The first month of the year is now behind us, and we are well on our way to having a great year. I am proud of the students for their diligence and dedication and am praying that as they continue to grow they will begin to further see how the things they are presently learning will have an impact on the rest of their life.
Omnibus/Humanities:
Recently, I have been reflecting on the ancient reality of the Christian faith. The things that we do as Christians today started two thousand years ago and we are a part of this great tradition of worship of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Currently, after reading through the gospel of John and a few letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch, we are immersed in Eusebius of Caesarea Ecclesiastical History, which is a monumental work of Christian history. Eusebius is the first to write a comprehensive account of Church History and, consequently, it is often relied upon to understand the early history of our faith. While Eusebius’ work is not usually considered the most riveting page turner, its pleasure, however, is found when upon completion you contemplate the amazing providence, power, and sovereignty of God: how he guides his Church into all truth and protects the gospel in every age. One also walks away with a greater sense of how our faith has been faithfully protected by believers who have literally given their lives for the sake of Christ. The students are challenged to consider what it means to be willing to lay your life down for Christ.
As we continue to read through various early Christian writings we will be considering questions that relate to the development of doctrine, particularly the doctrine of Christ and Trinitarian theology. Obviously, a central question we are asking is: Who is Christ? How do the Scriptures speak of him? How do the church fathers (i.e. Eusebius, Athanasius, Augustine) speak of him? We will also be trying to understand the process of scripture’s canonization—that is, how was “the Bible” put together? I want to encourage you all to continue the conversations that we are having in class in the home. Soon I will email a more comprehensive list of things we are discussing.
Latin/Greek:
A main focus this year in Latin for both classes is more translation practice. Translation is where the declensions, conjugations, vocabulary learning all come together and the beauty of the Latin language is seen most prominently. Each student needs to make sure they are studying through their Latin vocabulary each night for 5-10mins. They need to make sure they study their principle parts; this is vital to doing well in Latin. Mrs. Hahne is also teaching through Basics of Biblical Greek by Bill Mounce. They are currently working through the Greek-verb tenses, specifically chapter 17 – contract verbs.
Writing:
The point of this year’s writing curriculum is to learn how to build arguments on both sides of a position. In the progymnasmata curriculum this stage is called “Refutation/Confirmation.” During the month of September we worked on paraphrasing a sample essay in order to get a grasp of the structure of the essays we are going to write. Also, we began a refutation essay on the all-familiar story: the Tortoise and the Hare. The idea here is not primarily to teach the content of argumentation, but to get the students think through specific methods of argumentation. The methods of argumentation (for the refutation essay) are laid out in specific categories: unclarity, implausibility, impossibility, inconsistency, impropriety, and inexpediency. I encourage you to view the website Classical Composition to get a greater sense of the purpose of not only this stage of the curriculum, but the entire structure of the progymnasmata.
Logic:
Last Friday, we had our first Logic test that covered the first act of the mind: Simple Apprehension. During this month, we are going to be rapidly moving into the next two acts of the mind: judgment and deductive inference. As the year progresses, our study in formal logic is going to become more technical and, as a result, more difficult. It’s imperative that each student take good notes in class and not fall behind. Typically we will have a test at the end of each month.
Algebra:
The journey through the Algebra year has begun and so far we have tackled the concepts
of writing expressions and equations and applying them to word problems, discovering
what defines a function, the breakdown of real numbers and how to apply the operations
of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing to those numbers. With each chapter
there are new words and concepts presented. To help students become familiar with
new terms, they are to be recorded in a vocabulary book as we work through the chapter.
These words are listed in the chapter review section as well as in the chapter reading to
help students to identify important terms. In the next month we will be continuing to
learn to use the real number operations to solve linear equations, write proportions, ratios,
and to solve percent problems. These steps will lead to graphing these equations and
functions. I am excited to see each student grow in their math knowledge as well as in
reasoning abilities.
<h2>Orange County Classical Christian Education</h2>
