No Hidden Knowledge

There's no hidden knowledge;

It's all quite plain.

Behold the Truth 

In everything!

Every door open,

Every debt paid, 

Every captive free,

Every way made,

Any serpent crushed, 

Whenever wine is poured, 

Wherever bread is broken, 

Even one lame restored.

But we prefer a world

More sophisticated

A garden more private

Than that the Highest and Best

Reveals Himself 

In mundane ways

To mundane things,

Yet a child is born

A son is given

Lord of Earth, indeed!

The Same!

Who formed the clay

And breathed into it 

Fills it still

As the water fills the sea

A curtain torn

The Spirit loose

Creation restored 

And humble dirt 

Is wholly saturated 

Could be wholly satiated 

With the knowledge 

Of her God. 

By Veronica Boulden

Rest Is Not Death

We started easing back into our regular homeschool routine all of last week. The girls did the majority of their schoolwork everyday, though this week and for many more weeks, there will be even more schoolwork each day. 

We are still beginning school days by listening to Scripture and drawing. I've illustrated another Sertillanges quote. See the picture above. I'm thinking of making a calendar of quotes once I have twelve or more. 

The youth group and 56ers, the fifth and sixth grade group at church, started up again last week. This week, both our co-ops, art classes, piano lessons, and dodgeball also start up, so we will be back into a fuller than full swing of things by week's end. 

I spent the majority of Friday and Saturday, and even a few hours Sunday, quietly building the spring schedule for one of our co-ops where I serve as their Coverage Coordinator. At this particular co-op, there are between ten and twenty classes for three hours in a row, approximately forty parents to place each hour, and we survey parents for their preferences, so the schedule took several hours of intense focus. I did basic housework, planned meals for the coming week, made meals each day, supervised the girls' chores and schooling, had several conversations with Dwayne, but the schedule took the best of my energies the last few days. I was pleased to send the schedule to everyone this morning complete, and I'm pleased that every parent is in at least one class where he or she most wanted to serve.  

It was a mild winter day yesterday, so after church, we made a fire in our fire pit with wood collected from the yard over the last several weeks. It's incredible how much wood falls from the trees each fall and winter! The trees literally throw off limbs, big and small, that no longer serve them. There is a lesson there. 

But it was still winter in Connecticut, so we all got on our real coats, picked up yard debris in the gentle sunshine, fed the sticks to the fire and/or poked the fire with them, sat around, soaked in warmth till our shins and cheeks burned red hot, read another portion of The Hobbit aloud, and made Smores, of course. 

After everyone else grew tired of sitting and went on to other tasks, I remained, and rested there. Rest is not death, after all. I prayed about the coming week, the coming weeks, the season. It was the Sabbath and the day before the beginning of the first day of the first week of another busy season. So it was time given for prayer.  

 

Classical Conversations Review Game- Jenga

I found a miniature Jenga set at the Dollar Store while Christmas shopping, so I purchased that to use as a review game with my Foundations class. 

My daughter and I tested the game out at home before using it in class. The test was a fun review for her, and we confirmed that this will definitely be a fun game to play in class. 

Materials:

Jenga Game 

Sharpie

Memory Work Flashcards (or Foundations guide)

Geography Trivium Tables (or Foundations maps) 

Set up:

I labeled each Jenga piece with a subject "Science, Timeline, History, etc." on one side using a Sharpie. 

Then I pulled out the Memory Work Flashcards for the current cycle and the current weeks we are reviewing in every subject. 

I made piles for each subject with the weeks in random order. 

We also got our maps out and ready so we could easily point to the places on the maps if we pulled a "Geography" piece off the tower. 

We stacked the Jenga blocks appropriately (three blocks horizontal, three blocks vertical, etc.) and with the words facing down, so that way, we'd pull the pieces out and be totally surprised by which subject we chose. 

I left some of the pieces totally blank and those were "Wild." We could choose the subject we wanted if we drew a blank piece. 

We managed to play for about twenty minutes before the tower fell, and we'd worked through a good deal of review content in that time. 

I think this will be a big hit with my Foundations class next week. 

I've even decided to set this Jenga Review game up in the middle of our kitchen table and play it on and off all day tomorrow throughout our homeschool day; It was just that fun!

 

 

A Day at The Met

Norah returns to work tomorrow, and she'll return to college at the end of the week.  We all had one, final day off together, so we asked her what she wanted to do, and she answered, "The Met." So we got up early, made a quiche to eat for breakfast on the way, and arrived at The Met even before it opened. 

We toured the Greek and Roman section, the Medieval section, had lunch in the Cafeteria, then toured the Dutch Masters exhibit, The American Wing, and ended our visit after The European Paintings. We paid special attention to the artists we will be studying in Classical Conversations this year including Monet and Renoir. 

We left in the early afternoon. Since we brought drinks on ice in the cooler and homemade cookies Norah had made the night before, that's what we had for snacks on the way home, so no one was hungry until a few hours after we'd arrived back home. So we took showers and read silently for a few hours. It was nice to sit down in the quiet after standing and walking through crowds for hours.  

I was in the mood for Chinese, but instead of ordering and picking it up, I made homemade egg fried rice, enough for everyone, and Dwayne panfried some of the chicken and vegetable dumplings we had in the freezer. The dumplings Dwayne was making brought to mind The Funny Little Woman, so we listened to that audio book while we ate just for the fun of it. We cleaned up together, then Dwayne read from The Hobbit for half an hour or more, at least until Gandolf had rescued Bilbo and the dwarves from the goblins. Most of us are already in bed with books and/or crochet projects. Adele's still sitting me, flipping through books of paintings, even seeing some that she saw today. We'll all be in bed soon, since we're wiped out. But it was another lovely day together for which I am thankful.