School Days

We've been hard at work here in Hobbiton. Working on the three L's--Latin, logic and logarithms. We've been studying plants and bugs including this dangerous and disgusting one that has taken up residence in the pond in the back yard. They have been eating our frogs and polliwogs. It squeaks when caught. (use gloves!!)We've been reading our way through Churchill's The Birth of Britain, The Brendan Voyage, and The Merchant of Venice. (I love the Ambleside site although I don't really follow it...)

I really like Traditional Logic
from Memoria Press. I bought the DVD's and we are moving along quite nicely. Although one of the hobbits will keep writing "sillygism".

Our days are also full of chopping wood, archery, nephew/grandbaby adoring, and of course lots of reading!

What we've been doing

We've been hunting and Christmas shopping, baking and cooking and shoveling snow (lots of snow!)tending chickens ( we're even getting a couple of eggs already! My how those little chicks grew fast!) and sometimes we conjugate latin verbs and solve for X and try and figure out the Boer War. We also are reading the Iliad out loud. Try that sometime if you want to twist your toungue around all those Greek names. Truly gives new meaning to it's Greek to me!

Betsy-Tacy

Every now and then I visit the Bonny Glen to see what's up in literature. The hobbits and I get caught up in swash-buckling adventures and it is good sometimes to see what the gentler folk are reading. Or to put it another way--sometimes I want to read something girly. I participated in the Betsy-Tacy read last October without blogging about it and thoroughly enjoyed all the books from the beginning when Betsy-Tacy meet to Heavens to Betsy which gets her through her freshman year of high school. This year I am reading Betsy in Spite of Herself, Betsy was a Junior, and Betsy and Joe. If you would like to participate stop by the wonderfully named blog--A library is a hospital for the mind and sign up. Or just start reading! These are very sweet books and will have you making fudge and singing along at the piano (or wishing you were).

Moonflowers

We're shifting gears a little here at the Hobbit homeschool. Baseball is finished for the year and soccer has begun.(Soccer is much more low key!! No travelling to games!!)School paperwork is in the future. So is canning tomatoes. I guess I could be weeding but I'm going to pour myself a glass of iced tea, sit on the deck, and read Planet Narnia by Michael Ward It has been a lovely summer so far. And the moonflowers are blooming!

My Family and Other Animals

This is the best read aloud for boys who think they are too old for read alouds! It's great for summer too. This is my second time reading this one aloud...I only hope I retain my composure during the part about Widdle and Puke better than I did last time!

Missee Lee

We just finished this book by Arthur Ransome and it was great! Pirate adventure and Latin declensions! What more could we want?

Shh...he's reading!

The littlest hobbit is reading a chapter book voluntarily! His usual reading diet consists of Calvin and Hobbes, TinTin and Asterix the Gaul but a new series of books by Rick Riordan has captured the hobbits attentions and they are all racing through them (four available so far).
They center around a modern boy named Percy Jackson who discovers he's a demi-god, fathered by Poisidon. I myself am in the middle of book 3 and they are a refreshing break from presidential politics and imminent financial ruin. In each book there is a quest based on myth or the Odyssey, boon companions, magical weapons, and a climax involving great courage and dumb luck. Yes, they are very similar to Harry Potter but on a much easier reading level. The usage of myth is pretty clever though and relatively authentic. The hobbits are absorbing how the ancient Greeks thought the gods interacted with each other and humans. All in all, entertaining.