It's been a while since I wrote a weekly report; lots of things have been going on, and I've been busy. My Friday afternoons/Saturday mornings have either not been my own, or they've been too much my own, and I've neglected my reporting. I hope to get things up and going again!
We began some new AO titles this week: Oliver Twist; A Passion for the Impossible: the Life of Lilias Trotter; and Plutarch's Life of Brutus. We enjoy all three. Regarding the Trotter biography, Miss Priss said yesterday, "I think I'm going to really like this book."
Last week in This Country of Ours, we read about the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman. The girls were intrigued. Apparently, the Underground Railroad has popped up in other books they've read (their own free reads). I wanted them to dig a bit deeper, so I checked out from the library a basic biography of Harriet Tubman called, amazingly enough, Harriet Tubman, by George Sullivan. It's part of the In Their Own Words series. Tiny Girl finished it this week, and Miss Priss is more than halfway through.
The poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar has been a focus for the past three weeks or so. I was not familiar with his work, but I found I am familiar with a line from one of his poems: "I know why the caged birds sings," from the poem Sympathy. Some of his poems are lyrical and deeply meaningful; others are laugh-out-loud funny. I am glad we are now acquainted with Mr. Dunbar.
For two weeks, we've studied helping verbs and verb phrases. I found that the best method for this was asking the girls to memorize the list of 23 helping verbs, a worthwhile activity that has reaped benefits.
Today, Friday, we took a field trip to a nearby house museum, which dates from 1839. Miss Priss learned a few weeks ago that the museum offers a junior docent program, which piqued her interest. We set up a meeting for this morning with the woman who leads the program. After the meeting, she gave us a tour of the house, free of charge! Miss Priss is beyond excited about the program.
The girls' piano recital is in May, and they are seriously practicing their pieces. Miss Priss's drama troupe is also in rehearsal for their end-of-season variety show, scheduled for the first weekend in May. After much begging on her part, Tiny Girl was delighted to get the go-ahead from Himself and me to participate in the drama troupe next season. She and the new (leased) pony, Max, have been working hard, getting ready for some shows in April. We gave the March shows a skip; Max was lame for a few weeks and developed a minor thrush infection in one hoof. This set back their training schedule a bit. But they should be good to go for April!
That's our week. How was yours?
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Hi, Ellen! Ah, Oliver Twist and Lilias Trotter. I remember those. We enjoyed Oliver Twist but Lilias Trotter was a bit beyond us. It was our first year of using CM/AO and that was a just a bit much for us to take. I think that at another time I would enjoy it more (and also think my dd would have enjoyed it more than my ds did).
ReplyDeleteWe've read a bit of Brutus but not completely. Plutarch gets a bit left out.
Hope you have a swell weekend and a fantabulous week ;)
We tried (briefly) the Trotter biography but just could NOT do it. Glad you're liking Oliver!
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