A quick post on several things!
Today I went to a friend’s to do Reading Journals (more of that later), went to the library, did abouts an hour of school, and mowed the lawn.
A reading Journal is simply a book where we write something about the “school” book we’re reading. To practice this habit we are reading an Australian History book called “Icing on the Damper” with the C family. Mum reads a part of the book and we might take notes on what’s happening in the story, the historical facts, things to learn from the story (heart wisdom, or heart knowledge), etc. If we have a question we ask Mum about it and then she answers it and keeps reading. After we read a long section (maybe a chapter) we talk about it and write down, in the journal, some fact, a narration or some heart knowledge (aka: wisdom!). The idea is to get us to think about the book we are reading. Check out mum’s blog (Belinda Letchford, it’s under friends) for more on Reading Journals! They’re really good to get you to remember what you have read.
A history anecdote:
The Roman Republic was involved in the first of a series of three wars against the trading empire of Carthage, which ruled the seas. The Romans did well on land, but the Carthaginians were the only ones with a large navy. Then one day, a Carthaginian ship ran ashore on the Italian beach and Romans copied down, to the minutest detail, the ship so that they could build them too. They very quickly built up a fleet, but added an extra feature to the ship, a large plank of wood with a heavy iron “thorn” on it so that if you sailed up close to the enemy ship, you could drop this plank over the side of your ship, the iron thorn would dig into the enemy ship and it was safe to walk onto the enemy ship and try and kill all the crew! However, this addition made the ships top-heavy, and this was quite a danger in bad weather, making the ships liable to sink. There is a lot of bad weather in the Mediterranean, where the Roman navy was fighting, and they lost way over one hundred thousand men in storms and combats with the Carthaginian navy.
In fact, the Romans lost more men in that first Punic War (that’s what the wars against Carthage were called) at sea than any other navy in any other naval campaign, ever! Including WW2 in the pacific! That would make them pretty bad sailors 
!!!
NOW, I’m going to bed!
Comments
Apr. 24, 2008 - Untitled Comment
Posted by Catcher818
That's cool! want to be friends?
-ash