9/29-10/3

Gone to Texas. Children did school with K who also fed, bathed and corralled them. Glancing over everything, it seems that they made actual progress. Carry over from the week previous which I also didn’t write about, Gladys took it into her mind to write a “paragraph” and produced and illustrated the following grouping of sentences. Didn’t like to tell her she was plagiarizing. She looked up all the words for spelling herself and somehow, bizarrely, capitalized and punctuated each sentence.

10/6-10/10

Monday

Lay a bed till noon. Bailed Elphine out of the laundry. Went to Aldi for the week’s shopping by myself. Bought Matt a meager present of pancetta and jalapeños cream cheese. Came home and baked two Aldi Pizzas for the children and did a nice little bacon wrapped filet with mushroom and Brussels Sprouts for me and Matt. Family movie night: Star Wars, the first one.

Tuesday

Rhubarb Crumble for breakfast. Elphine to Bible Study at nine. Took the hour to write email and make lists. Started school at 10. Bible reading was the three coming to tell Abraham and Sarah that they would have a son. Discussed who the three were. Worked on Isaiah 55. Guess we aren’t doing the hymn. Need to find something new to sing. Still haven’t picked poems. Read the first chapter of the Tanglewood Secret. Seems like it will be good. Can’t believe I’m only reading it for the first time now. No French, no Latin. Straight to everyone doing their own work.

Triumphs of the day: Math with Romulus and Gladys. Gladys reading really well and sticking to it. Gladys having good handwriting. Gladys working really hard. Alouicious working hard and getting through all his subjects. Romulus liking math and getting it.

Low Points: Elphine blowing it all off and not caring. Pointed this out at the end of the day and she got all weepy and said she was exhausted from us going away and from the bishop and from the summer and just wanted everything to be normal for a few days. Wished her good luck with that. Just kidding. Commiserated and said we were all exhausted. Sort of apologized for yelling so much but not really. No bed time story. No story for the little girls. Just completely wiped out.

Wednesday

Piano until 10:30.

Bible reading was Abraham “bargaining” God down. Children bemused that Lot was counted as a “righteous person”. Quietly debating out whether to read Lot’s daughters’ incest. Hmm. Have two more days to decide. Worked on Isaiah 55. Read chapter two of The Tanglewood Secret. Drilled French. Gave two spelling tests. Ghastly spelling. Utterly ghastly.

No break for lunch. Ate a sausage patty and an avocado and helped Elphine with her Insects book. Aloucious wandered in and joined us. Tried to imagine the hook/net mechanism on a dragonfly and the mechanism by which it propels itself through the water. Very curious and interesting.

Since the three little girls were playing nicely somewhere where we couldn’t see or hear them, risky I know, I reread the history chapters on Atilla and Genseric. Romulus wandered in and wanted to know exactly when and how Atilla defeated the Roman/Visigoth army. Had to read it a second time.

Made him stay for a proper writing lesson. Started Memoria Press’ writing book, Fables. Talked through the Ant and the Caterpillar, the emotions of the ant versus the butterfly, what the word disdain means. Didn’t actually write anything.

Did lesson two of Latin. Actually dug up the worksheets but because I have a rule against photocopying or printing, I only have one copy which meant I had to write the exercises out on the board. Elphine, who has actually been doing grammar, had her English lesson reinforced by the Latin. Not that it was fancy, still just wretched subjects and predicates, but it seems like she’s sort of getting that the predicate is associated with the verb and the noun with the subject and that the words Predicate Nominative could also be thought of as the predicate noun….And so on and so forth.

Helped her with geography and then Alouicious also.

Triumphs: Persevered through being really tired. Got through everything with the two oldest.

Low Points: did not do science and math with Romulus. Did not to do anything with Gladys after the spelling. Sob.

Thursday

Woke up in a fog of stress. Told the children to get to work while I did one last push on the coffee hour lists and went shepherd’s bowl shopping. Got everything to church by a quarter to eleven, read the bible–destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah–and Tanglewood Secret, and then got my soup on. Gladys did math while I chopped and Romulus worked on another chapter of his story. Basically kept everyone working until around three and then it devolved and I had to just focus on the kitchen. Not a bad day though. Worked much better to go straight to church and do everything there than to do half at home and then rush to get the soup on. Next time going to shop the day before, for sure.

Friday

Library

Bible–skipped the incest and went straight to the birth of Isaac. Left over subjects from Thursday plus Tanglewood. More spelling. Discovered my quarter ended last week and spent the rest of the day panicking.

Scenes from the Week

Go read all the interesting learning notes at Melanie!