St. Athanasius Academy:

Yesterday I promised you that I'd share the castle books we've been using.

Well, you'll have to wait till tomorrow. I'm a little burned out. Yesterday I had Brikhead do a practice SAT test -- the full monty, as it were. Ten practice sections, averaging 25 minutes each, including the essay. Well, Brikhead did great on the essay -- I gave him a 10 (12 is the highest), his dad would have given him a 12 (but I work for WriteGuide as a writing consultant and have seen LOTS of practice essays in the past few months). The other parts of the test he didn't do too well. He averaged about 70 percent on all parts. Part of it was distraction for the other kids, part of it was having to sit still for so long, and part was simply not knowing or not reading carefully enough -- yep, DUMB MISTAKES!

Well, today we went through all of the test. Question by question, answer by answer until we finished going through all his "issues" with the test. It was a great exercise, but it drained my brain. I let the littles watch Robin Hood -- the classic flick with Errol Flynn, Olivia deHaviland, and Basil Rathbone. It fit so perfectly with the theme AND they were feeling puny AND it just made sense! They also did some cool worksheets, dot-to-dots and Sudoku puzzles from our new favorite homeschool resource: Edhelper.com. This site is well-worth the $20 annual fee. With dance class this afternoon, a run by the library, and the weekly shopping -- we'll have a very full "real learning" kind of day!

So, I'm sorry dear reader, you'll have to wait till tomorrow for our listing of castle books!