The first day of term

We're back into it. AO6 Term Two Week One. It's always exciting, isn't it, that first week of term with its delicious new books. Happy thrill.

This term I sat a bemused Jemimah down and told her that at the end of last term we'd reached 'today', and that since I did not possess the power of precognition and thence could see no viable way of being able to study the history of the future, we'd better jump into our Time Machine and take a quick zip back in time to the ancient past instead. She rolled her eyes at me, and wrinkled her nose, but she good naturedly played along with her daft mum and made lots of whooshes and clangs and high pitched squeals until we reached out destination of 'In the beginning'. I'm such a kid sometimes, I know, but it was fun.

We read some books - Story of the Greeks, the intro to Augustus Caesar's World. Jemimah wrote a narration. We started Nicias, our new Plutarch life and discussed whether he was a good guy or a bad guy, or possibly both? We looked up Greece and the Isthmus of Corinth and Cyprus and Sicily on the map.

Lunch outside was a highlight. It was so nice out in our back garden in the lovely autumnal sunshine that we decided to continue school outside as well, and I read aloud that introductory book of The Iliad that I've already raved over both here and on Facebook and so won't do so again, and then we played a game of Happy Latin Verb Families, which was so fun that we played over and over, sprawled there on a rug on the lawn. Actually, it was a combination of Happy Families and Go Fish, since you really can't play the former with only two people, so we added in a pool, but kept the rule of asking for a particular card. We used the cards that come in the Minimus Secondus Teachers Guide, but you could make them yourself. Each verb family contained the infinitive verb in English and Latin, a word in the first person present tense, and an English derivation. Thus we had Custodire, Custody, Custodio and To Guard, and Dormire, Dormant, Dormio and To Sleep. It was such fun. Give it a go!
 

We sang our new folksong - My Darling Clementine. Back inside, that is. I don't sing outside. We discussed the 13th Catechism Question - Did our first parents continue in the state in which they were created? We read one of Sandburg's poems - Phizzog. most silly. We did a review of line and rotational symmetry for maths.

Phizzog

This face you got,
This here phizzog you carry around,
You never picked it out for yourself
at all, at all—-did you?
This here phizzog—-somebody handed it
to you–am I right?
Somebody said, “Here’s yours, now go see
what you can do with it.”
Somebody slipped it to you and it was like
a package marked:
“No goods exchanged after being taken away”—-
This face you got.”

After a brisk walk with the dog, Jemimah settled down to make Japanese food out of Sculpey and I made Gyudon from beef and konnyaku and ginger. Yum.

How can a day this perfect ever be thought of as school?