Monday, April 3, 2017

Weekly Reflections - Week Twenty-Nine....


At Home

Sorry I've been absent. I had all three sick kiddos last week. I'm thinking influenza, but, of course, that's self-diagnosed. You know, fever, aches, chills, cough, etc. It was the pits! Then the Farmer started in...man sickness, that's all I'm saying about that one ;-)

Anyway, I'm thankful I recently began studying homeopathy through another local homeschool mom. It was very helpful in keeping the afflicted comfortable. I'm not a doctor, but some things that worked for us were Aconite and Belladonna for fever. Bryonia and Spongia for coughs. Hepar Sulph for sore throat and Sanguinaria for sinusitis issues.

Everyone was up and kind of running by Friday just in time for the annual homeschool curriculum fair I coordinated. I was a little nervous at one point when everyone was down, but thankfully, it all came together. We had 38 sellers with 42 tables and it was a gorgeous day! Part of the sale is pictured above.

Unfortunately, we did have to cancel our final Middle School Book Club meeting last week due to the illness. We read Julius Caesar by Shakespeare, but didn't get to have discussion. We are still up in air as to rescheduling, but it was the first Shakespeare exposure for some so I am excited to hear what the kids thought.

We also didn't complete the full week of school with illness and book sale prep happening. Because we have other out of the home academic events scheduled three days this week, I've decided to carry over last week's unfinished work. You might say we're taking two weeks to finish one week's book work. I don't normally roll this way, but given the fact that everyone is still in recovery mode, I feel the need to ease back in slowly. One of the beauties of homeschooling is being able to flex the plan.

Around the Web

I didn't spend much time online last week either, but did manage to read a couple of older posts at Memoria Press. One was written by Martin Cothran in response to comments made by Rush Limbaugh on classical education. The other was written by Andrew Kern on Teaching Classical Literature Classically. I appreciate what both of these men have to say about classical education and glean from their teaching.

Speaking of book clubs, I did listen to Creating a Book Club for Kids by Mary Wilson. In finishing up our second year of facilitating a homeschool book club, I've learned a great deal. Our club was co-ed, though age was limited and we met monthly. Last year, we studied 7 books. This year we studied 5. In our particular case, less was more.

Charlotte Mason Book Study

Since finishing Consider This, our CM Book Study group has decided to proceed our study of Charlotte Mason by reading through Vol. 1, Home Education. We will continue to meet monthly, discussing small sections at a time. After studying Vol. 6, A Philosophy of Education with Brandy's Start Here guide, I feel like I have a much better understanding of the big picture and now look forward to taking a closer look at the details.

I do plan to blog through our study so if you'd like to read and follow along, that would be great! We will begin by reading p. 1-41, Some Preliminary Considerations, for our first meeting. Since we don't have a guide to give assigned sections of reading, after our first meeting, we will gauge whether it was too much or too little. Feel free to join in and use the comment section of the blog for discussion.

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