Year 1: Week 27

This week, we...

• Read poetry from Nature in Verse
• Drew a horse. Since Gemma has drawn all of the other figures in 1-2-3 Draw Princesses, I bought two new drawing books for her. The first is Draw 1-2-3 Pets and Farm Animals. The reason I chose this book is because 1)I wanted some resources that will help her (and me) with nature journaling, and 2)I looked through Draw 1-2-3 People (which is great, and I plan to use it later) and it covers proportion, which is a little bit more of an advanced concept, so I thought it would be better later, maybe 2nd grade. The second is How to Draw Flowers which really simplifies how to draw at least a couple of dozen flowers. It has how to draw roses, asters, tulips, orchids - you name it. The thing that sold me on this book is that it helps a person who sees a flower and is overwhelmed with where to start see the parts of a flower.
  
• Read about Bartimaeus (Mark 10)
• Started A Comedy of Errors in Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare
• Read On the Shores of the Great Sea ("A Great Conflict" and "The Roman Fleet"). Gemma's narration about "A Great Conflict" was very short and centered on how elephants are afraid of fire, but her narration about "The Roman Fleet" was one of the best narrations she's given. After reading On the Shores of the Great Sea, I was certain I wanted to use it as our history spine, but I admit, I did doubt my choice our first term. Gemma did not yet understand that, yes, she did need to narrate every reading. Her narrations were often repetitions of the last sentence, followed by me leaning forward and, in a very un-Charlotte Mason way, saying, "You've got to be kidding me. That's seriously all you remember?" (I've gotten a little bit better, by the way.) Her narration of "The Roman Fleet" was awesome. Very complete, and she was even enthusiastic. It was a fascinating chapter. Did you know that Roman ships were equipped with boarding bridges? A Roman ship would get close to an enemy ship and drop its bridge, which had a curved spike like a beak, onto the enemy's ship. Then the Roman crew would run across the bridge onto the enemy's ship and engage in hand to hand combat. 
• Added Gutenberg's Printing Press to Gemma's timeline book
• Went to CC
  
  
• Read "The Black Bull of Norroway" from The Blue Fairy Book. Um, what was I thinking? I was thinking: Hey, we haven't read this story yet; why not? There's a reason this fairytale isn't scheduled by Ambleside Online. It's written in a Scottish dialect, so it has words like bannocks and collops and bluidy sarks. Her mither did sae; and the dochter gaed awa’ to an auld witch washerwife and telled her purpose. Gemma and I enjoyed the fairytale, though my accent was waaay off, and I had to stop and look up words every now and again. (There are audio versions of this story read by people who don't stumble over every other word, and who actually know the meaning of the words they're reading.)
• Went to to jiujitsu
• Read recitation passages
• Read "The Ass and the Lion Hunting"
• Went to tap and ballet
  
  
• Practiced piano
• Started building a paper basilica (um, because I have three or four Leonardo da Vinci kits that I bought on clearance for $2.99 more than a decade ago, and Gemma found them...and because she needed a handicraft this week)
  
• Listened to Mozart's Symphony 40, as well as Papageno's song from The Magic Flute; went to the L.A. Opera's Saturday Morning at the Opera; practiced piano, including "The Quiet Song"; sang along to French and Spanish songs, and hymn ("Soul Adorn Thyself With Gladness")
• Nature Study: Does it count that I thought about Nature Study? A lot? Or that on a walk, Gemma said a tree was beautiful and asked what it was. (It was an Illawarra flame tree.) I've got to come up with a way to "keep" that works for me. I know it's not what's popular in the Charlotte Mason world, but I've been thinking about what "digital keeping" might look like.
• Spoke some Spanish and French. In Spanish, Gemma worked on numbers. In French, Gemma worked on greetings, goodbyes, and introductions, and watched Bonjour, Les Amis.
• Read a chapter in Elementary Geography, and "The Monkey Bridge" in The World by the Fireside
• I almost forgot math! 😜 Gemma completed a chapter in Life of Fred: Mineshaft, and several pages from an out-of-print book of multiplication riddles. These riddles make me nostalgic. They're B.C.C. (Before Common Core).
• Did some sleuthing