Weekly Recap - 7/10/15

This week was about me managing my kidney stone pain.  At least I think that is what it is.  It feels just like that other kidney stone I had two years ago.  It was really bad on Monday, a little better on Tuesday, horrible on Wednesday and much better yesterday.  Right now I am barely aware of it.  So, that's good!

Sean attended his art class at the community college every day (M-Th).  He likes the class and he seems to be doing well in the drawing department.  He really got perspective down very nicely.  Now they are working in charcoal and I think he's flailing a little bit with that.  I've got an arrangement with Hannah that she picks him up some of the time and takes him for driving practice.  We've gotta get him driving!

Sean also worked on his Algebra II this week with his tutor.  She's an old friend so it is nice getting to chat with her a couple times a week.  Girlfriend time!

Sean is starting to wean off his medication very, very gradually.  It is kind of a bad time for it though because it has been really rainy and overcast and he hasn't been exercising either.  His physical trainer is on vacation right now.  But so far so good.

Becky is still so happily part of The Music Man.  She has rehearsals every night.  All day she practices her dance moves, plays with her hair and make up, sings, reads and chats with friends on line.

I am feeling so stumped about Latin with her.  We were booking through Henle but she went into full scale rebellion.  Honestly that book is so deadly, deadly dull.  Awful stuff.  Especially for girls.  She who loved Latin before and thought it was fun now hates with all the drama a 13 yo can muster up (and that's a lot!).

So I am just taking the order of different things she needs to learn from Henle but going elsewhere to find ways to learn them.  Yesterday all we did was review the 5th declension and then she read some Latin paragraphs from Ecce Romani.  But it was a very little bit.  We'll never be up to speed by September if we go at this rate.  I've got to get my mojo back again!  One thing I am relying on heavily is the Latin Tutorials at youtube.  They are great!  Very succinct, clear, short presentations.  I highly recommend them.

Becky is supposed to be attending some voice lessons over the summer but they are at different times than her usual lessons during the year, so of course we forgot completely about it and missed on yesterday.  I was in bed resting my kidneys and she was busy curling her hair for photo shoot for the musical and we both completely forgot.

Becky is in a girls book club and they are supposed to be reading To Kill a Mockingbird but she seems reluctant to start it.  I wish she would.  It is such a great book.  I think I over encouraged her to read it and now she is sort of balking because she is 13 and doesn't want to read something mom keeps pushing.

Speaking of 13 - she's turning 14 in two days!  Holy cow, how did that happen!!!!

Josh is continuing to go to work.  Every week he has a different plan for what he wants to do when this seasonal job ends.  Rick and I told him he has to come up with a plan for a future career this fall.  Right now though he's decided on land surveyor.  It looks like he just takes 5 semesters worth of surveying classes at night through the public schools workforce training dept.  Then he has to pass an exam to be certified or licensed or whatever the proper term is.  Then he has to get an apprenticeship.  Or maybe he can get the apprenticeship while he is studying?  I am so grateful to the state of Virginia for holding on to apprenticeships as a way of launching a career.  Apparently many other states now require you to attend a 4 year college and get a bachelor's degree.  But not in Virginia. They still do it the old fashion way.  Maybe because of George Washington?  Though Virginia clings to those old ways.  I remember my father saying that Virginia was one of the last states that let you become a lawyer via apprenticeship.  As long as you could pass the bar, you were good to go.  He said many legal secretaries would do this and it actually benefitted women. They'd be legal secretaries for years, learning all about the law, so then the attorney they worked for would make them official apprentices and help them study for the bar.  They never had to borrow money for tuition or anything.  But all the law schools got together along with the bar association and gradually pressured all the states to change.  Virginia was one of the last hold outs.  Dad said it was ridiculous.  You'd have these legal secretaries who knew way more about the law than these newly graduated law students, yet they couldn't practice and the others could.  Sometimes progress is stupid.

Will is doing pretty well up in Cambridge.  He's got his radio show tonight.  That is always a big hairy issue for him - getting the musical acts, writing the skits, etc.  He's a bit down because he wants a real job.  He's waiting tables but they don't have enough work for him really.  He's got all these little naggy things to do that don't have hard deadlines and require a lot of thinking about detail.  It is kind of depressing.  Rick had to go to Boston this week for a case he's working on.  He got to have dinner with Will.

Hannah has been busy looking for a permanent teaching job.  She interviewed yesterday at the school where she was a long term sub.  Keeping our fingers crossed!  She's also interviewed with several other places.  She is coming over today to help me clean out the basement.

I got to visit with another girlfriend yesterday morning which was fun.  And next week Lisa is coming for a visit.  So life is good.

I finally finished registering for CDU.  Today's assignment is to get my transcripts for my B.A. and J.D. delivered.  Now they do all that electronically.  Maybe Hannah will help me figure that process out.  Other schooly stuff I have to do:  I have yet to send in the end of year testing for grading.  I. MUST. DO. THAT. TODAY!

Ways to Strew

1.  Have a regular place in your home where you place new things you've brought into your house to expose and excite your children's interests.  I used coffee tables.  On the coffee tables I put:

• Library books, used books, books you own that haven't been perused for a while, new books, etc.
• magazines or printed out articles, coloring books, activity books such as Mad Libs, Kids sudoku, little Dover crossword puzzles and sticker books, dot to dot books, doodle books, and the like. ( a lot of these things, like Mad Libs and sudoku can be gotten on line.  However, I've never really figured out how to strew them.  But maybe you will!)
• little games such as a Rubik's cube, a mini oragami set, little puzzles of some sort, play doh, silly putty, paper doll set, cootie catchers (I got a great set of these that taught the catechism!), those little quiz books, etc. 
• Montessori trays
• Rotating toys (keep some toys in reserve, so that when the kids get bored, you can pull them out and they'll be like new again.

2.  Strewing in the home, that didn't happen via the coffee table:

• Christmas and birthday gifts - give a gift that supports an interest the child already has or something to spark a new interest - every year the kids got Jim Weiss cds in their Christmas stockings.  You can also give dvds, books, science kits, art kits, games, technical equipment (their own tools, sewing machine, musical instruments, etc.
• playing games together: board games, card games and jigsaw puzzles
• reading out loud regularly
• listening to audio books from the library or downloaded from audible, etc.
• watching educational videos/TV/movies 
• conversation - kids learn a lot through discussion!
• listening to the radio
• subscribing to youtube channels
• following and celebrating the liturgical year
• house projects like painting a room, building something, fixing a running toilet, wiring a lamp, etc.
• cooking
• raising pets
• helping with housekeeping
• essay writing contests
• Nanowrimo
• blogging
• gaming (Minecraft and many others)

3.  Fridge or wall strewing:

• post things like spelling and grammar rules, math formulas, fun facts, famous quotes
• have a globe that is easily accessible
• put up maps and timelines on the walls
• or get a map shower curtain!
• rotate your artwork to learn about different artists
• post poems on the door of your bedrooms
• post word root flashcards or Latin vocabulary postcards
• buy neat magnets for your fridge - alphabet and numbers but also, there are all kinds of clever fridge magnets out there now.

4.  Out and about Strewing:

• Gardening
• talking a walk
• bird watching
• rock collecting
• other collecting
• hiking at a nearby park
• trips to the grocery store, post office, hardware store, etc
• concerts
• plays
• play dates
• visits to daddy's (or mommy's) work
• farmers markets
• library visits
• storytelling events
• fairs
• art, history and science museums
• nature centers
• camping
• classes in the community - music lessons, art lessons, red cross certification, etc
• participating in co-ops
• sports or marital arts
• volunteering at food pantries, soup kitchens, nursing homes, park clean ups, etc
• pilgrimages to holy sites
• other various field trips (farms, caverns, hospitals, factories, etc)
• travel
• conferences or conventions - Lego, maker faires, county fairs, etc.
• Clubs like 4-H, American Heritage Girls, Scouts, Blue Knights, Little Flowers, Rotary club for youth, youth groups at parish, Junior Classical League, book clubs, Civil Air Patrol, community theater, etc.

Minimilist Monday

I've decided that I am going to try to journal regularly on certain days.  After all I changed this blog title to Household Diary a long time ago.  So maybe I should use it that way.  My plan is on Mondays I will post about housekeeping, decluttering, etc efforts - Minimalist Monday.  On Fridays I will go back to something I used to do a long time - Weekly Recap.  That will focus more on educational endeavors of the week.  Then on Sundays I'll try to do my usual book review for Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.  Of course maybe I'll post other stuff as I feel inspired, but the bare bones blogging will be Minimalist Monday and Weekly Recap, Book reviews.

So this week for Minimalist Monday:

Major, major breakthrough!!!  Ding, Ding, Ding!  Rick and I cleaned up our Master bedroom!  He cleaned up all the stuff that had accumulated on and around his desk which was horrific!  And I got rid of all the miscellaneous linens and old clothes that were supposed to have been sorted through and given away eons ago.  I even cleaned out under our bathroom sink which was quite a job.  I dejunked my dresser so that you can actually see wood!  I still have some annoying baskets of STUFF that I don't know what to do with.  By that time I was suffering from dejunking fatigue, BUT we got a huge amount of stuff cleaned out.  Last night we put it all out for Amvets to pick up today.  Please God let them come and pick it all up!  Sometimes they don't seem to show up when you think they will.

We are also trying to give an older printer away to our parish or perhaps to some charity that might need it.

The two areas we didn't get to:  our bedside tables which are full of dozens of books that have no other home.  We need to sort those into give away and keep - and then figure out where to keep them.  Also Rick did not get to the top of his dresser which is simply a big pile of junk.  But hopefully next weekend.

My goals for this week are to keep chipping away at the kids' rooms.  They went through their clothes and put the ones they don't wear anymore out with the Amvets donation.  I also want to spend time tidying the dining, which will involve cleaning out old school books and getting things ready for the upcoming academic year.

But the big thing I want to do is really get started with my basement.  Hannah said she'd help.  I need to make it guest ready again.  And that means finding a new home for our poor, wretched cat.  Oh dear.  That is a big, thorny issue.  When will that actually happen?

And one more thing I am going to ask Josh to do this coming Thursday or Friday - take all the accumulated cardboard boxes to the recycling center.

So to break things out in my head:

Monday - 20 to 30 minutes on kids' bedrooms; 1 hour on dining room (that should be enough to get it into order).

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday - significant time spent on basement on at least some of these days.

Thursday/Friday - big recycling haul.

In addition to this of course there is Latin and math, driving Sean back and forth to art class, and driving Becky back and forth to musical rehearsal.

Today I am going to make a chicken and rice salad (using left over chicken) and also cook up the fresh beets I got from the CSA yesterday.  I need to do that this afternoon because I've got to get Sean to a doctor's appt right at dinner time.

Stumble - Book 26

Stumble by Heather King is a searing and intimate examination of virtue. It's got wry humor in it too.   Each chapter is an essay entitled things like Compassion, Honesty, Chastity, Perseverance.  Each essay is a personal memoir of how this virtue, the mystery of it, played out in some ironic, oblique way.  Her prose is so honest, so exquisite in nuance and subtlety, she's like an artist who makes tiny amazingly realistic portraits the size of the head of a pin.  But she does so by examining her own life in all its prosaic tragedy, absurdity, sordidness, loneliness, and seeing there glimpses of Christ and eternity.

Christian love is a constant battling against taking sides.  It is about judgment and forgiving at the same exact time - something that only the Divine can do.  Be ye perfect as your Father is perfect.  It is about facing down the ugliness of sin, which is unrelenting, and somehow seeing a fleeting glance of beauty there anyway.  Christian love is confusing because it is not of this earth.  Christian love is confusing because we can only ever offer a cheap imitation and then we have to repent and beg for mercy because we will always get it wrong.  But Christian love is the only thing going for us.  It's the only real deal out there.  And it is so good, that once you get a real taste of it, you are compelled to try again and again.

I wept, I marveled, I pondered, while reading this book in day.  It is a book solidly grounded in love.

I think Heather King is a prophet for our time.  Thank you, Jesus, for Heather King!

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

Waterloo - Book 25

Waterloo; the History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles by Bernard Cornwell is an up close and highly readable account of one of the most famous battles in history.

Cornwell is a best-selling British author who penned the Sharpe's series which was made into a BBC series starring Sean Bean.  Cornwell is considered an expert on the Napoleonic Wars.  Since this past week commemorated the 200th anniversary of that epic battle, I thought I'd read more in depth about it.  I am not usually a big military history reader, though I have become more so lately simply because I've been reading a lot of memoirs or biographies in the last decade or so.  Anyway, one thing this book taught me is war is horrifying and grotesque and we should always remember that humans are willing to slaughter each other on the slightest wave of emotion.

Napoleon, who arose to power in the chaos and brutality of the French Revolution, caused the deaths of millions of people.  After fighting all over Europe for 20 years or so because he was monomaniacal and the French didn't have anyone else as clever to lead them, he finally got caught and sent to live out the rest of his life as king of the little island country of Elba.  Not content with that, he launched  a comeback campaign, which a huge portion of the French populous embraced because things had gotten kind of boring after his exile.  And so about 50,000 more people lost their lives for no good reason whatsoever.

Cornwell is right up front about how confusing military speak and descriptions of battles can be.  And they are very repetitive as well.  How many times can you explain that then this group of soldiers launched canisters or cannon balls or musket fire and people's heads were blown off, brains splattered, limbs torn away, men falling right and left screaming in terror and agony.  Yes, well that is what happens for four days and Cornwell walks us through it all.

The leaders on both sides of the battle made blunders.  Napoleon made more than Wellington.  He seemed to have lost his instinct for military strategy.  He relied very heavily on his own former genius, his belief that he had good luck, his generals who made some bad mistakes and finally on his undefeated Old Guard, who for the first time collapsed and fled the field in panic thus ending the battle.  Two of Napoleon's major mistake-makers were his youngest brother Jerome and his formerly always brilliantly reliable, general Ney who basically just kept screwing things up.  He ended badly too.  While other aides to Napoleon played the political game right and rose to power after their defeat at Waterloo, Ney wound up being shot by a firing squad eventually.  I guess he was sort of a scapegoat.

The big contrast is between Wellington's style and Napoleon's.  And this just goes to show you how easy it is to manipulate popular opinion.  Napoleon's men adored him and yet he cared nothing about them.  He was a master of rhetoric in the bad sense of the word.  Wellington was a silent, introverted formal man, who would not allow his men to cheer him and prized order above all.  However, Wellington always thought in terms of how he could spare the most men's lives.  He thought more defensively in terms of strategy.  He picked the battle field because it had a wide flat valley with hills that he could place his men behind to protect them from artillery.  He always thought in terms of having an escape route.  Retreat was better than senseless slaughter.  And yet he had never lost a battle!

Napoleon might have been different in his younger days, but now he sat way in the rear on a hill with a spyglass watching the battles and receiving messages.  Wellington, on the other hand, was in the thick of things and really risked death quite heroically.  He was like George Washington in that he just happened to not get shot.  His aides died around him as he rode to and fro rallying his men.  Because he was so stern and well respected, his presence kept the men orderly and focused even in the midst of all the chaotic blood, guts, noise and smoke.  Napoleon also wrote some rather unclear messages to his generals in the field, who quite understandably didn't get what he wanted.  This caused further problems as you might guess.

There are many heroic stories; the Scots seemed to be especially courageous in battle.  The book contains many first hand accounts culled from various memoirs and letters.  Even though this battle is one of the most studied in military history, many actual facts are still unclear.  One thing I didn't understand is that Cornwell would quote some rallying cry of some general as his men went into charge, yet on the next page,  I'd read that the battle was so noisy the men couldn't even talk to each other.  So I really don't understand how generals gave their orders to the men?

Finally, after page after page of men stabbing, slashing, shooting and beaning each other, Napoleon sends in his Old Guard to win the battle field, but he's too late. Wellington's forces have been reinforced with the newly arrived Prussian Army.  The reliable and brave Old Guard are too little, too late.  They realize the situation and for the first time ever in their long service to Napoleon, panic and flee.  The battle is over.  Napoleon is defeated.

Cornwell ends there and wraps up the story quickly, telling what happened to the various generals and leaders we've been following.  I wish he had said how they took Napoleon himself.  I guess the author assumed that was already known, but I don't.  Wellington did not like war at all.  He found the blood, gore and death horrific.  He collapsed in tears when he heard Napoleon had been captured.  He never glorified war and said that victory was horrible - because of all the corpses and destruction any battle must entail.  He did things out of a sense of duty and not out of a sense of lust for fighting.  He said he never wanted to fight again.  Instead he went into politics and even became prime minister but unfortunately was seen as rather a failure there.  His reputation was made though - the glorious general who lead the British and the Prussians to victory over Napoleon.

I am glad I read this book, but it was hard.  I really don't like violence and killing.  For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

The Case of Jennie Brice - Book 24

The Case of Jennie Brice is a quick, enjoyable read by one of my favorite authors, Mary Roberts Rinehart.  This was published in 1913 and I am always startled at how modern the writing is, even if the day to day details are quaint because they are so old fashioned.

Mrs. Pitman was a member of a genteel, first family of the City of Pittsburg.  But she is now in reduced circumstances.  She eloped with Mr. Pitman when she was very young and was disowned by her family.  Now she is a poor widow who makes her living by renting out rooms to boarders in the river district of Allegheny City (which was subsequently made part of Pittsburg.)  During the especially bad flood of 1907, she suspects one of her rather low-life boarders of murdering his wife, Jennie Brice.  But this isn't just a simple murder!

The opening scenes are eery and surreal because of the flood.  Everything is told from the immediately likable Mrs. Pitman's point of view.  Things are puzzling, creepy, and at times humorous.  We meet a cast of characters and the story moves along at a good pace.  I was engrossed from the first sentence and read it in two days.

A very enjoyable, light mystery; well written.  Mary Roberts Rinehart never disappoints.

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

A Charlotte Mason Inspired High School Plan

As much as I love unschooling (my own version of it!) in the younger years, when high school rolls around, we tend to tighten up.  There are many reasons for this:  1) the precedent set by our oldest who declared she did not like unschooling and that if she didn't have a hard reason to get up the morning, she knew she just never was going to!  My husband and I could both sympathize because as my husband said about himself, he operates on the principle of inertia.  If he's in bed, he doesn't get out of bed unless forced to.  If he is working he becomes a workaholic who can't stop until he has to.  He's just like that.  I am not like that.  But I still need structure or I tend to go off and daydream and neglect my duties.  I excel at starting things and then drifting off.  So an external obligation makes me more responsible. Anyway, the oldest really wanted to go to college and she was determined to do a regular 4 year program to get her there.  Not that she didn't resent some things.  She balked at higher math, but other than that, she was game for the whole rigamarole of earning those high school credits.  2) Rick and I really want our kids to be able to say without any hesitation that they are high school graduates, even though they didn't attend school and we pieced our own program together (instead of enrolling in a program).  3) We really do want our kids to be poised to attend college upon high school graduation, if they choose to.  They don't have to choose to.  They can take a gap year (as Will did) or try college and decide it isn't for him (as Josh did), but at least we are not holding them back from doing the regular expected thing if they want to.

The Charlotte Mason approach isn't too difficult a transition though for the kids.  We've always done lots of read alouds and copy work.  And we often are involved in co-ops or outside classes anyway.  So things wind up just tightening up, getting a little more intense and also there is now an expectation of tangible learning product that are more traditional, like writing essays, taking tests, completing labs, etc.

So for the first time ever in my homeschooling career, I will have two high schoolers and no one in the younger grades.  Sob.  I really have a sense of mourning. But I am trying to take that in stride and focus on doing what needs doing now.

The hardest part for me, is maintaining my zeal and energy levels so that I can systematically and consistently maintain the structure necessary to get everything done in a timely way.  It is really hard to figure out all the moving parts and how they will work together.  So I am only planning for the first semester with the idea that things will take some tweaking and that they may change substantially the second semester.

The key for me is fitting everything into our schedule so that we know when to do what.  If it is too complicated or too much an overload, too forced, it soon starts to drop out of the days, first by accident and then later simply because there isn't enough will to force it back into the day.

Here's my tentative schedule:

	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
Before Breakfast	Prayer, Scripture, Meditation, Saint	Same	Same	Same	Same
Breakfast School	Elements video;  poetry	Elem. video; poetry	Note reading; AfE	Note reading; AfE	Optional video; AfE		10:00 Mass
Mid A.M.	Copy work; math; break; rhetoric	Copy work; Chem class (@10) or physics at home for B.	Copy work; math; break; rhetoric	Copy work; math; break; AL	Copy work; math; NL video		Breakfast at the diner
Lunch school	Theology audible	Lunch @ SJN	12:00 HSC on line Speech class	Lunch @ AL	12:10 Mass; Lunch out	PT
Afternoon school	Chemistry; U.S. History prep; Latin homework	U.S. History @ SJN	Latin hmwk	Latin II	Book club mtg		Any home-work
	AHG/PT	Latin club 2x	Bass lessons	Voice (@3:30?)
Evening school	Finish anything needed; prayers; Independent reading	6:00 Sean HSC Comp. Language class; Ind. reading	CLC Ind. reading	Work on any home work; Ind. reading			Any home-work

Before breakfast:  prayer is the Morning Offering, then the daily scripture reading and meditation from The Word Among Us, then we listen to Saint of the Day at American Catholic

Breakfast school:  Periodic Table of Elements videos put out by the University of Nottingham.
Poetry readings from:  Stories in Verse (I have an old used edition; The Art of Poetry; The Harp and the Laurel Wreath
Musical Note Reading:  MusicTheory.net
Aristotle for Everybody (AfE)
Optional video on Fridays - we can go without a video or perhaps the kids can show me something or maybe I'll show them something I've stumbled across during the week.

Mid A.M:  Copy work will come from Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric
Math:  for Becky - Chalkdust Geometry; for Sean - Saxon Algebra II

Break time is for showers (me), snacks (no one eats big breakfasts around here), getting outside, making phone calls, getting a quick chore or two done.

Rhetoric:  This is going to be a combination of reading about Rhetoric and actual writing.  Since the kids are taking Speech from Homeschool Connections - I am going to wait to see what kind of writing requirements that course has and then blend in my own stuff around it.  For reading aloud about Rhetoric I am planning on utilizing The Art of Manliness' Classical Rhetoric series as well as Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language by Sister Miriam Joseph.  If I need to supplement any writing (I am aiming for an essay a week) then I plan to rely on our previous training from The Lost Tools of Writing.  And I might supplement that with excerpts from The Office of Assertion and The Writer's Workshop.  

Lunch school (this is different each day):
Monday -  Theology audio (to give myself a break from reading out loud and to give my kids a break from listening to me!) - maybe some C.S. Lewis or Peter Kreeft to listen to during lunch.  I am thinking Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters and Kreeft's Prayer for Beginners.  Also Brother Laurence's Practicing the Presence of God.
Tuesday - lunch at our homeschool co-op
Wednesday- Sean and Becky both have their Homeschool Connections Speech and Communications class at noon, so lunch will probably be eaten before then while prepping for the class.
Thursday - Becky and I will be at Aquinas Learning having lunch and getting ready for Latin class.
Friday - 12:10 Mass nearby and then eat lunch out

Chemistry - Sean is taking a class in Chemistry on Tuesday mornings.  The textbook is A Beka Chemistry.  While Sean is doing his homework on Monday afternoons for that class, Becky can work on her Latin homework.  The text for that is Henle.  Latin class is at Aquinas Learning on Thursday afternoons at 2:00.  Becky will be an aide with the Parva class from 12:30 to 2:00 and then in class with me (I am mentoring the Latin II class) until 3:00.  If the same schedule holds for her Voice Lessons, she'll have voice at 3:30. That means we have to skedaddle out of Aquinas Learning immediately to get her to her lesson on time.

Physics - Becky finished the first half of Physical Science which focused on Chemistry.  We've been loosely following Kolbe's syllabus.  She'll focus on the second half, Physics, for her 9th grade year.

U.S. History - both kids are taking a Tuesday afternoon class in U.S. History. The textbook is The American Odyssey; A History of the United States.  They'll also probably do homework for that on Monday afternoons or evenings.

Computer Languages - instead of continuing with Latin, Sean wanted to learn computer languages, so he's in a Homeschool Connections class for that which meets Tuesday nights at 6:00.

Bass lessons - hopefully, Sean will continue with bass lessons.  I am making it a requirement that everyone has to be studying music formally in some capacity.

PT - physical training.  This is Sean's PE.  I don't have anything lined up for Becky.  However, her American Heritage Girls Troop is working on a dance badge and she also has become keenly interested in dance because of her musical theater experience.  I don't know if she'll be in a formal class for this, or if we can piece together AHG activities, participating in more musical theater, plus other physical activity and make that all add up to PE.

Philosophy - our philosophy this year with be a combination of Aristotle for Everybody by Mortimer Adler and this Great Courses lecture series taught by Father Koterski.  We'll just watch one lecture each Friday.

Book club - I am not sure what extra reading will be needed for the Speech and Communications class or for the U.S. History course (perhaps the teacher will ask the kids to read a couple of supplemental books in addition to the textbook).  So I've come up with a tentative list.  I am aiming for a book every 3 or 4 weeks with a focus on the modern era.  All this is subject to change.  We'll meet on Fridays (or over the weekend; this can be flexible) to chat about what we've read.  Here's my list:

*Lord of the World – Robert Hugh Benson (September - 4 weeks)

My Family and Other Animals – Gerald Durrell (3 weeks – 1^st part of Oct)

Animal Farm – George Orwell (2 weeks – last part of Oct.)

*Shakespeare Pick – (4 weeks – all of November)

*The Man Born to be King - radio play by Dorothy L. Sayers (Advent/Christmas season)

P.G. Wodehouse pick (January - 2 weeks)

Lord of the Flies – William Golding (Finish up January -2 weeks)

The Man Who Was Thursday - G. K. Chesterton – (February - 3 weeks)

Ray Bradbury pick (end of Feb - first part of March)

A biography of a 20^th century saint – (Last two weeks of Lent/Easter week) Perhaps Edith Stein?

*Til We Have Faces - C.S. Lewis – (April - 4 weeks)

Agatha Christie pick (May)

*I really want to read these.  They may turn out to be the only ones we do, if there is a lot of assigned reading in the Speech and History classes.