Latin the Fun Way

I think Ian wasn't bluffing when he indicated, starting around 7:30 this morning, that he felt nauseous.  After all, he has been pulling out of a nasty flu which started several days ago, and this "Flu of 2013" is particularly brutal.   Because of the early-morning nausea, he ended up having a sick-day at home with Daddy (pretty rare, but Amy has a job too).  Madeleine was also in on the day of respite, in her case with a fever still pounding away.

But relatively early into his additional day off, he got some kind of second wind, and was soon diligently playing Pokemon Tower Defense and eagerly lecturing me about it.  

Yet, what he hadn't realized was that, far from being a day of mere recuperation, he was going to get a lengthy Latin tutorial with Daddy, veteran of five years of Latin.  It was badly needed - he seems to have gotten behind the other youngsters in his online class.  And certainly, it wasn't my idea either, but I thought I should do my best with it, since I had the time and the background to help him.

Ian often cries during tutoring.  I'm really not a tyrant about it - I don't yell or insult or grumble - but I do expect him to work through the answers, and, of course, Latin is both a lot of memorization and a lot of thinking-in-ways-we-21st-century-Gringos-otherwise-wouldn't.

But I know I must be doing a particularly good job when the tears are preempted by hands clasped to both ears and eyes closed.  This is a new learning posture in my amateur tutorial career, and it's a pretty powerful response.  Unfortunately, I didn't think to get out the camera at the time...

(April 10, 2013)