Week in Review 9/14/12

Monday - was supposed to go on a tour of a school we are looking at for high school for Sean. Fought traffic and got there a bit late only to find out that the tour was for middle schoolers. Oops. So we go on 9/19 for the high school tour. Came home and did morning studies with Becky and Sean. Josh was supposed to be doing his own thing but I don't think he was. Then we were off to our Aquinas Learning Center's parent orientation. We are at a new location and trying to work out the kinks. It was pretty chaotic but hopefully everybody learned something and next Monday we'll be good to go on our first day. Becky went to her first American Heritage Girls meeting of the year. The children's music director from the parish has a girl in the troop so she teaches the girls songs (the girls then go and sing at nursing homes). Becky learned Swing Low, Sweet Chariot which she loves and has been singing all week. They also went bird watching around the grounds of the church which Becky thought was fun.

Tuesday - Rick taught Gov't class to Josh and a friend. Originally, this was supposed to happen Sunday afternoon but Rick decided he could take off Tuesday mornings. Both guys were enthusiastic about it afterwards. Josh went off to Physics.

Copywork was from Jeremiah:

Practise honesty and integrity; rescue the man who has been wronged from the hands of his oppressor; do not exploit the stranger, the orphan, the widow; do no violence; shed no innocent blood in this place.

We read more about Manners (Don Quixote) and about Prometheus and fire. We reviewed more Latin - going over declension and conjugations paradigms for 1st and 2nd of both those categories. We reviewed the properties of verbs - voice, mood, tense, number and person. Sean read more of The Golden Fleece and then worked on his Leaf Collection project for Life Science. I never did get to math with Becky though, for some reason.

Wednesday - Math tutor came for the boys. Hooray! While she worked with the boys Becky and I did some work on fractions. Then Sean went to his art class. He liked it a bit better this time. I had to run out to get gardening/work gloves for them both for their historical swordsmanship class which was at 3:30. They both really enjoy the class but it is a lot more physically taxing then you'd realize. The coach is just wonderful. Josh has been working through the first chapter of Warriner's English Grammar and Composition, 5th Course. Wed. night he went to his CLC group.

Thursday - big day for Sean. He started at his Aquinas Learning Center Schola Alta group. We got up early and left the house by 7:20. I was a bad mommy and got him an Egg McMuffin on the way. I wanted him to eat and I knew he would eat that! So I might treat him to an Egg McMuffin on Thursday mornings. We got there right on time. It's an all day thing. He said he had a good time and that his favorite class was Latin! Meanwhile at home with Becky we did some math again, then went off to the library, came home and then off to her gymnastics class. I dropped her there and was supposed to drive over to someone's house who had brought Sean home for me, but I got lost several times. Was very anxious because I picked up Becky 40 minutes late from her gymnastics class, but she was fine. They had a TV in their little waiting area that was showing cartoons. She just sat and watched them until I showed up. She wasn't even aware that I was that late.

Today I hope to do a Friday freewrite, read some more from History of Science, Sean will do math, Becky though has to go to the dentist this a.m. Josh also should work on math homework. Before that, Josh and I are going to 8:30 a.m. mass together and then we are going to meet to discuss How to Read a Book, watch a history lecture from The American Identity and start his history timeline. I told the younger kids they were allowed to sleep in on Fridays so Josh and I could have some one on one time.

I've got two meetings this weekend to get ready for our own Aquinas Learning. Becky and I start on Monday. In addition to that Becky has an Honor Guard to attend Saturday evening with her AHG troop and I am teaching my first 7th grade Sunday school on Sunday morning. And somehow meals need to be planned and shopped for, the house tidied (it is a wreck right now!) and Sunday at sunset Rosh Hashanah starts!

{pretty, happy, funny, real} 9/13/12

{pretty}

I went for a walk this morning around the pond that lies just beyond our backyard.

There were some wild flowers.

The sky was a beautiful autumn blue.

{funny}

(Oops, I think happy was the next category, but I'm too tired to switch the photos around)

I think the idea that people spend 2.5 million dollars on these ugly homes is very funny.  They actually look okay here but in real life, they are big and pretentious and really ugly.  There used to be fruit orchards here.

I like this escapee from someone's garden's pluck, growing up out of the gravel like that!

{happy}

I spied my 17 year old son coming back from his morning walk.

I just thought this was a pretty shot.

{real}

This really is a big drainage pond and it fills up fast when it gets rainy out.

Construction trailer - they are still building the ugly, silly, overpriced box mansions.  More, more, more!

This is looking over the pond at my house, only it is behind those trees so you can't see it!

For more {pretty, happy, funny, real} go to Like Mother, Like Daughter.

Not strewing

I am in scheduling mode right now. I wanted to post this but didn't know how. I asked my local computer guy, Seano. He sat down and wrestled with the computer for about 15 minutes and then, voila! Here it is. If you click on it, it gets bigger!

The White Nile - Book 38

This book (an audio I got out of my local library) continued my armchair explorations into places and history I know very little about. The first book this year that I'm mentally putting into this category was Salt, then later I read about the Basque people. Next I learned about the wanderings of the Blind Traveler. The White Nile continues in this vein of the history of exotic (to me!) places.

The White Nile was written by Alan Moorhead who was a very interesting person in his own right. He was a reporter in North Africa among other places during World War II. He wrote many popular books. The White Nile was published in 1960 and tells the story of the European (mostly British) exploration of the Nile during the 1800s and into the early 1900s. It begins with Sir Richard Burton and his exploring partner John Speke, then goes into depth about the explorers and British governors who followed, General Baker and his beautiful blond wife, Livingston the missionary and Stanley the American newspaper man who 'found' him, the heroic General Gordon the governor-general of Khartoum and many others. The characters and the exploits of these men are detailed in such a comprehensive, articulate and gripping way. Alan Moorhead could really write! I found myself completely captivated by the dangerous and often bizarre events told by Moorhead. He based much of his recounting on journals, letters, and newspaper articles at the time. The book seems impeccably researched.

I know very, very little about African history, especially places like Uganda and The Sudan. This book sent me to my globe and I spent time looking at maps of this area of Africa.

The character that really stands out in this book is General Gordon. In fact while listening to it I thought, wow, this story would make a great movie. It turns out that Hollywood did make a movie about the whole escapade starring Charlton Heston as Gordon in the movie Khartoum made in 1966. It's on my must see list, though I am sure Hollywood strayed from the exact story.

Moorhead's writings are based on his Victorian explorers' writings mostly, so there is quite a bit of bigotry towards the Arabs and African Natives. It is hard to know what is true and what is exaggerated because it is filtered through Victorian British eyes. Moorhead does try to be objective in many ways, but there are also many assumptions and tales that seem a bit slanted, to say the least. The Arabs had been in the area for a long time, making lots and lots of fortunes in the slave trade. The natives are portrayed often as very brutal. The whole Mahdist uprising sounded familiar to my ears just because we've seen this type of thing before with the likes of the Ayatollah in Iran, Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, etc. Islam does seem to lend itself to this sort of cult leader and subsequent instability.

Moorhead himself, born in Australia and spending many years living in England, might have had his own prejudices. One little area that I did know about in Ugandan history was the story of St. Charles Lwanga and the Christian Martyrs. According to Moorhead though the Scottish missionary, whose name I forget, was much more successful then the French missionary priest and there were more Protestant converts than Catholic, but actually there were very few converts at all. The missionaries were having a tough time bringing the populace around. He does talk about the martyrs, how they refused to submit to the Ugandan king who had a proclivity for sodomizing young boys. When Charles Lwanga and others refused, in the name of Christ to allow the king to abuse the boys, they were burned alived. (This whole thing is ironic in light of the scandals that have recently rocked the Church!). Moorhead's book was written in 1960 and I don't know what the situation was like then, but now Uganda is 42% Catholic and growing. There is a vibrate faith culture there and a famous shrine dedicated to the martyrs. So perhaps that French missionary wasn't quite the failure Moorhead makes him out to be!

Moorhead wrote another book about this whole era and place, called The Blue Nile. I'd love to read that too.

For more book reviews go to 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Week in Review - 9/7/12

Monday - Labor Day. I was going to pretend that it was a regular Monday. We were just getting into a groove last week and I didn't want to spoil the momentum. Ha ha. Right in the middle of starting our morning work, the doorbell rang. Our next door neighbors who had been in Jordan for most of the summer visiting relatives had come home the day before. Their kids wanted to play! So Becky and Sean spent most of the day playing with them.

Tuesday - Will's last day before he left for college. He woke up covered in hives! From what we don't know. He spent the morning at the emergency care place in town. This day was shot through with unexpected errands and doing last minute things with Will. Josh went to his physics class.

Wednesday - Will and Rick left very early to catch the train to Boston. We managed to do a pretty normal amount of morning studies. Sean had his first art class, which went ok. Then later he and Becky had their first historical swordsmanship class. That was really cool!

Thursday - did our morning work. Becky had her first gymnastics class, this also turned out to be something that looks really good. Josh went to Physics.

Friday - today I meet with Josh to discuss How to Read a Book among other things. We'll do a normal morning workload. Even Latin. We never did get to Latin this week, but on Fridays we plan to do flashcards and games. We can at least do that much today!

Read Alouds:
Religion - Since we finished our great catechism book last week and we haven't started Aquinas Learning yet, I decided to read this book out loud: Manners in Modern Life; The Poetry of Conduct, The Virtue of Civility. It is EXCELLENT!
History/Mythology - Bullfinch's Mythology - a classic
Science - The Story of Science, Volume I by Joy Hakim - very interesting, lots of great graphics and maps.
Literature - Rick is almost but not quite done reading The Hobbit out loud.

Reading:
Sean is plugging his way through The Golden Fleece by Padriac Colum.

Math:
Becky worked some more on Fractions in Key To workbook

Copy work:

In honor of Labor Day and also because Samuel Gompers is my great great grandfather (and the kids' great, great, great grandfather) we did a quote from him:

Time is the most valuable thing on earth: time to think, time to act, time to extend our fraternal relations, time to become better men, time to become better women, time to become better and more independent citizens.

Sean did the first chapter in his Life Science book.

Next week we go full swing into the academic year beginning Sunday afternoon when Rick starts teaching a government class to Josh and a friend.

No pictures at all this week. My camera's battery died and I couldn't find the charger.

Strewsday Tuesday - 9/4/12

Oh my. It seemed liked the summer stretched out forever and then suddenly time sped up and began to go in fast motion.

No conscious strewing going on right now. Let's see if I can think of any unconscious stuff:

Becky and Sean are both into movie making. Becky has been making videos for her little youtube channel for a while now. She's just discovered the secret to stop motion. Yesterday (or maybe the day before?) she made a cute little 9 second video. It took her a couple of hours to get those 9 seconds! Takes a lot of hard work and patience!

Sean also has been busy making little movies. He got some kind of a special effects program. Yesterday he showed me a little video of himself blowing up in a very impressive fiery explosion. The attention that must be paid to detail is pretty impressive. He asked me if I thought the flash of light that only lasted 1/12 of a second should be longer. I really didn't have an opinion to give him, but he considered the matter very seriously and decided that yes, it should be slightly longer.

Poor Josh has been hunting for a job for several weeks now. He's getting a bit discouraged. Yesterday he had an interview with a local frozen custard place. They said they'd call him in the afternoon to let him know if he got the job. They didn't call. At prayers last night he asked us to pray that he gets a job. I forgot how completely disheartening job hunting is. So he's getting one of those life lessons.

Also, last night we decided to celebrate Labor Day by going out to a Korean BBQ restaurant. Actually, we just decided to go out because Will is a fan of Korean BBQ and since he's leaving this week to go back to Berklee, we thought it would be a nice going away gesture. So we packed everyone up and drove down the road to this restaurant that, it turns out, president Obama brought the president (or prime minister? Sorry, shaky on my titles!) of South Korea when he was visiting. I really love where we live. I love that it is so multicultural you can just go down the road and find a Korean restaurant, but also that you can just happen upon a place where the president of the U.S. has eaten. Apparently Hilary Clinton also ate there once after coming back from a visit to South Korea. The whole family that runs the restaurant got their picture taken with her. The food was good and it is fun because they cook up the bulgogi and such right at the table. After dinner we went to the same frozen custard place and had a 'last day of summer' treat. The place was definitely understaffed. Why didn't they call?

I've been reading Tom Brown's School Days and wanted to watch a film adaptation on it, so we got the old one made in 1940 or something, with Freddie Bartholomew. Becky and Rick watched it with me. And I've been listening to The White Nile on audio in the car and talking about the exploration of the Nile to anyone who listens. It is a fascinating subject!

Sean is also really interested in population. For instance we found out that the whole population of Greenland is something like 1/6th of our county's population. This completely astonished Sean who now goes around comparing populations of different places around the globe. We also found out that Greenland is communist! Apparently, a lot of former communists from the Soviet Union fled there. Well, not a lot, cracks my husband. Because you know, there are not a lot of people there to begin with.

Anyway, that's my paltry attempt to write a strewing post today.

What strewing in your home?

The Creed in Slow Motion - Book 37

The Creed in Slow Motion is a collection of sermons given by Monsignor Ronald Knox to the students of an all girls Catholic boarding schooling back during World War II.  Knox is a well regarded theological scholar.  He was asked and did translate the Bible into English.  He was friends with C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the like.  It is odd that a man of rather ivory tower scholarship should wind up the chaplain of an all girls school but circumstances led to this and we should all be thankful.  Because he knew perfectly how to relate to those young girls somehow.  His lectures were very popular and thus compiled into this book.

At the suggestion of Suzie Andres, I began to read this book out loud to Becky and Sean on the first day of Advent.  We have been plugging along through it slowly for many months.  The thing is, you can read a paragraph or two and then wind up having a half hour long discussion about the theology just explained.  Knox hits just the right tone for children.  He never talks down to them, his sense of humor never fails, the clarity of his analogies and explanations are spot on, and through it all comes an affection and thoughtfulness that makes reading these lectures so pleasant.  And when you are done this book, you will have a thorough grasp of what you are praying when you say the creed.

Ronald Knox is really a fascinating person.  My aunt Jackie, when she got her Fullbright scholarship, spent it in London, England.  This was in the early 1950s.  One day she noticed flyers tacked up around the streets.  Ronald Knox was going to be speaking at a nearby church.  She was delighted.  She went and saw him speak and said he was wonderful.  She's now 88 years old and still very happy she got to hear him before he passed away.

There's a Ronald Knox Society of North America! I think this might become a favorite site of mine. I'm looking forward to reading more by Knox.

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.