Homeschool Update: Week of 7/5/21

Morning Read-Alouds

From Sing a Song of Seasons: A Nature Poem for Each Day of the Year selected by Fiona Waters,  illustrated by Frann Preston-Gannon (Nosy Crow, 2018), we read "She sells seashells on the seashore," "Inside a Shell" by John Foster, "Five Little Peas," and "The Back Step" by Lee Knowles. 

From A Book of Americans by Rosemary and Stephen Vincent Benet (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1933) we read poems entitled: "Christopher Columbus," "Indian," "Hernando de Soto," "Peregrine White and Virginia Dare," "Pocahontas," "Miles Standish," "Pilgrims & Puritans," "Peter Stuyvesant," "Southern Ships and Settlers," "Cotton Mather," "Captain Kidd," "French Pioneers," "Oliver DeLancey," and "George Washington." 

Our picture book author for the week was Charlotte Zolotow. Grandma read The Seashore Book to the girls before we left New York, and I read The Storm Book at home. We also watched some videos of Zolotow's daughter, Crescent Dragonwagon, reading aloud her mother's books, Someday and One Step Two.

We read several articles from National Geographic Explorer magazine Volume 19, Number 2 (Pathfinder edition): "The Galapagos Islands," "Islands Born of Fire," "Home Only Here," and "Darwin."

Music

We learned to sing "Home on the Range" from Go In and Out the Window: An Illustrated Songbook for Young People (The Metropolitian Museum of Art, 1987). 

We listened to Tritsch-Tratsch Polka by Johann Strauss Jr, Variations on "Ah vous dirai-je, maman" by Mozart, and  L'Arlésienne Suite: "Farandole" by Georges Bizet. 

Art

This week's painting was the Mona Lisa. We studied the card from the Louvre Art Deck: 100 Masterpieces from the World's Most Popular Museum by Anja Grebe and Erich Lessing and watched the SmartHistory video about the painting.

Catechism

M. and C. started learning the questions and answers in Lesson 7: "Jesus Opens Heaven For Us" in The New Saint Joseph First Communion Catechism.

Memory Work

E. recited the months of the year, days of the week, four directions, marks of the church, and continents. She continued to practice "Happiness" by A.A. Milne. 

C recited the 50 states, planets, Great Lakes, countries of Europe, the oceans, the books of the Bible, and our address and phone number. She continued practicing "maggie and milly and molly and may" by e.e. cummings. 

M recited the 50 states, the countries of Asia, the books of the Bible, the Kings and Queens of England, and our address and phone number. She continued to practice Oberon's speech from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare.  

History 

In the summer, we typically do a quick American history study, so we started that this week. From The Great Heritage by Katherine B. Shippen (Viking Press, 1947), we read "The Great Heritage," "Beavers, Otters, and Furres of Price," and "Men of the Sea." From Yankee Doodle's Cousins by Anne Malcolmson (Houghton Mifflin, 1941) we read "Stormalong." From American Adventures by Elizabeth Coatsworth (Macmillan, 1968), we read "First Adventure." 

Math

M. and C. both did some work in Singapore and Khan Academy every day. C. is still working on multi-digit addition and subtraction. M. is working on algebra basics and time word problems.

Reading and Writing 

M. continued reading Thee, Hannah to Gran, and she also continued reading the Borrowers series. C. started the second Far-Away Tree book. In the evenings, C. and I started reading aloud Hitty: Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field. At dinner, my husband read aloud from The Three Princes of Serendip.

Other Activities

On the way home from New York, we met up with a bookish friend my husband met on Goodreads who has been exchanging letters with M. We had lunch and the kids played on the playground at a park in her neighborhood. 

On Friday, we met up with friends at the Adventure Playground. 

ARC Review: Rosetown Summer by Cynthia Rylant (7/20/2021)

In Rosetown (2018), Flora Smallwood struggled to accept her parents' separation. Now, in Rosetown Summer, her parents have reconciled, but her beloved favorite bookstore, Wings and a Chair, which has been so central to her relationship with her best friend Yury is likely to close, and she can't imagine saying goodbye. As summer wears on, Flora slowly learns to come to terms with change, whether she likes it or not.

In so many of her books, Cynthia Rylant beautifully captures the small moments of everyday life. Rosetown Summer is a quiet, gentle read, but it so deeply expresses the emotions of kids as they navigate the first major disappointments in their lives. There isn't much physical action in this book, but the coziness of the setting and the very real-sounding dialogue made it a page-turner for me nonetheless. I was reminded very much of Rylant's Cobble Street Cousins series, which was a huge favorite with my kids a couple of summers ago, and which also celebrates the joys of small-town living and which also explores the normal lives of regular kids in beautifully written language.

Rosetown wasn't super popular and I'm not seeing a lot of buzz for Rosetown Summer, but for the sensitive and thoughtful young reader, these two books really hit a sweet spot. I would have read and re-read this book as a kid and it would not have mattered to me at all that nothing ever happens. Just escaping into this cozy world for a little while would have been - and still is - enough for me.

Read-at-Home Mom Report: June 2021 Wrap-Up

My Month in Books

I read 17 books in June - 4 read-alouds with my kids and 13 for my own enjoyment. Seven were audiobooks, 7 were print books, and 3 were ebooks. Linked book titles below will take you to my reviews. 

I kicked off the month by reading the ebook of The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris in one night while we were staying with my mother-in-law. I picked it up to start before bed and just zipped right through it. It's a thriller set in the publishing world, with themes related to race woven into the story. I picked it up because it was in the Modern Mrs. Darcy summer reading guide and I really enjoyed its unique style and odd, creepy mood. (4 stars)

Next, I read The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder for book club. I thought I remembered reading and loving this book in college, but after re-reading it, I'm convinced I have it confused with a different book. I could appreciate some of the writing as distinctive, but for a story with a lot of Catholics in it, it didn't have much of a Catholic message. The only good thing I can really say about it is that it was short. (3 stars)

The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave was another thriller I picked from the Modern Mrs. Darcy summer reading guide, and this one I listened to as an audiobook. The writing was great, and the relationship between the main character and her stepdaughter was the most interesting part of the story for me. The ending felt a little anti-climactic, but it was also believable as a way things might resolve themselves in such a situation in real life. (4 stars) 

My next audiobook was Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell, which I had never read before. I had a horrible experience years ago reading The Captive by O'Dell, and I was afraid this was going to be dark and depressing in the same way, but it wasn't at all. This is a beautifully written story with vivid descriptions of people and landscapes alike, and I really enjoyed it despite not typically loving survival stories. (4 stars)

Next I listened to Hooked on You by Kathleen Fuller on Hoopla, and that was  a great palate cleanser. It's just a gentle Christian romance set in a small town and it's the first in a series. I'm looking forward to book two in 2022. (3 stars)

With a group on Instagram I read The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart. The group loved it. I didn't especially. It was fine, but it had a lot of things I don't like in it - character names with not-so-hidden special meanings, coincidences, puzzles, etc. The writing also felt uneven. In some sections the story flew by. In others, it dragged on endlessly. I also have no interest in the Disney+ adaptation of the book, so that aspect of the discussion was kind of lost on me as well. I'm not sorry I read it, but it was just okay. (3 stars)

I did love The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright, which I read aloud to my kids. It presents such a charmed and charming view of childhood, and I loved it even more than The Saturdays. (5 stars) 

Fox's Earth by Anne Rivers Siddons is a Southern gothic family saga spanning several generations. I didn't love it as much as this author's Colony, which I listened to last summer,  but Sally Darling did a fantastic job as the narrator and though the characters were mostly not likable I was riveted by their story. I also loved Rip, the black woman who works for the family at the center of the book who is the only truly good character in the entire book. (4 stars)

I read The Overloaded Ark by Gerald Durrell to satisfy a challenge prompt of a book set in Africa. I'm not an animal person, so a lot of the details about the animals were not that interesting to me, but I liked the stories about humans interacting with animals and with the jungle climate. Durrell is a good writer even if the book felt slow in some places. (3 stars)

My three-year-old and I read Winnie-the-Pooh together, and it was so much fun seeing her meet these characters for the first time. (We don't really do Disney, so she had no prior knowledge.) I think some of the writing style was lost on her at this age, but she loved Piglet, Owl, and Roo, and that made it enjoyable enough for a first read-through. (5 stars)

With my oldest I read aloud Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. It's pretty perfect. I got choked up a little at the end, but I made it through without shedding tears. She loved it and can't wait to read it again. (5 stars)

Another great audiobook pick was Haven Point by Virginia Hume, which is another family saga. This one jumped back and forth in time as it told the stories of three generations of women: one living in 1944, one in 1970, and one in 2008. Normally, alcoholism and WWII would be topics I would avoid in books but this one made both interesting and relatable enough that I was not turned off. (4 stars)

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides was kind of a let-down. I felt like there was a lot of hype surrounding it, and the premise sounded great, but the execution didn't quite work. The audiobook narration was top-notch, however. (3 stars)

Rosetown Summer by Cynthia Rylant was an ARC; the book comes out later in July. It's a sequel to Rosetown, and I might be the only one who loves it, but I loved it. I'm planning a review very soon. (5 stars)

Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink was another read-aloud, this time with my 5-year-old who loves babies. She had heard it before when I read it to her older sister, but she had forgotten the story so it was all new to her again. She really enjoyed it. (5 stars) 

My last audiobook of the month was Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews It was well-written, it kept me guessing, and it totally surprised me. It's a debut novel, and I'm hoping for more in the future!  (4 stars)

Finally, I finished the month with the ebook of The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. I have always liked the way John Green writes even when I haven't liked what he has to say. That was the case with this book. Written during the pandemic, this book is just utterly depressing and devoid of hope. Green sounds like he expects the world to end any day and it was hard to find more than a tiny flicker of hope anywhere in his essays. I enjoyed the line-by-line writing, but as a whole, it was just too gloomy. (3 stars)

DNF

There were a couple of books I abandoned again this month: The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer by Liza Rodman (it was weirdly anti-Catholic) and The Road Trip by Beth O'Leary (I was bored and I didn't like the audiobook narration). 

As for the rest of the family's reading...

My husband read aloud The Little Lame Prince to the family each night after dinner. In the car, we finished Anne of Green Gables. 

With my mom, I'm doing a summer reading project with my kids where we pick an author/illustrator/theme each week. I read books during the week, and then my mom reads one over Skype on Saturday. In June, we focused on Roger Duvoisin, Paul Galdone, and Virginia Lee Burton. 

M. (7 years, 7 months) has been reading the second book in the Borrowers series. She has also been reading Thee, Hannah by Marguerite deAngeli aloud to my mother-in-law on Skype.  

C. (5 years, 9 months) finished Little House on the Prairie, and she also read Three Boys and a Lighthouse by Nan Hayden Agle and  Ellen Wilson.

After E. (3 years, 8 months) and I finished Winnie-the-Pooh she got interested in Raggedy Anne and listened to some of the stories on audiobook. She also twice asked for the audiobook of The Saturdays at naptime. With her, I've also been reading aloud National Geographic's Little Kids First Big Book of Reptiles and Amphibians. She has also begun sounding out words and she was able to read Rag on her own. 

R. and A. (15 months) get very little scheduled reading time. They are often present for the older kids' read-alouds, and they do love to look at books but we need to work on carving out a time for them to hear more stories.

Up Next For Me 

In July, I plan to pick up where I left off with Jan Karon's Mitford series and listen to Light From Heaven. I've also started reading Girls Like Us by Cristina Alger. I'm supposed to be reading Angle of Repose with a friend as well, but we both keep pushing it off in favor of other books. I'm also hoping to read one of the Marcia Willett books my aunt sent me and to read a couple of other paperbacks from my TBR pile. 

Linking Up

• Monthly Wrap-Up Round-Up at Feed Your Fiction Addiction
• It's Monday! What Are You Reading? at The Book Date
• An Open Book at CatholicMom.com

Homeschool Update: Week of 6/28/21

Morning Read-Alouds

From Sing a Song of Seasons: A Nature Poem for Each Day of the Year selected by Fiona Waters,  illustrated by Frann Preston-Gannon (Nosy Crow, 2018), we read "Insect" by Tony Mitton, "All Day Long" by Kanoko Okamoto, translated by Kenneth Rexroth and Ikuko Atsumi, and "A Hot Day" by A.S.J. Tessimond. 

This week, our picture book theme was America. We read A More Perfect Union: The Story of Our Constitution by Betsy and Giulio Maestro and America the Beautiful published by Cottage Door Press, and Grandma read An American ABC by Maud and Miska Petersham during our visit to her house on the weekend.  

Music 

We learned to sing "America" from Go In and Out the Window: An Illustrated Songbook for Young People (The Metropolitian Museum of Art, 1987).  We listened to Appalachian Spring: "Variations on a Shaker Tune" by Aaron Copland, A Midsummer Night's Dream: "Scherzo" by Felix Mendelssohn, Marche Militaire by Franz Schubert, and Piano Sonata No. 11 in A: "Turkish Rondo" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. 

M. and C. practiced piano and recorder every day except Friday, Saturday, and Sunday when we were away. We had a sing-along on Sunday with Grandma and Aunt B.

Art

 We studied Angel with an Olive Branch by Hans Memling from the Louvre Art Deck: 100 Masterpieces from the World's Most Popular Museum by Anja Grebe and Erich Lessing. 

The girls made drawings for all of our New York relatives as well as birthday cards for Aunt B. 

Catechism 

We continued working on Lesson 6, "The Son of God Becomes Man" in The New Saint Joseph First Communion Catechism.

Memory Work

E. recited the months of the year, days of the week, four directions, marks of the church, and continents. She continued to practice "Happiness" by A.A. Milne. 

C recited the 50 states, planets, Great Lakes, countries of Europe, the oceans, the books of the Bible, and our address and phone number. She continued practicing "maggie and milly and molly and may" by e.e. cummings. 

M recited the 50 states, the countries of Asia, the books of the Bible, the Kings and Queens of England, and our address and phone number. She continued to practice Oberon's speech from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare.  

History

As review, M. read the sections of A Little History of the World  that corresponded to the time periods she learned about this past year.  C. had the week off from history. 

Math

M. and C. did Khan Academy. C. did some work with subtraction without renaming in Singapore.

Reading and Writing

We finished all of our outstanding books before we left for New York: Eleven Kids, One Summer, A Necklace of Raindrops, Baby Island, and Anne of Green Gables. C. and I also read Burt Dow, Deep-Water Man by Robert McCloskey, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig, and Phoebe's Revolt by Natalie Babbitt. 

Physical Education

In New York on the weekend, the girls learned to play wiffle ball. They also ran around outside at my grandmother's house. 

Homeschool Update: Week of 6/21/21

Morning Read-Alouds 

From Sing a Song of Seasons: A Nature Poem for Each Day of the Year selected by Fiona Waters,  illustrated by Frann Preston-Gannon (Nosy Crow, 2018), we read: "Puddle" by Nick Toczek, "The Sun Has Long Been Set" by William Wordsworth, "The Pond" by Amy Lowell, "One Two Three Four Five" by Anonymous, and "Where Go the Boats" by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Our illustrator this week was Virginia Lee Burton. We read Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, Choo Choo, The Little House, and The Emperor's New Clothes as well as Big Machines, a picture book biography of Burton by Sherri Duskey Rinker and John Rocco. Grandma read Maybelle the Cable Car. 

We also read the articles from National Geographic Explorer Volume 20, Number 1 (Pathfinder Edition): "Rethinking Spinosaurus" by National Geographic Staff, "The Transformer" by Brenna Maloney, and "Turning Trash into Treasure" by Glen Phelan. 

Music

We listened to Rodeo: "Hoe Down" by Aaron Copland, "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from the Peer Gynt Suite by Edvard Grieg, Orpheus in the Underworld: "Can-Can" by Jacques Offenbach, and the William Tell Overture by Gioachino Rossini. 

 We learned to sing "The Fly and the Bumblebee" from More Songs to Grow On by Beatrice Landeck (Edward B. Marks Music Corporation, 1954). 

M. and C. practiced piano and recorder daily.

Art 

This week's painting was The Two Sisters by Theodore Chasseriau, found in from The Louvre Art Deck: 100 Masterpieces from the World's Most Popular Museum by Anja Grebe and Erich Lessing. 

Catechism

We continued working on Lesson 6, "The Son of God Becomes Man" in The New Saint Joseph First Communion Catechism. We read about Saints  Aloysius Gonzaga, Thomas More,  and John the Baptist from Picture Book of Saints by Lawrence G. Lovasik (Catholic Book Publishing, 1979).

Memory Work

E. recited the months of the year, days of the week, four directions, marks of the church, and continents. She continued to practice "Happiness" by A.A. Milne. 

C recited the 50 states, planets, Great Lakes, countries of Europe, the oceans, the books of the Bible, and our address and phone number. She continued practicing "maggie and milly and molly and may" by e.e. cummings. 

M recited the 50 states, the countries of Asia, the books of the Bible, the Kings and Queens of England, and our address and phone number. She continued to practice Oberon's speech from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare.  

History 

In Builders of Old World, M. read:  "The Father of Modern Astronomy," "Magic Glasses," and "The Struggle to Advance Knowledge." This marks the end of her history for curriculum for second grade. 

C. and I finished reading Norse Gods and Giants. 

Math

In Singapore, M. worked on converting time between hours, minutes, and seconds, and years and months. She started doing some algebra basics in Khan Academy. 

C. worked on addition and subtraction without renaming in Singapore and continued working in Khan Academy. 

Reading and Writing

I started reading aloud Eleven Kids, One Summer by Ann M. Martin at lunch and my husband continued reading A Necklace of Raindrops at dinner. We also continued listening to Anne of Green Gables in the car. M. read Jasmine Green Rescues: A Lamb Called Lucky on the Kindle Fire. With C., I continued reading aloud Baby Island. E. listened to the audiobooks of Raggedy Anne and Andy stories. 

Physical Education

M. and C. went to the splash park with friends on Wednesday. All three girls played on the playground and in the field at the church potluck on Thursday, and they played with friends at the Adventure Playground again on Friday morning. 

Book Review: Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins (2005)

In the 1970s, Debbie, Patty, Hector, Lenny, and Phil are young teens looking ahead to the future. They begin the summer all together, listening to a radio show in a truck belonging to Lenny's father, but soon each is on his or her own path. At the end of the summer, when they all come together again, each one has matured just a bit, moving one step closer to adulthood.

There is nothing I loved more as a kid than books about everyday life. While some readers might complain that the events of this coming-of-age Newbery winner are too mundane, I am utterly content with how perfectly ordinary everything is. I could relate to so many of the thoughts and emotions of the characters, and I appreciated that the story was focused on interior lives rather than external action. I know the theory is that kids don't read books where nothing happens, but I absolutely did, and I know there must be others like me. 

Criss Cross is the perfect summer read for an introspective kid. It has lovely writing, believable characterizations, and though it's set on the '70s, it isn't by any means inaccessible to contemporary readers. It's also the companion a lesser-known but equally well-written novel, All Alone in the Universe. 

2021 Reading Plans: Mid-Year Check-In

This year is half over, and it's time to check in once more on how my reading plans from January have panned out so far. There have been some definite changes in priorities in my reading life since the end of the first quarter of 2021, so this is the perfect time to regroup and change my trajectory if needed.

As of the end of June, in 2021 I have read 95 books: 60 written for an adult audience and 35 children's books. I read the most books in January and June (17), the least in February (13), an equal number (16) in March, April, and May. 

Here's a look at my goals: 

There are two I don't really need to discuss. Goal #1, to stop counting picture books and board books, has been a complete success because I just don't count them anymore. I had considered starting to put them on Goodreads again without including read dates, but I haven't, and it's honestly been fine. Goal #10, to write 1200 words per week, proved not to be feasible almost immediately and is no longer in the plans. 

That leaves 8 goals I am still theoretically working on. 

Goal #2 is to read exactly 200 books, and no more. I have consistently been behind my goal for months now, but not by a lot. Often I'll get to the point where I'm 7 or 8 books behind and then I'll finish a bunch of read-alouds and that will close the gap to 4 or 5 books instead. There is a part of me that really wants to lower the number from 200 to 185, but just as I don't want to be reading to meet a certain number, I also don't want to have to stop reading when I want to in order to avoid surpassing the number. So I've decided to stick with my original goal for another quarter. 

Goal #3 is to read 50 e-books. As of the end of June, I've read 24. That's pretty close to half of the goal amount. I have at least two underway at the moment, too, so I'll soon get past the halfway point. I think I can definitely meet this goal by the end of 2021.

Goal #4 is to cut back on audiobooks. In January, my reasoning for including this goal was that if I wasn't listening to audiobooks, I would have time to read more ebooks and physical books and more time to listen to other things. But it turns out that I don't listen to audiobooks at times when I could be reading physical books, and it also turns out that I have had no problem listening to podcasts when I've felt like it. Giving up audiobooks for Lent was a good sacrifice and I may do it again, but I don't have the need I thought I did to cut back on them all year long. So for the second half of the year, this goal is off the list.

Goal #5 is keep up with Goodreads reviews. I have been doing this, but mostly at the end of the month and not in real time as I finish reading. I do usually get them marked as read right away, but typing out my thoughts doesn't happen until days or weeks later. I wish the app was more reliable. I feel like I would type a lot more of my reviews on my phone if the app didn't do weird glitchy things to me all the time. 

Goal #6 is to write down more quotes from books. I like doing this in theory. I definitely liked doing it as a teen. But it's just not the priority in my reading life right now, and that's not likely to change. In the last few months, as my kids have been busier, I've had to start looking at the amount of time I actually have to devote to bookish things, and then really consider how I want to spend that time. Writing down quotes was fine to do during a pandemic winter when we couldn't go anywhere, but summer playdates are back, and I just don't have time now.

Goal #7 is to host a read-a-thon. I used to want to do this, but I don't think I do anymore. My natural inclination in the past has always been to join a community and then immediately want to become a leader within it. But #bookstagram has not wanted any of my reading challenges, and I just can't imagine they will want a read-a-thon hosted by me either. I may do a few little read-a-thons on my own, but I think hosting a public one is off the table now. 

Goal #8 is read the Bible in a year. I'm still going strong with the Bible in a Year podcast. I'm caught up, and I look forward to it every day.

Goal #9 is to fill in my Literary Listopia journal. In April, I said that sounded like a good summer project, but summer is so much busier than I anticipated! I'm considering taking it to the beach with me on the off-chance there is downtime, but otherwise it might turn out to be a fall project.

And then there are my challenges. I only committed to two this year: the Unread Shelf Project and Modern Mrs. Darcy's design your own challenge. 

The prompts for the Unread Shelf project haven't really worked for me the last couple of months, and it seems like the host of the project isn't really involved anymore, except on her membership site, so my motivation to participate is dwindling. I'm still keeping track of the books I read from own shelves, but for no real purpose. 

I have almost completed all the books I planned to read for my Modern Mrs. Darcy challenge. I chose 12 categories and planned to read 3 books for each. I only have 4 of 36 left to read! One of those is my current audiobook, The Summer Guests by Mary Alice Monroe, which will be my third one narrated by Cassandra Campbell. I also need to read one more book about books, one more book on writing, and one more re-read. If I finish those soon, I may add a few more categories to concentrate on during the rest of the year. 

So that sums up where things stand as I hit the thick of summer reading and look ahead to the end of the year. I'll be back after the holiday weekend with my June reading wrap-up!