Thanks to Jennifer at Conversion Diary for hosting this 7 Quick Takes Friday!

– 1 –

Gregory calls the footrests that pop out of the recliner couches “kneelers”.  Granted we don’t kneel on them, but I think it is awfully cute.  And I guess it shows were we spend several hours a week…

– 2 –

I have almost finished painting the downstairs at the house.  I still need to pick a color for some of the wall space in the school room and get that up, then I’ll be done downstairs.  While I procrastinate on that decision I’ve been cleaning up the drop paper, drywall dust, miscellaneous construction debris, and dirt on the concrete floors.  Yesterday I scrubbed mud off the floors which was tracked in over a year ago by the contractors who did our siding.  I remember thinking at the time that I would be cleaning that up at some point…  but I didn’t think it would be quite so far in the future!  As I scrub the floor on my hands and knees I have been consoling myself with the thought that our floors should never be quite this dirty ever again.  I hope.

– 3 –

Speaking of colors, here’s a few of my color sample swatches.  The bottom wall and the wall on the left are painted a sort of cream color, and I’m leaning towards the one on the left for the top wall color.  But I’m also considering just painting that wall portion the same warm brown color as the rest of the walls in the house.    

– 4 –

I have already finished and filed our state and federal taxes.  Nothing like getting a refund to make that a high priority!  I even did it by hand - with TurboTax costing almost $50 these days, it just didn’t seem worth it.  I did use the free online forms though, so I was still able to e-file.  I must admit, I rather like doing taxes by hand.  Weird, I know, but it appeals to my desire for order and logic.  I wonder though how long it will take to get our state refund, seeing as California is about to go bankrupt…

– 5 –

Emma has started Math-U-See Beta with great rejoicing.  I am so glad we held off on starting it until she had all her basic addition and subtraction math facts down cold.  Now she’s able to jump into it and focus on the new concepts, rather than still struggling to remember basic addition facts while also learning new concepts.  I think starting this book would have been so much more of a struggle in September.  

– 6 –

I’m creating a mid-year homeschooling book wish list to discuss with Matt.  So far I have Andrew Campbell’s new Living Memory book, this sentence diagramming book from the Hedge School (a friend has it and it looks like an excellent resource), and the Handwriting without Tears cursive book.  We’re already talking about parts of speech, and I think the diagramming would be a nice exercise to help reinforce that.  I’d really like to start cursive with Emma soon, but I’m not sure if this book is the right way to go.  I need to do some more research on it, obviously.  Emma struggles with her writing speed, and I think that cursive could help her keep her writing going.

– 7 –

Last night I read a great interview with Andrew Campbell on Polysemy.org.  There’s a lot of good food for thought there, but what I’m pondering the most is this particular part:

I certainly see homeschool curriculum writers trying to make Latin more interesting to young students. Unfortunately, there is a bit of a disconnect between many curricula written for homeschoolers and the “state of the profession” as understood by classicists. Homeschoolers are still skeptical of using a text like Ørberg’s Lingua Latina. Some don’t seem to understand what real fluency in a language means: it doesn’t mean “finding the verb” or laboriously translating passages from ancient writers into “good English prose.” It means being able to pick up a text and read it with understanding, without recourse to English. It means being able to think in Latin, to communicate in Latin. You wouldn’t consider someone who has to translate every word of a French sentence into English “fluent” in French. You’d consider them a beginner. The same is true of Latin. Unfortunately, some methods focus so heavily on grammar and translation skills that they never give students true fluency in the language.

It is true that Memoria Press’s materials, to take one example I’m familiar with, have to do double-duty. They have to teach the language to students and do so in such a way that parents without Latin can learn alongside their children. It’s far easier to do that with a stripped-down, grammar-translation method text than with something likeLingua Latina, where the teacher must work substantially ahead of the student. The down side is that students can come to see Latin as an algebra word problem rather than as a natural language that people used — and can still use — to communicate ideas.

That last part about seeing Latin as a word problem rather than a natural language really hit home.  It is making me totally reconsider how I’m approaching my own Latin education as well as how I’m teaching Latin to Emma.  It also is making me think about my goals in teaching and learning Latin.

Campbell also mentions Evan Millner’s Latinum podcast series, which looks intriguing.  My main disappointment in what I’ve seen so far is that Millner uses the classical pronunciation and I’ve been using (and more interested in learning) the ecclesiastical.  

Hmm, this quick take is getting rather long, but perhaps I’ll have more to say about it in the future.  It is a great interview though, and I highly recommend reading it.