Illuminations

il*lu*mi*nate: 1. To provide and brighten with light. 2. To make understandable, clarify. 3. To enable to understand, enlighten. 4. To decorate (a manuscript or initial letter) with pictures or designs in brilliant colors.
SCRIPTURES - We read Luke Chapter 12 today. Also, I never realized how many scriptures there are about light and in most cases, they refer to being brought out of the darkness into the light. I love that visual analogy for the gospel and education. My goal right now in life is to enlighten, both myself and my children.
HISTORY - Today was the beginning of another week, which meant another day of illumination with the Brames. We started the day by talking about what it means to be a saint (including a Latter-Day Saint) and read about saints in the Bible Dictionary. We then read a story about St. Jerome and the Lion and looked at an art book about saints. Most paintings of saints include symbolism in the picture as a representation of their patronage. St. Jerome is the patron saint of librarians, thus his painting had many books in it. Next we read in The Story of the World, Vol. 2 about the monks in monasteries who made books by hand and illuminated them. We looked at some instructions online about the process of making parchment (sheep's skin) or vellum (calf's skin), the ink to write with and the actual illuminating itself.
ART - Then we made our own books, which involved sewing the covers on, and had a lot of fun illuminating the pages. Medieval monks used gold and silver leafing to add illumination to their pages, we used gold and silver glitter and paint.
MATH - While the kids were working on their artwork, I read to them from The Life of Fred - Apples (reviewing time, days of the week and adding to 7) and The Life of Fred - Fractions, which proved to be quite challenging. The question posed today was how long would it take to write a billion reasons why Fred should buy a bicycle if he could write down 1 reason per second. Jared and Beryl got that he could write down 3,600 reasons in an hour fairly easily, figuring out how many in a day was a little more difficult and figuring out how many in a year was just mind boggling. We will work on this one again.
GRAMMAR - In The Life of Fred, we also reviewed Onomatopoeia and syllables. Onomatopoetically has nine syllables and therefore is greater than onomatopoeia (six syllables) or onomatopoetic (seven syllables).
LUNCH - Christine made a wonderfully yummy barley soup to remind us of the importance of barley in the Middle Ages as well as some equally yummy black bean humus.
SPELLING - I gave the kids their spelling pre-tests. The girls did great. Jared was surprised when he recognized some of the words from his writing, I don't correct his journal, but I do read through it and pull out words that he needs to work on for later.
READING - I had the girls read their sight word cards as well as some easy readers. They are continuing to progress each day. Jared read more of Beowulf.
P.E. - We had a very busy evening. Jared had a soccer practice at 5:45, Clarissa's was at 6:00 and Krystal and Amber started ballet today at Radford University, which was also at 6:00. I had to have my friend take Clarissa to soccer, Chris took Jared and I took the girls. They were adorable and had a great time meeting their new friends and teachers.

GOVERNMENT - Jared attended the Radford City Council Meeting tonight as part of a requirement for the Citizenship in the Community Merit Badge he's been working on.