French Update

We've slowed down in working through Barbier from the plans I posted last time, but lots of learning is going on.

Little girls: We're parsing and construing our way through their homework assignments, one sentence at a time. This is slow going, but I really think it's going to give them the best foundation for continued learning. We work on only about five sentences each day, so each exercise takes about four days, but this gives us time to continue with French Phonics, Madeleine, and their paradigms.

Older girls: We've slowed down here, too, but as we work through each sentence, the girls' understanding is growing by leaps and bounds.

I type up each homework sentence in Pages on my iPad (one at a time, so I don't have to work ahead). Then we go through and discuss each word, its part of speech, its job in the sentence, the various elements of each word (person, number, tense, mood, and voice for verbs; person, number, and gender for nouns; number and gender for adjectives and articles). We also color-code each word as to its job in the sentence and adjectives match the color of the noun they modify, but in italics.

We haven't really done any English grammar in quite awhile, but they're learning so much that I think we'll be okay. Even though we're not really discussing English grammar as a separate discipline, we do discuss it lots in their composition assignments.

An additional help: I let the girls change the colors of the words in the iPad - they think that's pretty cool! The touch screen is still pretty new for them.

SDG!

French - Olders

We're reading Les Oeufs Verts au Jambon (Green Eggs and Ham). This was a great book to start with because of the sheer amount of repetition. I went through the book and listed out the vocabulary and grammar my students would need to know to puzzle out and understand each section. I pulled paradigms from the verbs in the book and homework assignments were transformations of sentences in the book or the composing of original sentences and questions using the grammar, vocabulary, and paradigms we'd already covered. We're almost finished. So far, here's the grammar we've covered:

basic -er verb conjugation and subject pronouns

negation with ne … pas (Je n'aime pas ce Sam-c'est moi!)

masculine and feminine nouns and articles

singular and plural nouns nouns and articles

making questions with est-ce que …

making questions by inversion

negative questions and subject pronoun placement (N'aimes-tu pas les oeufs verts au jambon?)

elision and liaison

using an infinitive with another noun (J'aime manger les oeufs.)

introduced direct object pronouns (les, en, me) and their placement

future tense

faux future

introduced passé composé

All this will continue to be reviewed as we come across it in our next book: Histoire de Babar.

Our paradigms, so far, include

aimer

vouloir

avoir

aller

être

The transformations I mentioned above were my friend's idea - I'd take a sentence from the book and have the girls re-write it according to a pattern. For example:

Je n'aime pas les oeufs verts au jambon.

The assignment would include:

make positive

change the subject to second person, singular

use est-ce que to make a question

make question with inversion

make the subject plural

make the subject third person, singular or plural

change to false future

change to future

change to passé composé

Sometimes we'd do it as a chain, after one change, the new sentence would become the basis for the next change. Sometimes we'd change the original sentence over and over. This is how the above assignment might look upon completion:

Je n'aime pas les oeufs verts au jambon.

positive: J'aime les oeufs verts au jambon.

2nd person: Tu aimes les oeufs verts au jambon.

question: Est-ce que tu aimes les oeufs verts au jambon?

inversion: Aimes-tu les oeufs verts au jambon?

plural subject: Aimez-vous les oeufs verts au jambon?

3rd person, s: Aime-t-il les oeufs verts au jambon?

false future: Va-t-il aimer les oeufs verts au jambon?

future: Aimera-t-elle les oeufs verts au jambon?

passé composé: A-t-il aimé les oeufs verts au jambon?

I'm stunned at how much we've covered in only six weeks and am looking forward to Babar. Since it was originally written in French, I think we'll all learn a lot! And we're having fun, which means we're actually doing it!

SDG!

Pride & Prejudice Ball

A waltz

Nathan, Lynne, Drew, and Judith

The gentlemen lined up for the 'Shoe Dance'

Nathan waltzing with Miss Trudy.

The ladies lined up, sans shoes

More photos!

Gileskirk, week 1 (29 Sept-3 Oct.)

Monday
Gileskirk: Opportunity #4; listen to lecture 11: 'French Revolution'; read Pride & Prejudice
Am. Gov't: lesson 20

Tuesday
Gileskirk: Opportunity #5; prepare for lecture 12: read Empire: pp. 93-110; read Pride & Prejudice
Am. Gov't: unit 5 intro, lesson 21

Wednesday
Gileskirk: prepare for lecture 12; Opportunity #6; read Pride & Prejudice
Am. Gov't: lesson 22

Thursday
Gileskirk: listen to lecture 12: 'Conspiracy and Terror'; read Pride & Prejudice
Am. Gov't: lesson 23

Friday
Gileskirk: prepare for lecture 13: read Empire: pp. 110-136; read Pride & Prejudice
Am. Gov't: lesson 24

Biology, week 1 (Sept. 29-Oct. 3)

Mon: Quiz 7; read through labs 6 & 7 to prepare for tomorrow.

Tues: labs w/Mrs. Lambros: labs 6 & 7, covering chapters 4-5

Wed: read pp. 116-120

Thurs: read pp. 121-124

Fri: read pp. 125-129

English, week 1 (Sept. 29-Oct. 3)

Mon:
composition: 2.2 Asyndeton, pp. 12-14; ex. 2.2.1, 2.2.2
grammar: read ch. 5: Complete & Simple Subject & Predicate
spelling: Level C, lesson 1, Day 1

Tues:
composition: 2.3 Polysyndeton, pp. 14-15; ex. 2.3.1, 2.3.2
grammar: ch. 5, ex. I
spelling: Level C, lesson 1, Day 2

Wed:
composition: 2.4 Expletive, pp. 15-18; ex. 2.4.1, 2.4.2
grammar: ch. 5, ex. II
spelling: Level C, lesson 1, Day 3

Thurs:
composition: Style Check 2
grammar: ch. 6: The Copula 'Is'
spelling: Level C, lesson 1, Day 4

Fri:
composition: Ch. 2 Review questions, pg. 19
grammar: ch. 6, ex. I
spelling: Level C, lesson 1, Day 5: Dictation

Literature: Biggles

{edit} This list covers the whole year, not just the next six weeks!

In addition to our Gileskirk discussion titles:

Silas Marner, by George Eliot
Pride & Prejudice, by Jane Austen
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
The Book of the Dun Cow, by Walter Wangerin
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexandre Solzhenitzen

I'm adding:
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë (finished in August)
The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins
The Complete Father Brown Mysteries, by G.K. Chesterton
The Thirty-Nine Steps, by John Buchan

I'm pre-reading the following to evaluate their appropriateness:
Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, translated and abridged by Walter Starkie (as recommended in Honey for a Woman's Heart)
Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackery
Far from the Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy

Any other suggestions?