Crash Summer Course in Medieval Studies

Since it looks like Becky and I are going to be participating in Aquinas Learning next year and since it will be on Cycle 3, which is Modern history, I thought we might prepare by doing a sort of study of the Middle Ages/Renaissance this summer. (We've been moving slowly through the Romans and frankly, everyone here has lost interest so I'm skipping ahead!). Here's my plan:

• Listen to the audio of Story of the World Volume II  - maybe at lunch time?
• Read aloud The Hobbit and maybe listen to the audio of another book, perhaps Door in the Wall while driving down to the Outer Banks.
• Watch lots of movies on this time period.  Here's my list so far, culled from The Well Trained Mind Board as well as other sites.

Pendragon - Sword of his Father (Christian movie made by homeschoolers!)

The Secret of Kells - we watched this several times this past winter and really loved it.

David McCauley movies Cathedral and Castle

King Arthur - not sure which movie yet.

The Flowers of St. Francis - wonderful Italian movie made by one of those famous Italian directors

Henry V  - Kenneth Branaugh

Joan of Arc (1928)

Robin Hood - Errol Flynn

Ivanhoe - the one with Anthony Andrews

The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Charles Laughton

El Cid 

Terry Jones' Medieval Lives

A Man for All Seasons - Paul Scofield

Dear America - The Royal Diaries - netflix

Monsieur Vincent - great French movie about St. Vincent de Paul

The Agony and the Ecstasy- Charleton Heston

(This might not be in quite chronological order, but I tried!)

Maybe do a couple of fun things like build a trebuchet and maybe do some brass rubbings at the National Cathedral.  Maybe also visit the Franciscan Monastery again.

Weekly recap 5/23-5/27

It's been a busy week:

• Monday Becky had her last American Heritage Girls meeting.  She earned two badges.  We are definitely doing this again next year.  Wonderful experience!
• Tuesday - Becky had her last art class.  Also doing that again next year!
• Josh and I went to Latin; still struggling through infinitives.
• Made Sean come with us to Latin.  He'd been so unhappy lately and I thought making him get up and get out would help.   Then he had a playdate with his friend all afternoon.  He hadn't had one in a while and that made him happy!  Yeah! 
• Wednesday - had Sean take a walk with me and then do some math and Latin.  It really helped me be on a more even keel emotionally the rest of the day.
• Josh and the teen that joins us for Lit/History on Wednesday did the next chapter in History of the Church.  Ch. 16 I believe.  We started talking about Joan of Arc by Twain, but we all three are way behind on reading it.  
• Becky went to VT.  The VT said that she needs to be reassessed but that she thinks she can stop therapy soon.
• Josh went to CLC in the evening.
• Got Tuck Everlasting out of the library for Becky.  She stayed up until midnight listening to it.  Then it was so sad that she had to sleep in our room.
• Thursday - quiet at home day.  Took walk with Sean in a.m. then did math and Latin.  It was great.  He was happy the rest of the day.  We did get our pool passes for the summer.
• Josh did some Geometry and read some Joan, but probably not as much as would have been wise!
• In the evening I went to a meeting.  We are forming a new Aquinas Learning Center.  I am so excited about it!  I'm going to be busy, busy, busy with it.  But I'm looking forward to that kind of busyness!
• Friday morning - Will and I took the car to the shop very early.  Then I took Josh to his Biology study group.  
• Took Sean and Becky shopping for summer clothes.
• Picked up Josh and then all three kids had their last tennis lesson for the season.
• Hannah has been getting used to her internship, commuting in to DC each morning with Rick.  I think she's having fun pretending she's a working girl, but at the same time she's tired and acclimating to everything.
• Of course lots of other learning went on this week, but I can't relate it all here.
• Rick and I are going to our last Opera of the season.  Hurray!  We're going out to dinner too. 

It's Memorial Weekend!  I love this weekend.  Our town as a big fair which the kids look forward to every year.

So happy Memorial Day Weekend.  Hope you have a great one!

Interesting Article from Psychology Today

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-science-success/201105/the-belief-s-sabotaging-your-life

Making boats

Becky got the idea of making aluminium foils boats from playing over at her friends' house yesterday.

Becky experiments with her different type of boats.

This is the rowboat.  

This is a raft.

This is a lumber boat.

This is the bottom of  a boat modeled on the ancient Roman  slave galley ships.  She is showing the keel she made.

This is the top of the Roman Galley Ship.

This is a speed boat.

This is the bottom of a tourist boat.  She's also showing the keel  here.

Top view of tourist boat.

Here we tried to get a shot of the wake caused by the speed boat.

And here we tried to get a shot of the wake created by the tourist boat.

Frogs! Or Toads!

Yesterday, Becky took pictures of all the frogs (or toads) down by the pond behind our house.  Every year there are dozens of them hopping about at this time of the year.  This year there seem to be even more than usual.  I really think someone is profiting by all those stinkbugs we are infested with!  Hopefully, you can click on each photo to get a closer look.  And you know what?  I'm going to make it my own personal quest to find out if they are frogs or toads.  We've got lots of toads up in the front of our house in the garden, much bigger than these little guys.  These little fellows are either baby toads (just out of tadpolehood) or frogs.  I'm guessing frogs because they are much closer to the pond and stream.

Exciting Stuff That Is Going On Around Here!

I just haven't been in blogging mode lately.  I hope to get back into the groove soon but I feel too discombobulated right now to focus on it much.  But since my husband had to get up at an ungodly hour to get to a business meeting in New Jersey (which of course woke me up too!), I thought I'd take the time to blog.  My last post was all about my uncertainty and I still need to think things out, however, right now I want to note all the positive, exciting stuff that is going on right now!

• My 20 year old daughter has returned from her semester in Rome.  She's happy to be back home in the U.S.  She's full of stories about her travels.  She's shown all the kids her Euros and 'cents' (that's what they call their smaller than Euro coins.  I didn't know that!).  The other day she was trying to figure out how much oil to put in the car and she kept trying to convert quarts to liters!  Then she realized she didn't have to!
• Another exciting thing for my 20 year old:  she got a summer internship with the National Right to Life organization.  She'll be working 40 hours a week and hopefully earning up to 6 credits for her Politics major electives.  She is VERY excited about this.  She starts tomorrow.
• I've been nagging and nagging my almost 19 year old to get a job.  To no avail so far.  However, there are two boys in a nearby neighborhood who need someone to watch them this summer.  And it looks like Will might wind up doing that.   I think that will be good enough for his summer before college. 
• Josh got accepted at the Catholic University New Frontiers High School Program.  That means he'll spend a week in July living at CU with other high schoolers interested in learning about engineering as a field of study and career.
• Josh and I just completed the last fundraiser for his workcamp coming up at the end of June.  He'll go with other parish teens to a small town in PA to help refurbish houses for a week.
• Josh got a 93 on his big Biology final.  He's doing really well with his SAT Subject test practices.  He takes that test on 6/4.
• Seano continues to obsess on videogames.  We've been taking lots of walks together and he educates me on their history and development :)
• Becky's art class winds up this week with an ice cream party.  Today is her last American Heritage Girl meeting for the year.  We opted not to go on the camping trip next weekend.  Our beloved little town always has a big fair Memorial Day weekend which the kids love to go to and we didn't want to miss that!
• Big news!  This week we'll have our first info night for our new one-day-a-week-mentoring-program.  Our center, which will be opening next fall, has been dubbed Adler Academy.  I'm the 'coordinator' meaning I show up and make sure everything runs smoothly.  The program is called Aquinas Learning and centers are starting up in several states now.  It is kind of the Catholic answer to Classical Conversations.

Uncertainty

Sometimes I have such confidence in the way we do things around here.  I feel like I've got balance and just the right amount of structure vs. freedom.  Just the right touch of formal vs. nonformal learning.  But frankly since Christmas I haven't felt the love.   I know it is probably due to changes that have happened since then.  It makes me think of how fragile my sense of well being is.  And how easily I am plunged into anxiety and uncertainty.  My name is Faith and yet, in truth, I have little of that beautiful gift.

Looking back over the last several months, in my perception, it has been dominated by a distracting busyness on my part, coupled with exhaustion when I come down from the busyness high.  And this busyness doesn't include actually doing much stuff with my children.

Where are the fun explorations, the field trips, the dynamic conversations, the projects, the closeness that should mark our unschooling lives?  While we still have conversations, they don't happen nearly enough.  We are close but also seem to be drifting too.  Everybody runs off to do their own thing which usually involves daydreaming or sitting in front of screen.

My life with my children is dominated by the little bit of formal schoolwork we do.  And now as summer looms I want to be free of that.  Yet I've got the darn end of year testing looming too. I feel completely unprepared for those tests.

On the unschooling Catholics list someone asked the question:  What are you into now?  And people came back with such interesting answers.  I kept trying to think of what we are into right now.  And while there are a lot of scattered bits here and there, there's no one thing that unites, that fills our days and drives our passion and quest for learning.

It's been a blah time.  It's also been dominated by lots of discipline issues.  Procrastination, mostly.  And out and out rebellion and rudeness upon occasion.  And my 12 yo is unhappy and bored and kind of lost most of the time.

In other words I am feeling unsettled and dissatisfied.

(to be continued. . . . )