A new week...

Fr. Flood, pastor at St. Benedict's parish, gave a rousing homily yesterday about, among other things, new beginnings. After having some good downtime yesterday afternoon and evening (Dad cooked and served up his famous chili for dinner.), this morning I awoke refreshed and energetic and ready for a productive day. Notes: Miller and I read some of this wonderful picture book about his fast-approaching 1st Penance and Reconciliation. It is quite long, so we'll have to read it throughout the week. He and his sister copied and read from their Seton spellers, and did whiteboard math. We had a very involved grammar lesson, studying verbs, reviewing the parts of speech, prepositional phrases and diagramming. I used JB's Seton 5 Grammar book to introduce verbs, talk about sentences and begin diagramming. It was one of those golden 45 minute jam sessions with lots of questions, creative interpretation of materials (read: acting out various verbs), whiteboard work and covering so much material in such a short time. While I was facilitating our grammar learning, JB was fast at work on her gum wrapper chain. She found this, and we all laughed. I am working to get JB doing more cooking, so she made alot of our lunch. Dad ate with us too. After lunch, J and JB and I read the introduction (excellent!) and 1st chapter of Guns for General Washington and JB copied a paragraph; it was neat that one of her Seton words, "hardy," was in the text. HRM is doing math and I will work with her later on history, religion and LA. HRM will be thirteen in May, and I could burst with gladness at the fine young lady she has grown to be, so far. She is annoyed with me as I probe her with Twilight series plot details. Notes for last Friday: JB did math facts and copywork from this encyclopedia of dogs. She had bought it, and a book about old dogs, at Barnes & Noble over the holidays and has been carting both books here, there and everywhere. I also sat down with her and the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia to review and plot our BC notebook. We discussed the Appalachian trail, a topic of ongoing interest. The kids played lots of Guitar Hero while I was glued to my novel.