Literature and Botany

              I feel like after losing a bit of steam, we’re starting to pick back up again. That isn’t to say that life doesn’t seem to be pulling us in all directions at once. I think, for some reason, we’re feeling a little less exhausted this week.  Seneca’s brother is getting ready to leave in July to serve with Fema Corps. He has to fill out a bunch of forms and get his fingerprints done at the Sheriff’s Office. I’ll be starting a new job on Monday, so I had to get a drug test done today.  It’s nothing too strenuous, but it can be time consuming and things like this can only be done on weekdays.  I’m going to miss having a couple of weekdays off, but I am excited about my new job.

                As to homeschooling fifth grade, Seneca has been working on the artist Henry Ossawa Tanner for artist study and Tchaikovsky for composer study. It’s been fun to listen to the music of Sleeping Beauty and imagine the scenes from the Disney movie.  

                Her two main lessons at this time are literature and botany. For literature, Seneca is reading Island Of The Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell.  She had a little trouble starting the book. I found some beginning chapters on audio online. This seemed to really help her to at least get started. She wasn’t crazy about the book at first, but now she loves it and is reading it independently.   

                For writing practice, Seneca types up a summary of what she has read so far in Island Of The Blue Dolphins.  She still needs to work on run-on sentences.   She also continues to work on cursive by copying a poem and anything else that pops out at her throughout the week.

                https://www.amazon.com/Shanleyas-Quest-Botany-Adventure-Kids/dp/1892784165/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1525386091&sr=8-1&keywords=shanleya%27s+quest For botany, I am reading to Seneca from a book called Shanleya’s Quest: A Botany Adventure by Thomas J. Elpel.  The book is beautifully illustrated.  I did think that the beginning of the book was too wordy and spent too much time telling a version of the creation story.  It was a wonderful marriage of science and myth, but since the point of my purchase for the book was for botany lessons, I just didn’t find the opening sections of the story to be necessary.  That being said, Shanleya’s adventures to learn about different plants and flowers, is proving to be a fun way to gain information. Each page features a story and information on plant identification. There is also a sketch with the identifying parts labeled. Seneca copies  the sketch into her sketch book.  To supplement this, Seneca has also been watching short videos on plant identification on the buschcraft channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXEwe15rui0&t=331s She screenshots the frame with the notes on the dry-erase board, and copies the notes alongside her sketch.   The best part of all was when she said that she loved doing this.