Monday July 17
Did math with Sophie and then she did copywork. She also read me a short section of geography and we reviewed the Hail Mary in French.
Did math with Ben. He did his letters book and copywork.
Did math with Anthony. He did copywork and read to me from Stories of Great Americans. I drew a picture for him and we did some map work.
Did math with Bella. She did copywork. I introduced her to the Latin numbers. We did a little botany, looking at some shrubs in the yard and discussing identifying features. We also discussed the depredations of caterpillars and looked at web articles to identify various caterpillars we’ve seen— winter moths, gypsy moths, and tent moths— and to learn about their life cycles and to investigate parasitic species.
Took Lucy to the doctor and then had to go to the pharmacy so no time for afternoon stories. Though we did watch some linguistics videos on You Tube.
Bedtime story: Dom read them something. I was too sleepy.
Tuesday July 18
Lucy was still sick this morning. I told the kids they could watch a movie if everyone finished school work fast enough. They were amazingly laser focused.
Sophie did a page of math, copywork, and read me from her geography and we reviewed the Hail Mary in French.
Did math with Ben. He did his letters book and copywork.
Did math with Anthony. He did copywork and read to me from Stories of Great Americans.
Bella reviewed a Minimus lesson by telling it to Lucy. I did a page of math with her. She did copywork. We reviewed the Latin numbers. She read several stories to Lucy.
I did a quick grammar lesson from Primary Language Lessons (is/are) and then for quick comparison wrote out the equivalent verbs in Latin and French (est/sunt and est/sont.)
Everyone watched Moana and then we had lunch.
Afternoon stories: All of a Kind Family, Golden Fleece.
Bedtime story: Shakespeare’s Star Wars.
Wednesday July 19
Lucy was feeling much better today. Finally.
Sophie did a page of math, copywork, and read me from her geography. No French today.
Did half a page of math with Ben. He did his letters book but no copywork. A hard day for him.
Did math with Anthony. He did copywork but did not read to me.
I did a page of math with Bella. She did copywork.
Bella took Lucy for a walk around the block. Then when they expressed dismay, I took the other kids separately. We marveled at how quickly the catalpa tree whose flowers we were gathering so recently already has seed pods longer than my forearms.
Afternoon stories: Finished All of a Kind Family Uptown. Read St John Vianney, Story of the World, Golden Fleece, two versions. (We’ve been reading the Padraic Colum GF, but today I pulled another version off my shelf, the Peter Green translation of the Argonautika. I’d never actually read it, but I bought it long ago and have carted it around for probably two decades. Well today I just wanted to see how the original recounted the story of the clashing rocks and I read it to the kids, it was just two pages. It was beautiful. I love, love the poetry, very fun to read aloud.) Sophie gave a beautiful brief narration of the story of Pandora. She deliberately left out details since I said I wanted a short version. Anthony criticized her for the lack of detail, but I was impressed at her ability to curtail detail when necessary. It showed an awareness of context and a control over the material.
Bedtime story: Shakespeare’s Star Wars.
Thursday July 20
Grocery shopping this morning. No table work.
Afternoon stories: All of a Kind Family Downtown, St John Vianney, Golden Fleece, Augustus Caesar’s World.
Bedtime story: Shakespeare’s Star Wars.
Friday July 21
Bella and Sophie did a bit of math and copywork. Then we had some errands to run. The boys stayed home with Dom, who was working from home.
Afternoon stories: All of a Kind Family Downtown, St John Vianney, Golden Fleece, Story of the World.
We’ve got to the chapter in SotW on Christianity and it’s been fun to talk about intended audience— the book is written to be accessible to non-Christians— and authorial choices. The children all felt like there were things the author could have included and we talked about oversimplification and the things that were missing from the account. Any mention of the supernatural, for example, except the resurrection itself. And any mention that Christians believe that Jesus is not merely the Son of God, but is in fact God himself, the Creator of the Universe. It was a really good discussion and it’s fun to see them digging their teeth in and really thinking about the text and comparing it to what they know about their faith.
Bedtime story: Shakespeare’s Star Wars.
