Bethune Catholic

We certainly labored on Labor Day yesterday. My last post details most of the work.

We also started to move the basketball hoop which overlooks the garden from a telephone pole. It was inherited-but we have never moved it. It is time. We have a better location for it and have need of it for exercise and fun.

As Mrs. Curley and the boys will testify, the last time I moved a backboard and hoop (some years ago), I tore my rotator cuff. I could feel it aching just as I approached the ladder. Well, without going into gory details, the hoop still stands on the pole, but it is closer to coming down. We removed a bunch of bolts, but it is still held by a chain. We ran out of time as the grill needed my attention-but we'll get it moved soon.

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Today is the first day of school for us. Last week I talked a little bit about my son's religion course. Today I'll look at history. This year oldest son is going to study US history. This is a strong area for him as we have an extensive library of several series of books he grew up with: Childhood of Famous Americans series; Landmark series, Signature series; and We Were There series. Our text for this year is: Christ and the Americas. We use the text as the basis of the course-to make sure we hit every thing at least a bit. But we will stray from the text quite a lot to do some indepth studies on certain topics.



For instance, when we study Cortes early on, we will read a bit from Warren Carroll's Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness. We use The World's Greatest Speeches throughout the course. Where we can, we will use primary source readings. So there will be quite a variety of readings-with the text making sure we don't miss anything.

There will be short papers throughout the course-looking for more than facts-analysis and interpretation for example. And of course he will attempt his first term paper in the 2nd half of the year.

I'm really looking forward to it. (I hope he is!)

Our homeschool's patron is St. Michael the Archangel. His statue (which I aquired in 5th grade on a trip to visit to relatives in DC at the Franciscan Monastery) overlooks our classroom.

St. Michael the archangel, defend us in battle.
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
Rebuke him O God, we humbly pray;
and do thou, o prince of the Heavenly Host
drive into Hell, Satan
and all the other evil spirits
who wander through the world
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen

Oremus pro invicem!