Monday

Went to the doctor. Probably am having allergies, bad ones, for the first time in my life. Opted not to find out more about anything. Will just take Zyrtec, or something, and try to cope. Found myself charmed, as I was leaving, to be thanked for my service to humanity by staying home with so many children.

Went to Aldi. Went home. Took a long walk. Family movie. Maybe the children practiced piano but probably not.

Tuesday

Woke up Really Late. 7:30. So weird that everyone is sleeping so late. No one climbed in my bed so I just kept on sleeping. Cornflakes for breakfast. Read Abraham’s rescue of Lot from Caedorlaermor. Catechism. French. Spelling Tests. Latin. Then everyone to work. Marigold is starting to distinguish one letter from another. She traces the letter and then picks them out of a group of letters and circles them. When we go to listen to the beginning sounds, though, she can’t differentiate at all. She guesses wildly. Still, she gets the idea of what we’re doing, I think. We’ve been writing her name over and over and over and she doesn’t get it at all. Whereas I wrote Baby’s name out one time and she began to make the letters. Except she’s sure there are several Bs in it and makes lots. Made up a page of math for Gladys which she did quickly and perfectly. All the waiting has paid off. She’s making all kinds of helpful connections and Getting the Point of so many things. Elphine worked solidly but didn’t entirely finish. Alouicious was lazy all day. Took Matt’s excellent suggestion that he finish up his school after dinner. In the afternoon read some stories to the little girls and took a walk. At bedtime read a pile of stories, none of which were memorable.

Wednesday

Piano till 10:30. No bible or memory work. Everyone worked independently; I rolled around in my red chair helping here and there. No spelling test but a fair amount of practice. Gladys struggled with the Belling the Cat, or whatever it was called. She didn’t want to do it and we were interrupted loads. Made her anyway. She did half her copy work. Romulus whined and moaned but did geography, math, some history, lots of spelling exercises, and wrote a paragraph. Pretty sure Alouicious and Elphine got through everything. We did two lessons of Latin together and I read out a bunch of All the American History You’ll Ever Need to Know or whatever that book is called. Talked about the moving of slaves across the Atlantic and how awful it was. Gladys was fascinated but in no way understood what we were talking about. Stopped for lunch and then got back to work. Around three o’clock we went to the library after struggling to find all the books to return. Enforced a one book each rule. Pick a book you will actually read that week and get it. No more of this piles of books we don’t look at at all and then lose. Once home left Alouicious to finish up the kitchen, Elphine to do something, and everyone else to put away school work. I took a walk up the hill. Lovely young lady took the four to fencing in the evening and I took the two littles to vestry with me. Exhausted by bed time.

Thursday

Ditched school in the morning and went berry picking. This is exactly the kind of thing I never do because of driving us so hard towards my goal of being done with school by Easter. But it’s also the reason, theoretically, why I think homeschooling is a clever thing, because we can do things like berry picking, so we finally did. Didn’t actually get out of the house until 10:30, stopped at the post to mail a letter and then drove along to Apple Hills Farm listening to Scottish music and talking about the vote for independence. Didn’t get lost. I picked a whole tub of berries and the children sort of picked a second one between them. They ate way more than they picked. Had to keep threatening no jam to get them to pick any. Then we sat in the shade and ate Nutella rolled in tortillas, what we call Chocolate Roll Ups. A lady came up while we were sitting there and said, “are you here with a homeschool group? You can always tell the homeschoolers.” Responded that it wasn’t a group, it was just us. She said she’d homeschooled her children and they’d been in a really great group in Greene, although she knew there was a group out of the Unitarian Church that was really good, “because it’s so inclusive” she whispered meaningfully. Thanked her for advice and said we really don’t have time to be in groups right now. She wandered away and Alouicious asked what her deal was. “I don’t know,” I said, “lots of people think that homeschoolers don’t have enough time with other people, they don’t have the chance to be social. But that’s not our problem” I said, “we don’t get enough time to study. We have too many friends.” He agreed with me. Paid for the berries and then wandered down to the little lake/pond and then walked up the extremely muddy path looking for wolves. Well, I wasn’t looking for wolves, but I guess the children were. Finally herded them back, went home and read some Kim, Detectives in Togas, a little book about Michelangelo, and something about skin. Went to church for drawing and shepherds bowl.

Friday

Just the basics today. Didn’t start until 10:30 and stopped around 1. Read Abraham’s visit to Melchezideck, recited a few catechism questions, drilled 30 seconds of French, and then gave spelling tests. Have sort of fallen into the way of giving Elphine and Alouicius theirs at the same time as Romulus and Gladys. Romulus sits far away and has a real graded test, Gladys sits close and finds the letters on the wall and then writes them, although she’s going to need to stop doing that in a week because she knows them and is just being perfectionist, Elphine and Alouicious grade their own tests and practice missed words. Then Gladys read The Boy and the Filberts to me while Romulus started, finally (because I forgot) D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths. My copy is falling apart, I should break down and buy a new one. It’s ridiculous. He read it really easily. Then he read some geography and then lay on the floor. Aloucious read Shadow of the Bull, having done math early in the morning on his own. Elphine had heen lying around reading The Light Princess so then she had to do math. Then we cleaned up and went to church.