Author Archives: Amy

Heart of a Shepherd by Rosanne Parry

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I first heard of Heart of a Shepherd by Rosanne Parry when I read Sherry’s review and knew it would be a story I’d enjoy.  I borrowed the audiobook from the library and finally, finally, finally got around to listening to it.  I listened in small segments of time over about a two-week period, but because it’s a quiet and simple story, the plot stayed with me despite my poor memory and the time lapse between listening episodes.  This juvenile novel is the story of an Oregon ranching family comprised of grandparents, their son, and his five sons, all living under one roof (when they’re all at home, that is).  Told from the point of view of the youngest son/grandson, Ignatius “Brother” Alderman, it is simply what happens to the family while the father is deployed in Iraq.  Except for Brother, all the Aldermen young men are either away at boarding high school or college or forging their own career paths in the U.S. Army.  Brother has big shoes to fill in helping his elderly grandparents keep the ranch going, and he is quite determined to meet the challenge.  Although it is a quiet, gentle story, it also contains a fair amount of suspense and excitement because of the father’s deployment and the happenings of ranch life.

Aside from a emotionally stirring plot, another thing I like about this book is its gentle and respectful treatment of religion.  Brother’s grandpa is a Quaker and his grandma is Catholic, and both of these faiths are treated with equal respect.  It seems that too often Christianity is given short shrift, or worse, totally denigrated,  in many contemporary stories.  Parry does neither in this story; in fact, this family’s legacy of faith is its bedrock, and it plays a major role in the whole story, right up to the end.  It’s also a coming-of-age story, with Brother right at that vulnerable, what-do-I-do-now age of twelve.  I love how his father and his grandfather speak to him in such encouraging, confidence-building ways, even when he doubts himself and his ability to get the job done.  They help him come into his God-given vocation by the end of the story, and this settling into his life’s purpose provides both a wonderful denouement and a testimony to the importance of a parent’s guidance and support.

This book is all the things I love in a story:  a quiet and gentle coming-of-age story completely infused with the strength of faith and family.  Only one thing makes it even better:  a beautiful setting.  Parry‘s description of the Oregon ranch and the surrounding mountains makes an already beautiful story that much lovelier.

Here are a few excerpts that I recorded because they encapsulate what I like so much about this story.  These are random quotations that I’m just going to share without context.  They’re lovely and good enough in their own right.

And then I got to thinking about the long line of soldiers that have marched away from this table, which is great if you’re the patriotic type, but it’s not so great if you’re the one waiting for your dad to come home.

What we need is a priest who grew up around here and wants to stay–who knows how people who live off the land pray.

Land shapes a man’s heart, too.  And his aspirations.  A man near the mountains learns to look up, and it calls his mind to God.

Sometimes choosing the right thing breaks your heart.

It’s like holding a handful of diamonds–Grandpa’s whole prayer life in books, that I can keep forever.

A week ago I would’ve been too nervous to pray out loud, but it is today, and I know the man I’m supposed to become.

 

I should probably say a word about the audiobook since that’s the way I experienced this story.  Although I much prefer to read a book than to listen to one, Kirby Heyborne’s narration made this story a pleasure to listen to.  His voice became Brother’s for me.

I give both the story and the audiobook a Highly Recommended.  (Yearling, 2010)

I’m entering this review in this month’s Award Winning Books database link-up because of the many, many awards it received.  The Award Winnings Book  Challenge is not limited to international awards, and Heart of a Shepherd won a 2010 Rodda Award from the Church and Synagogue Library Association and a 2010 Oregon Spirit Award from the Oregon Council of Teachers of English.  All of the accolades heaped upon this book are well deserved!

Kicking it up a notch & bringing things to a close

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This week has been something of a contradiction in terms. Due to the DLM’s current handicap, days are more tiring than usual since I have to carry him more than normal and he’s heavier than usual thanks to his cast. Despite my highest hopes of doing more hands-on, creative activities as we bring this official school year to a close, we are doing well to get the basics done. The other side of this coin is that the difficulty level of some of the things Lulu is doing has taken a rather dramatic jump the past few weeks, so I’m feeling both challenged and encouraged by the quality of the learning that’s happening in our homeschool.

Why must everything be such a dichotomy? ;-)

1.  After making peace with the fact that we probably won’t finish RS C before we take our short summer break (and learning that it really isn’t possible, anyway), things have evened out in the math department.  This week we played a bunch of math games.  Lulu also built her own multiplication table and completed a couple of review pages (assessments) with minimal missed problems or required help.  She has now completed through lesson 106 in RS C.  I am loving the RS approach to multiplication!

2.  Both girls have recitals–piano and dance–coming up in a couple of weeks.  We spend a chunk of time every morning at the piano together.

3.  Whether developmental or imposed upon him due to his current limited mobility, the DLM’s attention span seems to have made a leap since he has been more confined.  He loves to build with Wedgits and blocks.  He also makes a huge mess.  :-)

4.  Louise is still rolling along in RS B, and we’ve still yet to hit upon anything she doesn’t really already know.  I’m enjoying the leisurely pace, though.  She has completed through approximately lesson 25 (my lesson plan book isn’t in front of me, so I’m going on my very faulty memory here).  This week we played games several times (she enjoys Sum Rummy even though the real point of it is to give Lulu multiplication practice).  She also learned about quadrilaterals, rectangles, and squares and the difference between tens and hundreds, and she demonstrated entirely on her own that she knows many of the addition doubles sums.

5.  We attempted science again–shadows.  Unfortunately, the sun didn’t cooperate.  Steady Eddie is making this a Science Saturday today, and I’m (once again) hoping the sun cooperates.

6.  Lulu’s about ten lessons shy of finishing FLL 2, but she’s still a bit fuzzy on the definitions of many of the parts of speech.  While I’m not sure that I really expect her to be able to pick all of ‘em out of a sentence yet, I do want her to be able to spout off the definitions.  I hit upon the idea of having her make a parts of speech book this week.  This picture is of her hunting for an interjection (there was one!) in the comics one day.  I hope to share more about her parts of speech book later.  Besides this, both girls did a picture study from FLL one day this week.

7.  We headed out to my parents’ home on Friday for a bit o’ nature study.  The topic was ferns, and while it didn’t go exactly as I planned, we did get some pretty nature prints for our nature journals.  (And they got to visit with Papaw and pet A.B. and Bug, the horses.)  More on our nature study later.

8. This has absolutely nothing to do with the girls’ lessons this week, but the highlight of my week has been the book I’m reading:  City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell.  It is so, so good.  I was almost sobbing yesterday afternoon as I read one particular part of it.  This is almost always the mark of a good book to me.  Stay tuned for more about this next week.

Only tangentially related to this is the fact that my girls are going to be participating in a Chinese language and culture class beginning next week and going through the rest of the month.  (This is tangentially related to #8 because City of Tranquil Light is set in China, which I failed to say.)  It’s at our local university and will entail them being in a class with a Chinese professor two hours each week.  The challenge for me will be to get the DLM down for a nap early enough so that he can be up and ready to head out in time for the girls to get to their class on time.

The area in which I saw the biggest jump in difficulty this week was in writing.  Lulu completed week 29 in WWE 2 this week, and whew!  It was tough!  The excerpt was from The History of Mankind, and this informational material was much different than the stories the narrations have been taken from.  This, plus the length of the excerpt, made for some challenging narration and dictation exercises. She has also transitioned away from doing only two dictations to three each week.  I was really proud of Lulu’s narration on Thursday, though.  It has been a huge learning curve for me–to learn when to give help, when to encourage, when to be silent, etc.

Lulu completed step 13 in AAS 2 this week.  I’ve been toying with the idea of catching Louise up to Lulu in AAS this summer, which I think is doable only because Louise’s ability and interest have really taken off since Christmas.  This will give me one more thing next year that they can do together.  I’m thinking of my own sanity here.  :-)

The other thing we did well this week was memory work practice.  We’re all still memorizing 1 Corinthian 15:3-8 (or we might go on through verse 11).  Our hymn is still “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.”  I think we worked on these four days out of five!  Our poetry memorization has fallen by the wayside, but I’m okay with that for right now.

We didn’t do much history outside of reading related history books.  I also pulled out a model castle/book kit that Carrie sent me a long while ago for the girls to play with.  History is the area for which I always envision lots of add-on projects that we almost never get to.  I waffle so much in my philosophical resolve:  I want to be a die-hard classical/CM homeschooler, and I think I really am.  However, my mind wanders to all the neat projects that we could do and I get sidetracked.  What I’ve just about decided that for us, in our homeschool, is this:  that I really, really want to do a good job on the skills/basics–reading and writing and arithmetic, and then let the girs’ interests take them where they want to go.  Lulu is extremely interested in sewing, so I hope this summer we can start down that pathway.  I think that maybe this is what Charlotte Mason means by handicrafts–something with a “useful end-product” (to quote Simply Charlotte Mason).

As always, we did a whole bunch of reading.

I am really, really looking forward to the end of so many things right now:  the semester at the university, which means my part-time job will be ending for the summer (this is my last weekend to work!  hooray!); dance class, so we’ll have one more night each week FREE; the spring piano term, which means we’ll have a couple of weeks off from lessons; and formal school, at least for a six weeks (or so) break.  My plan now is to take off the month of June and then do a few days a week of formal lessons in July.  We’ll see how it all pans out.

Here are some horsey pictures, just for fun and because they’re pretty.

I hope you all have a nice and relaxing weekend!

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This Week in Books

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Observations:

  • As Louise becomes a more confident reader, our stack gets taller and taller.  This makes me happy.  Many of the books on this week’s stacks are one she read by herself.  The Minnie and Moo books by Denys Cazet are definitely her favorites.
  • Louise and I finished Shadow of the Wolf, the chapter book we’ve been working on together for a while now.  This was her first real chapter book (containing very few pictures).  I hope to blog more about it in the near future.  For our next shared reading, we picked up Wedding Flowers, one of Cynthia Rylant’s Cobble Street books.
  • I finally gave Lulu an abridged classic this week.  Since we are reading Knight’s Castle as one of our read-alouds, I thought it would be nice if at least one of us actually knows the story of Ivanhoe, so I brought the Great Illustrated Classic home from the library.  I have mixed feelings about this but am overall okay with it.  She devoured it in no time.  She went on and read All-of-a-Kind Family Uptown. (One of our libraries has four of the All-of-a-Kind Family books!  Hooray!)  Lulu is fairly reticent about what she reads unless I absolutely require a narration, but I always count it a good sign when she goes back and re-reads her favorite bits again and again, as she has with this series.  I also assigned If You Lived in the Days of the Knights, which she also finished one day this week.
  • In addition to Knight’s Castle, I’m still reading aloud Little Pilgrim’s Progress.  The chapters are very short, so I usually just read a few and then move on. 
  • See that book on the tip-top of the stack?  That’s my read this week:  City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell.  Boy, oh, boy is it good.  I can’t wait to tell you all about it. 
  • I’m also still listening to Heart of a Shepherd, but my times of solitude are few and far between.  I really want to finish it this weekend, though.

Have you had a bookish week?

 

Read Aloud Thursday–picture books about the Medieval period

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Today I’m sharing a couple of picture books we’ve enjoyed about the Medieval period.  Sometimes I think our Medieval period studies are going to last as long as the Medieval period did, but when you have such fun book as these to enjoy and “fluff up” your studies, you don’t mind a bit.  What’s more fun than castles and knights?  Not much, I think.

At the risk of writing about a book that everybody already knows about, I’m going to say a bit about Aliki‘s A Medieval Feast.  Aliki is known for her straightforward informational books for young children, and while this book is certainly straightforward, it is good for ages six to one hundred six!  There is a very modest plot involving a lord who learns he’s going to host the king and his entourage as they make a journey.  All of the work involved in preparing for the king’s visit is then described, from the cleaning of the manor house to the trapping of rabbits and birds to the cooking of elaborate dishes.  The story ends with the end of the feast, with the guests eating until dark and anticipating even more food the next day.  The story is straightforward but the illustrations are very colorful and detailed, with captions that provide even more detail.  This is a book to sit and pore over.  Highly Recommended.  (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1983)

Come to the Castle by Linda Ashman is somewhat similar to A Medieval Feast as far as the storyline goes, but it is far more elaborate.  It is also quite humorous in a tongue-in-cheek way, which isn’t really something that my girls are quite old enough to pick up on.  Written entirely in verse form, Come to the Castle tells the story of a bored lord who orders a tournament to relieve his boredom.  What follows is the rest of the story, the planning and carrying out of the tournament, from the perspective of everyone who does the work.  My girls were most interested in the gong farmer:

No, I’m not aristocratic

(Frankly, I’m too aromatic).

Still, it takes great fearlessness

To toil in this vile mess,

Performing work that all eschew,

That even knights can’t bear to do.

My nose more valiant than the sword–
I am the noble Privy Lord. 

(I never knew my “sweet little homeschooled girls” would have such an affinity for bathroom humor.  ;-)   )  S.D. Schindler‘s illustrations in this book are done in the style of an illuminated manuscript, with ornate lettering and detailed borders.  This, too, is a book to study and pore over.  I think this one might be better suited to children just a bit older than mine (maybe upper elementary through middle/high school), but I definitely give this one a Highly Recommended for an interesting and entertaining look at Medieval life.  (Roaring Brook, 2009)

 

 Spending all this time in cold, stony environs has really captured the girls’ imaginations, especially Louise’s.  She has been drawing castles in her free time this week.  Do you see the garderobe in this one?  Every one of her castles has one.  :-)

 Do you have a favorite picture book about the Medieval period?  Do share!



 

Zondervan Bloom Bibles giveaway

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A publicist at Zondervan contacted me several months ago about some gorgeous new bindings for their compact NIV Bibles, with the offer of a giveaway on my blog should I choose to review them.  She sent along a couple of Bibles for me to keep, too–a small, leather purple Bible with a lovely embossed cover and a zippered, wallet-style Bible with a nylon cover.  Although I really liked both Bibles, I felt a little greedy keeping them because what we do not lack for at the House of Hope is a copy of God’s Word.  After thinking and praying a bit about whom to pass these Bibles to, I decided to donate them to the youth ministry at our church.  I have enjoyed my New Mom’s Prayer Bible which I was given to review a few years ago immensely; it’s the Bible I usually take with me to church.

The Bloom Bibles are lovely.  (Had I been sent these Bibles, I would’ve been sorely tempted to keep one!  I did receive two coversets containing blank pages, so I have felt the Duo-Tone bindings.  I think I might use them for journals!)  I love the appliqued look.  They just make me happy.

Would you like to win one of these lovelies?  Leave me a comment and I’ll randomly pick two winners one week from today.  The contest will end May 9, 2012, at 8 p.m. CST. 

Exciting happenings at Hope Is the Word this month

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No, I’m not pregnant.  ;-)

A couple of exciting things are happening around these parts this month, though, and I wanted to give all my regular readers early notice so you all can join in the fun.

Reading to Know - Book ClubFirst, I am this month’s hostess of the Reading to Know Book Club, which just means that I chose this month’s title and Carrie’s likely to mention my blog once or twice as she encourages folks to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer this month and share their thoughts about it by linking up at Reading to Know at the end of May.  I’ll share my thoughts here before then.  (It’s my first time to read it, and I am prepared to be amazed and amused.)  I hope you’ll join us!

The other exciting happening is that I am hosting this month’s Carnival of Children’s Literature here at the end of the month. This is a great blog carnival that unfortunately I usually fail to submit to because I am just so forgetful.  I’m turning over a new leaf with this month’s carnival since I am the hostess, and I do hope that you will join me.  You can read more about the carnival here and about how to submit your entry here.  Visit April’s carnival at A Curious Thing to sample some of the yummy carnival fare.

Have a marvelous May, everyone!

 

The Fabulous Flying Machines of Alberto Santos-Dumont by Victoria Griffith

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I simply love reading picture nonfiction books that are more storybookish than just-the-facts-ma’am in nature.  (I’m sure there’s a proper term for this, but I’m drawing a blank.)  The Fabulous Flying Machines of Alberto Santos-Dumont by Victoria Griffith is just one such book, and it absolutely excels at capturing the imaginations of its readers from the first page:

Alberto Santos-Dumont loved floating above Paris in his own personal flying machine.  It had helped make him one of the most famous men in the city, if not the world!  Everyone, he thought, should have this much fun running a simple errand!

It turns out that Alberto Santos-Dumont’s interest evolved from dirigibles to a conveyance that can travel against the wind, and so he became the first man to publicly fly a plane in 1906.  (According to the detailed Author Note to this story, the Wright brothers’ 1903 Kitty Hawk venture was not widely-known in Europe, and who did exactly what first is up for debate.)  This book chronicles both Alberto’s inspiration for improving upon his dirigible and the spirit of competition between these fathers of aviation.  Louis Cartier, the famous watchmaker, makes an appearance in this story as a friend of Alberto’s and the inventor who helped him solve the problem of a hands-free method for checking the time by inventing the wristwatch. (In fact, the Cartier Santos wristwatch is named after the flamboyant aviator.)  Louis Blériot appears as a rival inventor determined to best Alberto. Alberto, ever the gentleman and more interested in the science of his craft than the business of it, allows Blériot to take off first in the test run.  Of course, Blériot’s plane falls apart after several failed attempts at lift-off.  Alberto then makes the first flight in a plane that takes off of its own power.  This story, paired with the colorful and evocative illustrations by Eva Montanari, is suspenseful and exciting.  My girls and I really enjoyed it.  (In fact, they’re hounding me for it even as I write this review!) Highly Recommended.  (Abrams, 2011)


Naturally, after reading The Fabulous Flying Machines of Alberto Santos-Dumont,  we had to go find our copy of The Glorious Flight by the Provensens and read all about Papa Blériot’s inventions.  (This is an old favorite.)  We were especially tickled to recollect the part at the beginning of the story where Papa Blériot crashes the family car into a farm wagon because he is so distracted by a dirigible flying above the Parisian sky.  Could it have been Alberto Santos-Dumont?  Another tie-in is Balloons over Broadway by Melissa Sweet, the wonderful picture book which details Tony Sarg’s balloon-engineering that made the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade what it is today.  (I really, really love this book, so go ahead and click the link.  You won’t regret it!)  If you’re of the unit study persuasion, these books just beg to be read together.  If, like me, you just like to chase rabbit trails sometimes, I’ve done a bit of the work for you.

I just love picture books, don’t you?

Many, many thanks to the author, Victoria Griffith, for emailing me to offer this book for review.  She sent the recently-released audiobook along with the picture book, and I know they’re both going to be enjoyed around here for years to come.  Other than a copy of the book itself, I received no compensation for this honest review.

Related links:

This week’s Nonfiction Monday round-up is at Gathering Books.

Jeeves and the Tie That Binds by P.G. Wodehouse

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I hardly feel qualified to write anything about the brilliant wit of P.G. Wodehouse since I’ve only just made his acquaintance.  So far I’ve read his witty introduction to a collection of his short stories, one of his short stories, and now the novel Jeeves and the Tie That Binds.  I’m afraid that my thoughts here will be a bit more Wooster-ish than Jeeves-ish; like Bertie, I sometimes grapple for just the word I mean to use, and unlike Jeeves, I do not have perfect recall of every literary reference I hope to make.  I had something of a difficult time getting through this book, which is no fault of the book’s at all, but the fault of my own short attention span and lack of long, uninterrupted periods of time for reading.  I had a hard time keeping all the characters straight.  I think that every character in this novel appears in an earlier Jeeves and Wooster story, so obviously reading the books more-or-less in order might help with this.  (Of course, given my poor memory, it might not help me much at all.)  Too, these characters have names apparently chosen for their laugh-inducing value but because many of them are unusual and quirky, I had a hard time keeping them straight. Here’s a list of most of the characters, both major and minor:

  • Florence Craye
  • Magnolia Glendennon
  • Gussie Fink-Nottle
  • Madeline Bassett
  • Ginger Winship (a man)
  • Spode, a.k.a. Lord Sidcup
  • Bingley
  • L.P. Runkle
  • Tuppy Glossop

And some of the places in the story:

  • Totleigh Towers
  • the Junior Ganymede
  • Market Snodsbury

See what I mean?  How could one possibly write a serious story about these people and places?  Wodehouse is quite the witty word engineer.

The plot of this story revolves around Ginger Winship’s run for the House of Commons.  Ginger is one of Bertie’s old college chums, so Bertie agrees to travel to Market Snodsbury to canvass the town’s inhabitants in hopes of helping Ginger win the election.  While in Market Snodsbury, Bertie and Jeeves stay at the home of Bertie’s Aunt Dahlia, which is quite the happening place.  What ensues is a comedy of errors involving (but certainly, certainly not limited to!) a wealthy businesss man who stole a patent from one of his employees, from whom Aunt Dahlia is determined to wring some restitutionary payment since the son of the now-deceased employee happens to be the fiancée of her daughter.  (Clear as mud?)  Of course, there’s also the matter of a certain notebook, property of the Junior Ganymede, which contains all the fits and foibles of London’s elite, as observed and recorded by their butlers.  This notebook has been “pinched,” and its existence threatens to wreak havoc on Ginger’s campaign and his love-life, not to mention potentially the lives of many other a fine gentleman.  And then there’s the fact that Ginger’s fiancée (and the moving force behind his run for Parliament) is none other than Florence Craye, former intended of Bertie.  My head fairly spun with all the comings and goings of the characters and all of the switching and swapping of love interests.  It is pure, absurd fun.

A few things I noticed that are apparently quite common in Wodehouse‘s Jeeves and Wooster stories:

  • a tongue-in-cheek approach to romance and marriage, or at least romance and marriage for Bertie.  His near miss with Florence Craye is legendary, and by the end of the story yet another girl has declared her intentions toward him.  When that falls through, he says that he “would send camels bearing apes, ivory and peacocks” to the address of the person who “saved [him] from a fate worse than death,” marriage to one Madeline Bassett.
  • lots of stealing or “pinching” of items.  Much of the humor in the stories depends on something being swiped and then Bertie (and therefore, Jeeves) having to get the stolen items back into the room of its owner before its absence is noticed.
  • some physical humor.  Bertie sometimes finds himself hiding uncomfortably in the bushes to eavesdrop on a conversation, etc.
  • Just like any good Butler, Jeeves really doesn’t enter into the story very much, but he always saves the day.  I love this description of his reaction to the news of Ginger’s engagement to Florence Craye:

Well, I hadn’t expected him to roll his eyes and leap about, because he never does no matter how sensational the news item, but I could see by the way one of his eyebrows twitched and rose perhaps an eighth of an inch that I had interested him.  And there was what is called a wealth of meaning in that “Indeed, sir?”  (35)

However, the real star of the show in my opinion are the words, even more than the story itself.  This is Bertie on Florence Craye and Ginger’s engagement to her:

Looks, however, aren’t everything.  Against this pin-upness of hers you had to put the bossiness which would lead her to expect the bloke she married to behave like a Hollywood yes-man.  From childhood up she had been. . .I can’t think of the word. . .beings with an i. . . no, it’s gone. . .but I can give you the idea.  When at my private school I once won a prize for Scripture Knowledge which naturally involved a lot of researching into Holy Writ, and in the course of my researches I came upon the story of the military chap who used to say “Come” and they cometh and “Go” and they goeth.  I have always that that that was Florence in a nutshell.  She would have given short shrift, as the expression is, to anyone who had gone when she said “Come” or the other way around.  Imperious, that’s the word I was groping for.  She was as imperious as a traffic cop.  Little wonder that the heart was heavy.  I felt that Ginger, mistaking it for a peach, had plucked a lemon in the garden of love.  (32)

And some funny one-liners:

. . . against a woman with a brain like that, Ginger hadn’t the meager chance of a toupee in a high wind.  (107)

 

I suppose if he had been slenderer one might have described him as a figure of doom, but even though so badly in need of a reducing diet, he was near enough to being one to make my interior organs do a quick shuffle-off-to-Buffalo as if some muscular hand had stirred them up with an egg whisk.  (198)

 

Many years ago in our pre-parenthood days, Steady Eddie and I attended a fantastic performance of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.  That and the movie Arsenic and Old Lace are what came to mind while I was reading Jeeves and the Tie That Binds.  Although I was often a little fuzzy on who now is engaged to whom and in whose possession the pinched porringer (or the pinched notebook) currently resides, I thoroughly enjoyed this story.

I am so happy to add my review to Carrie’s list of links for April’s Reading to Know Book Club.   This is also the first book I can mark off my list for The Classics Club.
Reading to Know - Book Club

An Ecclesiastes 3:2, 7 kind of week

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To say that this has been unusual and difficult week is something of an understatement, but all things considered, we had a really good school week. Monday was a normal day, except for the fact that Louise was a little under the weather. She went to bed on Sunday night with an elevated temperature, so on Monday she took it easy most of the day. Things got interesting on Monday night when the DLM fell and fractured his tibia–the large bone in the lower leg. He was out with Steady Eddie doing a bit of shopping (their usual routine while the girls take turns having dance class) when he fell at a store and twisted his leg. We didn’t know it was fractured until the next morning when the pediatrician’s office opened back up. We spent a good part of the day on Tuesday, then, in doctor’s offices, getting x-rays and having his little leg put into a cast. Through all this, we managed to “do school” thanks to the fact that Steady Eddie had taken off work due to the DLM’s injury.

On Wednesday, Steady Eddie had already planned to go into work a bit late to help me get our day going and get through our regular lessons. This was wonderful–he worked with one girl on math while I did language, writing, reading, etc., and then we’d switch. We got through all the must-dos before lunch! This day was one of those that was a bit off-kilter, though, because we got word mid-morning that the condition of our pastor’s precious wife, who had been battling ovarian cancer for 2 1/2 years, was declining. Steady Eddie left for work, and not too long after he had been there, he called to tell me that Rebecca had passed away.

So. School. Yeah. We did it. It was good, even. But honestly? It didn’t seem all that important. Interesting, but not important. Necessary, but not important.

Here’s the shakedown, keyed to the collage above.

1, 3, 7, & 8.  Math.  Lulu’s RightStart lessons this week involved taking a few assessments (which she was super excited about–these homschooled kids and their lack of test anxiety and boredom ;-) ), working a bit more on subtraction, and then switching gears and diving head-first into multiplication.  I love the way RightStart approaches multiplication!  Lulu had to color the multiples (i.e. color all the squares with a multiple of 2 on them, etc.) on small 100s charts (one for each number), and then she and Steady Eddie held them up to the light and compared the 2s to the 4s, for example.  Neat-o!  We also spent some time on a new-to-us game, Sum Rummy.  I didn’t think it was worth the trouble at first, but then when we got to the end and Lulu had to discover how adding the sums relates to multiplication and then do it, I was sold.  :-) One more fun thing I had Lulu do was take the centimenter cubes and line them up beside the meter stick to confirm how many centimeters are in a meter. Lulu completed lessons 99-101 in RS C this week.

Louise’s lessons this week involved writing equations using the abacus and really working on grasping the concept of tens.

Bonus this week for math:  having dad home to help.

2.  Ever seen a twenty-two month old in a cast?  It’s cute and pitiful, all at the same time.  Being more confined to one place than normal has increased the DLM’s attention-span and he has really played with this toys.

4.  History has been so interesting this week!  SotW volume 2 chapter 16 has us squarely in the Middle Ages, just after the Normal Conquest of England.  We’ve talked about Medieval culture and lifestyles.  Among other things, we did the Play-Doh activity suggested in the SotW Activity Guide to illustrate how English we speak came to be.  I could easily spend weeks on the Middle Ages, just doing fun stuff like this.  In addition to this fun activity, Lulu did a couple of written narrations and made a mini-book about how to become a knight.

5.  I’ve had extra help this week, too.  Steady Eddie had an out-of-town meeting on Thursday, so my parents took pity on me and my poor, handicapped toddler and came to help us.  :-)   My dad came by mid-morning and played with the DLM while the girls and I did lessons. Then, that afternoon, my mom came over and got the DLM down for a nap (no small feat, since sleeping in a cast is not high on his list of favorites) while the girls and I finished up lessons.  We had gotten a very late start that morning, so all this help was very welcomed.

6.  I decided to do something I’ve never done before this week–use the computer to help give me a little bit of “breathing space” to do lessons with Louise.  Well, it didn’t exactly work out this way this first time, but I hope it will in the future.  I made Lulu a spelling list in Spelling City from her AAS words, and she took a test on the computer.  Of course, this was only after we had gone through the whole step and all its instruction, and even practiced spelling the words using the tiles and on paper.  I’m a bit ambivalent about doing this because a.) I want to postpone computer-dependence for my kids as long as possible and b.) since Lulu can’t type properly yet, I don’t want to reinforce bad habits.  Thoughts on this, anyone?  Lulu completed AAS level 2 steps 11 and 12 this week.

9.  Bonus science lesson with dad:  looking at brother’s x-ray and talking about and identifying bones.

Here’s what else we accomplished:

  • We actually did our memory work two or three times this week.  Louise is also working hard on Awana verses.
  • The girls did four days’ worth of handwriting practice.
  • Lulu completed lessons 87-90, mostly reviewing the parts of speech, in FLL 2.
  •  Writing is getting more challenging; WWE 2 week 28 had Lulu dictating two sentences at a time, in addition to narrating from a lengthy passage.
  • Lulu’s assigned reading this week was All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor.  She did a book report on it (like this, only not as thorough this time).  She’s also working on reading If You Lived in the Days of the Knights, which we’ll continue next week.
  • Louise completed lessons 147-150 in OPGtTR and read several chapters from her chapter book (Shadow of the Wolf) with me.  On Thursday she sat and read three I Can Read books aloud with Mamaw.  She has turned into a reading machine.
  • Actually, we’re all pretty fond of reading.

 

On Thursday night the girls spent the night with Nana, who was on spring break this week.  On Friday I took the DLM to the last baby storytime at the library for this school year, and then we had lunch with Steady Eddie at my favorite “girl food” restaurant (which Steady Eddie actually likes but mainly indulges me in).  I worked a bit on schoolish stuff and printing pictures for my Project Life album, and then it was time to get ready to go to church for the funeral celebration service for Rebecca.  What a week.

Rebecca was forty-three years old, the high school sweet-heart and only love of her husband of twenty years, a mother to two girls, a pastor’s wife, a daughter, a sister, a sister-in-law, a friend, and a genuinely joyful person.  Her service last night was beautiful.  We laughed, we cried, and we worshiped Jesus.  Her husband, our pastor, spoke at the end about God’s grace and about how blessed he felt to be her husband.  He also lead the congregation (a packed house) in worship in song (he’s an accomplished musician and songwriter), and he played a song he wrote during her sickness.  Wow.  What a service, and what a reunion it will be for all of us when we get Home.

Today while I’m at work, Steady Eddie will be finishing up some schoolish stuff with the girls–science (they’re talking about shadows and being human sundials, if the sunshine cooperates), math, and a bit of history.

You know, this week has been hard (and jumbled, as this very disorganized post is evidence of), but attending that service last night in honor of Rebecca, believe it or not, ended it on a high note.  I’ve never felt God’s faithfulness more than I did last night.  To see our pastor lead us all in worship and thanksgiving to God, grieving for his wife and yet still buoyed up by the hope of heaven, was wonderful.

And so I’m ending this wrap-up with thanksgiving, too.  So many, many blessings this week:

  • That if the DLM had to break his leg, it happened this week. If it had happened last week, Steady Eddie would’ve been out of town and we wouldn’t have had as much help because Nana would’ve been working.  If it had happened much later, it would’ve been hot (and therefore more uncomfortable in the cast) and our summer plans of lots of outdoor fun would’ve been hindered.
  • That Rebecca’s life and her family have touched our life.  Her faith and trust and joy were such a testimony of God’s goodness.  Her legacy will live on.
  • That we only have three more weeks before we take our summer break from our normal school routine.  I’m ready for some down time!
  • That I only work one more weekend before being off for the summer!
  • That the DLM only has to wear his cast for 3 weeks.
  • That the DLM doesn’t seem to be in any pain.

If you’ve read this far, thank you.  I think this is the most nitty-gritty week we’ve had, and yet, it has been a good week.  We’ve learned a lot this week.

**Bonus points for anyone who can explain the reference in the title!  :-)

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