Weekly Report -- May 15

Latin

Thalia has moved ahead of me in Latin Alive, but I still have the weekend to catch up. We're both enjoying this program so far (first 5 chapters). It has more zip than Henle -- we get to use verbs! Woohoo! It has more oomph than Latin for Children. Of course, so far it's mostly been review for Thalia, so that adds to its charm. We're looking forward to the DVD release at the end of this month.

In the meantime, Annabeth continues to work steadily in Latin for Children, having reached chapter 10. Sometimes she is peeved by some of the grammar concepts (like, what would possess anyone to come up with a language that has declensions?), but we have soldiered through.

Math

I may die from math. So. Boring.

Actually, Annabeth is in sort of a fun spot in RightStart D, in the midst of patterns.

Other than that I try not to dwell on it too much.

Moving on ...

Language Arts

Thalia continued work in Classical Writing Homer, using the Face That Launched 1,000 Ships as a model, which was coincidentally also the Latin reading for this week. I thought it would be cool for her to try doing her rewrite in Latin, but she seemed to think that wasn't a good idea.

I am so impressed with her grasp of grammar when she works on this stuff. She gives all of the credit to Analytical Grammar.

She's up to doing 5 steps of the 6 step shuffle. She suffers mightily with it, though. Well, except the 5th step, which is making a passage more verbose. We all seem to have a talent for going on and on and on about nothing in particular, and it comes in handy on that 5th step.

Annabeth has been doing copywork and dictation from a botany book we're reading together, The Living World of Plants by Gerbert Grohmann. The book is written for 5th graders in Waldorf schools, and the writing, translated from the original German, has some passages worthy of copywork.

Today she decided to paint a picture to illustrate Steiner's verse about The Secret of Nature:





Behold the plant!
It is the butterfly bound fast to the earth.
Behold the butterfly!
It is the plant set free by the universe.




The flower is growing along the edge of a stream, in case you were wondering about that blue stripe.

If you happen to look through a copy of Donna Simmons Christopherus Unit Studies: Botany you'll see a similar picture done in crayon by an older student.

Annabeth has also been participating in the discussion Thalia and I have been having as Thalia begins her botany unit. So far the discussion have been pretty general -- what is botany, why are plants important, what are some careers in botany. Thalia will be working on her Plants Interest Patch while we do this unit.

History

Supposedly we're studying Greece via Famous Men of Greece right now, but I think we all know that mostly we discuss Percy Jackson. The Percy-mania should peak during the next week, when Rick Riordan visits, and then Thalia and Annabeth attend a Camp Half-blood mini-session at a library branch. In the meantime, whenever the FMoG book mentions the Oracle I picture her as having green light in her eyes and mist billowing around.

Actually, whenever FMoG mentions any of the gods and goddesses I'm mostly annoyed because they give the Roman names (yoohoo, it's supposed to be a book about Greece, not Rome), so I have to translate them all on the fly while reading aloud or else suffer the consequences.

Other Read Alouds

Speaking of read alouds, we're also currently reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and also Little Pilgrim's Progress.