Weekly Review - the start of a new year

This was Moozle's first week of Ambleside Online Year 6 and a good week it was. A highlight for her, especially after visiting Hobbiton in New Zealand earlier this year, was the first chapter of The Hobbit, which I'm reading aloud to her. This is the first time I've actually read the book - I know, one of the few persons on the planet - everyone else in the family has read the book and seen the movie. I decided to wait and enjoy it this year with my daughter knowing it was coming up in Year 6 Literature.

Benj is halfway through his Liberal Arts Certificate (two days per week) and continues to fit in some of the Ambleside Online Year 11 & 12 selections along with piano practice, work one afternoon a week and a piano student once a week.

We've started a new composer, Gabriel Faure and a new artist, James Abbott McNeill Whistler.
I've made a YouTube playlist for Faure with the selections we'll be listening to this term. Lovely music!

Shakespeare


King Lear is our play this term, using the Naxos version below, that so far sounds very good. We've used a few Naxos Shakespeare productions and have been very pleased with them.

Plutarch


Marcus Porcius Cato (234 BC-149 BC) - Marcus Cato the Censor, also known by a few other names,
using Anne White's Guide. We've done two lives without the complete guides (Demetrius & Themistocles) as I started them and didn't realise until we were halfway through that they were still unfinished. I made sure to check this time!

Poetry

This term Moozle is savouring the poetry of A.B. (Banjo) Paterson, who penned Waltzing Matilda and is one of Australia's best known & most loved poets. Benj's is doing poetry as part of his course.

Hymn Study


I'll be adding to this later but here is what we have so far.

Folksongs

This is a playlist of Australian folksongs I'm considering. I haven't listened to them all yet so not sure how suitable they will be for an 11 year old. Here are some of the Scottish folksongs we listen to - part of my passing on a cultural inheritance to my offspring.

Reading 


Benj - finished Uncle Tungsten and The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer. He's started reading Don Quixote. I bought the cheapest version I could find as it's not high on the list of my 'most wanted.'  (Apologies to my friend, Silvia!) I asked Benj what he thought of it and he said, "It's pretty stupid, but it's meant to be. It's a satire..." Anyhow, he's studying it this semester so it will be interesting to see what he has to say later on.

Moozle - the book devourer extraordinaire, has been on a G.A. Henty splurge, yet again. She read a couple of the books he wrote about Afghanistan while she was reading Kim for Year 5. They help in understanding some of the circumstances of The Great Game: 

Herat and Cabul, A Story of the First Afghan War and  
For Name and Fame: To Cabul with Roberts (Through Afghan Passes) 
We've managed to find them via Amazon, free for Kindle, so I've linked to what was there at the time I looked, but check first as I've noticed that the availability of free titles changes from time to time.
She also read A Final Reckoning: A Tale of Bush Life in Australia.

My reading - Finished recently: The Painted Veil (loved the writing); A Good Man is Hard to Find (not your average cup of tea, and definitely not for everyone); The Five Red Herrings - a Dorothy Sayers' mystery - say no more. She is more than your average mystery writer.

Started recently: The Double Helix by James Watson. This was one of my opshop finds. I've wanted to read it for awhile so I was so pleased to pick it up for $3.

The Road from Home by David Kherdian - I read this years ago but wanted to re-read it as it's a Newbery Honor Book and covers a portion of history we don't hear much about. It's based on the true story of an Armenian girl whose family were caught up in the Turkish governments systematic destruction of its Armenian population in the early days of WWI. From memory, I think it was written for a young adult audience.