Thursday

Reading practice for Helier

Nature study:
The Old Orchard Bully, from the Burgess Bird book for Children.

Here's an excerpt from A Summer by the Sea, which we also read today:

(the children are looking at sand through a magnifying glass)

"I've seen sand lots of times," said Stephen.

Tom whistled softly as he peered through the glass. Then he passed it over to Stephen.

"You may think you have seen sand," he said, "but just look through this glass. You'll see something you never saw before."

Stephen took the glass doubtfully, but one glance was enough to arouse his interest.

"Colors!" he cried. "Colors in the sand! Why it looks like tiny bits of glass and stones of every color!"

. . .

"And all this from a spoonful of common seashore sand," said Mary. She took a long breath and then added shyly, "I believe everything is beautiful if you know how to look at it."

That, with walking to the Farmers' Market and buying eggs (putting some of a dozen eggs on to boil, and leaving the carton open so that people can count empty spaces and eggs left over, makes a good subtraction lesson, as Crispina and I discovered), comprised school for Helier and Crispina. Big kids are working independently; I'm about to go up and work with Amicus on division with remainders.

Looks as though Epiphany will be taking Latin at the college; she felt a little "young," as she said last night ("I sat up really straight and thought, 'Olderness! Olderness! Olderness!'"), but she's ahead of where the college students are, thanks to good preparation last year via Henle and Fr. Victor. Aelred's going to speak to the college registrar today to figure out how best to classify her. I think she ought not to be just an auditor -- if she's going to go to the class, I think she ought to do the work and receive a grade. So she'll probably end up as an "unmatriculated student," or something like that, which classification will hopefully make it easy for her to register for more classes in future.

Off to the Latin Mass now, and hopefully to find out about Latin for Amicus with Fr. B & the other homeschoolers.