A week on a pretty even keel, even with some big waves to manage. This week included a day of hospitality ministry at church, and two big milestones for Son1: the first "real" lesson of the History Odyssey (Middle Ages level 2) program, and the first of the Latin Book One lessons at a faster, two days per lesson pace. All went quite well, no big upsets signaling frustrations, the week was fairly cheerful, and I'm content.

The biggest challenge was probably Monday. We spent most of the day at church preparing for and running a funeral reception. Wonderfully, the boys still got their core work done and I didn't fret over it. Son2 has a light load and cheerfully tackles it nowadays. I did assign Son1 most of his as homework for the rest of Monday afternoon since he chose to read at church rather than do his work. Interestingly he didn't argue about homework. Perhaps that set the tone for the week: Mom will assign homework if need be, and Son1 will get it done.

= Math =

Son1 worked steadily through his Intensive Practice workbook word problems on ratio and fractions, and then had some troubles. At that point I realized there was a separate lesson -- after the ratio lesson -- on ratio and fractions... and Son1 hadn't gone through that in the textbook. Oops! I backed him up, and got him working through the actual lesson. He found it a lot easier, LOL!

Son2 likes to skip around in his book. Problem is, he ends up in a similar situation to Son1: frustrated because he doesn't think he needs to work through the related lesson (sound familiar?). The rapscallion is now sentenced to review work for a little while. He is working through the practice pages after each lesson, starting at the beginning of the book he's nearly done with. So... in the latter part of this week Son2 set aside time and capacity, and got back in practice with multi-digit addition and subtraction, and multiplication and division of two-digit numbers by one-digit numbers.

= Latin =

Ah yes, Latin. Son1's week was a good solid one, with no real complaints but some serious dawdling and assigned afternoon homework on a few days (done cheerfully!), and in the end plenty of good work. He started with a review lesson that I used to introduce him to recalling the cases by their names (nominative, genitive, etc.). Until now we'd focused on function, but now it's time to tackle this part. Over the next four days he did two full lessons, with good comprehension and vocabulary recall! I'm reading ahead of him again, since he's doing this work mostly on his own. What a change for both of us!

Son2 had a less eventful, less varied week with Latin. He read Minimus lesson 5 several times on his own, with and without the CD, and he and I sat down with it one day and talked about the various words and concepts. Minimus is so fun! He ought to have had some activities too, but some weeks are like this.

= Memory work =

Ha.

= Piano =

The boys are back to being unable to keep their hands off the piano. Today I had to declare the piano closed (as is the kitchen often declared) to gain some quiet! Yet it was so enjoyable to hear them work on the various songs they were assigned last week, and master or nearly master most of them. This week's lessons with me went well. Something new: Son1 has been assigned a piece from Schaum's beginners book of "popular pieces" -- well, if you're talking about the 70s! In that book I found three fine, lively pieces and two okay ones among the many maudlin, sappy 70s songs. Henceforth I'll avoid such "popular pieces" books and prefer Schaum's graded books of folk songs, patriotic songs, and so on.

= Handwriting =

Moving along. Son2 becomes quite creative with invented handwriting styles on occasion. See his History Odyssey notebook page, below.

= Bible study =

I changed Bible study time to after Math and Latin, and that ended up in reality as, after piano and handwriting, too, and we only actually did it once this week. The kids like it, so we'll keep aiming for the intended three times a week.

= Music and art =

Partway through this week I had the bright idea to plan music from my CD collection to play when we're doing history stuff. Since we're still emerging from late antiquity in the middle east, with Son1 doing monasticism and Son2 already reading about the Byzantine empire, I played middle eastern music. That is, Peter Gabriel's "Passion" -- ethnic/traditional regional music similar to what he used for the soundtrack to the movie "The Last Temptation of Christ". The kids love it. Next week we'll do some Gregorian chant and related stuff -- I have a lot, oops! -- and Ofra Haza for middle eastern.

As for art, Son1 is becoming a master doodler, the boys love to draw all over their Bible study activity pages, and they had a ball working on their illuminated letters from Son2's history activity guide.

Son2's illuminated letter, with markers:

Son1's illuminated letter, with colored pencils:

= History & literature =

Son1 found History Odyssey quite a change from our relaxed tour through the ancient world! On Tuesday and Wednesday he did his History Odyssey lesson 2, which includes reading a two-page spread on monasticism in the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia (with lots of great pictures) and writing a series of summary notes in his new binder for history. He fancied it up with some invented handwriting styles. Next week I'll gently point out spelling errors, but I wasn't ready to do it after he had poured a lot of effort into pulling together the information. The picture is one of his pages.

Son1's notebook entry on monks:

Funny, church-nerd moment: reading aloud to Son1 from my copy of the Rule of St. Benedict after he learned about it, while he unloaded the dishwasher. What? Doesn't everyone own a copy of the Rule of St. Benedict??

Son2 enjoys the projects and activities from the activity guide for The Story of the World v. 2. This week he did some map work, and both boys got the chance to color an illuminated letter at last (as you saw, above).

Son2's map of the migration of Angles and Saxons into Britain:

Son1 started and finished the week behind in his reading -- for history (two chapters behind and the last of Outcast), classical studies (three chapters), and American studies (one chapter). On the other hand, he caught up and read way ahead in church history (Peril and Peace)! He also started The Door in the Wall for History Odyssey at my urging, setting aside Outcast for the week. I'm generally okay with this, though he'll have big chunks of assigned reading time early next week to help him catch up.

Son2 read ahead last week, so he had just a bit of reading this week: The Hero Beowulf picture book, a last story in Osborne's Favorite Greek Myths, a final story of his choice in Viking Tales, which he does not like at all, a couple of chapters of British history in Our Island Story, and a story from Early Saints of God. Ever heard of St. John the Short? Me neither!

I still like the different reading topics on different days. I think I need to go ahead and buy one or two of the three books the boys are reading online (Our Island Story, Famous Men of Rome, This Country of Ours). It would simplify their reading time, even though the boys seem to enjoy reading from the laptop.

= Writing/composition =

Son1 started over with the Classical Composition lesson from last week (total meltdown day), and worked steadily on it. Unfortunately, we began to run out of time in the week, so I decided that the summarization he is doing for his History Odyssey lesson is enough composition work for this week. He'll continue with the CC lesson next week in smaller amounts of time while we see how much time the various types of History Odyssey lessons will tend to take. I'm digging deeper into the History Odyssey program, and I may modify some of the HO work so he has time to do Classical Composition lessons about every other week... or perhaps he could do CC lessons more slowly, in small amounts per day over two weeks. Hmm.

I really need to set up some copywork for Son2. Probably drawn from his history topics or his reading.

= Science =

Last weekend at Son1's campout he had the opportunity to stargaze with a telescope! Son2 and I sat on our entryway bench during a rainstorm today and talked about what we noticed. That was pretty neat.

Breathe, breathe, grin.

Posted by cellista

I love the illuminated letters! Those are beautiful. My boys hate to color, we'll probably never get something like that out of them.

Posted by bubblyone

Now that you mention it, I forgot to say that my boys usually won't do coloring pages at all. For some reason this piqued their interest when we thumbed through the first activity pages from the activity guide for SOTW2.

In this fall's history activities I've noticed Son2 being very careful with coloring -- both the illuminated letter and his mapwork. With maps, Son1 is more into scribbling to fill in... but he really took a lot of care with his illuminated letter.

Kids can be a mystery :)

Posted by LocalHomeschooler

Soungs great
You seem to really have a good handle on things :-)
good job!

Posted by Anonymous

I had to laugh about the Rule. We have a copy on the shelf, too. Wouldn't be without it! :)

-Drew/Plaid Dad

Posted by Dell

Such fun to read of your studies! We are in the middle ages too, and my girls would LOVE to do an illuminated letter! I quick pulled my Story of the World activity guide off the shelf, and found the page! Thank you! We will post ours on my blog in a few days I'm sure!

Posted by Lori

I checked out your blog based on Dell's--I'm pretty far behind you, but I like how you have organized the record of your kids' accomplishments. Good idea to tuck away for the future (mine are 1 and 3).

I posted a picture on my blog of an original music manuscript that my sister-in-law inherited from her German mother-in-law (of course there is an illumined letter at the beginning).

Warmly,
Lori

Posted by Lori

As soon as I posted my previous comment, our internet service failed, but the example is up now.

Lori