On Saturday the boys pulled out the Scrabble game and I helped them play while I baked bread, made preserved lemons, and whipped up some fish chowder from Friday night’s leftover tilapia. Really it was almost like playing Scrabble against myself, but they seemed to have fun. I helped Ben win. And he did a great job of keeping score– math practice! Lucy started playing with their tiles and they got upset, so we found the bananagrams for her. So a very educational way to pass the afternoon.
On Sunday night we read Yeh-Shen (Ye Xian) by Ai-Ling Louie, the Chinese Cinderella and then had a great discussion about fairy tale themes and variations with the kids, who delighted in pointing out the similarities with the Baba Yaga story Vasilisia the Brave and discussing differences among various Cinderella retellings that we own.
Monday October 29
Anthony: math, copywork (he’s copying and memorizing Jabberwocky now, at his own request.)
Ben: math, Explode the Code, copywork, reading from Little Bear “Birthday Soup”
Sophie: math, copywork
Bella: math, read and narrate from Young Oxford History of Britain and Ireland
Went shopping with kids.
Afternoon stories: Little Plum, Magna Charta, St Louis de Montfort, Story of the Chosen People, lectionary readings.
Bedtime story: Canadian Summer
Tuesday October 30
Anthony: math, copywork, read and narrate from People in History, about St Alban.
Ben: math, Explode the Code, copywork, reading from Little Bear “Birthday Soup”
Sophie: math, copywork, dictation, read Geography. (Lots of hymn singing, too. And poetry reciting. She recited a great number of the poems she’s memorized.)
Bella: math, Latin, copywork, read and narrate from Young Oxford History of Britain and Ireland
Afternoon stories: Little Plum, Magna Charta, St Louis de Montfort, Story of the World (Ferdinand and Isabella), lectionary readings.
Bedtime story: Canadian Summer
Wednesday October 31
Anthony: math, copywork
Ben: math, Explode the Code, finished reading from Little Bear “Birthday Soup”
Sophie: math, copywork
Bella: math
Afternoon stories: Little Plum, Magna Charta (then grandparents arrived and so stories were cut short.)
Bedtime story: library book
Thursday November 1
Anthony: math, copywork, read Child’s History
Ben: math, Explode the Code, copywork, Little Bear
Sophie: math, copywork, Child’s Geography
Bella: math
We went to the noon Mass at the pastoral center. Most of the feast day Masses near us are at parishes with schools and the daytime Mass is the one for the school children, which is always extremely long. So the pastoral center Mass, which is mostly for employees, but also attended by many elderly people of the neighborhood, is perfect. It always starts with the Angelus, has very little bells and whistles (though today we had incense) and does not drag at all.
Afternoon stories: Little Plum, Book of Marvels, St Louis de Montfort, lectionary readings (even though we heard them at Mass, I wanted to discuss them further)
Bedtime story: library book
Friday November 2
Anthony: math, copywork, read and narrated from People in History chapter about St Patrick.
Ben: math, Explode the Code, copywork, Little Bear
Sophie: math, copywork
Bella: math, composition
Anthony’s copywork this week has been Jabberwocky. He’s been memorizing the poem as he copies and recited it to Dom today.
Sophie has likewise been memorizing most of the poems as she copies them. This week she’s been working on Sylvia Plath’s Morning Song.
I shared and discussed a couple of poems with Bella and Sophie. It’s been a poetry-rich week, though I haven’t been remembering to mark everything down.
No afternoon stories as I had to run errands: pharmacy, grocery store, library. And make some phone calls which had to be made during business hours.
Bedtime story: The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship a Russian folk tale retold by Arthur Ransome (yes, the Ransome of the Swallows and Amazons fame).
