An extended read-aloud last night, trying to catch Gracie up, again, as Sarabelle has taken advantage of my down time to race ahead in her attempt to beat us to the end of The Half-Blood Prince, left us just four pages short of the goal, Sarabelle's dog-eared page, when Gracie revealed she had nodded off for just a sec' around 1:30 AM, and left me rather hoarse. Should you have happened to call my house this morning, that wasn't some cigarette smokin' hungover bar hag that answered my phone, it was me. All communication was performed in sign language and via this keyboard until the tea and honey took effect.
We are comfortably lodged in fantasy; we are allowing no reality to creep in. No political or current events have been sparking any deep debates here. And, if you hadn't noticed, there's no schedule either.
School, if you could call it that, consisted of Sarabelle doing math yesterday. That's it. I'm waiting for Gracie's replacement Latina Christiana I book to arrive. Maybe that will spur us on. The fall's reading list is still being whittled down. I think we may pass on Aeschylus's trilogy and focus instead on more of Aristophanes. He's more amusing, and if we're going to go hard core classical, better for us to start off with the more entertaining bits. A few of the books I'd initially chosen contain a lot of duplication and my latest efforts have been to discover which books cover the major players without being terribly redundant. Plutarch's Lives, available online at Project Gutenberg, seems to be the basis for both Famous Men of Greece and Famous Men of Rome, and D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths covers most of the same stories that Hawthorne covers in his Tanglewood Tales and Wonder-Book for Boys and Girls. Some overlap is good though, with two children of differing abilities. Green's Tales of the Greek Heroes is the only book eliminated thus far. I need to update my Curriculum link over there on the sidebar.
Next week the girls have their second round of kayak camp and then off we go to New Jersey. The plan was originally to head up north and assist my brother with his kids during his two week summer custody allowance. But surprise, surprise, plans change. Now I have to get Elle back to start school too soon to be of any help, so my parents will be handling the four girls, his two and my two older ones, and traveling home with Sarabelle and Gracie in tow. Want to bet everyone'll be a little testy after that trip?
After that, we should be ready to buckle down and get back to work. Well, after that and moving into the orange house...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment