Monday April 16
Bella: Latin, math, copywork, composition, Latin.
Sophie, math, copywork, Child’s Geography, looked at pictures of the Holy Land from Cardinal Sean’s pilgrimage a few years ago.
Ben: math, copywork, Bob book
Anthony: math, copywork
Read aloud: St Magnus, St Margaret Mary, Story of the World, King Alfred the Great, Book of Marvels (Niagra Falls) Attempted narrations, we’ve let the habit slide since before Easter.
Anthony and Lucy helped do the dishes before dinner and both of them and Ben helped with meal prep. It’s definitely getting to the point where they are more help than hindrance in the kitchen.
Bedtime: Night of the Moonjellies
Anthony’s baptism day. We had fudgey gluten free brownies. (made with almond flour.)
Tuesday April 17
Bella: Latin, math, copywork, composition, Latin, worked at updating her book of centuries.
Bella is working on a composition inspired by Burgess’s Mother West Wind books and her observations of the natural world. The first installment is about a robin. I know the details she includes are from her own observation of robins.
Sophie, math, copywork, Child’s Geography, French, composition (narrated from Blessed Marie of New France).
Ben: math, copywork, Explode the Code
Anthony: math, copywork, Child’s History.
Lucy: Bob book, copywork
Read aloud: St Magnus, St Margaret Mary (finished the book), Augustus Caesar’s World, began Kitchen Madonna. Informal narrations, but not on every book.
Bedtime story: finished Castle in the Air
Wednesday April 18
Bella: Latin, math, copywork.
Ben: math, copywork, Bob book
Anthony: math, copywork, Child’s History.
Sophie was having an off day and didn’t get any work done. Everyone’s had colds, I think we’re on our second round.
Sophie, Ben, and I did take a walk, though, and enjoyed the spring flowers.
Read aloud: St Magnus, St John Masias Dominican doorkeeper of Lima Peru, Story of the World, article about Viking archaeology in North America, Kitchen Madonna.
Bedtime: Pharaoh’s Boat
Thursday April 19
Everyone is really and truly sick now, just a cold, but all five kids are fairly miserable.
Sophie did math, riding on the fumes of a new math book.
Anthony did a page of math.
Nothing else got done. We went to the doctor, came home, had lunch, then I went grocery shopping.
Bedtime story: Island Boy.
Friday April 20
I decided to do a fun picture study activity with all the sick kids. We spent time looking closely at fine art postcards and talking about them and sketching them.
Read aloud: St Magnus, St John Masias, which led to reading yesterday’s lectionary selection from Acts about Philip baptizing the eunuch because it was a precedent for God causing someone to be miraculously transported from one place to another, Alfred the Great, Kitchen Madonna, looked up images of Our Lady of Częstochowa and read up about the history of the image, as it was mentioned in The Kitchen Madonna.
Saturday April 21
Sophie pulled out her math book and did some math before she realized it was Saturday. I told her she was just making up for days skipped and she can do math anytime. I’m happy she was excited enough about the book to want to do it.
Bella is writing stories in the vein of Thornton Burgess’ Mother West Wind stories. And she’s writing more and more on her own since I gave her permission to ignore spelling and promised not to point out spelling errors unless she asked me for help.
For the first time ever Ben asked me to help him decode words in a book he was looking at, one about weapons and vehicles of WW2. He pointed at the words United Kingdom and asked me what they said, I couldn’t see the print and so he spelled out the letters and I told him the fist word was United, he looked at the first two letters of the second word and guessed Kingdom. He went on to look at France, Italy, and the confusing one: United Kingdom/Russia (a British build chassis that the Russians modified). After I’d helped him read each country name, he flipped to other pages and was able to recognize them again. I don’t know if he was primarily looking at letters or flags, but he did know where on the page to look for the country name and was trying to decipher it. That’s a huge step in print awareness and curiosity and applied reading skills.
“Ben helps with the pasta pot” made me think of Strega Nona.
Ha! Bubble bubble pasta pot… It would have been even better if it had been Anthony. We sometimes call him “Big Anthony” after the character in Strega Nona.