Day 53

Sarah finished her book report, and it's fantastic! She rewrote a chapter of Understood Betsy in first person from Betsy's point of view. Here's a little bit of it: "I took my cup out to a clean snow bank, and I made loops and curves with the hot, fragrant syrup that hardened as soon as it touched the snow. As I let the maple candy melt in my mouth, I thought about what cousin Ann had said about my examination and about Hemlock Mountain. Of course Hemlock Mountain would still stand there just the same, even if I failed in an examination!"

So after I pasted it in here, I asked her if that was from the book. She said no because she didn't even have the book in her hand when she wrote it. I told her some of it sounded like the book, which is fine because when we tell about something we usually include vocabulary and the voice of the book. So she looked in the chapter and found much of it was totally from the book. She was flabbergasted! She had not realized at all that this had happened. I told her that's ok because her aim was to rewrite the chapter changing the point of view, but I wasn't sure what would happen if she did the same thing in a school setting--plagiarism? She really did do a beautiful job of writing it from the first person though. 

I've said before that I want to show real life as a homeschooler in this blog, so that's where I've been the last 2 days. Real life. Honestly, Monday I just forgot to write a post. Last night, I started to at bedtime and it just got away from me. I've had a bit a depression lately, and sometimes things are just hard. The last 2 days have been pretty good school days though. Jeff's been off a few extra days, so that's been fun. He likes to have school with us and talk about what we're learning. Right now, he's got the kids down the road playing basketball before other kids get out of school. It's totally silent here except for the sound of the keyboard as I type. There's a nice breeze blowing in the window--and there are a few gnats in the house, and I have to go to the dentist in a little while. It's all reality, whether it's pleasant or painful. And we have plenty of both.

See you tomorrow!