We've also been working on a difficult solar system puzzle for two days. We're in the difficult portion now, and frankly it has such tiny pictures that it's giving me a headache. We only do that for about a half hour until the girls' patience runs out. While we've been working on that, we listen to the CD for the Bach Children's Chorus. Madison got her official acceptance letter last week, and she's got to memorize the following three songs in the CD by the end of the summer.
With "space" as the focus this week, the girls have been able to get going at their schoolwork at such a good clip that I'm able to have them do regular math (non-space) without any trouble. Ella is doing 4-digit by 4-digit addition with carrying (and I'm not exaggerating: she always gets every single problem right, for the last two weeks). Madison is starting long division. I had started long division with her back in the winter, and realized she wasn't quite ready. After 3 days, she's starting to get the hang of it. But it's difficult, and she gets frustrated when she works on something that you can't just snap your fingers and know. That's ok, some things are like that.
So I guess I've got a end-of-kindergartner doing addition with carrying, and an end-of-second-grader doing long division. I'm satisfied!
The new Charlie Bone book (Book 6, Charlie Bone and the Beast) arrived on Monday afternoon. Madison started it at about 4:30. She had finished it by 10am the next morning. She started reading it again yesterday afternoon.
We've been listening to Book 3 in the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. We finished that yesterday. We were weeding out the front rose garden yesterday afternoon, and fortunately that's right next to the driveway. So we had the CDs in the car, opened the car door so the speaker was nearer us, and listened to the 3rd and 4th CDs of Prince Caspian while finishing the weeding. It really helped us continue the weeding, because we didn't want to stop listening. David arrived home while we were still thus engaged (OK, while *I* was still weeding, and the girls were sprawled around with juice boxes listening), and he got out some pistachios and sat down and listened to the end of the book with us.
I had been skeptical of C.S. Lewis, given all of the apologia nonsense he also produced. (According to David, in Mere Christianity he actually states that if you have any underlying motive for your good actions that benefit yourself, it doesn't count as good, only self-abnegation counts. Rand said that if you want to see the worst of Christian apologetics, just read Mere Christianity. I haven't been able to bring myself to think that it's worth my time, maybe someday.) But Lewis is a fabulous storyteller, it's all beautifully written, and what is in there are Biblical referents that the culturally literate adult can appreciate, rather than admonitions from a Christian ethical perspective. That is, the first few books are the retelling of Bible stories: The Magician's Nephew is a retelling of Genesis, and The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is a retelling of the crucifixion and the resurrection. I can't figure out what Prince Caspian is supposed to be retelling, unless it's Jesus's gathering of the 12 disciples, roughly. I wonder if he does The Flood in one of the other books. The girls are enjoying them enough that we'll continue, and I tell all who are interested (primarily Madison) about the parallel Bible stories.
Don't you think Ella looks better in my new sun hat than I do?
Now, that's a loaded question, isn't it?
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