Book of Days

Each year I try to think something in which we can participate in so that our brains don’t atrophy over the summer. From August-May we have concentrated studies and then become more relaxed during the summer months. Last year our “Weekly Wall of Enrichment” was a big hit with everyone in the family. This year we are using “The General Study Wall“.

I actually got the idea from two different sources. I first heard about the book The Intellectual Devotional over at Seasonal Soundings during her Spring Reading Challenge. I was intrigued and then when I saw the book on a display during a Mother’s Day weekend trip to the bookstore, I knew it was just the thing for a new direction to our yearly summer studies.

 I wasn’t exactly sure how I would incorporate it until I was watching the movie The History Boys. I was disappointed in the movie, as there were a few things that really disturbed me about the plot, but it was in one of the scenes of the General Studies teacher’s classroom that I had an “aha” moment. One of his walls was literally covered in pictures:of events, of people, of places etc. THAT was what I was going to do with all the new knowledge we gained during these summer months. We would have our own wall of pictures representing things we read about, talked about, saw, witnessed and so on and so on.

Each month we will fill up this bulletin board with pictures representing the various things we are learning. Our beginning entries for the month of June are Alexander the Great (from our daily reading today from The Intellectual Devotional) and also Dante’s Divine Comedy as this is Josh and his sister’s special study this summer. I think it will be interesting to see how much these pictures will help us remember our summer studies for this year.