The First Day of School

Today the Mango Academy began their 13th + year. Over the years the method has evolved from regular book work type school work to more of a Charlotte Mason approach. (To see how this is done on a practical level see http://www.amblesideonline.com/ .) Our morning starts off with everyone praying, a devotional, a hymn, poetry, different books Mom reads, common knowledge quiz, and several other things. Then Mom works with Elizabeth while the middle four read a literature book for half an hour. After that is History and writing (I'm sitting in on this one. Mom is doing writing rather than English this year, because this is the weaker subject of the two for us.) Next, the middle four read for another half hour. This time it's a History book-right now they all have books on Creation. (They're doing Ancient History this year.) Mom has several other extracurricular subjects, that happen on different days, but that is the basic structure of our school schedule.

Last night as Mom and I put last minute things together I came across a story that T-Bob wrote last year. It was hilarious, at least I thought so.

There once was a spider called William Wallace. He liked to bite other spiders when he was young so the spiders got rid of him as soon as they could. He was a funnel web. Everything he bit died. One day when he was older he married a beautiful black widow. Since he was naughty he had another wife which was a brown recluse. They all bred together, and they came out with the deadliest spider alive. He was called William the Conqueror. He had a tribe of the deadliest spiders and conquered everything. Hence the name William the Conqueror. When his whole tribe died they didn't have any of those spiders alive. There was only three mentioned in my story. The end

It is strange to no longer be a part of school, though I do plan to sit in and work on handwork etc. (when I'm not working) for the school before the 1/2 hour of literature reading. I have a long list of books to read though as well as other subjects I've chosen, that I've never really had time for before.

~JoAn