ABOUT THIS WEEK:Monday
SHAKESPEARE:
This morning we finished A Midsummer Night's Dream and began reading Romeo and Juliet! I am always so impressed by these kiddos, reading Grandma Jean's heavy, crumbling Shakespeare book with its tiny, tiny print...And actually understanding the story line.
Our Shakespeare text, and a modern Hollywood adaptation that uses exact phrases from the original
Here and there I ask them to summarize what they've read, or ask them if they can identify a joke, or to explain a character's motivations, and they are always on top of it. They get an A+ for reading comprehension, without a doubt. I remember all of the groaning and grunting about Shakespeare in college! I guess it's just the way you approach it.
POETRY:
Today we re-read Maya Angelou's poem Phenomenal Woman, and the kids both wrote a rough-draft poem entitled Phenomenal Child. They feel a bit awkward bragging and describing themselves as individuals. I think it's an exercise that all women - young and old - would benefit from.
ART:
Just an interesting note...In the waiting room at the dental clinic, the cartoon Lilo and Stitch was playing. We all agreed that the chunky, exaggerated muscularity of the human characters' legs and feet are reminiscent of full-bodied people in many of Picasso's paintings. I like to find connections. It's an easy way to reinforce what we've learned.
I often say, "Who (or what) does this remind you of?" which inevitably leads to a casual conversation that is thoroughly engaging, and serves a dual purpose; not only is it fun to talk with my kiddos, but it also gives me the opportunity to take stock of what lessons really left a mark, and which ones we might need to revisit. I like quizzing the kids this way - it's gentle and enjoyable, and they don't feel pressured.
Tuesday
MORNING MEETING:
We did mental multiplication, wrote thank-you letters to family, and we started reading Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Though we've seen A Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet performed live, we haven't seen Romeo and Juliet. We will be watching filmed theater productions, to become more aware of the text.
The language is much more dense and unpoetic than the other two plays we've seen, which makes it a little more difficult for the kids to plow through when they read aloud. There are many references that we aren't "getting," though many of the quips we do understand. The kids were fascinated to learn that Juliet is only twelve, and that her parents are already worried about her marriage prospects, saying that other perfectly respectable Veronese women were already with child at age 12! We've been reading so many wildly different stories about the lives of adolescents. It's so important, I think, for kids to read about the feelings and thoughts and experiences of other people their age. There are so many paths.
SAXON MATH 76:
Akychame: Discussion of lesson 52; finished the lesson (dividing fractions by fractions, "borrowing when subtracting fractions)
Lvov: Discussion of lesson 4; finished the lesson (Multiplication with several digits, long division, missing factors in multiplication problems)
SOCIAL STUDIES:
We discussed Shakespeare's day, the 1600's - when and where Romeo and Juliet took place. Only an hour or so from Venice, where we just visited. We discussed what life was like then, and how people married at a very young age. We compared this to other cultures wherein early marriage and motherhood is the norm. We also talked about life in our culture, how we aren't expected to take on responsibility until we are much older.
We also read a little book about the written word, from papyrus to illuminated texts to the printing press and emails. It was a quick, easy timeline. After, we read an article in the "World of Wonder" section of the Republican newspaper entitled, "History of Writing." It takes the reader form cave paintings in France to the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet of over 2,000 characters to the Rosetta Stone to modern word processing programs.
This led to a great discussion about the written word, and why written communication is so important. Before this, people handed down information, stories, myths, and history through word of mouth (all of which was subject to hundreds' of years of exaggeration, omission, etc.). The written word ensured that a people's stories would live on intact.
Not only could people pass on their histories and stories, but they could also introduce new ideas to the world and have them circulate far and wide. Ideas became like viruses - easily "infecting" humanity and thereby changing the world. Think of holy texts alone! Their power, even thousands of years later, is fearsome. Ironically, the Bible and other texts were meddled with, translated, mistranslated, and there have been additions and omissions, and much of the N.T. wasn't even written until hundreds of years after Jesus' death...So it's not all that different from an oral tradition of story telling, but many people believe it is the word of god; it's amazing, the power of language.
This article also gave directions on how to create quills from feathers, which is quite easy. We got a feather and a little knife, made a few cuts, dipped it in ink, and presto! We were suddenly monks scribing illuminated manuscripts. It was really fun, and so much more beautiful than plastic pens. Also, never knowing what consistency the ink will be leads to surprising artistic flourishes! This tied into our Shakespeare reading because back in "the day" people wrote with nothing but quills.
GERMAN TEXT:
We read through chapter 2 in Ultimate German; we read the conversation piece and we quizzed each other on the vocabulary
LANGUAGE ARTS:
Because we are reading The Master Puppeteer, I gave an assignment that dove-tailed with our reading. Jiro, the main character, is a boy who is at odds with his parents. Being in an old Japanese society, though, Jiro isn't at liberty to discuss his feelings openly with his parents. He must keep so many feelings bottled up inside, such as rage at his mother, and guilt about his sickly father. For this language arts assignment, the kids were asked to get into Jiro's mindset and write two letters each: one to his mother and one to his father. In the letters, he would tell his parents everything he's been keeping inside. The kids did a fantastic job becoming the main character, and writing the letters first-person.
Here is an example of Akychame's letter from Jiro to his mother:
(letter is forthcoming...)
We also watched Romeo and Juliet with DiCaprio, the modern "gangsta" retelling. It was quite controversial, but it stays true to the original text, which I think is very clever. Of course, the movie skips huge segments of the play, but the only words spoken are directly from the Shakespeare text. It's so clever! And it helps us digest the material a little more easily, to pair scenes with corresponding visuals.
LATIN:
We had an oral quiz on the first chapter of our Minimus textbook, and did pretty well. We need a companion CD of some sort to help with pronunciation.
ADDITIONAL LEARNING TODAY:
The kids also played one game of chess online
Wednesday
MORNING MEETING:
We focused on Social Studies. We also read Scholastic's If You Lived in Colonial Times by Ann McGovern. I love these books so much. They approach each era from so many angles, and give so much detail. They make the times come alive. We just recently read If You Grew Up with Abraham Lincoln, which was similar. Great books, great visuals. I love making connections between these time periods and the famous people that lived then, or wars that were going on, or works of art created, etc. I never talk about anything historical without weaving two or three entirely unrelated events or personages into it, just to "shuffle" the new material into a historical context.
For instance, when we spoke of Lewis and Clark's journey, we spoke of Sakajawea and the Indian tribes who were thriving at that time, and Thomas Jefferson and his controversial life, and how Napoleon was in power in France at about that same time, and how that is when Beethoven was very famous throughout Europe, etc. For instance, when reading the article about the history of writing, we read about the Rosetta stone, and how it was discovered by Napoleon's soldiers in Egypt! So French soldiers were in Egypt finding this holy grail of languages at the same time Lewis and Clark were meeting with Indian tribes, telling them that the country was no longer theirs, but that it belonged to Thomas Jefferson.
This is all in keeping with my belief that history shouldn't be taught chronologically. All throughout our lives we are learning and reading and watching movies, being exposed to history in a piecemeal fashion. It is way too chaotic to be taught in tidy little packages. I am more interested in creating historical "folders" in my kids' minds, to empower them to be able to organize every new thing they learn into their own internal timeline so that it all makes sense, and so that each new unit of knowledge illuminates and gives meaning to all of the other things they have learned. Kind of like how they say that every book written alters every book written before it in some way.
LANGUAGE ARTS:
The kids are almost finished with their "Phenomenal Child" poems, inspired by the Maya Angelou poem - these are such great poems-in-progress, and give such insight into how my kids see themselves. They are fine poets.
SAXON 76 MATH:
Akychame: discussed lesson 53 and finished it (dividing fractions by fractions, "borrowing when subtracting fractions)
Lvov: discussed lesson 4 and finished it (Multiplication with several digits, long division, missing factors in multiplication problems)
POETRY:
We read poems by Marlowe (Come With Me and Be My Love) and Sir Walter Raleigh (The Nymph's Reply). These writers llived at a time when the pastoral poem was really popular (poems about getting back to a simpler life in the country- glamorizing peasant life). Marlowe wrote his invitation for his beloved to come to the country with him and be his bride. Decades later, Raleigh penned a tongue-in-cheek reply, supposedly written by Marlowe's beloved nymph, expressing that moving to the country and getting married might not be as romantic as Marlowe makes it seem. The kids got a chuckle out of this playful literary banter.
GEOGRAPHY:
We had an oral quiz on the names and locations of the 9 South East European countries. We did super!
GERMAN:
The kids both completed one lesson of Rosetta Stone German, Level 2, Lesson 2 - online (pronunciation, listening, and grammar)
ADDITIONAL LEARNING TODAY:
Akychame had a one-hour piano lesson
Thursday
MORNING MEETING:
We orally quizzed each other on chapter 2 of our Ultimate German text. We did great!
MYTHOLOGY:
We read about Damon and Pythias in Myths to Read Aloud. This myth tells a tae of trust between friends, and we learned how the word "companion" means someone who you eat bread with. Friends are those you share your food with.
SHAKESPEARE:
We read the first several pages of Romeo and Juliet - it's taking a long time to get all of the names straight, even for me. So every time we read the words of a new character, we need to look them up and make sense of who they are in he grand scheme of this family feuding.
CRAFTS:
Lvov finished knitting her scarf! Yay, it's so cute! I love it when I walk into the living room while the kids are watching a movie, and they're diligently knitting away like a couple of old ladies. It warms my heart. Akychame made a knitted collar for our cat, and she made me a little blanket for a doll, with purple fabric sewn to the back!
ART STUDY:
We studied Frida Kahlo's self-portraits, which led to a discussion about beauty. The girls thought it was strange and cool that Frida did not paint herself in a flattering light. She actually emphasized her "imperfections". We talked about how Hollywood made a movie about her, starring Salma Hayek, who is thought to be one of the sexiest women alive. Being superficially beautiful obviously wan't important to Frida, so we wondered how she would feel about being portrayed by a bombshell.
I explained to the kids that both men and women fell hopelessly in love with Hayek, despite what people might see as her physical "flaws", and despite her spinal injury that left her bedridden for much of her life. She definitely had inner beauty, charisma and an independent, unusual mind. She is a good role model.
We focused on her self-portraits and noted that in the portraits, she surrounded herself with objects and animals that were dear to her, that symbolized her daily life. Also, sometimes dream imagery comes into play. The kids drew their own self-portraits in this style, emphasizing features that define them physically, surrounding themselves with objects and animals that are beloved to them. They were so incredibly excited about this - it was a hit! And the drawings themselves are so interesting, and really tell their stories.
(photos of self-portraits forthcoming)
