Thursday school plans, with no Ivanhoe spoilers

Indoor plans:

Continue "The Deserted Village" (poetry)

History (a short section. the Hundred Years' War and the remaining years of Edward III are summed up in a very short space).  Book of Centuries.

How Math Works: drawing daisies with a compass.  And what does one do with a daisy drawing?  Check out this page on timber framing.  Who'd have thought?

Old Testament:  begin the story of Balaam in the Book of Numbers.  We had not intended to get into this part of the book this term, but we have a couple of weeks to spare.

Ivanhoe

Outdoor plans:

Nature walk on a city trail!

The Parents' Review on Geometry and Synthesis (and the argument over taking flowers apart)

"Before the child has to work at geometry, see that he realizes:-- That there are in nature no lines, except the edges of solids, nor surfaces, except the sides of solids. That natural movements and growths take place usually in curves, not straight lines. That axes, diameters and co-ordinates are not part of any natural figure, but measuring rods introduced for man's convenience. Connect in the pupil's mind these devices with that earlier invention, mentioned in the former paper, of breaking big numbers into tens and hundreds; explain that man extracts no more real instruction out of such devices than a monkey gets by breaking things in bits, unless he completes the cycle of study by the transcendental (or supra-simian) act of synthesis. The parent will translate these words into such as she finds suit the child; the essential thing is for the parent herself to grasp the idea clearly. If she does not, she should get herself taught to do so by some competent person.

 "In connection with this idea of synthesis, a child should be taught that if he wants to learn anything about an object by breaking it open, he should not break it till he has taken a good look at it in its original state, so as to be able to reconstruct it in his mind as a whole.'  ~~ "Home Algebra and Geometry," by Mary Everest Boole, in The Parents' Review, Volume 3, 1892/93, pgs. 854-857

And check this one out (emphases mine):

 "May I make an example of flowers to illustrate the application of the science of appearances? Amongst other sciences applicable to them is horticulture, which treats of their civilization, the robustness of their constitution, their span of life, their propagation, their cultivation, the improvement of their characteristics of form and colour, the soil suitable to them, its texture, and its chemical constituents. There is also botany, a science which deals with their habits, their structure, their organs, their classification and variety. These are all concrete facts, to acquire which we examine the flowers from every point of view. We uproot them, we dissect them, we remove them from their surroundings, and consider them almost without reference to them. The facts of their appearance are different. They depend, not only upon the aspect and condition of the flowers themselves, the relation of the parts to the whole, and of the parts to each other, in different qualities and characteristics, but their aspect also depends upon their relation to surroundings, and to the aspect and condition of surroundings, and to relations, conditions, influences outside themselves and their immediate surroundings.

 "We may be able to change their surroundings and the outside influences, but we cannot disassociate them, We may take flowers from the field, or hedgerow, or garden, and bring them indoors, place them in a vase or upon a table or in a box, we may change their conditions in a countless number of different ways, but do what we may, we cannot see them without some surroundings. Any change of surroundings or change of relation of outside influences will cause change of appearance. Their appearance amongst the green grasses in the field will be different from their appearance as they grow in the garden soil against the red-brick wall, or as they lie indoors upon a polished mahogany table. They will appear different under the influence of sunshine, or gray weather or rain, at a distance from us or near at our feet. The appearance of the flowers will in every possible case have certain fixed relations to surroundings and outside conditions and influences. We cannot see or conceive flowers or any other object except under aspects influenced by outside conditions, for that is the way nature conveys to us the impression of them."  ~~ "The Fine Arts and Education, Part 1," by Francis Bate, in The Parents' Review, Volume 7, 1896, pgs. 561-571.

Do you get the feeling we're talking about a lot more than botany here?

Dollygirl's Grade Six Homeschool week: already changed

This week we will have only four days of school, because of a public-school holiday on Friday.  I also forgot that Dollygirl is going on a tour of the local airport on Thursday morning.  Also I think a couple of the days were a bit overloaded, so we'll probably have to pick and choose a couple of the readings.  Here's where things are at now.

Monday

Opening time: Bible verses, hymn, prayer, Mensa puzzle cards

Bible—Schaeffer, Basic Bible Studies. Finish verses on page 13, about the Holy Spirit.

Poetry: Robert Frost, America’s Poet, chapter 4, “Searching.” Read “Birches.”

The Hobbit, chapter 5

Math: Minds on Math pages 44-45. First, construct a clinometer using a photocopied protractor, straw, string, and washer. Go outside and use the clinometer to measure a tree (see instructions in the book). Come back inside and construct a scale drawing to determine the height of the tree. Answer questions 1-3 on page 46.

French: review the two songs we did last week. Le Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon, Act 1, Scene 6.

World history: Story of the World Vol. 4, chapter 25, first half. Explain about Manchukuo. How was this an early test case for the League of Nations? (See also Usborne Illustrated Atlas of World History, page 69.)

Computer time

School of the Woods, chapter 2

Copywork

Skills and crafts: probably start felt doughnuts, from Stitch by Stitch.

Free reading

Tuesday

Opening time

Bible—verses on page 14 (end of study 1). How do we recognize the Christian God? Reminder: “the Bible sets forth God as one God but in three persons.”

Geography: Read pages 13-15 in Hammond Discovering Maps, and narrate. Read Cool Geography, pages 10-14. (Keywords: gazetteer, atlas, marine chart.) Do Cool Geography Activity 3 on page 20: map questions about the United States.

Shakespeare: Cymbeline, Act 1, Scene IV. What is the bet that is made in this scene? What are the “prizes?”

Math: Read the description of geometric models on page 46 of the textbook. In your notebook, write out a definition of a geometric model (what is it? What is it used for?) Get out four cubes (building blocks) and set them up as shown. Compare your cubes with the drawings of top view, side view, front view. Answer questions 5 & 6 on page 47.

Copywork

Computer time

The Aeneid of Virgil. Read from page 31 to the end of page 32 and narrate what has happened to Andromache since Hector’s death and the fall of Troy. Read to the top of page 35, stop, and narrate the first part of Helenus’s instructions to Aeneas. (Who are Scylla and Charybdis?) Read the rest of his instructions, and the rest of pages 36 and 37.

Skills and crafts

Science: Read The Great Motion Mission, page 23-top of page 26. Narrate orally: what is going on at the art gallery? Read this out loud three times: “Visible light is radiation in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum.” Take the blue sidebar on page 26 to your father and ask him to explain it to you.

Teatime

Free reading

Wednesday

Opening time

Bible—start study 2. What is God’s sovereignty? When we speak of His sovereignty, what two thoughts must we keep in mind? God’s work of creation: Look up the first few verses on page 15.

Poetry: Robert Frost: listen to Frost read his poem “Birches.” Read “A Young Birch.” Robert Frost, America’s Poet, chapter 5, “It’s a Funny World.”

Science: 1. Read “Light Color Optics” by John Grunder, in The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, Winter 2008, pages 72-74. 2. Play the “Light Race” board game from the Eyewitness Action Pack “Light & Illusion.”

Canadian history: Read Story of Canada, pages 230-233

Folk songs

English: Write Source 2000, “Library Skills.” 1. Read the introduction and section 290. 2. Sections 291-293 show you how a "card catalogue" works. What are some reasons that most public and school libraries now use computerized catalogues instead of actual cards? Would there be any advantages to a card system? Disadvantages? 3. Review of the Dewey Decimal System.

Thursday:  Field trip morning!

Thursday afternoon:

The Hobbit: continue. Written narration chosen from several suggestions I will give you.
Computer time

French: Act 1, Scene 7.

Science biography: First, read the mini-biography of Einstein on page 27 of The Great Motion Mission. Then read chapter two in Cwiklik’s biography, and narrate.

Free reading

Next Monday:

Opening time

Bible—finish study 2.

The Aeneid of Virgil. Finish chapter 2. Study for dictation later.

Citizenship: Uncle Eric, chapter 3, “Sorting Data.” “Without good models, or paradigms, students have no way to know which facts are important and which are not.”

Math: Use the clinometer you made on Monday to measure one other object outside (p. 47, question 8). Also answer questions 9 (views of an object), 10 (matching pairs), and 12. Weekend homework: p. 49, question 16: construct an object using 8 cubes; draw the front, top, and side views of your object. Give 8 cubes and your drawings to someone else. Challenge him/her to construct an object using the drawings. Is the object the same as the object you created?

Dictation

Canadian history: Read Story of Canada, pages 234-235. Narrate.

Picture study: read about Emily Carr’s breakthrough in 1927. How did her meeting with the Group of Seven change her life as an artist? Compare Lawren Harris’s painting on page 32 (of Anne Newlands’ book) with Carr’s 1928 painting "Skidegate." Also compare "Skidegate" with her 1912 painting on page 25.

Poetry: read these poems from Florence McNeil’s Emily: “Home” (p. 36); “Discoveries II” (p. 41); “Discoveries III” (p. 44); “The Group of Seven” (p. 46).

Art Instruction: Choose something outdoors (maybe a tree?) to paint or draw in Emily Carr’s later style. Try and paint its “inside” more than its “outside.”
Free reading

What I'm reading

I'm about halfway through this book on the life and work of geometer Donald Coxeter. (Amazon reviews here.) This would be an awesome, awesome book to add to a late-high-school math course, with the exception of a few strange pages about his adventures in psychoanalysis, and a bit of profanity near the end. I keep coming across things that I'd like to quote here, then I keep reading and forget to post them.

Please understand that I have absolutely no qualifications for reading or understanding this book. I have no post-secondary education in mathematics of any stripe, geometry or otherwise (although I did briefly work in a university math office). In fact, I'm pretty sure that my high school mathematics completely skipped over even the basics of what Coxeter spent his life doing, and we certainly NEVER talked about the historical rift between geometry and algebra. (See Nicolas Bourbaki...who didn't exist.) Which is really sad, because it might have helped make a little more sense of what we did do.

But I'm enjoying it anyway.