Weekly Happenings: Promises to Keep

This week was a bit different from normal (I'm wondering if there's such a thing as a normal week, anyway), what with dreary, chilly weather for a few days; The Elections and a friend of the girls hanging out with us most of the day; a day meeting at church, some theatre excitement; and horse show preparations.

I made a few amendments to our schedule, bypassing spelling, grammar, and memory work for the week. I also stretched out our composition assignments and Miss Priss's Critical Thinking workbook lesson.

Hot chai and composition on a wet day

A breakdown of some things we learned:

• Ordinary Genius, a biography of Albert Einstein and AO Year 6 selection. They've been notebooking each chapter, and I was pleased overall with their initial attempts.
• In history, we read about events following World War II, such as the Marshall Plan and the building of the Berlin Wall; South Africa and apartheid; and the Communist victory in China.
• Dion and Dionysius battle it out in Syracusa in "Dion," one of Plutarch's Lives.
• Newton's law of universal gravitation was the focus of our Secrets of the Universe: Objects chapter. I'm telling you, the way natural phenomena can be reduced (if you will) to mathematical equations simply blows my mind!
• In It Couldn't Just Happen, we read about the ozone layer of the atmosphere and the greenhouse effect and how termites (!!) greatly contribute to it.
• Ulysses (Odysseus) and his men are taking their own sweet time getting back to Ithaca in The Odyssey for Boys and Girls. This week, they lounged and feasted with Circe (after she changed half of the men into pigs and back again) for a year or so until one of them said, "Hey, shouldn't we be thinking about heading home?" (I'm paraphrasing.)
• We regularly catch sight of a blue heron at our lake cabin and sometimes one flies overhead here in the South, so School of the Woods delighted us.
• On Friday, we enjoyed another Hodgepodge pastels tutorial: Harvest Moon Nocturne. The girls were less panicky this week than they were last week and loosened up a bit.

Tiny Girl's on left; Miss Priss's on right.

One of our Frost poem's this week was "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," one of the best-known poems of the twentieth century. And no wonder. The calm, quiet pastoral scene beckons us in and then surprises us with an unexpected depth. Here is an unmissable link: a video of Robert Frost reciting this simple yet magnificent poem.

On Monday evening, Tiny Girl's theatre troupe's production was announced: Peter Pan! And Tiny herself was cast as Captain Hook. Already she's in the throes of practicing at home with her lines and songs (she has a short solo). Miss Priss's troupe has been rehearsing their production of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Miss Priss was cast in several ensemble parts, and she also has a brief solo for one of them.

Petal the pot-bellied pig came to visit us at the barn.

Tiny Girl has a horse show tomorrow, so we have schooling later today at the show venue. We'll also be cleaning tack, polishing boots, ironing jods, etc., tonight. She and Max are going to the show, but here she is with Tuli, who's coming along well with her training.

Not so familiar with the Great Blue Heron? Here's a fun video to watch:




I'll leave you with Frost:

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923)

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

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