Dollygirl's Grade Six: School for Wednesday

Dollygirl did the basketball-scores page and a page about batting averages in Key to Decimals.

We read the first chapter of Crystal Mountain, by Belle Dorman Rugh.  I read this out loud a few years ago, but Dollygirl doesn't remember it, so we're starting it again.

The Story of Greece: Chapter 40, "Darius Demands Earth and Water," Chapter 41, "The Battle of Marathon," and whatever Chapter 42 is called, about the events after the battle, the strange last days of General Miltiades, and the death of king Darius.  I wrote all the people and place names on an old blackboard we have, and starred the really important ones.  I also printed out a map of the battlefield that showed where the left, right and centre parts of the Greek army were headed; since this (particularly the problem of them being short-handed in the centre) was mentioned during the story, it helped to be able to show it on a very simply drawn map.  I think Charlotte Mason might have approved of that one.

Highlight of reading about Marathon?  You might think it would be the collapse of Philippides, but I think Dollygirl found more interest in the idea of the Greeks crashing down the hill, hardly able to stop, and more or less smashing into the Persians.  We have a fair-sized hill in our back yard, and Dollygirl has done her fair share of crashing down it (on foot or sled).

So, to this day, when friend meets friend, the word of salute
Is still “Rejoice!” his word which brought rejoicing indeed.
So is Pheidippides happy forever, the noble strong man
Who could race like a god, bear the face of a god, whom a god loved so well,
He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered to tell
Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began,
So to end gloriously, once to shout, thereafter be mute:
“Athens is saved!” Pheidippides dies in the shout for his meed. -- Robert Browning