November is glorious in Oklahoma. This year the colors have been brilliant, the sky has been a beautiful azure blue, and temperatures have been pretty mild. It is December 1. We haven’t turned on the heat yet, but the air conditioner is definitely off.
This was a particularly busy month. Every day on my calendar had more than one thing outside the house scheduled. It was a month of finishing-things-up. Josiah and Gideon finished up their term in Foundations and Essentials. Micah took blue books for Challenge 2, and I gave exams for Challenge 3 and wrote progress reports. There were meetings, field trips, and dentist appointments.
Rejoice:I have still been staying up late with Jon and Micah, so I am not getting up early enough for a long and quiet morning study period alone with my coffee. I did write a gratitude-based series on Instagram in November, and I was consistent with Bible study but not personal reading.
Relate: Our CC community is now on recess until January. We miss seeing our friends consistently, but we were all very much ready for a break from the pace of life when classes are in session. Jon and Micah and I continued to work companionably at the big table in the evening. Occasionally, one of us tutors him in algebra or Latin or edits work for him. Most of the time, we are all working on our own projects. We have enjoyed hanging out with him as fellow autodidacts.
Remember: We had three or four Council of Oaks meetings a week and did memory work each time. We are on track with Foundations memory work, but the younger boys fell behind with the Essentials memory work because they didn’t want to take time to recite a chart for an adult in class. We did a few more Spanish and German lessons and learned our hymns and poetry. It feels like we are behind in Scripture memory work, but in reality, I had delusions of grandeur when I made the Memory Work Packs for each month. I’ll fix that.
Reason: Math, Algebra 2, and Calculus are all on track. Logic and Latin are on track. English grammar is too. Check. Check. Check.
Read: Josiah and Gideon and I finally finished Abigail Adams: Witness to a Revolution by Natalie Bober. We read it a little bit a day over fifteen weeks, and it was enjoyable. Abigail was quite a behind-the-scenes hero of the American Revolution, and her story was engaging.
Record: I wrote mostly on Instagram, and I met the monthly challenge on 750words.com. The boys all wrote essays for school, and Micah wrote his blue book exams. I did a lot of essay reading and coaching. I have a couple of ideas for article series for this blog, but I can’t decide where to start.
Books Finished in November:
By Micah: Jane Eyre, plus a lot of other school reading and internet research
By Josiah: Nathan Hale’s Raid of No Return and Natalie Bober’s Abigail Adams: Witness to a Revolution., Of Courage Undaunted by James Daughtery, And a pile of re-reading. He is still finishing up The Silver Chair and Johnny Tremain.
By Gideon: Nathan Hale’s Raid of No Return and Natalie Bober’s Abigail Adams: Witness to a Revolution. Of Courage Undaunted by James Daughtery, And a pile of re-reading. He is still finishing up The Last Battle and Johnny Tremain.
By Me: a whole stack of cookbooks (none of which I would particularly recommend), a book about dot journaling, (from which I learned nothing new), and I started eight books and finished none of them. For recipes and bullet journaling ideas, Pinterest is still my go-to.
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