Weekly Report 4/17-4/23

Weekend

• J got back from his CLC retreat. They had election of officers. J was in the running for vice-president but didn't make it. Then they put his name in for secretary but he withdrew because he said he'd be terrible at keeping records of meetings. He says he hopes he gets to be an officer next year. He joked: So I found out what having a social life is like! You hang out with a bunch of kids your own aging goofing around and talking. I liked it! Maybe now he'll come out of the shell he's been in these last two years!
• We finally made it to confession. I feel so badly that I never got the kids there during Lent. Bad mommy! But it was very rewarding to go anyway. Better late than never!
• W had his piano lesson. He finally contacted someone about attending the homeschool prom; only a month late, but they need boys at it so they let him in!
• S and his friend hiked the 3 miles from friend's house to our house and thought it was the greatest thing ever. That's the first time they've done that without someone older with them..
• B went ice skating with her new friend and had an absolute blast.

Monday

• Monday morning we all went to an open house that a Christian homeschool support service about 30 minutes from here was having. It meets in a huge Baptist church. They have various classes for 7th -12th grade all day long on Mondays and Wednesdays. They don't make you sign a statement of faith which is great. J sat in on a debate/speech class and now he really wants to take it along with Geometry. We met the Geometry teacher who seemed very nice and teacherly (if that's a word!). Afterward we went back to the library in our town and then ate lunch and took a walk around the historic spots/park in our little town.
• J did math lesson and then lots of Latin homework. He stayed up late trying to finish it.
• S practiced piano and then W took him to his lesson
• B wanted me to read several library books to her and then she spent a long time coloring in her Doodle a Day calendar which she had misplaced for a couple month, so she had lots of catching up to do.
• I taught RE in the evening. I can't wait until that's over. Just one more class!
• B got the latest Penderwicks audio book from the library and is listening to that. S got a Calvin and Hobbes book out that had a very lengthy intro by Bill Watterson. He like to read about cartoonists and how they come up with their ideas.

Tuesday

• Went on a great field trip in a.m. to the Kennedy Center to see the NSO. It was an educational program connecting history with music. The ushers were really disorganized though and made us late because they couldn't figure out where to sit us. We missed Bach's Toccata and fugue in G minor. But we did get to hear bits of Hayden's Surprise Symphony and Military Symphony. Hayden lived about the same time as George Washington. Then we got to hear Tchaikovsky's ending of 1812 Overture which was fantastic. All the school children just ate it up. Then we heard bits of Rite of Spring by Stravinsky and Leonard Bernstein's Times Square from On the Town. We also got to hear a couple of snippets of other pieces and they ended with a focus on percussion and on a contemporary composer Jennifer Higdon. And finally they played Sousa's Stars and Stripes and got a little girl out of the audience to be guest conductor. The conductor, Emil de Cou is so very personable and warm. It was lots of fun.
• W took himself and J to Latin class and then W drove J to his math tutor as well.
• S did first 1/2 of lesson 45 in Saxon 6/5 on quadrilaterals
• B did the 9x table with Math It - S and I explained 9x mysterious powers.
• B was caller in a game of phonics bingo - long vowel words. She's getting this reading thing!
• S and I read the first ch of Island of the Blue Dolphin. I told him we were going to start our own personal book club and begin with that book.

Wednesday

• Dentist appts in the a.m. No cavities. Now the kids don't believe me when I tell them they need to brush their teeth, cuz they haven't been doing it very much and we haven't made it to the dentist in two years and ,uh, no one had any cavities. Apparently they've been gifted with really good teeth, though poor B is going to need braces.
• J and I watched the next lecture in How the Earth Works on glaciers. I slept through most of it, unfortunately.
• J read Aeneid
• J also worked on essay for 30 minutes
  
• S and I read the next ch. of Island of the Blue Dolphins
• S did L 46 in Saxon
• S translated next little story in the LfCa history reader.

Thursday

• Did a little bit of schooly work. Read Augustus Caesar's World to S. Read King of the Golden City to B and S. Read story about Mother Cabrini to S and B
  
• J watched next history lecture on Sparta
• J read lots of Book 5 in Aeneid
• Went to Little Flowers and taught little class on St. Mother Cabrini
• S played with Jack
• W went to see Adrian Ballou in concert and met him! Got to chat with him. Was so happy about it!
• J and I went to 4H and J had class on shooting sports

Read Alouds:

• B is listening to the Penderwicks on audio
• R is still reading Detectives in Togas
• I've started reading Old Town in the Green Groves by Cynthia Rylant; This is Rylant's retelling of the missing years of Laura Ingalls Wilder's life, between the time they lived on Plum Creek and moved to Silver Lake.
• King of the Golden City
• Augustus Caesar's World
• I've been reading Movie Shoes by Noel Streatfeild to B and S.