Today was our first "official" day trying out the unschooling life. Of course, it wasn't any different than any other day, except that I was much more aware of what the kids were learning and absorbing as we went about our business.

NT started the morning bright and early watching Cyberchase on PBS, where he learned about measuring the passage of time.

Later, we picked Minna up and went downtown to see the 8th floor Macy's holiday story, A Day in the Life of an Elf. We arrived just as it opened so we almost had the place to ourselves, giving the kids as much time and space as they liked to check out each animated scene.

Afterward, the kids burned off some energy running around in the skyway while we tracked John down and then walked over to Peter's Grill--the "oldest continually operating restaurant in the city" (94 years!)--where Minna treated us to brunch.

This afternoon NT spent several hours building and rebuilding structures with his new Marbulous set from Gramma Ruth. He talked about gravity and angles as he re-engineered his designs to make the marbles go faster or take different paths. For a little while he had some help from Grandpa Alan.

We read Hardy Boys' Secret of the Old Mill out loud for about an hour. NT asked if he could stop me if he heard a word he didn't understand so I could explain it to him. Today he learned what "genuine" means.

NT also spent quite a bit of time in his basement "studio" working on various crafts, including some pretty cool monsters he fashioned out of sparkly pipe cleaners.

After LL's nap we watched a DVD of Swan Lake from the library so she could see real ballerinas perform. Interestingly, her brother seemed much more interested in the performance than she was!

NT read a book about the Titanic to himself at bedtime. He is really fascinated by shipwrecks. We talked about how scary it must have been for the people who were on the ship when it went down.