Another Visit to The Met

Norah had to work on Friday. She's earning money for college. Then she needed to use her time on Saturday- Monday to finish her regular Challenge 4 work and her Senior Thesis, so she told us to go ahead to The Met without her, but to take lots of pictures.  It was a moment of maturity. Her dad and I see those more and more lately. 

On the way there, we sang the Classical Conversations timeline song a few times. Adele is still practicing for Memory Masters, so it was a good use of the time in the car. And fun! Avril is in Challenge A now, but she grew up singing the song and still remembers the timeline and enjoys singing it with her little sister. This song is really just a part of our family culture now, and gets referred to often by everyone, even Dad, as we are discussing anything and everything. 

Having been to The Met before, we knew we'd see a bunch of things directly related to our CC timeline, our other memory work, our read alouds, or our homeschool in general... so we decided to keep our eyes open for all those things that sparked relations.  

"Cherokee trail of tears is on the timeline, Mom!" -Adele 

This is End of the Trail by Fraser.

We do a lot of reading aloud, and a lot of snuggling while we read, so these images were some of my favorites of the day. This is called Story of Golden Locks by Seymour Joseph Guy. 

Jungle Tales by Shannon

A Young Mother by Vonnoh

This was one of the most interesting pieces to us this time. It's a statue of Cupid by MacMonnies. We stood and studied it for several minutes. It's made of several different materials: bronze, wood, ivory, lapis, bloodstone, enamel, gold... All the textures and colors were a dance and delight for the eyes. Lapis is my favorite stone. 

We memorize the Christmas story from Luke every December as part of Advent. "Joseph took the child and his mother to Egypt to escape King Herod..." Images like this make the words stored in our hearts come to life. This is Flight Into Egypt by Tanner. 

This one just reminded me of the sun coming up through the trees in our woods right now, a sight I see almost everyday as I sip my coffee. It's called Dawn-Early Spring and it's by Tryon. 

The girls have memorized poems by Robert Lewis Stevenson, shown in this relief by Augustus-Saint Gauden.

John Singer Sergeant is one of the artists studied in CC with the modern history cycle. The girls recognized "Portrait of Madame X" right away. 

This is a statue Nydia, a blind flower girl from Pompeii, by Rogers. Adele actually wrote more than one paper about Pompeii this year in Essentials, since that story is part of CC's Ancient History cycle. 

Adele's memorizing Latin noun endings, but Avril is actually doing her first year of Latin with Henle in Challenge A, so she knew how to read simple words and phrases in the museum. That was pretty exciting. 

"Thou shalt... have no others gods... not make unto the any graven image..." The Ten Commandments are in our Ancient History memory work this year. 

Egypt, Nile River, Nile River Delta... several locations in geography memory work are related to Egypt and the Mediterranean this year since there's a focus on Ancient History. This also brings to life some of the Old Testament stories we know and love. 

Adele just wrote her Faces of History paper/ did her presentation on Persephone. She kept seeing Persephone everywhere! 

The girls love the myths and read them constantly, so it was fun to find or recognize the characters in the art and know their stories. Above is an image of a maenad dancing for the god Dionysis, who recently showed up in our read aloud: Prince Caspian, and Narcissus seeing his reflection.  

Hercules' knot

There's a history sentence about "The seven wonders of the ancient world..." and the "Temple of Artemis at Ephesus" is one of them. 

"...Persia fall to Alexander the Great!" is an item on the timeline.