Ari and I both finally finished reading Summerland. Ari complained a lot less about reading it at the end than he did at the beginning, but it never really grew on him as much as I had hoped it would. I remain a fan, though it's kind of a hot mess of a book. "How about," thought Michael Chabon, "a great American Huck Finn-esque road novel about, like, believing in yourself and stuff, and then, in case that doesn't scream 'American!' loudly enough, I'll throw in baseball as an extended metaphor. But since it's a kid book, I don't have to be all subtle about it, I will just tell you, repeatedly, that baseball is just like life! Doesn't that sound amazing? But also! Sasquatches and fairies and Norse mythology and a dig at the designated hitter! Because why not?!" But I kind of love it anyway. When it's good, it's very good. Like here, one more block quote from Summerland, as I go through my withdrawal:
And in that moment he felt--for the first time that optimistic and cheerful boy allowed himself to feel--how badly made life was, how flawed. No matter how richly furnished you made it, with all the noise and variety of Something, Nothing always found a way in, seeped through the cracks and patches. Mr. Feld was right; life was like baseball, filled with loss and error, with bad hops and wild pitches, a game in which even champions lost almost as often as they won, and even the best hitters were put out seventy percent of the time. Coyote was right to want to wipe it out, to call the whole sad thing on account of darkness.
But don't worry, Ethan perks up and gets back to the business of saving the world soon after. And the world being terrible, cruel, and unbelievably wonderful all at once is one of my favorite things for books to talk about. So, to sum up, Summerland, is kind of like life and baseball: messy and convoluted, losing almost as often as it wins, but a lovely thing to behold nonetheless.
Now, discussing Summerland with Ari was, predictably, like pulling teeth. Sigh. Maybe by high school he'll open up a bit more?
As if finishing Summerland weren't enough for the week, he also finished lesson six in Caesar's English (and got 23/25 right on his quiz), did a lesson from Spelling Workout, started reading Building Poems, and did lesson two from Paragraph Town. The paragraph lab from this lesson had him making lists a famous person he admired. He, of course, chose Milo. Sure, fine. And then he was completely stumped when it got to the part where he was supposed to say what he admired about Milo. Because Ari doesn't do sincere very well. Unless he's sincerely angry about something. I think we need to work on being funny but still actually completely the assignment. This is probably a more difficult skill than just saying something nice about your brother, but whatever.
He's got maybe another week or week and a half of Singapore 5A (and that's with some slowing down to give him extra time to work on his homework for Math Olympiad). Hence my Life of Fred order. I think we'll try doing 3 days of Singapore and 2 days of LOF and see how that goes. He is secretly excited about LOF; I can tell because he's not so good about keeping secrets. He really loved the story and the humor before (when he was doing Fractions); if I can just somehow keep it low pressure, it will all be good. Anyway, Singapore this week was all about ratios.
Milo is never going to finish Singapore 1B. This is probably not really true, but it feels that way. I am trying to fight my lingering fears that he's somehow behind. Singapore is, after all, a relatively rigorous math curriculum, and he'd be a very young second grader this year were he in school. And going at Milo's pace is the whole point (or one of them) of homeschooling, right? right. So. It's introducing multiplication and division now, and, mysteriously, Milo strongly prefers that to adding and seems to be faster at it. He STILL reverses numbers constantly (not letters ever), and I'm starting to wonder if that's something to worry about. Because, you know, I need things to worry about.
He finished up Sideways Stories from Wayside School this week and then read Tomie DePaolo's 26 Fairmount Avenue, which I gave him primarily because it's short, and I needed something I could read fast and pull copywork and narration from. Which I did, and that went well. Today he started Pippi Longstocking, and, for the first time ever, complained after a few pages that he didn't like it. He insists that it's not too hard; he just doesn't like it, so I had him push on, and eventually he said it was getting a bit better. So we'll see how he likes it after another day or two of reading. Ari LOVED Pippi when he was Milo's age or a bit younger; he read all three of the books in quick succession.
He's started on ETC 5 and is still moving through Master Reader (we haven't been doing it every day, so it's slowed down).
Gus is doing ETC 1 and seems to really enjoy it. He read "A Kiss for Little Bear" and most of "Mouse Soup" this week. He's doing a few pages of Singapore Earlybird a couple of times a week. He's a bit frustrated because there are no "pluses" in it, and he feels that stuff like learning the names of shapes is not really math. We got to a section on patterns this week, and he was delighted. "This is real math!" he said, "patterns!"
In history, we read about ancient Africa and watched some Anansi videos on Discovery Education Streaming.
Milo and Gus learned about compounds in science; Ari did more microscope stuff and had to draw and label a plant for his science homework.
We have two more weeks of homeschool soccer before I get my Thursdays back. The kids have really enjoyed it. I'm a bit surprised, particularly in Ari's case, at just how much they've enjoyed it. I'm toying around with the idea of signing Ari up for basketball for the winter (he's tall!), but we'll see.
We've had light attendance at the last couple Math Olympiad meetings for various reasons, but it seems to be going well.
And season 4 of Friday Night Lights is now available on Netflix instant viewing, so I'm off to watch that and drink wine and eat a brownie. Whoo hoo! Friday night!
2 comments:
It sounds like you had a lovely week of sharing and learning. I'm marking your reading selections on my list. We'll have to check those out.
Oh, enjoy the wine and brownie! That sounds like a lovely treat for a job well done.
Post a Comment