Lugubrious?

I'm reading "The Call Of The Wild" by Jack London with Andrew and Sarah. They are really enjoying it, as am I. Especially with a puppy in the house, it's helping us understand the behavior of our dog stemming from instincts.

One of my favorite things through the years has been when I read aloud to all the kids. It's been very productive in the learning process, and we've had great discussions and further learning come from that reading aloud. Now it's just usually Andrew and Sarah that I do some reading aloud to. Occasionally my older kids, and Doug too, will sneak in an listen as I read aloud. (Shhh, I pretend not to notice.) :o)



The younger kids add words that we come across that they don't know to thier vocabulary notebook. They jot them down during reading, and then later look them up and write down the definition. The other day, the word we looked up was "lugubrious". Don't know what it means? Neither did I. Dust off your dictionary (or, check out dictionary.com) and look it up!



Later in the day I tried to stump Jeremy. Jeremy is the king of vocabulary. He loves words. He has a very high vocabulary. At times I have to stop him during conversations to ask him to define the words he is using so I don't get lost. So, I walked up to him later that day and asked him if he knew what the word "lugubrious" meant. Sure enough, the little stinker, he DID!! Darn! I told him I'm going to start going through the dictionary and picking out the most uncommon words to ask him until I can stump him, just for fun. :o) I'm very proud of him. He actually has alot of similarities to me (not what every older teen wants to hear). He likes words, loves to write, is always researching, etc. He also reminds me alot of my Dad in that he doesn't accept thing at face value, he researches (deeply) on his own and the makes up his own mind. He definitely does not comform to popular opinion.


It's so cool to see all the years of homeschooling paying off, and see the benefits of it in the older kids. If you're homeschooling younger kids, stick with it, the payoff is worth it! There were years I wasn't sure I'd make it and sure wondered if it was worth it. But, I'm so glad I stuck it out. When God directs you in something, He guides you a day at a time through to the end! He is faithful!