Thursday —
Mar 29th, 2007 by willa
Sean:
- He did another page and a half of Algebra. He is almost done with book 8, then he gets a couple of weeks’ break from math, then we will decide what to do after that.
- Latin — read the Introduction of Henle Latin 1, then I tried to explain declensions to him, without much success. How is that, after teaching Latin for about 10 years already?
- Art Through Faith — section 2 on Christian symbols — he narrated.
- Story of the Church — Charlemagne’s last days — narrated
- Weekly housekeeping jobs.
Music this week has been:
- Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack
- Dvorak: New World Symphony.
Kieron and Paddy are still immersed in an ongoing duplo/imaginary game. So I am leaving them to it.
Aidan’s OT called sick so no occupational therapy today. Aidan did some work in his Handwriting without Tears book.
Kieron did do his reading yesterday:
- Plutarch for Young Folk (Romulus and Remus)
- Questing Knights
- My Path to Heaven. This led to a long philosophical discussion. The book is a child’s version of Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. However, some of the questions are either too ambiguous or too leading, and of course, my kids pick up on this right away — my instincts have told me this and that’s why we have had the book for years and I’ve never given it to a child. Whether this will make the book inaccessible to my kids or not, I don’t know. I will encourage Kieron to try again and maybe discuss it with me. The pictures are by Caryll Houselander and very nice, and the text isn’t too bad, so maybe we will just skip the questions or use them for discussion-starters. I am not saying the questions are bad, just that they bring out the amateur Scholastic in my kids and they start disputing “What does it mean, that only humans can love? Can’t animals love?” and so it ends up not being so much a devotional as an exercise in defining terminology and clarifying distinctions and so on.
This afternoon some of us are going to town for Aidan’s orthopedic appointment and to go to Walmart and look for fabric for pirates’ costumes, Easter dresses and the like.
Because of my eye, I have gotten out of the habit of reading out loud to my poor 4 year old and 7 year old so I want to work on that.
The weather is warming up but there is still lots of snow on the ground so there is an interim between winter and spring — no one really wants to go outside but no one really wants to focus either.
Maybe your older children can read to the littles, and you could sit and enjoy. :)
We have been listening to the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack too. My eldest dd’s first orchestral experience was playing the main theme from the first movie - great fun! The Saturday music school she attends puts all the kids together once a year to do something big - the beginner orchestra members get simplified parts, but it gives them a chance to feel what playing in a bigger, better orchestra is like. Last week they announced tentative plans to do music from the second movie next term - big cheers all round!
My kids loved the pictures in My Path to Heaven but did not care for the text at all. I think they had a similiar reaction as your children. They wanted to quarrel with the author. They didn’t like his spin on things or something. It turned them off. But the pictures were great and they would pore over them (or is it pour?).
Blessings,
Faith