Monday July 11
Began with daily lectionary readings. Then looked at postcards for brief picture study.
Life of Fred with Sophie and boys. Then the boys got new Miquon math books (orange) and began to work in them. Ben did 7 pages and Anthony did 3. Sophie worked in her Miquon book too.
Bella did Miquon and then copywork from Peter Duck.
Sophie did copywork from her Memoria book.
I tried to do some alphabet work with Ben but he balked.
Afternoon stories: Big Six, Maximilian Kolbe, Story of the World (Cuban Missile Crisis and Bay of Pigs), Little Women.
Bedtime story: Queen Helena and the cats. Orchard Book of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses.
Tuesday July 12
Began with daily lectionary readings.
Life of Fred with Sophie and boys.
Boys worked in Miquon books, each did a couple of pages.
Sophie did 3 pages in Miquon and then a couple of problems in MEP. Then read to me from A Child’s Geography.
Anthony read Bob book and then copied a sentence.
Bella did math and then copied more from Peter Duck.
Afternoon stories: finished The Big Six, finished First Christians, Maximilian Kolbe.
Bedtime story: Otis and the Puppy
Bella is having Dom read her a book about WWII weapons. She’s read most of it, but she likes to share it with him. They’re reading about the war in the Pacific.
Wednesday July 13
Boys each did some Miquon math on their own. Sophie and Bella couldn’t find a page to do without help.
On our way to the grocery store, we stopped by the library to drop off books and pick up a few new ones. But there was an event going on: Swords Through the Ages. The kids started watching while I dealt with overdue books and fines and a blocked account. And then I started watching and I couldn’t pull us away. It was very, very good. The main presenter used to work at the Higgins Armory Museum, sadly now closed. They had a slideshow with pictures from medieval and renaissance manuscripts, training manuals. They introduced each kind of sword and then talked about how you would fight with it, enacting the fights in the illustrations. Lots of quick sword battles, funny jokes that had the kids laughing. Entertaining and very informative. I gave it an A+. We were very late in getting to the store and had an extremely late lunch. But it was so very worth it.
Afternoon stories: St Maximilian Kolbe, Little Women, and some library books.
Thursday July 14
Kids all did some Miquon math. We had friends visiting for the morning.
Afternoon stories: Maximilian Kolbe, Little Women, Story of the World (Kennedy assassination).
Bedtime story: Ben’s new Aesop’s fables book illustrated by Barbara McClintock, gorgeous.
Friday July 15
Read lectionary readings and saint of the day: St Bonaventure, whose story really appealed, especially the connection to St Louis and Blessed Isabella, but also the story about his washing the dishes when the messengers appeared to give him his cardinal’s hat.
Miquon Math for everyone. It’s going really well, so much smoother than the MEP was. MEP is great, but everyone had hit a wall, the second half of the book is really intense, and needed a break to do easier work. The boys are loving the more manipulative heavy work and will do the same amount of work as that on an MEP page, but because Miquon is more spread out, they’ll do several pages at a time and feel really accomplished. Basically, I’m remembering why I love Miquon so much. But think the MEP is good and will probably bounce back to it too. Because challenging is good and the contrast is part of what’s making the MIquon so fun.
Sophie had a great breakthrough with division when I got out the linking cubes. She’s so resistant to manipulatives, probably thinks she’s too old to need them, but boy where number lines weren’t working, the cubes really did the trick. I love those moments. Bella and I worked on adding and multiplying fractions, using a number line. I think she’s getting it.
Sophie read me Child’s Geography. She copied in her Memoria Press book. Anthony read me a Bob book and copied a sentence.
Bella worked on her Latin and we composed sentences for a pretend dialogue, based on one in the book. She copied more of a passage from Peter Duck.
I read the kids some poetry and the pages in Comstock’s Handbook of Nature Study about woodchucks and houseflies since those are critters we’ve had run ins with of late.
Afternoon stories: Maximilian Kolbe, Little Women (with a great discussion about letter writing styles), Catechism, Story of the World (Civil Rights movement and assassination of MLK).
Listened to some tracks from The Real Ambassadors because I love Louis Armstrong, it’s a great album. And very apropos. My kids really can’t wrap their heads around racism.
+JMJ+
Re: kids wrapping their minds around racism
A few years ago, I blogged a little about Norman Rockwell’s painting of the black children moving into the white neighbourhood. One of the commenters said her children wouldn’t understand the subtext unless it were explained to them, then added that she was very grateful for that.
In even sunnier news, Ben’s socks are awesome.
Sadly, I think mine would now get the subtext. At least Bella would. It’s a hard line to walk, giving them enough historical context to understand the world around them while letting them have the innocence of childhood. Reading 20th century history has been both rewarding and challenging. We’ve done a lot less 19th and 20th century lit than we have for previous historical periods. But we read Lord of the Rings, which I think addresses many of the underlying spiritual concerns far better than most 20th century works. So maybe my lit selections haven’t been so far off after all.
Ben’s socks are awesome! My mom has the knack of finding cool clothes. Ben’s been wearing just one of the socks all week because he hurt a toe and the sock makes him feel better. It’s really cute.