Homeschool Update

This week Thalia and I have been working our way through The Odyssey, having recovered enough from the trauma of The Iliad to attempt another epic.

We're listening to Sir Ian McKellen read the Fagles translation while Thalia follows along in a paperback version of Fagles and I follow along on the iPad with a translation by Murray that's main attraction is that it's free online. Murray is fond of phrases such as "I ween". We're also watching the Teaching Company lectures by Elizabeth Vandiver on the subject.

While the main images I retained from The Iliad were 1. Achilles whining, 2. intestines unfurling on the ground, 3. black blood gushing forth, and 4. other random sharp objects being thrust through other random people's heads, the main images from The Odyssey have been 1. baths, which are typically followed up by an olive oil moisturizer and something fluffy to wear, 2. Dawn's rosy fingers, and 3. people stretching forth their hands to eat the good things before them (at a feast). It sort of comes across as chic lit after all the gore of The Iliad. If I were to write a paper on the subject, I think I'd make it about the baths.

We're also zooming through her half-credit requirement in Personal Finance using Dave Ramsey's Foundations in Personal Finance High School Edition. I'd never seen Dave Ramsey before. He's reasonably engaging, most of the things he talks about have been the same things we've talked about around the kitchen table for years (topics like "why we're too cheap to take up cigarette smoking"). We've now reached the point in the course where Dave wants the student to follow 4 Mutual Funds and 2 stocks; Rick thinks that the financial markets have changed enough since the course was written that it would be better to follow 2 Exchange Traded Funds and 4 stocks.

Local public and private schools will be starting in the next week, and a co op we belong to starts in about a week. We've been amassing other curricula, including Lial's Intermediate Algebra, Kinetic Physics, Notgrass World History for Thalia, Shepherd Life Science and Writeshop for Annabeth. I'm not too thrilled about those latter 2, but they're co op classes and she seems to be pleased to be taking them.

We still need to get our English course together for Thalia, and can't purchase Visual Link Spanish until later in the month when they release the new Mac version. We also have a lot of ACT study guides floating around the table where we're dumping all of our shiny new curricula (plus a copy of My Life as a White Trash Zombie for comic relief, as all these text books and study guides looked a little too earnest and it was a 4-for-3 on Amazon.com with the ACT guides). And we're in negotiations about what acting, musical theater, dance, and voice lessons will be taking place beyond all of this school work -- the kids think "all available", but we'll see what's affordable and what can be justified by somehow fitting onto the transcript.

Gearing up for the next season of schooling -- I wonder what adventures are ahead of us.