Day 51

I was giggling with the kids today about making the noun form of the word spontaneous. They just could not come up with the word. Here are some of their guesses: spontanium, spontasium, spontanianism, spontanuity. Then Sam said, "Hey, the noun form of notorious is notoriety."The next guess was spontanery. We laughed ourselves silly. They knew none of those were actual words, but they couldn't get at spontaneity. So I asked them if they really hadn't heard it before. They thought they might have, but they weren't sure. I'm sure they've heard it plenty of times and known what it was at the time. This evening, the girls were watching one of The Great Courses, and the word was used in the lesson. It seems to always happen that when we've been paying attention to a word, we'll notice it used soon after.

They all worked on their book reports today. Sam's drawing some great pictures; I'll have to put some on here when he's done. Rachel seems to be having fun with rewriting her scene, but Sarah was having trouble feeling satisfied with her writing. She had wanted to write a letter from one character to another, but it didn't sound good to her after she got started. Then she thought she'd just do a regular summary type report, but that seemed wrong too. She decided on journal entries in the end. I think it's going to be great. She's a very good writer, but I wonder if that label has made her hesitant to write. Like maybe she thinks she has something to live up to. I think she thinks it all has to sound perfect when it comes out of her. I have talked to her numerous times about just writing any old junk and revising after, but she feels like she can't revise either. She was sad about it not being good enough and I got upset about her giving up. I'm sure I handled it totally wrong, but I think tomorrow will be better.

We started reading Black Horses for the King today. It seemed like it wasn't that easy to read aloud. I don't know if it was the size of the type or just the words. Have you ever noticed some books have words that just don't flow out loud? Maybe it's just me; I don't know. I do need to get some different glasses, though. That might be it. The book seems like it might be good.

We couldn't get to the grocery yesterday because of being locked out, so we had to go today. I had an appointment this afternoon that I completely forgot about because I was at the store. By the time I remembered, I couldn't get ahold of the lady I was supposed to meet. I guess she'll just think I'm brainless. She might already think that anyway--what's new? My memory is full of holes!

See you tomorrow!