Note: No School on Monday, Sept. 1st (Labor Day)
ABOUT THIS WEEK:
My wallet was stolen on Saturday, so during the school week I was running from office to office filling out police reports, obtaining signatures and faxing documents to Korea for approval - the red tape was never-ending. But we still managed to have a great (albeit stressful and light) 4-day homeschool week. But we always manage to make the most of tricky situations!
FIELD TRIP:
We will be visiting the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany. Mainz is where Gutenberg (the founder of the printing press) lived. The museum has demonstrations of the printing process in a workshop created from woodcut prints from Gutenberg's time. In preparation, we will read "The Story of Books" by Harry Ellwood, and others.
We saw the evolution of printing presses from medieval days to the present; we saw illuminated manuscripts; the Gutenberg Bible; etc. It was great to see old books, elaborate fold-out books, examples of early lithography, typesetting, goldleaf, decorative edges, metal book clasps, etc.
We saw so many incredibly ornate fold-out scientific books - LOVE this stuff!
The kids and I had a wonderful discussion about how pivotal Gutenberg's invention was, how it enabled the common men to distribute and assimilate ideas, how it made knowledge more democratic and the world much smaller; we discussed the paradox of censorship, book burning, how the only educated people used to be related to the church (or scientists or people who couldn't disagree with the church). As usual, it was an engaging, lively discussion.
A lovely bouquet and lovely girls
In Mainz we also visited a flower garden and created our own bouquets. I love these gardens! They operate on an honor system - 60 Euro cents per stem - that you deposit into a little container, and they provide knives (the stems are large) and rubber bands. We stumble upon these gardens quite often, and always leave with armfuls of color.
Kiddos in the Altstadt, by the Mainz Cathedral
CURRENT INDEPENDENT READING:
This week we will read the first 10 pages of Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George and write descriptions and passages into our Commonplace Journals. Over breakfast the 3 of us will compare notes on our reading together, and share quotes from our commonplace journals.
Here's one of Lvov's favorite quotes from Julie of the Wolves (she wrote it in her Commonplace Journal): "I hug a little cub and his fur is like water so he just slips through my fingers."
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Tuesday - Library Day
GEOGRAPHY:
- We memorized relative sizes and positions of countries in Western & Northern Europe (how many Italy's fit into one Spain, for instance, and which borders or coasts line up with what). Next, we drew Western & Northern Europe from memory on blank sheets of paper, including capital cities. We did great! Our maps are becoming more realistic. It was interesting watching Al Gore's video representation of continental drift because when we study the earth, it is so obvious. We also thought about silly ways of remembering countries and locations.
For example, the Scandinavian countries of Sweden and Finland look like two feet staying warm under the warm "blanket" of Norway. If someone tried pulling the blanket away, the sleeper would shout, "No way!" Like "Nor-way!" Silly, but effective.
- We also studied Athens, Greece and the isle of Crete so that we could really "see" and understand where the events in the Theseus and Ariadne myth take place: the war between Crete and Athens, Daedalus' labyrinth, etc. It's so fascinating that these stories are anchored to real-world places. Even the city of Athens was named after the Goddess Athena, and the Aegean Sea was named after Theseus' father's suicidal leap (Aegeus).
SAXON MATH:
Review of lesson 47 in math textbooks
Akychame: diameter, circumference, and pi
Lvov: three ways to show division
ART STUDY:
Further picture study of Picasso's Guernica:
Picasso wrote that it's silly to try to "figure out" artwork; to give it a "meaning." He wrote that when you smell a flower or hear a bird's song, you don't try to analyze it or wonder what the flower or the bird had in mind when they created their art. Art should just be appreciated on a gut level, simply and immediately. So, instead of reading a bunch of dry art theory about Guernica, I had the kids write their own gut reaction to, and feelings about, this work.
LANGUAGE ARTS:
We culled new vocabulary words from our Shakespeare reading. We also talked about how tongue-in-cheek and saucy Shakespeare could be-even when the writing seems hyper-intellectual and boring, it is a minefield of innuendo. The kids were shocked- lots of belly laughs!
Now the kids read Shakespeare as if they are hunters, searching for inappropriate passages. Which is fine with me. Anyone who can write this beautifully can be as ribald as he or she likes. Speaking of gender, we also discussed how the jury is still out on Shakespeare's true identity (as outlined in Time Magazine). He could have been one or many, male or female.
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Wednesday
POETRY:
The kids perfected Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and recited it aloud to Phil (in Korea) over the telephone. They derive such pride of ownership in having internalized a poem.
Like Sartre said of all of the literary giants on his bookshelves, they are all his. He knows them intimately. No one can tell him anything about them - they are his best friends, his family. I am "giving" my daughters a world of genius, of ideas, of beauty; it is all theirs to construe and appreciate as they wish. They are our DNA, our cultural ancestors.
SAXON MATH:
Review of lesson 46 in math textbooks:
Akychame - pi: she did her own measurements of round objects using the formula of diameter multiplied by pi = circumference.
Lvov - square roots
LATIN:
We studied Latin word roots that we use to build modern English words. This brought home how truly vital this "dead" language is. All week we were identifying Latin word roots in our everyday life. Very fun! For example:
corp - body (and in German, "korper" is body)
dent - teeth
homo-same
tri-three
vita - life
scope - to see
We also learned some actual words that are almost identical to English words:
admitto- to admit
agricola - agriculture
anima - animal
causa - because
centum - hundred
CREATIVE WRITING:
ADDITIONAL LEARNING TODAY:
Akychame - piano lesson (1 hour) - she is "whizzing through" her piano book, as her instructor said. She is doing great and getting excited about her recital in a few months.
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Thursday - Library / Tennis Day
SOCIAL STUDIES:
Because it is banned book week, we'll explore how we feel about censorship. Censorship is when a government, school, or company decides that certain books can't be sold or read because they think the books are too inappropriate in some way, or because they are threatened by them. Many famous books were once banned (against the law) because of censorship, such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Ulysses, and To Kill a Mockingbird, to name a few. In some instances, the books were confiscated (taken away) or burned. Ideas can be very dangerous!
This ties in with our field trip this week because Gutenberg made printing so much cheaper and faster, that dangerous books were much more accessible to society at large (not just rich people and the church). Your creative writing assignment is to write a poem about book burning, and what you think of it. Should people be told what they can and cannot read and write? Try to make the poem short and powerful.
SAXON MATH:
Review of lesson 46 in math textbooks
Akychame - percentages (tips, taxes): turning % into fractions and decimal #'s and multiplying to find %
Lvov - 2-digit multiplication with carrying
NATURE STUDY:
We hiked to a wonderfully isolated apple orchard in a small village. The orchard overlooks the village and the church bells sing up to the trees. We climbed apple trees, sketched the scenery, admired the apples, and then went home and made apple pies from scratch. It was a feast for he soul!
ADDITIONAL LEARNING TODAY:
Akychame - tennis lesson
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Friday
MYTHOLOGY:
We reviewed the Theseus and Ariadne myth, which is one of my favorites. We realized that Shakespeare's main character is Theseus, and lives in Athens, so knowing the myth behind this story is crucial. We reviewed the stories about King Minos, his wife's illegitimate child the Minotaur (half bull, half human, who ate youths), how Daedalus was hired to construct the labyrinth maze to imprison the Minotaur and sacrificial youths, how Araidne spooled Theseus into the maze with a "clue" of thread, the Minotaur's death, and so on. We padded our memories of these stories with selections from Edith Hamilton's Mythology.
SHAKESPEARE:
I will read two pages of A Midsummer Night's Dream to the girls. We will also watch the beginning of William Hoffman movie adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The kids watched this performed live several years ago. We will also discuss what life was like at the time of writing, and discuss the main themes of the play.
SAXON MATH:
Review of lesson 47 in math textbooks
Akychame - percentages (with tips), multi-digit multiplication
Lvov - circumference, radius, diameter
CRAFT PROJECT:
We created miniature medieval "illuminated" books out of an old Pizza Hut box! We added old-looking paper, drawings, and "leather" covers with gold edging and straps. Oh man, it was so much fun, and tied into our Gutenberg Museum field trip perfectly.
Here's Lvov affixing faux-leather straps to her medieval tome. It's so cute! This whole project (minus the writing and illustration) took only about 1 hour. Ever since I was a teenager I've wanted to have a collection of hand-made miniature books.
Here's the inside of one before any text or illustrations had been added. It's so fun to choose the colors and designs.
We love making miniature books so much. It gives us an appreciation of the whole binding and printing process and is just plain fun. We love making miniature anything, actually. Last year we had so much fun making dioramas of scenes from the kids' chapter books - usually these scenes included tiny furniture (our favorite was a working rocking chair made from a pizza box! We had to tape a nickel to the bottom of the seat so it wouldn't roll completely backward when rocking. Worked like a charm!)
Ta-daaa! Our completed medival illuminated manuscripts! Don't you just want to open them up and see what's inside???
EDUCATIONAL MOVIE:
An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore: we were so affected by this movie - especially the visual aids (graphs, before & after photos, etc.). It sparked a great discussion.
CHESS HOMEWORK:
Played three games each against the computer, and kept asking to play more!
