I had no idea that school could be so enjoyable. I studied Charlotte Mason's precepts all summer. I prepared myself, dreaming of the learning splendor that was to be. And then last week, I became petrified. I was afraid that I would find myself once again failing, that it is too good to be true. I proceeded with the 4-day school week, something new for us, and though we did have many interruptions of plumbers and tile layers and phone calls and therapists, which did put us temporarily off course, we did complete all studies this week. The only thing the girls did not do was spelling, instrument studies, and typing instruction. Those are afternoon activities and I was not die-hard about those this week.
Everything came about, despite the interruptions, very smoothly. We do need to go to bed earlier so 7am is not so painful, but that will come in time.
There are many things I knew I would enjoy learning about this week, but Geography was not one of them. Instead of letting my apprehension show, I proceeded to read the lesson out of "Explore the Holy Land" as on the curriculum. I found it was fascinating. The premise is that we are exploring Turkey as we ride over it on a magic carpet! It is so imaginative, a true "living book" with narrative, that it is enjoyable!
So after reading about Turkey today, learning about the 4 bodies of water that surround it, about Istanbul being what separates Asia from Europe, about the Bosphorus Straight, and so on, we were reviewing by letting the girls pretend they were doing a "Special Report" on the travel channel on Turkey.
So I prompted Tara to start talking by asking her a question: "What can you tell me about the great seas we discussed?" She looked very serious, when she said, "Well, the seas look like this..." and she drew two C's in the air. I thought she was serious, because she does oftentimes take things VERY literally. We had an issue of "literal translationitis" earlier today when Writing Strands said to look in the dictionary for an etymology of a word and she looked in the dictionary and....defined etymology. LOL
So imagine how scared I was for 3 or 4 seconds when she showed me the formation of two C's in the air. I thought, "Jesus, if this whole time she thought I was talking about a literal gobbling turkey and 4 C's, I don't know what I will do!"f Then she started laughing. A joke. And I laughed until I cried. I couldn't stop laughing and crying, the girls joined in, and for 10 minutes we were useless. I guess I can scratch "laughed at silly pun til I cried" off my Bucket List.
Everything came about, despite the interruptions, very smoothly. We do need to go to bed earlier so 7am is not so painful, but that will come in time.
There are many things I knew I would enjoy learning about this week, but Geography was not one of them. Instead of letting my apprehension show, I proceeded to read the lesson out of "Explore the Holy Land" as on the curriculum. I found it was fascinating. The premise is that we are exploring Turkey as we ride over it on a magic carpet! It is so imaginative, a true "living book" with narrative, that it is enjoyable!
So after reading about Turkey today, learning about the 4 bodies of water that surround it, about Istanbul being what separates Asia from Europe, about the Bosphorus Straight, and so on, we were reviewing by letting the girls pretend they were doing a "Special Report" on the travel channel on Turkey.
So I prompted Tara to start talking by asking her a question: "What can you tell me about the great seas we discussed?" She looked very serious, when she said, "Well, the seas look like this..." and she drew two C's in the air. I thought she was serious, because she does oftentimes take things VERY literally. We had an issue of "literal translationitis" earlier today when Writing Strands said to look in the dictionary for an etymology of a word and she looked in the dictionary and....defined etymology. LOL
So imagine how scared I was for 3 or 4 seconds when she showed me the formation of two C's in the air. I thought, "Jesus, if this whole time she thought I was talking about a literal gobbling turkey and 4 C's, I don't know what I will do!"f Then she started laughing. A joke. And I laughed until I cried. I couldn't stop laughing and crying, the girls joined in, and for 10 minutes we were useless. I guess I can scratch "laughed at silly pun til I cried" off my Bucket List.
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