Third Hobbit Down

It's turned into sick week here at the Hobbit Homeschool. Swine flu is still the most probably diagnosis. It's not so bad. Headache and fever followed by sore throat and cough. And no energy which is very unusual around here! We've been watching alot of movies--The Return of the King, Ivanhoe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, 300 Spartans, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Alarmingly, I'm actually liking this! No dividing fractions or getting our declension endings right! I've caught up with a few (okay, more than a few!) blogs, tackled a couple of house keeping chores I've been putting off (or how thick is the algae in this fish tank??)started online Christmas shopping...I would think we have the makings of unschoolers if I thought the low energy would last but I know soon enough they will be clammering for stuff to do. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the quiet!

Sick Day

I have two hobbits down for the count and one that is not any too lively. The big question is...Is it Swine Flu or not?? I checked online and found these symptoms:

Fever-check

Cough--check

Sore throat--check

Runny/stuffy nose--check

Body aches--check

Headache--check

Chills--check

Fatigue--check

Diarrhea or vomiting--check for one hobbit but not the other.

Hmmm. Maybe or maybe not. In any event today is a day for the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings.

Poetry Monday

Autumn by Emily Dickenson

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.

More Zoo Photos

Or it was dry in the bird house....


This little fellow wanted to come out and play.


And I couldn't resist adding this beauty who posed for us at our local zoo!

Ocular Athletics

A Bucket by Joe

As I'm sure you know (but a friend of my mom's pointed out that not everyone in Britain has a baseball cap so I'm going to tell you anyway) is rather like a pot. Buckets are round and usually have a handle which flips up. There are thousands of kinds of buckets. Some of them are called pots but they are really buckets. An example of this would be flower pots (buckets). I hate it when things get credited for other things work. No one ever calls a pot a bucket but people call buckets pots which is very annoying. Just think that without buckets there would be no syrup, no milk and by extension no cheese, ice cream, yogurt and no pancakes. think how often you use all that stuff especially cheese. Well I gotta do my math, folks. Adios.

Salt by Adam

Today I am going to write about salt, but today I will try a different way to go about it but this is my first try so if I slip back to my ordinary way forgive me. Salt is more valuable than you know. A lot of tasty meals you eat would not be possible without salt. Salt is immaculate in the practicality of its common use. Say if you where to eat an apple it is good but it has no salt. But if you make, say, an apple pie or apple crisp, they both use salt. Most everything uses salt. Look around and see if you can find a food without salt. It's out there though a little hard to find. Well, I will withdraw from the limited section of my mind to this wonderful world of though and idea where my hazardous simplicity is certainly required elsewhere.

Yarn by Ken

Yarn is very useful for knitting. Without yarn you couldn't knit at all. Sometimes, when I play with action figures I use yarn as spiderman web. There's not much else I can put into words about yarn. Except that my cat loves it. Good bye.

Wet Weekend

We had a very wet visit to Washington,D.C. this weekend to visit the hobbits' sister and to see some sites. On the plus side we had the zoo pretty much to ourselves. On the minus side alot of the animals don't like to come out in the rain. Otters were an exception. We had a great time in spite of the rain. Washington is a beautiful city.

Ocular Athletics

A Picture by Adam

A picture, like most things I write about, is just an ordinary, boring, every day object to which I try my utmost best to make as interesting and exciting as I can. A picture can be a simple photo or a grand and articulate masterpiece. A photo is quite astoundingly a frozen image in time, a memory whether happy or sad, like right now I am looking at a picture of my sister Ked and Kevin's wedding. A happy memory, it is strange to think it is the only wedding I can remember ever attending. One of my favorite painters is Leonardo Da Vinci, quite a mouth full, so I will call him Leo. Leo loved to paint horses, mainly ones in war charges. Toward the end of his life Leo made the Mona Lisa, a painting so realistic it looks as of she is looking at you. No matter how much I enjoy writing this I expect you are getting bored so I bring this page to a gracious close with these few words; just because it is ordinary does not mean it is not wonderful.

A Ball Cap by Joe

A ball cap as I am sure you know (but I am going to tell you anyway) is a hat designed to keep the sun out of your eyes. It is shaped like a bowl with a duck's bill on the end. My favorite ball cap is my Cleveland Indian's hat. I have never met anyone who didn't have a ball cap. They are quite inconvenient at amusement parks, however. I once lost a really nice one on a roller coaster and never saw it again. (It was actually my dad's hat that I happened to be wearing.)


Scissors by Ken

Scissors are very useful objects. They cut paper into shapes or whatever you want to do with paper. The scissors I happen to be looking at have orange handles but are really only casing metal handles to make them more comfortable. They have two metal pieces that are pretty sharp. Each one is attached to the handle. They are held together by a very short nail.

Uncle Chestnut

We've been enjoying The Inconvenient Adventures of Uncle Chestnut by Paul Nowak. It is based on stories from Chesterton's Tremendous Trifles among other of his writings and is written like a memoir of a small boy who follows Chesterton around and learns alot about life at the same time. It is an easy reader and the 10 year old could easily read it to himself but we are reading it aloud so we can experience it together. A great addition to our Ocular Athletics! You can get it on amazon or here.

Masaccio

Vasari's next artist of note is Masaccio and Vasari loves him! His rendering of feet really excites Vasari! People appearing to walk on tiptoe is a big pet peeve of Vasari's and Masaccio's feet are considered sublime! You can judge for your self. Unfortunately, Masaccio died suddenly at the age of 26.

Feast of the Holy Rosary

Or Battle of Lepanto Day!! We'll be celebrating with an afternoon tea party and of course a reading of Chesteron's Lepanto.

The Rosary

I've been meaning to post about this little book since last summer when a very dear friend recommended it to me.Now that it is the month for the Rosary I can no longer justify further procrastination! The Rosary subtitled Keeping company with Jesus and Mary by Karen Edmisten is a wonderful book! How I wish I had it when I was learning to pray the Rosary. I wanted to follow Pope John Paul II's Rosarium Virginis Mariae and pray the rosary daily but oh how my mind wandered in those days (well, in these days, too) and Saint Louis De Montfort's True Devotion to Mary made me feel unworthy to even be in the same room as a rosary let alone pick one up. But I persevered and kept praying, telling myself that someday I would have more time and at least I would be in the habit...
This book addresses just that and much more in such a friendly way that the Rosary becomes a joy. Thank you, Karen, for such a beautiful little book!

Poetry Monday

I love October and not just because it is the most beautiful month. It's because it is the month of the Rosayr and that means it must be Lepanto season!

Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!

Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise

I've been reading Vasari's Lives of the Artists. This is one of those books I bought for my daughter when she was on a Renaissance binge and meant to read but.... Well, I finally have a little time to read and it is pretty good! Vasari is very readable and when I think I could skip an artist as too obscure he corrects me. I had never heard of Lorenzo Ghiberti but according to Vasari and Michelangelo he is "worthy of heaven, itself". (it was Ghiberti's vanishing points that got them all excited!)

Dum cernit valvas aurato ex aere nitentes
In templo, Michael Angelus obstupuit:
Attonitusque diu, sic alta silentia rupit:
O divinum opus: O janua digna polo!

When Michaelangelo the panels saw
Gleaming upon the church in gilded bronze
Amaz'd he stood; after long wonder thus
The solemn silence broke:'O work divine!
O door worthy of heaven!'