We had a roman soldier's meal over the weekend. The idea was to wrap up meat and veggies in foil and cook it over fire, Just Like The Roman Soldiers Did! J and I had a couple of conversations about whether or not Roman soldiers had access to tin foil and came up with some hypotheses about what they might have used instead, but decided to go with the flow. And look! No silverware! Roman Soldiers didn't have no stinkin' silverware! Everyone ate all of their food, which is an event in and of itself.


Last week we studied mountains and volcanoes for earth science, and so he had to do the volcano experiment, naturally. They all loved it of course (all three boys got lots of chances to errupt the volcano; we used a half gallon of vinegar and an entire box of baking soda, and they still wanted to keep doing it), and J and I talked about the difference between the chemical reaction of vinegar and baking soda versus the physics of a real volcano eruption. I think he got it:

WHAT WE DID

What We Used: We used baking soda, white vinegar, potting soil, water, a tray, a bottle, and red food coloring.

What We Did: First, we mixed the dirt and water. Then we mashed it into a kind of clay and put the bottle in the center, forming a mountain around it with the mud. Then we added vinegar to the bottle, and then put baking soda and red dye.

What Happened: The volcano erupted. The so-called lava was red. It spread to every part of the tray. Pretty soon it fizzled out so we added more vinegar or baking soda. Then it erupted again. We did it over and over again.

What We Learned: We learned that vinegar has acid in it and that it releases carbon dioxide when it has contact with baking soda. That’s called a chemical reaction. We also learned that lava comes out of a volcano because of pressure, not a chemical reaction. When lava is in the earth it is called magma.

We did some music study over the weekend and listened to an awful lot of Vivladi. Benjamen was more interested than Jonathan was, and he's been putting the CD back on the player every day this week.

Jonathan has committed The Wind and The Moon to memory, so now, for writing practice, he's copying out Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite by Isaac Watts. It's kind of an awful poem (we're only doing the first two stanzas, and I'm not fond of the moralizing even in just those two), but when we came across it in one of our books, J liked it well enough to ask to copy it out, so there we are. I'm finding that, the more we're learning together, the more I'm having to fight the urge to censor.

End Of Year/ Beginning of Year Feast


We had our Roman Feast this evening and I was quite pleased with how everything turned out. It was all easy to make and didn't take up the whole day like I thought it might. That's the cecina (a flatbread made from chick peas) at 12 o'clock, gravy at 1, turkey breast at 3, four bean salad at 6, and honeyed stuffed dates at 9 o'clock, all served with white wine (grape juice).





We still got all of our planned studies done for the day and J and I made some invading barbarian gear and and an emperor's scepter, which he's holding in the photo.

Summer, I Hardly Knew Ye

We are sloooowly wrapping up ancient history after spending lots of time on it over the summer, reading, making projects, and having fun with it, but going even more slowly than we did all last year. Oh well, we'll be done this week and then we get to start medieval history. Tonight we're having a simple Celtic feast of roasted game-bird (er, chicken), wine (er, grape juice), roasted potatoes, and bread (I made French bread because I'm not ardent enough in the whole historical accuracy arena).

Edited to add pictures from the feast:





Also, I don't think the Celts had stemware, but what're you gonna do? We did eat with our hands, though, and now the boys never want to use silverware again.

J's been reading Celtic fairy tales and histories and I've been typing up his narrations of the books he's read, filing them away in his history notebook.

This Friday we're having our end-of-ancient-history Roman feast with roasted turkey, wine (grape juice), cecina, bean salad, and stuffed, honeyed dates.

So, we finish up ancient history, then onto the medieval period. Can I just say that I cannot wait for medieval history? We are going to be having such a fun year.

We continued plant science over the summer, too, reading lots of books, doing lots of experiments, and growing lots, too. Each fella has a bean plant of their very own to water and tend to, and we grew petunias, lavender, hollyhocks, basil, tomatoes and spearamint. Everything's thriving (we tried pansies--from seed-- and those stinkers wouldn't grow for us!), and I'm thinking of lining one of the footpaths around the property with my little lavender plants. We also grew a sunflower house out in the yard and they're over Nicholas' head, now, but still not big enough to really play in. I just used the sunflowers a friend from Dan's work gave us, and I'm not entirely sure that they're the house-making variety. We shall see, though.

We've already started our science plans for the year, at J.'s insistence, and will be focusing on Earth Science until Christmas and then next January we'll start Astronomy. Woot! More fun. We're planning a trip down to the natural history museum to check out their rocks and stuff, er, geological specimens. We're also watching cool IMAX movies that I rented through Netflix on Yellowstone's geological features and the Serengeti, etc. I'm stocking the shelves with great library finds on whatever topic we're focusing on each week and J is plowing through those speedy-quick (J's also reading the Junie B. Jones series, which has affected my vocabulary adversely).

Here's a narration I took down from him on one of the science books he read:

The Earth’s Crust

The earth’s crust is the top layer of the earth. The continental crust is 25 miles thick. The oceanic crust is 4 miles thick. I bet I could dig through that. Beneath all the crust is a very hot layer called magma. Below the magma is an even hotter part called the core. The crust sort of floats on top of the magma and the continental plates and oceanic plates drift apart and collide. When oceanic plates drift apart, the ocean floor spreads and a rift forms. When two continental plates drift apart, a valley forms. Sometimes, oceanic or continental plates go under each other. That’s called subduction. Subduction can cause mountains or trenches.

If I had his retention, I would be able to rule the world, I tell you. Also, from here on out, I'll be bolding the stuff that cracks me up.

Here he is doing an experiment on water flow:



It quickly became a lesson on rainbows (see the rainbow?). Then it became a free-for-all, everybody-get-wet kinda thing.

In unrelated scientific news, we had a little Discovery Channel action on the deck last night, about two feet in front of the dining room door:



J came running to the bedroom where I was reserving library books online, saying excitedly, "An eagle?!? On our front deck?!?" It's actually an immature red-tailed hawk, we think. J was very excited and went off to draw pictures afterward. B was very angry at the hawk and kept yelling at it to let go of the squirrel while I was snapping photos. We've had the circle of life talk ad nauseum since then. N said the hawk has angry hands. I have to agree. He was such a big guy (or girl, I suppose; anyone know how to sex a hawk?)

J's been bugging me to help him learn cursive since, like, last fall, so I finally caved. He was teaching himself and coming up to me with these I-love-you notes that he had written in cursive, using the cursive he found in one of his spellers and the charts on his writing tablets. So I sat down with him and gave him an overview of connecting the letters and whatnot and we've been doing a letter every day, upper- and lower-case, and leaving it at that. I'm not sure what we'll do when we get to Zz, but I'm sure J'll let me know. He's probably got it all figured out.

He gets lots of writing practice (manuscript) in all of the other subjects, too. We do writing for history and science (narrations) and he writes out rules for spelling and grammar. Even some of our art lessons have simple sentences to copy, with the aim of understanding that writing, too, is an art. Every so often I'll suggest that he add a few pages to his journal, as well. Lately, that leads to long rapturous rambles (he's inherited my writing style, I think) about Pokemon or Bionicles.

I've also been sneaky with his manuscript writing, having him copy poems and stuff, because I know he'll remember them once he's copied them. So lately his noggin's been full of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Moon and The Wind.

In the spelling arena, we've been keeping a running list of words he misspells in everyday writings and we go over those a couple times a week. Splendedly. Magnifacent. Moulth. That kind of thing. He's also doing workbook lessons daily and seems to like doing them, so far.

For math, we went back to Saxon. As much as he didn't like the repetition, without it, he was drifting a bit. So we're doing modified Saxon lessons (read: I skip alot) and I'm hoping I can alter it enough to keep his interest and avoid the moaning and groaning that we enjoyed last year. I skip a fair amount, make sure not to skip the hands-on stuff, and we do parts of the worksheets orally so the lessons aren't dragging on forever. So far, we're doing well (knock wood).

He's started doing Latin daily, usually in the evening, and I mainly let him play with the three books we use, but have him write down four or five vocabulary words when he's done. Again, his retention just floors me. It's as though writing it down etches it into his brain somehow. The hardest thing for me, when I took Latin was going from English to Latin, but for J, it seems equally easy whichever way he's translating. Last night, after he'd written out his words, he decided to write out a birthday invitation he copied from Minimus, but changed the names and dates so that it was an invitation from him to me. He thought it was hilarious.

Goodneighbor M came over last night, too, to show us all of her photos from Oz. She's been in NZ and Australia for the last month and sent post cards, so we spent a little time every day looking at the Atlas, listening to Waltzing Matilda, etc., looking up lyrics, studying Aussie slang, the Maori, Aborigines...all things Oz. The photos she shared were amazing. J said that the Opera House looked like a giant lotus flower, which almost made me cry it was such a sweet, reflective statement.

So we're keeping busy. We start in the morning after breakfast and he runs off to play every half-hour or so. He's excellent about doing a bit of work, then tromping off to read something unrelated, then transitioning into imaginative play, then rough-housing with his brothers, then coming back to the table and asking me what we're doing next or looking at his schedule he drew up and telling me what he wants to do next.

Here he is after Dan had come home and dumped a load of library books on the couch. The leaf is from a catalpa tree in the yard:



In between "lessons", B will bring me a reading book or his Saxon math book that we've been doing since last year. N gets in on the lessons, too, of course, and when I read at night, he presses his nose into my books and points out Os and Ts and Hs and Es. He's also counting his M&Ms just as well as B does, these days.

To another fun year of learning...we're on our way.