in pursuit of wild things

Hard to believe August is nearly history. Autumn will arrive before I’ve adjusted to the fact that Spring is long since gone…time is really a quick march.

We’ve been wrapped up in our studies this week. We’ve spent an entire week on Galileo and this weekend the kids will replicate some of his gravity and pendulum experiments. The crew looks forward to their science labs with Daddy over the weekend. Tomorrow we’ll finish up our biography on him and move on to Blaise Paschal for next week. Oldest also wrote a paper on Kepler this week for Writing (week 8 of Writing With Skill Vol 1) which tied in nicely with our science studies.

He gave the younger siblings a little talk on Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Johannes Kepler. The best part about Oldest’s paper was that he finally wrote a one-hundred and fifty word essay (151 to be exact). He’s so adept at narrations (thanks to The Story of the World and Writing With Ease) that he finds it hard to write an actual essay with details. Writing is the subject that causes him the most difficulty. So challenging that we tackle it within the first hour of our school day. If we save writing for later in the day then his attitude deteriorates and we both end up very frustrated. Now that we are close to the end of our first term we’ve finally managed to find a rhythm to our day. YEAH!!!

Sparkles is doing far better in school than she gives herself credit for. She struggles with new concepts but does well after plenty of practice. She constantly comparers herself to her brothers (who “get it” instantly) and I need to find a way to help her stop

this behavior. She is so competitive and I am not…I really struggle to understand this part of her nature. I’ve prayed consistently the past few weeks over the nature of my relationship with my sweet Sparkles. I love her so much but I haven’t been the best mother to her. Somehow I’ve let the wreckage of the broken relationship with my own mother to seep into my relationship with my daughter. When the Lord pointed this out to me I wept very bitter tears. I will do better.

Middle Boy…nothing is hard for him…except punctuation. He hears songs and melodies on the radio and television and starts to play them. Right now he is working on “I Am the Doctor” from Doctor Who. Five weeks ago we listened to Pomp and Circumstance (graduation song) for our music appreciation course and this week he played it on the piano for me. Once a melody gets in his head he will work on it until he can play the song. In mathematics he figured out multiplication on his own as a form of fast adding. He also pointed out to me that the hexagons in his math books are really cubes (which you can see here). I could not see the cube until he drew it for me. Everyday he amazes me…and I guess if he was my little brother I would be just as insecure as Sparkles too.

This week I chose a motto for our school from Leonardo Da Vinci; “Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his teacher.” They all were very cross with me and thought I was asking too much of them!!! They are all so much smarter than me and just do not realize it yet…thankfully I suppose.

Our week wasn’t very exciting. Last Friday evening the “Ice-cream truck” came through our neighborhood. We let the crew run out to the end of the road to buy a treat and the driver promised to come up our road every Friday evening for the rest of the summer. I didn’t know our little community even had an ice-cream truck. The only ice-cream truck I

remember was when I visited with my father’s mother in the inner-city of Akron, Ohio. I spent a few weeks of one summer with her when I was a little girl. Akron is a big city and it was very different from any military base I had lived or the rural Kentucky of my mother’s home place. I wish I had gotten to know her better. She was a WW2 bride from England. I loved listening to her talk. I thought her accent was marvelous. When I knew her she was married to my step-grandfather Joe from

Hungary. He escaped from the Soviet concentrations camps. His war stories were amazing and so sad. My grandfather Joe was a cook for the Hungarian army and he taught me two recipes: lecso with kolbasz and rakott krumpli. I’m not sure about the spelling of those words but the first one is a vegetable stew with kielbasa sausage and the second is a layered potato and egg dish. He also introduced me to the wonderful spice called smoked paprika! I only spent one summer with them as a child and later for a few weeks in my twenties. That’s a trip down memory lane…