Yes, somewhere in there, we are related to dirt, the Sphinx, and a moray. Bizarre.
Today is just one of those days. You know those days, right? The days where you find yourself leaning into the refrigerator, eating caramel ice cream topping out of a jar with a spoon, praying that your oldest child stops coughing and your middle child stops wailing so they don’t wake up the youngest, who has only just fallen precariously asleep for the first time all day, despite spending most of the night flailing and coughing? Now that we’re all on the same page about what kind of day it is, let’s pretend I never mentioned the caramel thing.
We have some kind of crud at the McLernins house. It’s an congested chest crud that is making everyone cough and be irritable. They’re coughing their brains right out, as can be evidenced by Captain Science’s inability to complete his Ancient Greece quiz/activity. It wasn’t that he didn’t know the answers — he remembered things like perioikoi and hoplite just fine. Ancient Greece has been his favorite topic thus far and we discuss it all the time. He couldn’t figure out what to do with the scrambled letters once he’d answered all the questions. The act of unscrambling was just beyond his ken. Understand, that child has been doing word jumbles and the like since he was three or four, so this isn’t a new concept. He didn’t “get it” today, nor could he (after figuring out the middle word was probably “and”) think of a game he played that had “and” in the title. Finally, he managed to come up with “chutes and ladders,” which didn’t work, and with much coaching, wandered ’round to “hide and seek.” Even knowing something similar to “hide and seek” was what I was looking for, he still couldn’t unscramble “H-A-D-Y-R” into a Greek-related word. In a combination of frustration and pity, I finally just blurted out “hydra and seek,” and he laughed, because it is cheesily funny.
At that point, I decided it was time to fold ‘em and walk away, which was definitely the right call. I called a hiatus on any further learning and instead, am enforcing a nap time for all children, regardless of age. Of course, only the baby is complying (and only after a great deal of coaxing), and the other two are coughing, thrashing about, calling things out to each other, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. As long as they’re pretending to rest, however, and aren’t waking up they’re sister, I’ll play along and pretend I don’t hear them shuffling about up there.
I’ve finally gotten a shower and had a cup of coffee, so I call that a win. We can finish the rest of today’s work on Saturday when we have a better hand.
This is one of our activities to review Ancient Greece.
