Two more weeks until a break – can I make it? 😉
Scholé of Intent: We finished up two Morning Time books this week. I actually read from Opal Wheeler’s Edward MacDowell bio during lunch the past few Mondays because it’s been hard to fit it into our Morning Time along with the Young People’s Concerts. Frankly, I was not a huge fan of the book, and I don’t think we’ll be reading another of her composer biographies (although I know others love them). I was especially disappointed by the accompanying CD I bought – the audio files were just poorly synthesized versions, many only part of the piece. I ended up searching Amazon Prime for the music mentioned in the book, and could only find some of the pieces there. 🙁 I think in future we’ll stick with the Venezia bios or other good picture books I’ve come across (such as Mozart the Wonder Child by Diane Stanley).
On a more positive note, yesterday we finished Anne White’s Plutarch Primer: Publicola. She really helps make Plutarch more approachable with her notes and vocabulary explanations, as well as including some good discussion questions. We’ll continue on with Marcus Cato the Censor, and will probably only get through two Plutarch lives this year, instead of the ideal three – but I’m okay with that. 🙂
Scholé of Method: While I was reading and listening through this term’s Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet, there were several scenes I felt it would probably be best to skip over (especially for D and E). I also wasn’t comfortable showing them either of the movie versions I’ve watched, but Shakespeare is better seen than just read. So as a compromise, I bought Brick Shakespeare: The Tragedies – Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Julius Caesar. The scenes I was most uncomfortable with have been left out, but the story is still understandable, and Shakespeare’s original language is used. My kids enjoy the creativity of the Lego scenes (we did a couple of plays from the comedy book), and the “gruesome” ones aren’t too disturbing because it’s Lego! One caution: some of the scene introductions and summaries of the missing scenes aren’t G-rated, which is strange for a book supposedly aimed at kids – I pre-read them and edit as necessary.
Scholé of Practice: On Wednesday, the older boys and I enjoyed another of Pam Barnhill’s live webinars, this time with Tricia Hodges and her mom guiding us through a few chalk pastel tutorials. We couldn’t do the spiral galaxy because we didn’t have enough black construction paper, but we had fun with the dandelion and football. Here are some of our drawings – I think the smudge on D’s football is intentional, although I didn’t notice it before. It does make the football look like it’s moving. 🙂
Oh, the smudges on D’s football are terrific! They *really* do make it look like it is moving. Very clever.