Morning Time
Prayer, doxology, national anthem
Bible reading - Mark 1:26-27. We discussed how Jesus handled the unclean spirit and the reaction of the crowds.
Christian biography study - The 9yo read to us about Jan Hus and the beauty of Prague. The 7yo read about Selina, Countess of Huntington's childhood.
Memory work - The 5yo recited the days of the week and months of the year for us, without error. We added 1 Kings and 2 Kings to our memorization of the OT books. We added Manitoba to our list of Canadian provinces. We added 'forgive us our tresspasses' to the Lord's Prayer.
History - It's history day! We continued working on our medieval wool process. We decided to dye our wool in thirds - one third blue, one third yellow and one third natural white. For the yellow we used turmeric, which was present as a spice in Medieval cuisine but would never have been actually used to dye fabrics since it was so expensive. But for our purposes (using a natural ingredient to make a dye and watching the fibre change colour) it sufficied. We washed our wool out after and the colour was vibrant and autumnal.
Individual Studies
9yo
30 minutes silent reading
R&S English 2 - lesson 6 - starting sentences with a capital.
Copywork - All capital letters in cursive.
Saxon 5/4 math Lesson 9 - Adding money
7yo
30 minutes piano practice + piano lesson.
30 minutes silent reading
5yo
R&S Math 1 - Lessons 7 and 8 - the numbers 5 and 6.
Tuesday
Morning Time
Everything happened in the car, en route to piano and swimming lessons. We recited:
Prayer, doxology, national anthem, the current portion of the Lord's Prayer, added Ontario to our list of provinces, reviewed the OT books and added 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles to the list, and reviewed days of the week and months of the year.
All three children had swimming lessons. Then the 9yo had his piano lesson at the conservatory. Afterwards we went to the library and bought books at the volunteer-run store. The 9yo had saved enough money for a pair of night vision goggles, so we went to a store to buy those, as well.
The children spent the rest of the day reading their new books.
Wednesday
Morning Time
Prayer, doxology, national anthem
Bible reading - we read Mark 1:28. We discussed how news would have travelled in OT times.
Christian biography read-alouds - The 9yo read to us about the end-of-the-world scare in 1400AD. The 7yo read to us about Selina witnessing a funeral. We discussed the repetitive nature of end-of-the-world scares and what the Bible says about the end times. We also defined 'mortality'.
Our memory work was The Lord's Prayer, to which we added the line 'as we forgive those who trespass against us', the OT books up to 2 Chronicles and 5 Canadian provinces.
We started Shakespeare studies. I pulled out my Arden Complete Shakespeare and read a passage from a play to illustrate the language, and how difficult it would be to understand today. Then I read part of The Tempest from this abridged version:
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| Image from Amazon |
We listened to the poem Vagabond Song, by Bliss Carmen. First we heard it read by, and I'm not exaggerating, possibly the worst reader of poetry that Youtube has to offer. Then, because I was deeply aggravated by the slaughtering of one of my favourite poems, I read it myself. And I did a much better job. We discussed what we thought the poem was about and if we have ever had nature bring forth an emotional reaction in us. The 9yo said the sound of rain made them tired, the 7yo thoughts birds in spring was a happy sound, the 5yo loved picking flowers for me. I said that personally I love the sound of the wind. We asked ourselves what emotions Bliss Carmen felt when he saw the changing leaves.
Indidvidual Studies
9yo
Geography - as of now, we're switching geography to individual studies. I knew it would be a challenge for the younger two to sit and listen to any of this grade 4 level stuff, but I was optimistic. Turns out that optimism was misplaced. The 9yo and I reviewed the Earth's axis, tropics of capricorn and cancer, the polar circles, the five climate zones, the equator, the definitions of climate and weather, and learned the name of the sun.
Saxon 5/4 Math - Lesson 10 - Adding with regrouping. We used play money to illustrate the lesson.
30 minutes of piano practice.
7yo
Rod and Staff Math 2 - Lesson 6
30 minutes piano practice
5yo
Rod and Staff Math 1 - Lessons 7 & 8
100 Easy Lessons (Phonics) - Lesson 25
After our lessons for the day we went for a nature walk and discussed all the different topics that come up when you walk anywhere with little children. Today it was the difference between convex and concave (brought on by mushroom caps), the history of slavery in North America, erosion of rocks by water, rock that exists in old vocanic tunnels, and probably other topics I can't remember right now.
We collected rocks and feathers for our nature tables.
Thursday
On Thursday we totally skipped morning time. I had been up since 4am and the house needed to be cleaned and, well, we just didn't feel like it. So that's that.
We went for a few walks and talked about convex and concave mushrooms, found interesting feathers, and then watched cartoons instead.
Then we dyed our next batch of wool! We chopped up a purple cabbage and simmered it for about an hour, then removed the leaves, added a good amount of white vinegar, poured the whole mixture into a bucket, and added the wool. It sat for a long, long time, trying to soak up the purple cabbage colour. After a few hours of the wool really not taking the vinegar/cabbage water, (I had added the vinegar as a mordant - a way to get the dye to stick to the fibre) I discovered that a very small amount of vinegar turns the end dye result light pink. The amount I put in likely wouldn't allow the purple cabbage dye to dye the wool anything noticeable. But salt might help. So I dumped in a bunch of salt as well and let that sit for a while longer. When I pulled it out and rinsed it we discovered a very slightly light pink wool. Nothing at all like the grey/blue/purple of a winter sunset we had imagined. And we'd had such success with the turmeric!
Individual Studies
9yo
R&S English 2 - Today was the unit one test in the test booklet. The 9yo got 33 out of 34 on the test.
And that was quite literally all the formal schooling that happened today.
Friday
Today was not a day when any school got done. We ran errands and handled appointments, mainly. The 9yo and I started watching a really interesting astronomy show called The Planets, on BBC Earth. We saw the episode on Mars and the one on Saturn. I didn't know that Mars' soil was still 2% water, or that the rings of Saturn may have been caused by the tearing apart of a planet sized ice moon. Here's a link to the show.
Saturday
Morning Time
We didn't get Morning Time done today. We had company instead.
Individual Studies
9yo
R&S English 2 - Lesson 7 - The beginnings and ends of various sentences.
Saxon 5/4 - Lessons 11 and 12
30 minutes silent reading
7yo
R&S Math 2 - Lessons 7 and 8
30 minutes silent reading
30 minutes piano practice
Patterns of Nature - Lesson 2 - Seeds
5yo
R&S Math 1 - Lessons 12 and 13
Patterns of Nature - Lesson 2 - Seeds
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