WEEKLY REVIEW

We took off this week except for reading. We finished up Otto of the Silver Hand, and read a book on Louis Pasteur. We also finished up the Little House book we were on, and started The Long Winter.

Our Berlitz language books came. The French one isn't nearly as good as the Spanish and German ones. It doesn't even indicate which syllables should be stressed in any way, like the others do with all capital letters in the stressed syllable. Nor does it have a pronunciation guide of any sort at the beginning. Of all of them, the older edition German one is best.

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WEEKLY REVIEW

We started with an introduction to Galatians this week, and will be reading that next for Bible.

For U.S. history, we watched a film about Madame Curie and read some more from the scientist book we have been going through. We also read Drake Drills for Oil and a book about the making of the Brooklyn Bridge.

For Middle Ages history, we started Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle. Big Girl also read The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian by Lloyd Alexander.

For free reading, Big Girl read The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin.

I ordered the Berlitz Self Teacher for Spanish this week, and Big Girl and I are going to give Spanish another try. I also ordered the French one, and we already have the German one, just for fun. If we make it through the guide, then I will see about ordering us an actual curriculum.

Just a side note: None of the covers on these books (except the Spanish one) look like the ones in the links. I hate these modern covers they put on everything now. Makes the books look cheap and trashy, in my not so humble opinion. If I were judging by the covers, I'd have skipped over them.

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POETRY

We have been memorizing poetry for quite a while now, and as I said elsewhere, we focus on one poet at a time while memorizing his or her poem. I will read a poem each day by the particular poet we are studying. We keep the memorized poems, along with the pages I make for the bulletin board (with the poet's picture, country, and birth and death dates) in a notebook. The girls review the old poems by each of them reciting one each day. We do those the same way we do our current memory work: Big Girl will recite the poem while Little Girl looks at it and corrects any mistakes, then they switch. I started doing this when I realized that I was memorizing the poems myself just by looking at them and correcting the girls when they would recite them. So it serves double duty.

Here is a list of the poems we have memorized so far with their authors. At first, we did simpler ones, that were mostly by poets who wrote specifically for children. I tried to choose the most "important" and well known poems and poets. Here is the main site I use as our source.

Ooey Gooey - Anonymous

The Germ - Ogden Nash

The Vulture - Hilaire Belloc

It's Dark in Here - Shel Silverstein

The Land of Counterpane - Robert Lewis Stevenson

How Doth the Little Crocodile - Lewis Carroll

Some One - Walter de la Mare

Silver - Walter de la Mare

Hurt No Living Thing - Christina Rossetti

The Duel - Eugene Field

Jabberwocky - Lewis Carol

I Chased a Dragon Through the Woods - Jack Prelutsky

The Tyger - William Blake

Trees - Alfred Joyce Kilmer

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Paul Revere's Ride - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (only did part of this one)

O Captain! My Captain! - Walt Whitman

Charge of the Light Brigade - Alfred Lord Tennyson (half of this one)

Daffodils - William Wordsworth

Eldorado - Edgar Allan Poe

Because I Could Not Stop for Death - Emily Dickinson

Old Ironsides - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost (my favorite poem and poet!)

The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

Daddy Fell Into the Pond - Alfred Noyes

The Owl and the Pussycat - Edward Lear

The Spider and the Fly - Mary Botham Howitt

The Arrow and the Song - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

And if anyone is wondering "Why memorize poetry?" Here are some good articles. I don't agree with everything in them, being a Christian, but there is some good stuff to be pulled from them. The "disagreeable" parts will be obvious to other Christians. (Just philosophy type stuff.)

Poetry Memorization

In Defense of Memorization

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WEEKLY REVIEW

Well, we ended up going with another poet after all. I found this cute book in the Goodwill, by T.S. Eliot, on which the musical, Cats, is based. We will be reading through it, and some of his other poems, before we get back to our anthology. We won't be watching the musical, however, as I hear it has inappropriate content. What a shame.

We started with Aaron Copland this week, and will be continuing for another week, before doing a couple more modern composers I decided to go ahead and cover while we are "here."

We will be starting on Ireland for geography this coming week. Also, we will be going back to the beginning and world artists now, after spending a year or more on American artists. We will start with Giotto. I don't care for a lot of his paintings, or many of the others from this time period, due to their portrayals of Christ. But we cover them because of their significance in history, though I will be very picky about which paintings we focus on.

Big Girl finished up her Easy Grammar Plus last week, and will be taking a break from grammar for a while to work on her writing, which she loves.

For history, we finished up our book and a video on Alexander Graham Bell. For world history, we read some about France and Germany during the Middle Ages, and Frederick Barbarossa. Big Girl is reading The Red Keep, by Allen French.

In Bible, we finished Acts, and have started the book of James. Also, for memory work, since we aren't doing a poem right now, we are going to memorize the books of the Bible in order again. Big Girl still remembers most of them, but Little Girl doesn't even remember ever doing it the first time.

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WEEKLY REVIEW

We finished up Robin Hood this week, and will be starting The Red Keep next for Middle Ages history. We started Mr. Bell Invents the Telephone for U.S. History, along with a book called Scientists Who Changed the World, which is a compilation of about 20 different scientists and inventors.

We are continuing with our little book on the periodic table, but only doing one element a day, along with looking at some online videos about them. We are also looking at this periodic table which is linked to Wikipedia.

I don't know if I mentioned, but our country we are on right now is Scotland. Interestingly, both Alexander G. Bell and Andrew Carnegie (who we just finished reading about) were from Scotland. Likewise was Sir Walter Scott, whose books Big Girl has been enjoying lately. We didn't plan that, but it just worked out that way, as so often seems to happen. :-)

For our poetry, we are just going to continue reviewing our old poems daily, along with reading from an online compilation of poetry. If I come across a poem I want them to memorize in our daily reading, we will do it, instead of covering any more poets specifically.

As for our artist study, we are finishing up Rockwell, and I don't think I am going to cover any more of the moderns. None of us enjoy many of them anyway. We will take a short break and then go back to the beginning.

With composers, we will be starting Aaron Copland this week, and he will be the last modern composer we will cover. Then, we decided, we are going to go through the 3 Themes to Remember books we have, one at a time, until we are finished. Then we will go back to the beginning, and do one at a time again.

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