After a couple short days of schoolwork last week to finish up Term 2, we’re now wrapping up Exam Week here at our house! I planned for us to take the whole week to finish, but it ended up only taking a couple days. This is a rather long rehash of the last couple days, but hopefully someone will find it useful!
On the other end of the spectrum, the children did well on the Italian songs portion but were very slow in answering the Q&A section. So I’ll be incorporating more of the latter into our days, and I think I’m going to slow down our working through the Pimsleur program to give us more time on each unit so we can practice talking beyond the CDs. I also want to incorporate more vocabulary from other sources so we can have more varied conversations. They also gave pretty scanty narrations of Herriot, the only assigned reading they have been listening to on audiobook and not narrating to me formally…I’m guessing there’s a connection there. 😉
We also took time to discuss what they’re liking most and least: Gianna isn’t a big fan of Paddle to the Sea, and her favorite is “everything else.” 🙂 Vincent’s favorites are Paddle to the Sea (naturally–my two oldest are just about as different as they come!) and Burgess Bird Book (also not a surprise–he is my bird-lover), and the only one he doesn’t enjoy is Aesop.
“Whittington and the Cat” from Baldwin’s Fifty Famous Stories Retold (Vincent)
Once there was a poor lad who had no mother and father because they were dead, and people in the town used to call him Dick. He heard the stories of London, where the streets were paved with gold and the people were fine gentlemen and ladies, and no one in London had to go to work. Dick wanted very much to go to London. And one day a wagon driven by eight horses came past his house with bells on their heads. Dick thought they were going to the fine country of London. So when it was coming past his house, he ran outside and asked if he could walk along. The driver asked him questions. And when he saw how poor the lad was and that Dick had no father and mother and no money, he said he might do as he liked.
So it was a long walk for the little lad, but Dick went along, and he had to run fast to catch up with the wagon. Then it was growing dark and it was nighttime, and Dick cried himself to sleep. When he was awake, he was very hungry, and instead of thinking about London, he wanted to go home to have some food. Then it happened that the driver, who lived in a house, was coming home, and he said, “I’m afraid you’re too lazy a lad that you don’t want to do any work.” But Dick said, “I want very much to do some work if only I can find some.” And the cook said, “If you don’t go away quickly, I’ll throw a pan of hot dishwater at you.” And then the owner came in and he told the cook to make him a good dinner, and after that he found some light work for him to do.
One day, a man asked him to wash his shoes, and he said if Dick washed his shoes for him, he would give him a penny. So Dick washed his shoes. It took him a long time to think what he should buy with a penny. He slept in a room where there were lots of mice and rats, and every night a number of mice and rats bothered Dick so he could not sleep, so he decided that with the penny, he should buy a cat. The next morning, he met a girl with a cat, and he said, “I’ll give you a penny for that cat.” And she said yes, and she gave him the cat. And she said to him, “You’ll find he’s a good mouser too.” And so Dick went home with the cat, and every day he carried part of his meal up to her. Soon all of the mice were driven out by the cat, so Dick would sleep soundly every night.
One day, the owner was letting all the people in his house to have their choice because he was sending a ship to a fine state which had many stuff. The girl said, “You should let Dick have a choice,” and the captain of the boat said, “Why doesn’t he give me that cat? Who knows how much money he’ll make out of it.” And so they were at the king’s house, and when they were eating dinner with the king and queen, an army of rats came and took the meal away from the people. When the king and queen were preparting for another dinner, the captain told them about the cat he had that the little boy gave him. And the king said, “If you give me that cat, I’ll load your ship full of gold.” And so the captain came with the cat. When they were eating dinner, the cat pounced on the rats and soon mose of them were laying dead on the floor. The other ones went into their holes and dared not to come out again.
When the ship came back, the owner called Dick from scrubbing the pans. Dick said, “Oh please don’t play a joke on me. My clothes are not nice and my shoes are full of hobnails.” The owner said, “This is not a joke. The cat has brought you all this gold.” The owner showed him the golden treasures. Dick gave the owner and sailors presents and money, and he gave some to the owner’s daughter. And the owner said, “He shall be called Mr. Whittington by his name.” And the stone that he sat on when he was going to sleep from the wagon is now called, “Whittington’s Stone.”
“Armadillo” from Kipling’s Just So Stories (Gianna)
Once upon a time there was a jaguar, and he lived with his mother, and she told him that he was supposed to scoop a tortoise out of its shell with his paw and he should throw a hedgehog into the water. One day he found a tortoise and a hedgehog, and they were friends, and he wanted to eat them, but he did not know which was which. One was hickley-prickley and was slowdee-doedee. They confused him so that he did know which animals they were. He said, “Are you a tortoise, or are you a hedgehog?” “I don’t know which one I am,” said the tortoise. So he said, “I’m supposed to scoop a tortoise out of its shell and throw a hedgehog into the water.” And he said, “Okay, throw me into the water, because I’m a hedgehog allright.” So he threw him into the water. Then hickley-prickley said, “Am I a hedgehog, or am I a tortoise?” “A tortoise, I think,” said the jaguar. “Allright,” he said, “I am a tortoise.” But when the jaguar put his hand on the hedgehog, it hurt. So he went to his mother, who said, “Son, son, son” ever so graciously, ever so many times. She put a bandage around him for a few minutes and let him suck out the things, but his hand still hurt. Then when he met them again, hey had already figured out each others’ tricks so they both rolled around him and confused him again.
