Day 48

Some of the many composition books we have around the house!




Sean:

• Algebra -- summary and review cont of chapter 5
• Latin -- vocabulary and grammar cards
• Greek
• Vocabulary
• Read Mere Christianity
• Read Book of Discovery
• Wrote short "note narrations" of both of them.

Notes:

I really really really want to get him writing consistently, and also I am concerned about his retention because of the speed he gets through his readings, so the "notes narrations" were a solution to both of the problems. I found that if we start somewhere, anywhere, I shortcircuit my perfectionism a bit and can build on what's there.

I spent yesterday looking through a whole bunch of composition and grammar through writing books (pictured above). Our unit this month is on taking notes and writing summaries for oral and written presentation. The Easy Writing pictured above is a sort of "grammar in the context of writing" workbook. It teaches you to rewrite sentences in different ways, hopefully learning more sophisticated verbal devices, sort of like IEW's "Style Syllabus". It is artificial of course, just like IEW's style syllabus is in my own humble opinion. But I am hoping to use some of the ideas to encourage the kids to experiment with different types of sentence structure should that be necessary (Sean doesn't ever write much so I'm not really sure what issues he has, if any).


Kieron

I decided to have an "Alternative" day for Kieron. (I don't have a real label for them yet, but I've been trying to break up the dullness that comes this time of year by having some Plan B ideas ready and then seeing where they take us.

Kieron did Greek, Handwriting, and fractions practice (using a drill book like calculadders that I have around the house, and I did the writing for him, which gets us through more and also is a break for him). He did Latin Quia.

I was going to work with him on a notes narration for his Faith and Life chapter, but we didn't get around to it.

Then I had him read Across a Dark and Wild Sea , about Saint Columcille. He was intrigued by the homemade inks. Serendipitously he had found a beautiful large feather at Thomas Aquinas College campus when we were there on Sunday. So I asked him if he wanted to try to make ink from soot, and he liked the idea. He also loved the uncial alphabet shown in the book.

Trying to grind the soot (we always have LOTS!)


The page about the writing utensils and ink


The uncial alphabet.Writing attempts -- the first ink turned out too watery so we added more soot. He doesn't want to try to cut the quill yet so the writing turns out pretty thick. But it was fun!