This was our second week of school and we are not off to a good start. Last week, I managed three solid days of school work despite our fire on Labor Day, but this week my whole world fell apart. On Wednesday afternoon I received a call from the restoration company hired to repair the fire damage. They informed me that ALL of our property has been "contaminated" by the fire and said that everything in the house would have to be packed up and moved out. Some of the contaminated property could be professionally cleaned (if our insurance will cover it, which is still uncertain) while the rest had to be disposed of and/or replaced. He also told me that we would not be able to live in the house for several weeks while the work is being done and would need to find someplace else to stay. Further, if our property is not cleaned and/or disposed of, we would not be allowed to move it back into the house because we would re-contaminate it. Given that we just barely got settled into the house, after so many months of careful packing and planning, this is all quite a shock.

Religion

This week we read the first chapter in Faith and Life: Following Christ (again) and completed the corresponding Activity Book pages. The kids also read the first four chapters of Saint Dominic: Preacher of the Rosary and Founder of the Dominican Order by Mary Fabyan Windeatt and we worked through most of the Race for Heaven Study Guide questions and activities. Lastly, the kids read the first two chapters of Ignatius Schuster's Illustrated Bible History and answered the chapter questions.

History

Our week began with a field trip to the World Forestry Center Discovery Museum. In trying to fill a gap in our history reading next week, I had considered assigning a book that I'd seen on other middle school reading lists- The Trees by Conrad Richter. The forestry museum seemed like a good tie-in with the book. However, after pre-reading the book on Tuesday (after our museum visit), I decided that it should probably wait until high school, though it is an engrossing book that I enjoyed. That being said, the museum was a bit of a disappointment anyway and wasn't quite what I'd imagined.

To compensate for the museum, we took the beautiful Columbia River Highway to Multnomah Falls - the second highest year-round waterfall in the United States and a place where Lewis and Clark camped twice on their expedition (in November, 1805 and again in April, 1806). We read the applicable journal entries by Lewis and then the boys ran (literally - where do they find the energy?!) to the top of the falls, while M and I only managed to hike halfway.

Field trips aside, history was probably our slowest subject overall this week, but this is mainly because I've stretched my scheduling of our spine out ridiculously so that it will last us another two years. It's the kids' least favorite subject (but my favorite) and since I usually include tons of extras and get easily distracted by rabbit trails, I wanted to have time for everything without overwhelming them. Since this week fell apart, not a lot got done:

• One assignment in their American Republic Student Activity Manual ("The Journals of Lewis and Clark")
• Watched the second half of Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery on Netflix Instant
• Finished reading their biographies of Lewis and Clark. M read The Lewis and Clark Expedition by Carol A. Johmann, while J chose to switch to Lewis and Clark: Blazing a Trail West by John Burrows.
• Lessons 2 and part of 3 from the Time Travelers Early 19th Century CD: Westward Weekly newspaper and Growth of the Nation map (we skipped the field book project).
• Read 'Hasty Pudding' by Cornelia Meigs and 'Johnny Appleseed's Coat' by Mabel Leigh Hunt, both from The Children's Hour, Vol. 11: Along Blazed Trails (©1953).

Language Arts

This week, M finished up Peppermints in the Parlor by Barbara Brooks Wallace (her free reading selection), a book that I loved at her age and was recently reminded of after browsing through one of Don Killgallon's books. She enjoyed the book so much that she promptly started on the sequel, The Peril of Peppermints. J read through two Naruto [manga] books that he picked up at the library.

For Literature, M read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll for four days this week (30 minutes per day); we're loosely using the MCT literature guide for discussion. On Friday, she also began reading from The Other Alice: The Story of Alice Liddell and Alice in Wonderland, a nonfiction book by Christina Björk and Inga-Karin Eriksson. (For older students or adults, I highly recommend Alice I Have Been: A Novel by Melanie Benjamin!)

Despite all of my big plans for J's reading this year, I ended up placing him in a literature class at a local community learning center. I  knew the class would be challenging, but I really had no idea it'd be so challenging (especially for someone who only enjoys reading manga). His book list this year include A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Pride and Prejudice, and Slaughterhouse Five. This week's assignment was to read two chapters per day of A Tale of Two Cities. He was not understanding the book at all, so I broke down and bought him the Cliff Notes. Now, he reads a chapter in the book, followed by the Cliff Notes summary and seems to be doing just fine. We'll see how it goes.

For Grammar, we only managed 10 pages of Grammar Town and four chapters of  Grammar-Land (plus the corresponding worksheets); there was no poetry this week.

This was our first week using Susan Wise Bauer's Writing with Skill for Composition and it went surprisingly well. M had a major meltdown on Day 2 (she's such a detail person, summarizing is really hard for her), but pulled it together for the rest of the week and even did a great job on Day 4 which was a longer "challenge" assignment.

Art

This week the kids attended their first drawing class at the community learning center where I've enrolled them part-time (for 2 classes apiece). They both enjoyed it very much and are looking forward to next week.

We did not start a new lesson in art this week, but rather continued with the project we missed last week: a One-Line Abstract Drawing in the style of Paul Klee (this was from Discovering Great Artists by MaryAnn F. Kohl and Kim Solga). We reviewed some of Klee's work before jumping into the project and ended up spending two days on it.