Year 1: Week 21

While my public school students were having their last-day-of-school-before-Winter-Break party, my homeschooled daughter was in jail...

Gemma and Daddy took a field trip to the Los Angeles Police Museum.

This "week" (11 days), we read so many things: poetry from Nature in Verse, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, The Baptism of Jesus (Matthew 3:13-17, recitation passages, Aesop's The Gardener and his Dog, Plant Life's chapter about vines, The Burgess Seashore Book's chapter about jellyfish, 3 more pages of Lamb's "As You Like It," The World by the Fireside's chapter on cotton, "Poles & Axis" from Mason's Elementary Geography, a chapter about Romulus & Remus (and identified Greece, Italy, Sicily, Mediterranean Sea in our atlas), and "How Horatius Kept the Bridge."

Gemma had her in-class dance recitals.

Unbeknownst to me, Gemma decided to do her cursive with red colored pencil...

Christmas pageant songs (including A Maid Engaged to Joseph and O Come All Ye Faithful) were practiced, as well as this term's hymn and foreign language songs.

In math, Gemma did assorted pages of Mathematical Reasoning E and a chapter of Life of Fred: Liver.

On piano, Gemma practiced Toymaker's Dance.

We revisited Van Gogh's First Steps, After Millet. 

She drew these pictures:

So, I'm reading her Burgess Seashore Book about jellyfish, and the fox compliments the seagull, telling the seagull that he would know what the weird jelly on the beach is because he knows everything. I say that the fox is being humble and the seagull is being humble. Gemma says, "But what if someone is only pretending to be humble?" And I say, "That's false humility." And she says, "That's like Uriah in David Copperfield. Look, I'll show you." She pulls out her Usborne Illustrated Dickens, and shows me. Uriah Heep is a great example of a character who demonstrates false humility.

*

Her independent reading this week included Betsy-Tacy, Henry Huggins, The Courage of Sarah Noble, 3 Gail Carson Levine books, etc.

*

We finished one of our read alouds - The Year of Miss Agnes. Gemma asked if there was another Miss Agnes book. There is, so I'm sure we'll be reading that one in the not-so-distant future.

*

Two of the funniest things she said this week:

1)"I don't like it when I'm being bidden to do something."

2)(Of Romulus and Remus) "That was so mean of him to kill his brother. He should have just said, 'Hey! Get your own hill!'"

*

Masterly Inactivity: Gemma spent TWO HOURS cutting and duct taping a cardboard box into a carriage for some dollhouse dolls.

*

We went to see A Christmas Carol at the community college. It was a very strange production, but I liked some of the strangeness. Modern dancers as spirits and clock gears danced to 19th century hymns.

Our giant amaryllis is opening up!😊