We are all well again and have hit the high trail towards a new term of learning and adventure! Thank you all for the get well wishes and prayers, they were so much apprecitated :)
We have been enjoying Epiphanytide immensely and will conclude the celebration of the Christmas season with the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord on Thurday, January 13th. I think we've all decided that we want to leave our beautiful tree up until Candlemas this year, I love this tradition!
Violet is venturing in to the Civil War period with some great reads ~ The Red Badge of Courage, Lincoln: A Photobiography, The Long Road to Gettysburg , Uncle Tom's Cabin, and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes for fun. (These should keep her busy for a while ;-)
She's also embarking on a winter Astronomy session with Matthias for her Earth Science.
For the Arts (other than her continued ballet training) we will go through some of the works of the Hudson River School and listen to the music of Debussy. Actually everyone will join in for this on some level.
Matthias is excited to delve deeper with Seamus in to their Meteorology studies. Beginning with this new term they will focus on Studying the Weather. We have been so pleased with The Encyclopedia of Weather and Climate Change, it is a wonderful, must have resource for any weather related studies.
He is also continuing his study of the Saints of the early Christian period during the founding of Rome, giving nice weekly reports and creating some historical timeline pages to correlate. We are thus into the study of the Romans and the founding of Rome using Famous Men of Rome as a spine. He's currently reading the Ides of April.
Seamus picked back up with his Bible history timeline work with the New Testament and the birth of Jesus and subsequent stories up to the Magi's visit. He is enjoyiong learning how to type out his narrations that I have taken down for him after each short reading.
He was thrilled to receive a lovely set of Thornton Burgess stories for Christmas and is beginning with The Adventures of Prickly Porky. He is also learning "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost, one of our favorite poems for this age. If you haven't seen the picture book version of this one illustrated by Susan Jeffers, see if you can find it, it's delightful.
Sean-Paul has chosen to start his year of learning off with horses :) He's on a Billy and Blaze kick much to my delight as I enjoy reading these books by C.W. Anderson almost more than the kids ;-) We will be coloring lots of different pictures of horses, working with the Parts of a Mammal puzzle and cards which for us is a horse. He's about ready to play our Horse Sense game which everybody loves and he will most likely be recreating lego horses to replicate the little knight and castle set he purchased with some Christmas money from his Godparents (Hi J&S!)
I would say we are off to an engaging start for the new year. I pray that your new year is off to a grand beginning and that you are healthy and happy!
Glad to know you're all feeling better again! So many great favorites in your book lists. And we still have our tree up too - we do love the old calendar and are enjoying this Epiphanytide. Blessings to all!
Posted by: kimberlee | Friday, January 14, 2011 at 10:00 PM