Morning lull

There's a lull in activity this morning. At least for me there is. Right now Will is with the math tutor in the dining room. Hannah is at her Spanish class at the community college. Josh is curled up on his bed reading The History of Medicine and Sean and Becky are playing with Sean's big set of magnetix. I think they are building a flying saucer.




Already this morning Sean and Becky have done some penmanship, math (it was fun: we learned about Roman numerals and measuring ounces, cups, pints, quarts and gallons). Sean did some work in a music theory notebook. I read aloud to both Becky and Sean from our CHC Devotional Stories and we learned what a Covenant is. Sean asked if I'd read more from D'Auliare's Book of Greek Myths. We read about Echo and Narcissus. We did our read alouds out on the screen porch.




Josh finished up Algebra homework (he just had a little bit left to do) and practiced piano. Then he worked with the math tutor.




We still have to do Language Arts, Latin, Greek and Logic.




I'm finding that you can still be relaxed and feel unschoolish while really being in academic high gear. I think this happens by just letting the day flow but keeping in mind the things you hoped to accomplish.




Okay, lull was over. Made lunch for Sean and Becky. Sean did his five spelling words. Hannah picked them out of his Writing Tales story and they are a bit too hard for him: mouse (this one isn't hard!), country, journey, heartily and residence. The thing that is throwing Sean is that the 'ou' sounds in three words make completely different sounds, which just has him muddled! Plus, spelling is tough for him because he never says what he thinks he is saying. I'll ask him to spell mouse and he'll spell it orally "moues." Then he goes to write it and he can't remember because he knows it doesn't look right but since he's spelled it orally wrong, he can't figure out where he got lost. He can't get his mouth to accurately say what he wants it to say. For example, when spelling 'journey', he kept saying 'g' as the beginning letter, even though he knew this was wrong. He got frustrated with himself. Maybe I just shouldn't make him spell the words out loud until he really knows them visually? I might ask the VT about this. We did a little grammar exercise where I read a sentence and he had to change it to another type of sentence: command, exclamation, quesiton or statement. He was quite good at this and enjoyed this little exercise.





Then we did Ch. 5 in Latin for Children which is just reviewing. He remembered a lot of the meanings of the words but then he and Becky starting quibbling over whose turn it was to say what word, etc. So we didn't quite finish the page. They are downstairs playing Super Smash Bros which is what Sean lives for lately anyway.



This post is turning into a journal of the day. . . it is now 2:20 p.m. Josh read a lot of The History of Medicine, he's really enjoying it. Then he did his Sadlier-Oxford Vocabulary. Then we read some out of the Art of Argument about ad hominem circumstantial fallacies. Next we studied for our Greek Alphabet quiz which I've arbitrarily scheduled for tomorrow. Will is in rebellion about Greek now. If it doesn't equal a credit, he doesn't want to do it. So he only studied a tiny bit and then went off to make himself a hot dog and read The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Now Josh is reading Christ and the Americas, Sean has gone back to Super Smash Bros., Becky is watching the old Disney Cinderella and Will is still reading.



This is the time of day when I have a strong need/desire to take a nap. Might do so while Becky is occupied with the movie.

9:17 p.m. Well, I never did get a nap in. Instead I helped Josh with his American history. Then I took Sean to his piano lesson, drove all the way to Chick-fil-a and got dinner, brought it home, read the first Chapter of Lingua Latina, supervised Becky while she practiced her piano, played a concentration game about the states she got from Chick-fil-a. Left Josh here to watch Becky until Rick got home, hopefully reading his Lingua Latina. Took Will and Sean to their first Music Theory class which was really fun. Came home, said prayers, Josh is still working through his Latin. Will says he needs to read his Economics and do his Rhetoric.

I'm going to bed to watch episode 5 of The Last of the Mohicans (the old Masterpiece Theater version from the 70's.)