Weekend: Beowulf

We spent most of Saturday preparing for Sunday's Beowulf discussion. (It was a lot of fun!)

We also watched a big chunk of "The Story of English" (a BBC television series from the 80s) that was related to Old English and Middle English. Fascinating stuff, though portions of the television series are not recommended for children.

More details here and here.

Recent Discussions: Catechism and Literature

Haven't posted on this in awhile, so I thought I'd just cover the basics.

Our previous catechism class we discussed the middle part of ch. 4 of Jesus of Nazareth - on the Beatitudes. That is an amazing segment, fairly easy to understand (though inspiring and enlightening) and we had a good discussion.

This week we discussed the final part of ch. 4 - on the relationship of the Old Law and the New Law (particularly as discussed in the Sermon on the Mount). Amazing stuff. Good discussion. Rather challenging reading.

Last night for our monthly lit discussion, we studied Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. We had a fairly small turnout, mostly boys on the younger side (most of our group consists of girls between the ages of 14 and 17) and it was more informal than usual, but not a bad beginning to really tackling a classic work. It was interesting to compare translations (everyone, not surprisingly loved Tolkien's the best) and we even pulled out Ria's copy of the Middle Ages Reader to compare a little bit to the Middle English original (and take advantage of the handy glossary).

We talked about the style, the translation, dove a little into symbolism and ironed out some interesting plot points. Not bad for an evening's work. We also decided to read more on King Arthur for next month and try to re-read C.S. Lewis' Silver Chair. I don't know when I first noticed the connection between various stories in the Chronicles of Narnia and great works of classic literature, but I definitely noted another connection here. Lewis directly includes a green kirtle in the Silver Chair. We'd like to re-read it to see how close the connection is. (I had previously seen hints of the Odyssey in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Plato's Cave Analogy in The Silver Chair.)

May 22 - Teen Catechism Discussion

Since we finished Sacramentum Caritatis last week and one family was going to be missing, we decided to do something a little different in the interim. We watched Alex Jones' No Price Too High (the story of his conversion) and discussed it afterwards.

Gus and Ria both attend these discussions, but Gus doesn't generally do the readings. He LOVES listening in. Ria is very comfortable participating in the discussions and the three of us enjoy chatting afterwards on the way home. There are a lot of things we don't do as well as I'd like in homeschooling - I have some perfectionist tendencies that aren't quite satisfied. But I know that these discussions are extremely formative both in terms of the faith and in the thinking skills so important in (among other things) learning to write well.

May 15 - Teen Discussion

We discussed the last portion of Sacramentum Caritatis with an emphasis on the concept of "Eucharistic Consistency" (what an awesome term!)