Our Weekly Amble for February 26-March 2 AND March 5-9, 2018

Last week, (Feb 26- March 2) was like a perfect storm. On Sunday, the end of break week, I was home sick with a horrible head cold. On Monday, we began our new term, the Warm-Up Week for Homeschool Consistency Boot Camp, and I was curating for Charlotte Mason IRL on the topic of Break Week. It was busy.

It was also a very organ week. On Saturday I sat in the hallway while the children were at a day of workshops for the Organ Guild of Columbus. It was great because I got a good bit of work done, it was not great because I got colder and colder throughout the day and I suspect it helped that head cold along. M-girl and N-boy enjoyed the workshops a lot. M-girl particularly enjoyed the Children’s Choir workshop and N-boy the improvisation techniques one. I ran into both choir teachers from high school, which was weird. (I was only in choir my freshman year, but the one was a student teacher that year).  Anyway, we had that on Saturday, then regular lessons and practices on Tuesday and Thursday. Thursday was also the first Thursday of the month, so there was a recital that we attended (actually, the organist from my parents’ church).  On Friday, the church where the academy is hosted had a visiting composer (who has composed some of the children’s music) and he did an hourlong workshop with them. The six students played for him, then he worked with each one in the group and focused on something key for their piece. It was one of the coolest lessons I’ve ever observed.

Remembering what we’re about

Monday after break week is often a challenge, I wore my Atmosphere Discipline and Life shirt to remember – and remind – our purpose and posture of learning. The very beginning of this first day after break was not an exception, we struggled.  However, once we got going it went pretty well. The best first day after break. Overall, it was a good week. We did the planned work and the extra events.

Wednesday was cleaning day – and we decorated for spring besides. The girls did a nice job with that.

We had Art and More with Friends and worked more on Cleomenes for Plutarch (killed all the ephors!), made the most difficult fans ever in paper sloyd, and started some drawings.

We gave the children a good amount of time to play outside as it was a nice day, especially for February.

I got to snuggle the newest member of our group – a few weeks old – during the sloyd and drawing time. That was fun, I like holding the ones I can hand back these days 🙂

Drawing Lesson

Baseball outside

R-girl planned and cooked dinner Thursday night. It was yummy and she experienced the difficulty of getting everything together. Good lessons all around.

This week went overall very well. We had our moments, though.  

We did Morning Time all four school days, although I was tempted to skip Friday. I was glad we did it because it was, by far, the best part of the day.  We finished A Comedy of Errors during Whatchamacallit. The children were painting, so we listened to the Arkangel production I bought – which all term they refused to try because they thought they wanted to read it. They decided they loved it, so I purchased Henry V and Richard III – we’ll finish Henry V from last term (that I stopped to pick up Comedy) and Richard III for next term as we start Year 7. We missed it in the fall and I think it’ll be good to do before we get to Daughter of Time.

We mostly finished the Memoria Press grammar book II and I’ll be buying Level III at the Cincinnati GHC. We’re still reading through the section on diagramming. We finished the week with what turned out to be a not very funny Mad Lib. 

We started learning When I Survey the Wondrous Cross and Philippians 4:4-13. They’ve almost finished memorizing ‘Matilda who Told Lies and Burned to Death.’  We’ve been enjoying Langston Hughes poetry in the Dream Keeper book. We started to read from Michael Clay Thompson’s Building Poetry about metaphor and simile.

We also finished The Open Gate by Kate Seredy. We all enjoyed it and there was much to think about. 

I got and wore another attitude adjusting shirt from Brandy and it was well received by all. The girls had optometrist appointments on Tuesday. R-girl needs a slight adjustment to her lenses, but M-girl needs drastic changes … and wants to get contacts, so that’ll be happening soon. Actually, she’s been wearing N-boy’s old glasses this week and they’ve made a big difference.

The children continued with Latin. N-boy and R-girl in LFC B lesson 19 (maybe 18?) and M-girl moving forward through lesson 7 in Latin Alive! She had a good tutoring session yesterday using Google Hangouts with our tutor.

In math, M-girl had several lessons that were marked as though for tests this week. She got almost everything right which is always reassuring and she is finishing up MEP Year 5. N-boy is working on positive and negative numbers with multiplication and division, addition and subtraction. R-girl is working on fractions and adding together differing kinds of things and order of operations.

I want to start giving variations on their written narrations as we move into more formal composition.  I need to purchase and watch Amy Snell’s workshop and read Karen Glass’ book. The children all write fine narrations, but I think more variety and challenge would help us all.

On Friday, my parents took the girls to see the new A Wrinkle in Time movie. They said it was good – pretty to watch and interesting – but not like the book. They could see all the things that were stripped from the book and the things added to the movie, so I felt like they were discerning about it.