So impressed was he by the poem he is memorizing that Captain Science was compelled to write his own Greek poetry:
Ares
Oh the war and pain!
Oh Oh it’s Ares
He is ruining the hall
In the sunshine terrace
It is so scary
He causes so much terror
I like this god
But Zeus is fairer
The rhyme scheme would be perfect if he had known “Ares” was pronounce “Aireez” not like “heiress.” Otherwise, not a bad poem to whip out on the fly like that!
Captain Science just started his first memorization exercise. I read it aloud twice and then he read it aloud twice. I could tell when he read that he’d already learned part of just from hearing it twice. This is one of the blessings of having a gifted learner (I can also tell you about all the curses) — gotta love that photographic memory! He seems to have a good feel for the meter of the poem. I think he’ll have this learned and ready to recite to others in short order, then onward to something more difficult.
PROMETHEUS AMID HURRICANE AND EARTHQUAKE (from “Prometheus Bound”)
by: Aeschylus
EARTH is rocking in space!
And the thunders crash up with a roar upon roar,
And the eddying lightnings flash fire in my face,
And the whirlwinds are whirling the dust round and round–
And the blasts of the winds universal leap free
And blow each other upon each, with a passion of sound,
And æther goes mingling in storm with the sea!
Such a curse on my head, in a manifest dread,
From the hand of your Zeus has been hurtled along!
O my mother’s fair glory! O Æther, enringing
All eyes with the sweet common light of thy bringing,
Dost see how I suffer this wrong?
This English translation, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, of ‘Prometheus Amid Hurricane and Earthquake’ is reprinted from Greek Poets in English Verse. Ed. William Hyde Appleton. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1893.
All this weather is not conducive to high quality homeschooling. Days and days of rain and gloom have left Captain Science fidgety and unfocused. It’s bad enough that the broken arm limits his ability to partake in the physical activities that help keep him on track, but not even being able to go outside or see so much as a ray of sunshine leaves me with twitchy, bouncy, scatterbrained children. Eyes are rolling around in the head like marbles. It’s not pretty.
Captain Science keeps snapping his glasses. They’re semi-glued until the new pairs arrive. The kid (and his brother, who has broken half of the Captain’s broken pairs) is rough on glasses. He’s twitchy, fidgety, glasses-falling-apart unhinged. The sound of his cast scraping against the desk is making my skin crawl and he keeps whispering to himself. Send help before I invoke The Slappening*.
Seriously, though, it’s hard to give too much of a damn about Ancient Greece or the parts of speech when you’re expecting an ark to go sailing by any moment now.
Ark-related question (from me, not Captain Science, who doesn’t give a hoot): Did Noah supposedly save two cockroaches on the ark? Or did the cockroaches just hold their breath and walk along the bottom? What about two mosquitoes? If so, why? This is one reason why it’s so good that we’re secular homeschoolers, because I have no answers to questions like these! See, even my mind is wandering.
*My friend Heather’s term for that moment when you’re just going to lose it and start grabbing anyone within arms’ reach and start slappin’ ‘em.
