Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

Slowly I climbed out of bed. ScienceKid has come down with a cold and my body is achey as if all my limbs are fighting off some illness. After a hot shower I retrieve Brutus from SK and take him outside. Brutus has slept through the night for three nights in a row. Outside Brutus seems obibilious to the snow, does his business and comes inside for his breakfast. I check emails, put bacon into the oven and urge the boys to get up. Every morning it is the same—they get out of bed and move down to the sofas for another bit of shut-eye. MK tried to convince me that he was fast reading his Greek Heros and Mythology book but I actually caught him fast asleep.

8am the boys are finally at the island chowing down some bacon, Abington Crumb Cake and chocolate milk. Noticing that Brutus was fast asleep I urged them to move onto school work.

MK quickly threw Spelling Power over to me and asked for his words. Typically MK misses few of the words in the list, and after practicing them one or two days knows them. This time he has had great difficulty with these words and has worked on learning them for over a week—- usually, accidentally, slowly, ….. — but today he finally gets most of the words correct. He moved on to do a page of handwriting practice, and then opens his math book. Two hours later I told him to move onto his grammar, Latin and Classical Composition.

SK started the morning with his Great Books studies. He read from his Euripedes Ten Plays book for awhile before writing a short summary of his reading for the day. Next he moved to Latin, working through 3 exercises. He finds he can read Latin quickly but he has not mastered the ability to translate from English to Latin with the correct endings. I know he’ll get there but he is frustrated by it. After Latin he turned to listening to a few lectures from the Teaching Company’s Western Civilization DVD. By late morning he moved onto working through a section of Algebra 2. SK understands the material however he is finding that his small errors result in incorrect answers.

In the middle of school there are runs outside with Brutus, playtimes with Brutus, and more mad dashes outside with Brutus. In the afternoon MK works through Latin and rewrites his Classical Composition. SK chose to spend more time on Algebra before moving on to study his Science Olympiad Food Science event.

While the boys finished up their afternoon work I walked into the school room for the first time in 2 weeks with my eyes open. The room is a mess with books, papers, science-stuff, and telescope gear everywhere. The feeling of being overwhelmed with a disorganzed house hit me at that moment so I moved over to the kitchen; one room I can usually straighten up rather quickly. Breath, breath, let the stress go, was what I was telling myself. I unloaded the dishwasher and discovered that another cabinet shelf had crashed onto the lower shelf. Yep, such quality cabinets these are not. The shelf, a corner cabinet so it has loads of extra room was only holding 12 small salad dishes and 12 little pie plates on the one shelf.   That’s it.   DH had told me not to put too much on any one shelf cause these are the cheapest cabinets either of us have every encountered, even cheaper than cheap apartment cabinets—-yep, cheap, reallly cheap….. Breath, breath, let the stress go, was what I was telling myself. So I thought I would grab some veges out of the freezer for dinner. No such luck—-the freezer top is covered with DH’s tools—-always the case, always….. so I have resigned from any cooking……

Breath, breath, let the stress go,……