Self Study Update III

What a stressful week this has been! My root canal tooth has been acting up and I succumbed to my first illness of the school year. Sadly it didn't take too long for that to happen this time. I have high hopes for a completely healthy year someday. I guess I need more  vitamins and hand sanitizer! Because of all this I have made less progress this week than I had hoped for:

French:
I started the next chapter in my book when I realized that it begins with the irregular verbs that I know well (avoir, etre, aller) but I am still hoping to really improve my -ir verbs with the spelling changes.  I need to clear some space on my hard drive so I can download the verb drills I found last week.

Poetry:
What can I say, it's still in my pocket! ;)

Piano:
I've been playing this a lot lately, albeit much more slowly than in this video.



Nora and I went to a book signing a few weeks ago with a bunch of teen authors which was really fun. Someone asked the panel for writing advice and one bit has stuck with me. Margaret Stohl said that she works on the bic principle (butt in chair) and that a big part of writing is just forcing yourself to start and do it even if it is just for 15 minutes.

I'm trying to apply that to a lot of my endeavors as I feel myself getting stressed & tired from work every day. It is hard not to just collapse onto the sofa some days and rendezvous with my good friend JB Fletcher

I am telling myself I can play the piano for just 15 minutes or conjugate French verbs for 15 minutes or read a little bit of Who Killed Homer and I find once I start it's easier to go longer than the original 15 minutes.It's the getting started that is the biggest challenge for me.

Somehow giving myself permission to quit after 15 minutes is making a difference in my attitude. And I really do quit after 15 minutes sometimes. But I'm also trying to keep in mind some advice from Eat Pray Love: "you must be very polite with yourself when you are learning something new."

Self Study Update II

Last night was Back to School Night for the parents in my class which is always a huge production with so many things to get ready. Things went smoothly but I am relieved it is over! At this point the school year starts to flow a little bit smoother and I go back to feeling like I have some sort of a life outside of school. 

French:
I finished up the first chapter in my French verb book on schedule and realized that I am very rusty on anything but present tense regular -er verbs. I am not going to start the second chapter until I practice and review the other regular verb conjugations and get more comfortable with them. I started googling and found some great resources to focus on verbs:

I like this powerpoint about "boot verbs" a lot and plan to print it out to cut up as flash cards. But I am most excited about this website I found, frenchtoday.com . I want to order the French Verb Drills I and French Greetings & Politeness. I love that I could practice while I drive to work and I like that the instructor has placed the emphasis on pronunciation. Everything offered on her site looks like something I would like to try out.

More French Links:
Francais interactif

The French Workshop
This site made me so nostalgic for Madame Pantzer, my high school French teacher. I loved all the posters of Paris she had on her classroom walls and I used to think I would be a French teacher like her (that pesky issue of fluency pretty much stopped that plan!) and be decorating a French classroom someday. I do think some of these books would be helpful to me because they are so simple.

French Flash Cards

Poetry:
I haven't done much with my chosen poem other than carry it around all week in my own personal poem in your pocket celebration. But I know it's there and I'm taking baby steps. I have been pulling it out and reading it a few times throughout the day.

Back to School Update

It is week 3 of first grade with my new class and thankfully we are all starting to settle in. I knew I was winning them over when I heard one little boy whisper to another, "she is just so funny" (in a complimentary seven year old boy way, I promise!) and that has kept me going on the long, hot days. But I have to say, the temperature in my non air conditioned school is yet another reason to homeschool! My poor students have been so uncomfortably hot and sweaty. It is really challenging for them (and me) to want to keep working & learning when we're so miserable.

I do like my job a lot but I always forget how exhausting the start of a new school year is with getting to know all the new families and learning everybody's routine. Because of that, I am scaling back my self-study plans a bit for the fall which I am hoping will make them a bit more realistic and attainable for me.

French:
 My goal is to work through one chapter a week in Barron's French Verb Workbook. I'm also going to keep up my hodge podge Francophone music/magazine/movie intake as much as I can. I've been listening to Feist sing en francais a lot during my commute:




 Poetry/Memory Work:
I have very little experience memorizing poetry so I'm not sure how this will actually play out. But I think this is an appropriate selection given my recent pledge to stop buying books (at least until I make a significant dent in those I already own). And I have always loved Wordsworth so I'm going to give it a go.

"THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US; LATE AND SOON"

THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
          Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
          Little we see in Nature that is ours;
          We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
          The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
          The winds that will be howling at all hours,
          And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
          For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
          It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
          A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;                         10
          So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
          Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
          Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
          Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
                                                              1806.

One of my favorite moments at the end of last school year was when one of our volunteers, a retired teacher in her eighties recited "Daffodils" for the first graders, who were, surprisingly, quite a polite audience. And I've thought that would be another good poem to try to memorize. Maybe later this year. But I'm also being tempted to try to memorize this one which always makes me think of Bridget Jones in her boat with Daniel Cleaver!

Other than my French and poem memorization I'm going to keep myself free and see what happens as the fall unfolds. I've got Latin, Welsh, some math review, grammar, piano (mostly trying to be consistent with Hanon and scales amidst playing for fun in my living room cabaret act) and of course the books I'm in the middle of reading to pull from as well. I love making lists (for me, the fun seems to be in the list making not so much the checking off of items) so my original plans had formal goals for each area which just isn't realistic for my schedule right now.

It will be interesting to see if I actually stick to any of this!