We didn’t have any field trips this week, but we spent all day Monday watching coverage of Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral (some of us were up by 3:30 a.m.!) and a few more documentaries about her life. It was an emotional day!

On Tuesday, we returned to our regular schoolwork. Ladybug worked with fractional exponents in algebra 2. She started Act IV of Romeo and Juliet. She compared Bohr’s model of the atom to the quantum mechanical model of the atom in chemistry. In history, she read about the sack of Rome and the Visigoths. We read my least favorite part of The Fellowship of the Ring: “In the House of Tom Bombadil”…that guy makes Dr. Seuss sound sane! We made Lake-Town beef pot roast with horseradish dumplings from Recipes from the World of Tolkien for dinner one night, and it was really delicious!

Chickadee did more rounding to the tens, hundreds, and thousands place in math. We finished reading about suborder Caniformia in science, ending the chapter with minks, otters, skunks, and raccoons. In grammar, she learned about adverbs that tell “to what extent” and also reviewed the other parts of speech we’ve done up until this point. She’s currently memorizing the poem from elementary school that Ladybug remembers best. “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. In history we read about the Indus River Valley and Mohenjo-Daro. We have reached the part in Heidi where they move to Dörfli for the winter.

Unusually for us, the first days of fall have actually felt like fall, and it looks like that trend is going to stick around, so I’m planning a day where we get out of the house and enjoy the weather early next week!