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!