Saturday, October 17, 2009

Devotion, Conviction, A Goal

WOW, what a week!

Tennis lessons and soccer practice at the park district; piano and violin lessons were awesome; Columbus is history along with names like De Gama, Vespucci, Magellan and Diaz. We got to apply 9volts to water in order to examine electrolysis and said "see ya'll later" to the Alkali Metal group. Next week we will become aware of Alkali Earth metal group. There were a few tears shed when the countries of Africa were more challenging to learn than we'd like. Sheppard Software provided us with tools to practice country outline maps of Africa along with geomorphology and rivers of the continent. We are reading some stories about Mansa Musa along with a book called, Castle Diary. The Middle Ages were not just in Europe, but also occurred in Africa and influenced history there too. I took someones advice and started listening to the Secret Garden on Librivox.org. I've never heard the story or seen the movie. I'm intrigued. I've also checked out another turn of the millennium mystery story that sites Pliny the younger as the main character during Domitian's time. My G1 did two MathUSee chapters this week and will do 2 more next week because, as I pointed out, he really didn't need more time to do skip count by five and ten in order to learn those multiplication facts. He did GREAT! All did well with spelling and working all their consonant blends like champion spellers. Grammar lessons were flying and individual reading flourished, well at least until someone left their book at the tennis court.

The house got cleaned for a visit that didn't happen due to full planes and hunting season. And G2 managed well with a bout of puking on Thursday evening. She has caught up with much of the work she missed on Friday even the painting from our art chapter about the Limbourg brothers. Latin lessons with the Daddy were much less rammy than usual. Finally, I got to participate in a discussion about Macaulay's book, For the Children's Sake. I've read the book several times and continue to wrestle with the choice to home school these children. Is it for me or for them that I should have so much less time to myself? Should I stop spending so much money on their private, classical education? Should I let an expert take over and do this because they know more about elementary education than I do? God is in charge of all this, so why can't I give up the control and just let Him take over in the classroom? And, I'm continuing to be convicted by this decision to devote my energy and my development as a teacher to this goal this year. To re-evaluate why I do what I do and how I do it so that it is truly for their sake.

The latest art work as follows is G1's portrayal of a kangaroo; G2's music note; and G3's turtle.

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