School Days

Bright and challenging are words I would use to describe things lately.  The days have been full, very full, and I can see that I will need to be even more disciplined in this new season of life.  In between illness and a broken arm, we have done our best to move forward with our studies.   They are my studies, too, after all.  Roan spent a couple weeks working with numbers, reviewing some qualities, and doing some simple things with his increasing collection of stones, marbles, and crystals.

Willow had a second block with Old Testament stories.  We spent the first block, through the sons of Cain, with Jakob Streit's book And There Was Light.  This time around, we used the Christopherus Old Testament stories, as we simply have so much ground to cover.  There will be a third block before the year is out.  Please don't feel bad if blocks take longer than the recommendations--they are simply recommendations, after all!

In our work with numbers, we heard stories about one-to-one matching, greater than and less than, and even and odd.  We played games for each, which wasn't something I did a lot of with Willow.  She had some more age and development on her, so it wasn't as necessary.  For Roan, it is just plain fun.  Here, they were playing Contest for the Crown, where two similar princes vie for the crown, one being false and less than the other.  Willow contributed some of her costume jewelry for the contest.

Roan is cast-free now, and learning to use his arm again.  He's working with vowels this week, while Willow and I study The People of the Rice, as Christopherus calls them.  I find myself missing the complete materials of Enki for grade three, but I am gaining proficiency in finding what we need from used books and our local library.  Always one to love Natalia Belting and her wonderful stories, we'll be using two Ojibwa stories from The Earth Is On a Fish's Back this week.  We also had a nice windfall of some Native American books donated to the local library.  These are often sold for a small donation, so they are now a part of our library.

For vowels, we'll have a return to painting with water colors, and spend this week intensively painting the sounds of each.  If it helps anyone, I think it's quite possible to get three cups of paint out of the smaller bottle size, instead of the pint I used mix up.  These are the more vivid Stockmar colors--carmine red, golden yellow, and prussian blue.  I'm not sure the others would do so well.

And with that, there is much to do and I must get to work in these last few minutes.  Thank you all for your kind words and prayers.  They have been a tremendous help to me in this experience.  I never dreamed I would be here, but it is here that I am.  I wish you all a happy Tuesday!