First Day of Fifth Grade!

  Fifth grade homeschooling year has officially begun!

  For history, S read from Benjamin Franklin by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire.  I had some hesitation about her reading it because although it is not from a religious book publisher, it is clearly a Christian book.  Our homeschool is secular, but I don't want to exclude religion or there's also the argument for having religious (Judeo-Christian) knowledge as part of cultural competency.  The books itself was written in 1950 at a time when it was taken for granted that everyone in America was a Christian.  That, in and of itself, is a great teaching point.  For now, our approach is to be aware that this book was written by Christians for Christians and we will discuss those implications as they arise.  For example, S read about the Franklin family saying grace before a meal. That made no sense to her at all.  I had to explain that to say grace means to say a prayer.  She asked if using the word grace like this was an old-fashioned expression. I said it wasn't so much that it's old fashioned, but since we're not Christians we don't ever use this expression.    One old fashioned expression in the book that had her completely thrown was "knee high to a grasshopper."    "Huh?! What?! Okay, this book makes no sense."
        For science, I pulled a book off of one of our bookshelves that had been bought a little while back, but not used as much as I would have liked. It's a reference book on sharks from the Usborne publishing company.  It is definitely not a living book or a book that would meet Charlotte Mason criteria, but it's in our house, so we are using it.  It's a good book and very informative.  I just don't think it would be considered a Charlotte Mason book.  I think if we were to use it along with a book, such as a biography of shark scientist Eugenia Clark then it would lend itself to being more of a Charlotte Mason resource. For now, our book on Sharks will do for science reading.
     Our artist this term is Edmonia Lewis.

Seneca listened to the first ten minutes of lecture on Edmonia Lewis.  In the lecture, it says that her date of death is unknown. However, I looked up Lewis on her Wikipedia page and it gave a specific date of death. At this time, I don't know why there is such a discrepancy.  Here is link to the lecture that we are watching.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e74ImAzS38  We will continue watching the rest of the lecture next week.
     Ballet is back!   Ballet is three days a week for two hours per day.  She will also have jazz class one day a week, pointe class, and Russian character dance class.  This means four pairs of dance shoes! We have two - ballet and pointe.  In fact, we had to stop at Payless (which has amazing deals on ladies shoes at the moment) and buy a new pair of ballet shoes.
    Our poet this term is Joyce Kilmer. His poem "Trees" is Seneca's favorite poem.  I read aloud some general information about Kilmer.  He was killed in World War I. I told Seneca that this was the war in the movie "Wonder Woman." Her response, "Wait. That was World War I?  That couldn't be because in the movie Steve said that that was the war to end all wars, but then there was World War II."    I couldn't believe that she had remembered that line.  We had a discussion about how there really was a saying that World War I was to be the war that would end all wars.    
    As to the poem itself, S read it aloud five times and almost has it memorized.  We'll aim for a daily reading of the poem.  She is the one who wanted to keep reading it over and over again.  I only asked for two readings.
  I'm going to jump in here and mention our use of technology in our lessons.  On the one hand, I don't want us to become dependent on screens for learning, but they can be a huge money-saver.  We will look at pictures of Lewis's sculptures and access Kilmer's poems online.  We also are listening to the lecture on Edmonia Lewis because it has been posted online.  Free online material is also a time-saver.
   We really should have done some math, but we were too exhausted.  Not only is ballet a two hour class, but it's a forty-five minute drive from our house when the traffic is good.