Our Week in Review

Whew, we had another packed week! I am learning that Tapestry of Grace at the dialectic (middle school) level is quite a jump up from the upper grammar (upper elementary) level. But I am happy to report that I am finding ways to tweak it to fit our family's needs and our overall schedule, and we are still learning a ton each week and having fun too!

We all learned about five of the 12 South American countries: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Our daughter G focused on a brief overview of their struggle for independence, as it followed so quickly after and was influenced by the French Revolution and just before that, the American Revolution. She learned a bit about Simon Bolivar, who was instrumental in fighting for independence in these countries, and is often considered South America's "George Washington". She also learned about Napoleon's 100 day reign after escaping from exile, and his final defeat at Waterloo, followed by his second exile (this time to a teeny tiny island thousands of miles out in the Atlantic ocean - no chance for escape this time!). We talked about how these verses might apply to Napoleon: Ps 49:12 ~ "Man in his pomp will not remain, he is like the beasts that perish." And Mark 8:34 ~ "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" I LOVE being able to easily weave Scriptural principles into our studies - thank you Tapestry!
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In Literature she was supposed to start reading an abridged version of Frankenstein, but ended up reading the entire book in 4 days! I had forgotton that Frankenstein was actually the name of the scientist who created the monster, and that in the book the monster himself had no name. We had an interesting discussion afterward. Lots of good points were brought up. Here are some of the books she read from this week:

The boys, meanwhile, focused their attention on interesting facts about each of these 5 South American countries. We checked out books from the library and had fun just reading and learning together. The second book in the following picture (Spanish Conquests in the New World) I read outloud to all the children, and it gave us a good background for understanding their future struggle for independence. Most of the native south Americans were so oppressed under Spanish rule.

Tapestry produced a new product this fall that we are just loving! It is a workbook type book that has 4 pages on each of the South American countries, with geography questions, native animals to color, and interesting facts about each one. We bought 3 of these, one for each of the school aged boys.


Here is son C coloring his capybara on one of the Venezuela pages.

We continued all of our regular work in math and grammar and spelling and writing. Couldn't manage any latin this week! So daughter G and I are doing a lesson today. :-)

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It was a very challenging week for me, personally, since in addition to our regular schoolwork each day and my prep work for the two science classes I teach at co-op, I also had to prepare for my first turn teaching G's virtual co-op class. I pretty much did school morning, noon, and night. But it got done and I learned SO much. We had a technical glitch with G's virtual class (my microphone would not work!) which meant that I had to teach via typing in a chat window. Good thing I am a pretty fast typist. It was less than ideal, but I hope still a positive experience for all the students.

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It was a good week and now I am busy preparing for another one!