What We've Accomplished Today....04/06/10

I felt that today was a good day. No, the day isn't over but we actually did get all of the school work done.

We have made ourselves schedules using an excel program. Although we have yet to actually follow the schedule we all did well today (okay not me- I was supposed to wake at 5:45...slept in til 7:30...). We have a block of time for school work: 9:00am to 2:30pm. That is not to say we sit and do school for the entire 5.5 hours (there'd be no lunch or snack- heaven forbid!) but we stop after a couple subjects and then do 'something else' for 10 minutes. Lunch and snacks are put in there when we feel like eating. Fox feels that 10:00am, 12:00pm and 2:00pm are food times, no matter what else is going on.

Let's see what we got done today:

9:ish we started and discussed doing all 'together' work first thing. This includes Bible, Church History, Shakespeare, and ?? *I'm forgetting something* We also discussed what we would read for Bible since Lee has been reading New Testament and Fox, the Old Testament. We agreed that since the OT has more books we will do that 3 days a week and NT 2 days a week. Being Tuesday, we opted to go with the NT today. We read Matthew 13:18-30; Jesus is talking about parable of the sower and also of the householder who sows good wheat and an enemy sows in tares. Both kids were very aware what Jesus meant in both of those parables. I like when they do their narrations how the other will almost always have something else to add. This helps with missed points. It was a great discussion.

For Church History we finished up about Cyprian because we have been neglecting Church History. We discussed what they personally felt about the Christians that had denied the faith when persecuted but had a change of heart and asked to be back into the Church and those who left the Church due to the leniency and kindness extended to those repentant. They both felt that those that left the Church were in the wrong. Jesus says we are to forgive freely. Cyprian was in favor of kindness and said that the Church was in the Pope and the Pope was in the Church; those who were in opposition to either were not part of the Church. Cyprian was executed because he refused to offer a sacrifice to false gods. We discussed why he paid the executioner before he was executed. I found it to be interesting that even the pagans in the street were silent in what I would gather to be sadness that Cyprian, who was a kind gentle man of God, was being put to death. Next is Anthanius (did I spell that right? I don't have it in front of me...) and I am looking forward to it.

This is where we took our little break. It was now 9:40ish. They insisted we started back at exactly 9:50. Next we did some Shakespeare. We had been just reading our lines in Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene I, in hopes to get it down to perform (via video camera) but I felt we needed a little more background to Shakespeare himself. When we first started with AO and I told them we would be doing a Shakespeare play (even if only a scene or two), Fox asked me who Shakespeare was (gasp! didn't they teach him anything about Shakespeare in ps?? *That was my thought*). We read a little about where the information came from that helps historians know about Shakespeare. It mainly comes from his plays and Church documents. We learned that he was possibly born on April 23, 1564 and baptized three days later. He was the 3rd of 8 children (3 of his siblings died in childhood) and he attended a 'free grammar school' with waived tuition because his father was a bailiff. He didn't however attend University which leads some skepticism to the authorship of his works.

After that bit of information on Shakespeare, which we will continue next time we do Shakespeare, we went ahead with our play. It has been quite a while since we had worked on the play so we were a bit rusty. We remember some of the funny parts ("What meanest thou you naughty knave.... saucy fellow"... "Nay, sir, I beseech you, be not out with me but if you be out with me, I can mend you." Not necessarily in that order). Yea, we need to work on it...But they understand what is going on for the most part, which is good.

Let's see, then we did separate work: Math, Language Arts, Science (all LIFEPACs and do not 'require' my assistance for the most part). Fox did his Daily News and Foreign Language review on the computer. Lee hasn't gotten there quite yet... oops guess we didn't get everything done. And as I think, we forgot about copywork as well.. sigh... but I think our accomplishments outweigh the ones we missed. Lee did Circle of the Seasons and The Fallacy Detective with written narrations on those (CotS she actually makes quick notes and then narrates out loud). We were supposed to have Art today but... well, the day isn't over and thats one of the great things about homeschooling, we are at 'school' all day. Edited to add: We added Cyprian to our timeline :)

On my newly created schedule, I have blocked off 3:00pm to 4:30pm to work on my schoolwork but ... I haven't gotten there yet. With not getting up on time either I missed my 1.5 hours of school time this morning. I will have to make it up. Now, I have to let ds on the computer so he can read Oliver Twist on his Kindle for PC. Have a good day :)