One of the great things about homeschooling for me is that it's allowed me to develop a strong relationship with my teenage daughters - and a number of her friends.
I had a great day today in co-op with these great kids. In Latin we had a few minutes left over after I had given them their next assignment and I asked if there were any questions. I had given the girls kind of an informal quiz on the Roman and Greek Gods at the beginning of class. So one of the girls (who felt like she had a long ways to go on this topic) asked how she could learn more about the gods. Gilbertgirl (our resident mythology expert - she seriously knows, or at least remembers, a great deal more than I do) and I threw her a couple of suggestions (including re-reading D'Aulaire's Greek Myths and this bargain from Blackstone Audiobooks). But then we ended up getting into this fascinating discussion about the Greeks and mythology and why we study them; about learning how to cut past emotionalism in a discussion with someone and find some common experience to build an "argument" on. We talked about the Pope's Regensberg speech and the importance of Greek thought. We talked about Chesterton's emphasis on the value of Roman culture and mythology (which we'll be reading some of in class later this year from The Everlasting Man). These teens have some amazing insights. Our class got out 15 minutes late, but no one seemed to mind.
This is great stuff!!!
And John is back home safe once again. Life is good.
BTW, I have so much more I've been meaning to blog on the last few days - a number of things I've been reading (I'm making a LOT more headway in the Everlasting Man - I'm on the chapter after "The God in the Cave" now, but several other interesting tidbits too), a little something about Math and some other stuff (maybe I'll get to them later this weekend).
I also meant to write up something earlier today about the great feast of the archangels, but you can read some wonderful posts here, here, here and here. It's my brother Tim's birthday and the feast day of my brother Mike and myself (my middle name is Michelle) - I won't even go into the nieces and nephews .
On a sadder note, please pray for little Naomi Rose who passed away today.
5 comments:
If you are in the chapter after "The God in the Cave" in GKC's The Everlasting Man, you have over two chapters to go until you get to "The Escape From Paganism" - in which you will find the completion of GKC's argument regarding paganism and mythology. It is clearly the foundation-stone on which Tolkien bases his discussion on "Fairy-Tales". As someone who reads and delights in stories, it is a most important piece of the Gospel to see how it fits into the idea of reading, and story, and writing... Here is just an excerpt to hint at the delights to come:
We could not deduce whether or no Achilles would give back the body of Hector from a Pythagorean theory of number or recurrence; and we could not infer for ourselves in what way the world would get back the body of Christ, merely from being told that all things go round and round upon the wheel of Buddha. A man might perhaps work out a proposition of Euclid without having heard of Euclid; but he would not work out the precise legend of Eurydice without having heard of Eurydice. At any rate he would not be certain how the story would end and whether Orpheus was ultimately defeated. Still less could he guess the end of our story; or the legend of our Orpheus rising, not defeated, from the dead.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:379-80]
(Speaking of Euclid: there are over 100 ways of proving the Pythagorean Theorem, which is Proposition 47 in Euclid's Elements Book I!)
Excellent! I can't wait to get there.
I didn't know there were so many ways of proving the Pythagorean Theorem. By the way, we studied most of Euclid's Elements for Math Freshman year at TAC and I LOVED it.
Those discussions were SOOOO cool!!!!!!!!! I hope we have more of them in future!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm sure we will! Looking forward to discussing The Phantom Tollbooth officially next week - everyone seems to have enjoyed it so far.
How terribly sad that the baby passed away. I just can't imagine.
I'm glad to hear John's back (once again!). It's always wonderful to have them home safe & sound. :-)
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