One of my key sayings is that I don't just want to have books, I want
to read books. It doesn't make me happy to think of having a houseful
of books if no one is reading them. Therefore, I am happy to report that
since we went to the book sale on Tuesday, several of the books have
already been read and several more are in the process of being read.
Alex is working on his 2nd William O Steele book and he is pretty
satisfied with his choice.
I am finding that both, Alex
and Andrew, are willing readers but it doesn't always do to point to
the shelves of books we already have. They still love to go to the
library and book sales and their reading is rejuvenated by those trips.
But
that is not what I want to talk about today. I felt like it would be
profitable to go through one of our MT sequences pointing out the places
where we stopped for discussion. I will repost the bulk of this post
on the MT Moms site.
Yesterday, very late, 10:45, I
finally called everyone together for MT. We began with prayer
concentrating on Nathaniel who is apprenticing in an nuclear plant this
month.
Because Christopher, my senior, needs to get the
show on the road, I decided to go straight to grammar after prayer. I
pulled out my vintage
Mother Tongue II 
and
we discussed transitive and intransitive verbs. We orally analyzed
several sentences together and then individually. Then I let
Christopher leave to finish up
That Hideous Strength
by CS Lewis.
One
of the reasons I skipped several items during the morning is that I had
been away last week, and I just wanted to reassert things slowly.
Therefore, we did not sing. We sound terrible, so it is always a
temptation not to sing but I am determined that we WILL sing on most
days. Today we will sing 2 songs. Yesterday's
Coram Deo by Judy Rogers and today's
Crown Him with Many Crowns.
Then
I read EX 20:1-17 as our review passage. Plenty of fodder for the mill
in that. We first discussed the idea of taking God's name in vain and
how God will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. We also
discussed covetousness.
Then we headed over to review and relearn Gen 1:1-5.
Which reminded me of my
Morning and Evening
devotional so I pulled that out and read it. It was based on the verse Ezekial 34:26
"I will cause the shower to come down in his season: there shall be showers of blessing."
I used this as a socratic jumping off spot and we defined the terms in
the verse. Everyone participating. We defined Cause, Season, Showers and
Blessings. In the end we concluded that since we are not God and
cannot control the weather, it was a sin to complain about the weather
but maybe not a sin to be disappointed in the weather. My real goal was
to stop the baseball players in the family from being dramatic weather
watchers for the next few months. Weather can wreck havoc on a baseball
season and I just wanted to establish where it came from. By the way,
Christopher was not far off reading and he participated in this
discussion.
We then went on to read
Worldliness 
edited
by CJ Mahaney. We are on the end chapters on modesty so it is more
pointed at Emily. Not too fun for her, so I make sure that I make
connections to masculine modesty also.
I am continuing to read through
101 Famous Poems
with the children. We discuss one poem a day and the poem we discussed yesterday was:
Abraham Lincoln Walks at Night (In Springfield, Illinois) by Vachel Lindsay
We
are not huge Lincoln fans here so I wasn't sure how the poem would go
over but it turned out to be an excellent poem in which to discuss
modernity which is the time period my high school students are
studying.
We concentrated on these three verses from
the perspective of the time period the poem was written in which was
1914. Significant. We discussed Lincoln, the Civil War, the beginnings
of WWI, The League of Nations and mostly all that was meant by :
The Workers' Earth.
We discussed 'The little man" the "working man" etc. We discussed
socialism at great length noting that we know more about it now than
they did in 1914. We were able to bring most of this discussion down to a
simple concept that Alex could understand. We ended our discussion on
the topic of self-government.
- The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
- He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.
- He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now
- The bitterness, the folly and the pain.
- He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn
- Shall come:--the shining hope of Europe free:
- The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth,
- Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.
- It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,
- That all his hours of travail here for men
- Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace
- That he may sleep upon his hill again?
in either Shakespeare or Plutarch during the morning.
Alex and Andrew and I continued reviewing All the World's a Stage and I had Alex act out the 7 seasons as we read. He balked at sighing like a lover.
We also reviewed Breathes by Walter Scott which we are relearning.
I reviewed the US Oath of Citizenship
which they mostly know and told them to write it out for their
narration for 2 days and then Friday I would test them on it by having
them write it from memory.
We reviewed the 1st Amendment and
discussed the 5 rights guaranteed by it. We also discussed the
Constitution and what the Bill of Rights actually were. This came in
handy as while we were reading aloud America Grows Up
we learned about the 1st Continental Congress. We decided that it would
be fun to visit Mount Vernon on our trip to Washington this summer.
We then went on to read aloud The Light Beyond the Forest
which details the search for the Holy Grail.
America Grows Up which I already mentioned and:
The Silver Chair (Narnia)
by CS Lewis
I
hope you can see the richness of having these sorts of discussions
every single day. The thing I absolutely love about it is that the
younger students are being stretched while the older students are
learning. I let all participate equally and of course, I draw out those
who are quiet. We do laugh a lot and our family can be a bit brutal
sometimes. We all love to hear what Alex, the youngest, has to say
before any concept is defined. Andrew seems to have a better grasp of
grammar than my high school students but then again he has had 3 years
of Latin at a younger age. I say 3 years of
Latin for Children 
but we only get through 2/3 of a book a year.
The one other beauty of this method is that it helps children learn how to make connections which is the heart of intuition.
As
you can see, I did not let the schedule dictate the time. I dropped
things off in order to fully grasp the moments that arose naturally.
Finding this balance is often difficult. If you are the type that must
get through the LIST then teach yourself to embrace the moments of
discussion that arise. Don't ever rush those until they deteriorate into
frivolity which they inevitably do. That is some part of the art of
teaching, I think.
(Need to finish this up quickly)
. I liked the title because it rang true for me. My own journey to fitness, a journey I have not completed, began very much like the author's. He started with one pushup. I started with an App and a check mark.