Full Up

Week 2 of school and our schedule is full up.

*1*

Math is working for everybody. JOY. Cub is working through Saxon Alg 1/2 and cruising along just fine. Feeche is doing pre-calc under the excellent tutelage of Mrs. I (who I thank God for at least daily) and Math Made Easy II really is explaining fractions in a fun and easy manner.
Perplexors and Complete a Sketch continue to be big wins.

*2*



I've long been under the delightful spell of Memoria Press. This year it is the backbone of much of what we are doing: Christian Studies IV; Famous Men of Greece, Latin poems and Songs Copybook, The Divine Comedy, American Studies, . World and State Geography. Good,  solid stuff. Famous Men is excellent- the study guides include map work, questions, a challenge project. The kids beg for more. Christian Studies same kind of thing. An excellent overview of the Bible before hitting high school apologetics hard. We're reading through the Children's Bible in order to read through the Bible together in a year. The pictures are lovely.

*3*

The Divine Comedy deserves a spot all to itself. The study guide is great, the reading rich; it's like Pilgrim's Progress (Cub's favorite book for a couple of years- he read the abridged, the unabridged and Christiana); apologetics, literature, allegory, and myth all rolled in to one. Feeche and I are loving it. I promise to catch up to the Canto he's on before next week!!

*4*

Major crisis (mine) over Latin this week. It has been one of those things that just never seems to move forward. We keep plowing away at it. I decided this week that we're going to just inundate ourselves with Latin and see if any of it actually takes beyond the vocab. Played Lingua Angelica, worked on song memorization, played Powerglide Latin in the car, did LCI and FFI.. Had a break-through regarding declensions. I so seriously missed out on the grammar of language and it just seems so hard to me. I think the only reason I can write is because of the millions of words I've read. Reading is certainly a good way to get an education, but in my personal experience it's been an inadequate way to understand something in a particular fashion; in other words, good overview, but lacking in mastery.
The kids all jumped into Rosetta Stone's German this week and had a blast. Even Dr. dh (who in a previous decade was conversant in German) got in on the act. I might sucumb to pressure and join the fray. Otoh, I'm not sure where to fit it in.

*5*

Horatius at the Bridge- memory work moving forward. We are on paragraph 5 and the kids have definitely caught the joy in memorizing a poem with such a delightful rhyme scheme. They are having fun with it already and going faster than I'm assigning.
Feeche has his poems picked for Poetry Outloud; Charge of the Light Brigade, which is one of our old favs, and a couple of newer ones including The End of Science Fiction, which I love.

*6*

More door plates and knobs were polished this week. Brass is beautiful, brass is divine but I would not be unhappy if I never polished any ever again. Ever. Again. Ever. Seriously. The walk is slowly getting done. Dr. Dh has set a goal of having it finished by the end of this week-end.
A friend commented recently about how she has always been very eager for outcomes but has come to realize that the process is every bit as important. Clinging to that. Yes I am. Even as the clothes fall down in the "closet" yet again. I think I could do with a little less process and a little more outcome in my life. Just saying.

*7*

The drought toasted the garden and killed some of the many trees that we have planted, babied and nurtured. The tomatoes, however, seemed to like the heat and we have 10's of pounds of ruby red, ripe tomatoes on the counter. We're drying them. Tomorrow some of them will turn in to sauce. They've been a lovely addition to the salads this week.

What's going on in your corner of the world?

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