Field Trips & Flicks

Monday -March blew in like a lamb and afforded us a lovely day at they symphony and a perfect afternoon at the Nature Center cross county skiing and snowshoeing.

Tuesday & Wednesday we worked on basics. Flower finished Writing With Ease 1 and will be done with Horizons Math 1 today. Cub worked on Division and Math Games, along with Thinking Skills. Flower continues to work through Veritas Press readers. Cub is reading lots of anything and everything. He had to write a paper, however, for Apologetics and froze (o.k. "heated up" is a more accurate description, or "came unglued," "fell apart" etc). He is still thinking that writing a paper and talking about a topic are totally removed from each other but after several rough drafts and lots of angst, finally had something resembling the assignment to turn it. (true confessions: this happened only after I vowed to cut off all forms of help and leave him to face his professor (DAD) alone. Apparently, the thought of showing up to class with several other kids, to face the Dad empty handed did the trick and we were finally able to make some progress). Feche-boy worked on scheduling last Sunday with Viking Man and has days full up beginning with an early morning jog and jobs and seguewaying right into Life of Fred Algebra, Apologia Biology, Memoria Press' Ancient History & IEW's Ancient History Theme-based Writing.

Thursday we attended TDA- Art, Drama, Music, Prayer, Read Alouds, Writing, Science, Music History & Singing, ending with Intercession. What a difference it makes for the younger kids to watch, listen and learn from Jr. & Sr. Highers. We finished the day by cleaning the rooms together and spending 45 minutes at the playground in a massive snowball fort fight.

Today is the usual for the notsolittles. The older 2 are attending a luncheon for their preferred political candidate, who is running against a favored incumbent. Still, they know him personally from TeenPact events and are excited to hear what he has to say. Tonight, the community Science & Arts Center hosts their "First Friday," meaning free admittance. While the notsolittles and I hang out at the Science Center the older kids are going to hear a presentation by a State U. professor doing a re-enactment of Charles Darwin, explaining his life and theories.

At home tonight we are watching The Gathering Storm and in the morning, Into the Storm, about Winston Churchill and his involvement in WWII. There was an interesting commentary in The Post American World that has totally piqued my interest (again) in the man. George Grant's excellent book Never Give In: The Extraordinary Character of Winston Churchill, is required reading around here so we all have a basic appreciation of Churchill's contributions but now I want to know more. In other viewing we watching A&E's excellent production Victoria & Albert about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and The Winslow Boy based on an actual incident that occurred during the Edwardian Era. Both excellent.

We finally unearthed the Story of the World CD's and Cub has big plans to do a SOTW listening fest this week-end. Not much memory work and we still have a long way to go with Cub's writing but overall I'm counting it a week chock-full of educational opportunities and pursuits. How was yours?