Learning Notes: January 26-30

Meant all week to keep carefullish notes but was interrupted every time I sat down to do them and then finally just gave up towards the end of the week. Really good week on the whole. We've gotten past the half way mark in history, done much much better in spelling and advanced really well in math. For one thing, in a moment of sheer providence, our piano teacher asked to only do three kids on Wednesday and then come back the next day for another child. This means that piano ends at 10 on Wednesday instead of 10:30 which means that we can really do a good solid day of school work both days, including Bible and Memory Work. Just in one week having a whole extra day of memory work showed itself extremely profitable.

Monday

I did some light house work and got some writing in. Piano, Math, Spelling and a subject of choice did happen for the three oldest. Gladys did piano, read and did math. No complaining for the most part. Even by me. Read The Talking Parcel at bedtime.

Tuesday

Bible Study. So amazed that I actually do have time to go to this. I sit at the children's table by myself and stare at Elphine and Gladys across the room who sit with someone else.

Got into school seriously by 10:15. Still reading Treasures of the Snow. Started into the Joseph saga in Genesis. Didn't have very much voice and couldn't really get through Isaiah 55 myself and so dropped out and was shocked to hear them all rattling it off. It is particularly marvelous because Gladys still isn't saying 'r' and listening to her running over the king james English with no 'r's totally made my whole day.

Spelling. Math. Continued memorizing of Alphabet Limmericks. French. All before lunch. Very short lunch and then everyone got to work while I read with Gladys. Had been going to run to Aldi on my own but everyone worked so hard and well that I weirdly found myself convinced to go to Wegmans instead and to take everyone with me. We rushed ouselves into the car and rushed around the store and were back home in exactly and hour and a half. Very weird. Had a good time.

Cleaned the kitched myself after supper (chicken and mushrooms with pasta) as a gift to the world and then read more Talking Parcel.

Wednesday

Piano. Memory Work. Didn't get to math before lunch. Struggled to get on track in the afternoon but did manage to get through everything. The jump from Aesop Fables to Baldwin's Famous Stories or whatever its called is a bit steep but Gladys is doing pretty well. She very interestingly is not sounding words out carefully out loud. She looks at the word and figures it out in her own solitary silence and then says the whole word. Its very slow but nice. Interesting to me that she wants to do this. Romulus finally noticed, after me saying it seven hundred thousand times, that his handwriting is a mess and began to write more carefully. Don't know why this particular moment but grateful anyway.

Quick Supper, Fencing, no night story as voice near totally gone.

Thursday

Settled in finally around 10:30 and pushed through till 1 without a break. Much horror and discussion about Treasures of the Snow. I love this book so much. It is so rare to find a Christian story/novel that's not by CS Lewis, that's not weird and clunky in some major way. Well, there is Elizabeth Googe. Who am I missing? I'm sure there are some. But this book is so well written, the story so nicely crafted. And, well, it is a great bludgeoning of the gospel over the head of the child, but it really works. I can barely read it without crying. The children are particularly horrified because the 'good character' is turning out to be just as wicked as the 'bad character' and in need of a savior. Every spare non school moment this week has been preoccupied with talking about this book.

After lunch did a little reading with Gladys while everyone else worked. I should note, here, that one reason the week went so well is because we stopped inviting the little girls to join us for school. They would be involved in some game when we were getting started and instead of telling them that we were about to pray, we just quietly disappeared and they basically lived their own lives playing with each other and trashing everything on their own while we worked. This saved my voice from having to shout over them, and all our sanity.

We only got about 45 minutes work before we got the very welcome surprise of our old neighbor and her gorgeous puppy stopping by and were then thrown into total confusion as the puppy and Ash and all the children ran screaming around the house. I just made a cup of tea and sat down and took the afternoon off of everything except making meat pie filling and dough. Then we had some counseling in the late afternoon and evening. Did read another chapter of The Talking Parcel at bedtime.

Friday

Opted not to go skating or to the library or anything and did a good solid Reading Day the way I always mean to but haven't since Christmas. Four chapters of Treasures of the Snow, a chapter of Around the World in 80 Days, some extra science reading, some more American history, and three chapters out of the Middle Ages text. Elphine and Alouicious have to read this text on their own all week and work through the questions without any interference from me, but then I read aloud all the chapters they were supposed to have done so they can check their work but mainly because Romulus and I want to know what happened. Its so interesting. Romulus in particular is always launched into a frenzy of battle drawing as a result of this text.

Afternoon play at church to which I did not go so as to be able to clean the school room the way I should have before Christmas. Even faced down the guts of the couch which was filled with about three hunred pencils and lots of fruits from the Montessori Pie. Really deeply and profoundly happy that its clean. Will be able to function so much better with all the clutter consigned to outer darkness the way it should have been so long ago.

Scenes of the Week