A final push before the holidays

Superboy and I sat down and had a conversation about the remainder of the year. We both realize that we have been a bit slack lately, and, although some quality learning has been happening, we are not happy with the quantity of our recent accomplishments. Much of this has been due to the arrival of our horses, and all the work that has entailed, but now that things with them have settled into a little routine, we can re-focus our energies toward school.
So, with 5 weeks until the Christmas holidays, we are going full steam ahead.
We got an incredible amount of work done today!
Monday is "mostly math" day, so Superboy did a workbook page of addition problems with regrouping, we read a chapter of The Man Who Counted, we figured out 5 or 6 more numbers in our ongoing Four-fours problem (see below), read the "D" entry in G is for Googol, did an activity set of the TOPS math kit "Get a Grip," did some Egyptian math problems from previously mentioned website, cut and assembled a 3D scarab beetle, colored some Egyptian jewelry, read a chapter of Tales from Ancient Egypt, listened to a chapter of "Story of the World" on CD, and started a new science unit- a TOPS kit called "Green Thumbs: Radishes".
That's on top of our barn chores and shopping for last minute science supplies (try finding radish seeds this time of year!)
WOW!
Superboy had a great attitude and really enjoyed his work. He got so excited when we found the new numbers for the Four fours- heck, we BOTH were jumping around and cheering!
I said to him "Wow! We really got alot of math done today!"
His reply: "Yea, that's 'cause it was fun math!"
Let's see if tuesday "lotsa language arts" can hold the same level of enthusiasm tomorrow!


A little explanation of the Four fours: We read in The Man Who Counted that you can make ANY number by using exactly four fours. (ex: 44-44=0, 44/44=1, etc) so we decided to test it out ourselves. We made a chart of numbers 1-100 and are trying to make them all, whenever we feel like doing it. Each time either of us makes one, Superboy writes how it was made on the chart. He is learning some pretty advanced functions this way, for example, factorials, roots, and powers, etc. and having a blast doing it. We've been working on and off for about a month and only have 9 numbers left! Today he was so excited to figure out 85 all by himself. Here is how he did it:
(4! + .4)/.4 +4!=85
Pretty cool, huh?