Hello, my friends. It is nice to have time to chat to you!
We finished AO6 Term 2 today. It's a bit of a hollow victory, since we're starting back into Term 3 first thing on Monday morning. It's only a week until we leave for America, and I'm aware that we're going to struggle to fit term in amongst all our holidays in the latter half of this year (oh, life is hard), and so it is best to work when we can.
We're celebrating a little bit this weekend with Graeme Murphy's Swan Lake on Saturday night, and a visit to our favourite Japanese restaurant, but on Monday it's school as usual. Sigh. Such is life.
When we've not been working this week, I've been pruning the roses. The weather has been perfect, so I have really enjoyed spending extended hours in the garden. We've finally declared war on the possum(s). Barney, our next door neighbour has set out the trap, and I'll be watching to see how many he catches. They're such cute little critters, but enough's enough. I want at least a little bit of the produce from the garden, and they could at least leave a few of the pots of pansies to flower. Grrrrr.
In the kitchen I've been cooking up big pots of lovely pumpkin soup using the pumpkins from the garden. I'm guessing possums don't like pumpkin - which is good, because we do! I make 4 litres at a time and we're up to our fourth batch this winter. It's sort of a wonder we don't slosh as we walk! It is just so yummy, though, especially with a slice or two of good grainy bread.
I'm still working on CM science. This week, I've been pondering page counts versus the new literary science books we have nowadays. Charlotte Mason lamented the dearth of good English literary science books and resorted to use text books in her schools. Lots of facts packed into a short number of words. Nowadays we have some wonderful literary science books. They are much easier to read because they contain less densely packed material - you can read more pages quickly, but you learn less per page. So what do we do? Do we resort to text books like CM did just to keep page count the same, or do we use time taken to read as our indicator instead? I believe CM would have chosen the literary science texts. Students will read more pages, but hopefully not spend much more time in doing so. What do you think?
This coming week we have lots going on. Apart from the dreaded packing, I have book club ( we're talking about Barbara Pym's Excellent Women), a going away party for a work colleague, and a dinner to celebrate our dear friend becoming President of Rotary. Next weekend is the Geelong Bible Conference. I can't wait!!
Hopefully I'll have time to talk to you before I leave on the 9th, but if I don't I'll post pics while we're away.
Take care. Love you all!!
Possums must be different creatures down there. Here they're icky looking, odd things, most often seen squashed on the road.
ReplyDeleteI wonder on science if a textbook could help by providing illustrations and definitions (when necessary)and the rest could be literary, observation and "doing"? Just a thought. Here the Fulbright books have taken over. If you use anything else, I understand from Moms, you are "odd...." Shame. Go with your heart, Jeanne.
Counting the days till you're on the same TIME at least! Don't forget, a lot of motels (don't know your travel arrangements) have coin-operated laundry so while that's not how you want to spend your vacation, throwing a load in can save a ton of packing. And there's a Wal-Mart just about everywhere for cheap tshirts or whatever in a laundry emergency!
I'm certain CM would have picked the literary science texts too.
ReplyDeleteHave a wonderful time away!!
Popping by real quick before Google Reader goes away forever! Hope you are well and will try and add you to my list on Bloglovin b/c I don't want to lose touch. Feel free to stop by my blog and leave me your Bloglovin, feedly or just your blog link here!
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xo
I missed this post! How was the ballet?? I LOVE Swan Lake and LOVE Graham Murphy - so the two together are divine (I've seen it in Sydney).
ReplyDeleteI think you should pick the books that give you the best information. If a textbook is boring, it doesn't matter how few words it uses. If the literary text waffles on and on and the information is dodgy, then I don't care how well it's written. Go with your gut. Having said that, I think pics help a lot understanding science concepts that are difficult to describe in words.
The ballet was excellent. Dinner before was pretty good as well!
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