Seven Quick Takes on My Favorite Dinosaur, Field Trips on Mondays, and an Audio Download

:: 1 ::

We started off the week with a field trip! It was Homeschool Day at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History, and this means I, along with five children {yes, we had a tagalong}, got free admission! And my mom let me borrow her {more reliable ahem} car. It was so great. If you ever get a chance to go, the dinosaurs alone are worth it.

 

:: 2 ::

The thing with starting off a week with a field trip is that the rest of the week is all downhill. This is why I usually have Enrichment Friday rather than Enrichment Monday. It’s just better. My son was trying to describe to me how he felt on Tuesday and so I ended up teaching him the word lethargic. See? I was pushing through it. 😉

 

:: 3 ::

The stegosaurus has always been my favorite dinosaur. I cannot tell you how happy I was to meet this guy! He does not, by the way, have little hands. There was a T-rex next to him.

 

:: 4 ::

This week’s links collection:

• Ultraviolet light reveals how ancient Greek statues really looked from io9
  • I cannot tell you how disappointed I am in the Greeks. In my brain, they went from Awesome to Tacky. Seriously.
• Personality Matters: Understanding MBTI Typing by Mystie Winckler
  • I’ve been waiting forever for Mystie to write this series.
• This New Breakthough Alzheimer’s Treatment Fully Restores Memory Function from Collective Evolution
  • Hope.
• WHY LIBERAL ARTS IS SUPER DUMB from The Mugdown
  • Funny post of the week.

 

:: 5 ::

If you’re not really a video person {like me!}, the audio file is now also available for the Principles Are Practical discussion that I had with Mystie. It’s still free to all of you who subscribe, and if you don’t subscribe, what are you waiting for? Use the form below:

 

:: 6 ::

Last weekend, we went to the theaters and saw Insurgent. I tend to like dystopian action flicks, so I was happy. I was also happy that we still had gift cards leftover from Christmas to cover the cost. Even. Better.

Since Friday is Movie Night for Si and me, I might as well mention that tonight’s selection is The Giver. Never seen it before, but I’ll probably like it, seeing as it fits with our theme of Fake Ideal Worlds.

We’ve also scheduled our next 11Up Club movie night. We’ll be watching Night at the Museum. We thought it was particularly appropriate in light of this week’s field trip!

 

:: 7 ::

Answering your questions:

• Question: Why not Greek instead of Latin if your goal is reading the Bible?
  • Answer: It’s hard to give a short answer to that question, which tends to be based upon the fact that the New Testament was mostly written in Greek. First, I suppose I ought to say that we haven’t ruled out Greek for some of our children, but we would consider this an endeavor for high school rather than junior high. Another consideration is that Latin is something I take to easily, and since I’m the teacher and all, that does actually matter. But one thing I think is important to think about is that Latin was the language of the church for at least a thousand years. The Vulgate was translated in the late 300s because that was the common language of the church. The truth is that we don’t just want to read the Bible. When our pastor stands up in front of our church and says that a really important book we need to read is Athanasius’ On the Incarnation, we’d like to read it in the original. {In an ideal world, at least.}
• Question: How does narration mature over time?
  • Answer: How I wish we had a book just on narration to refer to for questions like these! The short answer is that I don’t know for sure because my oldest is only in 7th grade. With that said, I have written a number of times on blending the progymnasmata with narration and using that to help them grow up a bit. You can check out those posts here.