A peaceful day

Lots of people are posting that they have Christmas packed away for another year. Some people had it all done by Boxing Day even.

Not me.

Our peaceful home, well, my Mum's home, anyhow, still has presents cluttering the dining room floor. And the bedroom. And the library. (Yep, the library.) We're much to busy having fun to tidy up - even if we wanted to, which we don't.

It took me a few years to train my Beloved to the fact that we liked having Christmas hanging around long after the 25th. We like munching on Mince Pies. We make a wish on the first 12 pies of the season. Superstitious nonsense, you might say, but we call it Christmas magic. We eat marvellous meals. We drink too much Champagne. Can you drink too much Champagne? Really? We read books. We do jigsaws. And more jigsaws. We hang out at the beach building sand castles. We see movies. We munch on Santa chocolates. We play Christmas music. And other music when we get sick of that. We sit around and talk to each other. About all sorts of stuff. Like memories of Christmases past, and which presents we are enjoying. We spend time with friends. At their place and at ours, where we eat too much and drink too much and talk too much. We've done a bit of shopping in the Sales. Only a little bit. I've had a haircut. Jemimah's taken photos on her new camera. Front of dogs. Back of dogs. Dog coming. Dog sleeping. Dog eating. Dog jumping. Close-up of dog. If you have a child with a new camera I guess you might know what I mean.

Some time soon after New Year we might get sick of picking our way through piles of wrapping paper to make our way from bed to bath. Then it will be time to tidy up. We'll pack the Christmas tree away in its box and find spaces for all the presents to live.

Then all the magic will be gone for another 11 months. Eleven months of reality. I'm not ready for that to come too soon. Not on Boxing Day. And not even today. Maybe next week. If we have time.

For the time being, we're just busy having fun and being a family and building memories of a happy and magical childhood. Reality can wait.

2011 has not been an easy year for our family. We've had far more lows that highs. But through it all we've learned to depend on each other, to be kind to each other, to be each other's bestest friend and greatest encouragement. Throughout the year, God has been good, and he has been faithful. He has kept us safe through all our tribulations. He has given us strength and wisdom and perseverence. He has given us family and friends. He has answered our prayers. He has been so very good to us.

Only he knows what is in store for us in 2012. Only he can rule the weather and the rains. Whatever it is though, he will be there with us, and with him by our side we will succeed.

Thank you all for your prayers, friendship and support throughout the past year. May the Lord bless you and keep you all through 2012, my friends, and thank you to each and every one of you from me.

For everything. But mostly for being you.

Happy New Year!

I suppose it was inevitable really, that a love of Japan and a love of books would some converge into a love of Japanese literature, but it hadn't ever really happened until this year. Oh, I'd read a number of books about Japan, some of them were even written by Japanese authors. I loved The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzō, and In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, for example, but both of those were really essays on wabi sabi aesthetics rather than J-lit per se. I also have a kinda pash on geisha, so I've read lots of geisha books too.

It took A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami - one of my 2010 book club choices to introduce me to the J-lit genre. And with this one novel I was seriously hooked. I started reading my way through this intriguing man's surreal and mysterious works, one by one. Then on to other authors.

And now it's the end of 2011.

And here is my list of Japanese books read in 2011:

1. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami


2. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami


3. Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto


4. Moonlight Shadow by Banana Yoshimoto


5. The Housekeeper and The Professor by Yoko Ogawa


6. After the Quake by Haruki Murakami


7. The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto


8. The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino


9. Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata


10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami


11. The Girl who Leapt through Time by Yasutaka Tsutsui


12. The Stuff that Nightmares are Made of by Yasutaka Tsutsui


13. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Some of them were better than others. If you want to try some J-lit yourself, The Housekeeper and The Professor is marvellous. I loved The Lake as well. The Girl who Leapt Through Time is okay for kids. Despite all of the hype, 1Q84 is a big disappointment. Apart from that one, though, Murakami is invariably pretty good. Dip your toe in and see if you like it.

People read for various reasons. Some read for self improvement. If I read this book it will make me a better person. If I read that one I will be a better Christian, even. Others read through a sense of obligation. Reading is good for you, so I must have three servings every day regardless of whether I like the taste of what I'm reading or not. Some read only what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy. Some read to learn. I read for all these reasons, but most of all I read because I love to read. It gives me great pleasure to settle down with a good book. It is one of these bestest things in my peaceful world.

When I read J-lit I learn more about a country that intrigues me. I learn what makes this sometimes closed and enigmatic people tick. I learn about a different world view. I learn what they think about me as a gaijin. I learn what they think about about my Christian God. I love the sense of gentleness that pervades these books. They make me feel nice and peaceful somehow. They transport me to another world. (And with Murakami, then sometimes that's literally another world!)

Currently I'm reading Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. Oh yes, I realise again why I like this man's work. And why 1Q84 is hopefully an aberration. Kafka is full of Japanese literary references. It's even set in a beautiful library:

Before coming to Takamatsu I found out some wealthy man from an old family in the suburbs had renovated his personal library into a private library open to the public. The place has a lot of rare books, and I heard that the building itself and the surrounding garden were worth checking out. I saw a photo of the place once in Taiyo magazine. It's a large, Japanese-style house with this really elegant reading room that looks more like a parlor, where people are sitting with their books on comfortable looking sofas. For some reason that photo really stayed with me, and I wanted to see this in person if someday the chance came along. The Komura Memorial Library, the place
was called.

Japan, Books and Murakami. What's not to love?! (Well, except the cat scene.)

If you want to know more about J-lit, In Spring it is the Dawn is my very favourite blog on the topic. Start there. She taught me everything I know.

While there you might want to join the Haruki Murakami Reading Challenge for 2012. I have. Next year I hope to read After Dark, Pinball, 1973 and South of Border, West of the Sun. Which will make me a Sheep Man. Maybe I'll even read more. I'll see. What about you? Wanna be a Hajime and read one book? Or maybe more?

Maybe like me, this will be the start of something new and exciting. I hope so. I'd love your company!

We awoke this morning to New Year's Eve. Possibly my favouritest day of the year. The whole family is on holiday for 17 delicious days. The Christmas period looms ahead with all its magic and excitement, and we are home alone. Lovely.

For breakfast on Christmas Eve we eat Julegrøt, (Yule Porridge), the traditional Norwegian Christmas Eve breakfast of creamy rice pudding with butter and sugar and cinnamon . This festive breakfast has wonderful associations for me of a marvellous Christmas spent with cousins in Norway. My first white Christmas. (You can read more about it here, if you like.) In one bowl of porridge will be an almond. Much like the charms in the Christmas Pud. The finder of the almond traditionally wins a marzipan pig, but the marzipan pigs we find in Australia are yucky, so we substitute with a chocolate animal. This year, for the first time, Jemimah found the almond. She was delighted to put an end to Daddy's winning streak.

Elves in Scandinavia are called Nisse. They're naughty, mischievous little imps and can cause all sorts of trouble around your home and property if you don't care for them properly. They move all the animals around, braid the horses' tails together, pranks like that. Naughty. All sorts of trouble happens if you don't care for the nisse. Fortunately, they don't ask for much. All they require is a bowl of risengrynsgrød with a knob of butter set outside your kitchen door or in your barn on Christmas Eve. Don't forget the butter, though, or else. Of course, you know what happens if you put creamy rice outside - the cats eat it. Of course they do. The nisse know this too, so you always accompany the rice with a wooden spoon. Not for eating the pudding with, although it helps, but for beating the cats away with. Once done, you can be assured of another year with well behaved nisse. Well worth the trouble. We don't have a barn here in our Melbourne home, but the bowl of risengrynsgrøt is sitting outside as we speak. Just in case we have nisse here in Australia as well. Can't see why we wouldn't. The bowl always comes in clean anyhow, and it can't possibly be the cats. Can it?

After breakfast we open the presents around the tree. A few years ago we realised that gifts from family and friends tended to get lost in the flurry of Christmas Day, and so we started our tradition of opening them on Christmas Eve. I love it. It is just the three of us. We open each present slowly and enjoy it. Best of all, there is still the anticipation of more to come, so if a present is not 'exactly what was hoped for', then it is still possible it might arrive tomorrow. I have never known anybody to be disappointed by a Christmas Eve gift. No expectations - that's what I love about today.

Later this afternoon we will travel down to Mum's in Geelong for our traditional Christmas Eve meal of Roast Ham, Boiled Potatoes dripping with butter, and Asparagus with Hollandaise Sauce. Summer Pudding for Dessert. We began this tradition a few years ago to justify the purchase of the ham. It seemed crazy to buy a whole ham just for a slice each on Christmas Day, and weeks of leftovers. This way we enjoy two meals out of it, and still have a little left over to eat with lettuce and cranberry sauce in fresh white bread rolls on Christmas night. This evening family friends will be joining us. I am looking forward to it very much.

Right now Jemimah and I are watching The Polar Express. We are sipping on Hot Chocolate served just as the song begins. You know the one. No, it doesn't matter that is is 34°C outside. Some things you just gotta do. Tradition, right? Daddy is doing secret wrapping business in the kitchen behind closed doors and listening to John Rutter. Since the only gifts he wraps are mine, then I believe that it is highly important to leave him to it. For as long as he takes. You just can't hurry things like that.



We're munching on shortbread and chocolate from the gifts under the tree. Jemimah is still nibbling on her chocolate rabbit. She's finishing up a few gifts that need a bit of painting, and is wearing a Santa hat. And the tee shirt and shorts she's worn every year since she was three years old. This year the shorts look like cycling shorts and the tee shows a bit of midriff if she raises her arms, but she looks really, really cute. And happy. And excited.

I'm happy and excited too. Can you tell?

Happy Christmas Eve, everyone.

The trailer for the new Hobbit film appeared yesterday, tempting and teasing us over a movie with a release date that is still a year away. It looks wonderful!

While you're waiting, you may want to do the Charlotte Mason thing and read the book.

These two are my favourites:

This gorgeous edition is sumptuously illustrated by Michael Hague, one of my favourite illustrators of children's books. I like the fairytale non-scary element that characterises his works for kids, and besides, this is the edition I read as a child, which will always make it a sure favourite. I am such a nostalgic girl. Each year my Mum and Dad would give us one of Michael's books for Christmas. This one was in my brother's stocking, but it didn't stop all three of us reading it and poring over the pictures. Delightful.

This edition illustrated by Allan Lee is a bit more frightening and otherworldly, but equally lavish. I didn't get my hands on this edition until much later.

Either is beautiful. Of course, you could always go the unillustrated route and let your imagination go wild, but in my very humble opinion these two editions are too good to miss.

While you're waiting for your book order to arrive, here's something fun to get you in the mood: Type 'The Shire to Mordor' into Google Maps (click the pedestrian option first) and see what happens. Go on - you'll be glad you did. Or at least, I thought it was funny. (Thanks Nathan for this piece of frivolous Middle Earth fun.)

This mostly-peaceful-but-not-recently blog has been far too controversial of late. You all know how I crave your approval, and so I tend to stear clear of talking about things that upset you, honest I do. I want you all to like me!

Fortunately, alongside celebrating the 'C' word, I've also been beavering away at our homeschool preparations for AO5 beginning in only a few weeks at the beginning of January. Probably most of you re far too busy doing, well, other stuff, and are entirely disinterested in what I've planned, but I thought that I would post it here if only to put a little distance between things that upset people and...well, things that they're not interested enough to get upset about.

I'm excited about next year. The books have been arriving through the last few days, and we've had a lot of fun having a little bit of a preview of what we'll be studying. John Gibson Paton, Beatrix Potter, George Washington Carver and Lillias Trotter are amongst the wonderful personalities we'll be getting to know, along with my Grandfather, the WWI hero, Sloan Bolton. We'll be reading Oliver Twist, Little Women, Kim, Anne of Green Gables, Norah of Billabong, and other wonderful, wonderful works of literature. All years of Ambleside Online are splendid, but AO5 is shaping up to be truly exceptional!

Many think of AO as being only a booklist, but implemented well, it is so much more than that. I thought that in this post I would give you an idea of the other things that we'll be doing in our Australianised AO5 to transform this list of books into a curriculum that is as close as possible to that which Miss Mason used in her own schools, and which bore so much good fruit.

Sound good? Okay, let's begin with Language Arts, shall we?

Copywork

Finally next year we get to make use of the Downunder Copywork that I purchased before Jemimah even commenced in AO1. Despite having purchased the complete set, we've never used it because I subsequently decided that I preferred the Victorian font to the NSW style foundation font used in the books. Finally in AO5, Jemimah's handwriting has developed to such an extent that she no longer needs to copy the font to form the letters neatly and correctly, and I think she will manage to utilise the excellent Australian copywork selections provided in the latter books without compromising on precision. At the age of ten, little girls, particularly, enjoy developing their own distinctive style of handwriting, and I can already imagine Jemimah adding in a few of the flourishes from the old fashioned manuscript style as well.

In past years Jemimah has written using an HB pencil. Commencing next year she will begin using a cartridge style fountain pen. I remember how incredibly thrilled I was when we graduated to using fountain pens in grade four, although ours were the old fashioned ink well type, and not a few terrible accidents happened as a result. I wonder if mine was the last year to use ink pens. Certainly my brother who is only two years younger was introduced straight into using ball point 'biros'.

Writing with a nib is a skill. No doubt Jemimah will use a conventional ball point in the future, but next year, at least, I want her to experience the old-fashioned pleasure of pen and ink copywork.

Studied Dictation

We'll continue on with Simply Charlotte Mason's Spelling Wisdom (British version) for this subject. We have noticed a significant improvement in Jemimah's spelling merely by our diligent application of Miss Mason's methods using this book. We may also utilise some of the Downunder Copywork selections next year. I'll see how we go. We usually do two dictation lessons each week.

Narration

Oral narration will continue on all selections. Occasionally we skip this as a surprise treat, and occasionally she does novelty narrations, but for the most part she simply tells back what's she's heard.

Written narration will commence next year, much to Jemimah's disgust. We'll begin with one written piece per week, and increase it once the rebellion dies down. Initially I'll allow her to read her piece aloud, and I won't even look at it. Later we might look at correcting punctuation and layout, but I can't imagine that being in the first two terms, to be honest.

Grammar

After two terms of grammar this year we spent the last term reading Nuri Mass' excellent Little Grammar People. We both learned heaps from this book. Next year we plan on a nice easy-peasy beginning to the year by using Mad Libs, a game popular in North America (or so I'm lead to believe), but almost unheard of in Australia. I've ordered a few of these books from Amazon, and they've not arrived, so I've yet to see one in reality, but they appear to be a fun way to consolidate the parts of speech we learned this year. In term two we'll use Charlotte Mason's First Grammar Lessons again, and maybe read Nesbit's Grammarland in term three.

Typing

I meant to do this in 2011, but it just didn't happen. 2012 is the year. I'm going to use the programme my two nephews are using, but I can't remember what it's called. I'll ask my brother and let you know.

Maths

We loved our term of Simply Charlotte Mason's Pet Shop Maths at the end of this year, and feel refreshed and ready to head back into the rigours of MEP5 next year. We'll do a few of the introductory revision lessons at the beginning of MEP5 before taking up where we left off midway through the year.

Latin

We really enjoyed Minimus Latin this year. We finished Book One, but I don't think we're ready to commence Book Two quite yet. I've ordered the series of MiniBooks readers that accompany Book One, and we're going to use these to get a better grasp on our vocab before moving ahead to Book Two later in the year.

French

I'm really excited to be beginning Mission Monde French in AO5. The books arrived during the week, and they look wonderful! We're doing Mission Monde Level One, which is Grade Four standard. In addition to this we will continue to read and narrate little stories from G Gladstone Solomon's books, Je Sais Lire and Le Français pour Les Jeunes, both of which use short phrases of French that build on each other to form a short story, similar to M. François Gouin's method explained by Charlotte Mason in Home Education (p 303).

Our French Psalms are taken from two Psalters: Chantons au Seigneur by Eglise Réformée Evangélique and Psaumes 1-50 d'aprés la Version Poétique de Clément Marot et Théodore de Bèze. We sing and then memorise three per term (or, rather, Jemimah does. I am not nearly as good at this as she is), as many verses as we can master. Next term we will continue with Psaume 23.

We are also memorising this Psalm from the version d'Osterveld Bible that Jemimah's Great Granddad won as third prize from Moffat Road Sunday School back in 1916. We memorise as many verses as we can. When one is mastered we move onto the next.

French folksongs come from this Youtube channel. J'adore this resource! We learn three per term by heart. I haven't chosen these yet...watch this space.

Performing Arts

We've resubscribed to the Season of The Australian Ballet again next year. Highlights include traditional versions of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and Onegin. It's the company's 50th Anniversary in 2012, and it looks to be an extraordinary year of dance.

We're a little disappointed by the Shakespeare offerings in Melbourne in 2012. Bell Shakespeare are performing only one full length play - Macbeth - in July, so we'll study that in second term and see it performed. Later in the year they're performing a concert of highlights from Romeo and Juliet along with the MSO. Perhaps we'll see this. Don't know yet.

We're excited to be attending Victorian Opera's traditional pantomime performance of Cinderella in the spectacular Her Majesty's Theatre in January. I haven't been to a panto since I was a little girl, so I hope it's what I remember, with lots of buffoonery, slapstick and audience participation. If it is, Jemimah will have a ball.

Opera Australia are performing Gioachino Rossini's The Barber of Seville in April. This a great opera for kids. It's on our list. Pucini's Madama Butterfly is a maybe as well.

Citizenship

Plutarch's Marcus Brutus in Term One, using Anne White's indispensable study guide. These are fabulous. I would like to read Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to set the scene as it were and compliment our study. This may be a little bit optimistic, but I've put it on the timetable. We'll see. Perhaps we'll just watch it on DVD.

Art and Picture Study

We dropped art in 2011 after the floods, and I'm keen to pick it up again. I've ordered Artistic Pursuits Book 3 because Jemimah is desperate to study sculpture, the focus of this particular book. I haven't seen the books yet. Hope they arrive soon - I'm looking forward to checking them out!

Fragonard is our artist for picture study. This artist fits in with our history period for Term 1(almost!), and I think the paintings that the AO Advisory have selected are beautiful. We have our pieces printed professionally onto photographic paper, and mount them in our Book of Masterpieces. It is a much treasured book of old friends, this.

Music and Composer Study

Jemimah is super keen to study violin, but unless a teacher drops out of thin air between now and January 1 then this ain't gonna happen, kiddo. Sorry. In the mean time we'll continue on with recorder using Enjoy The Recorder by the Scottish Composer, Brian Bonsor. His arrangements for even the earliest levels of recorder playing are always interesting, and we have enjoyed the many traditional folksongs included in these books. I'm learning along with Jemimah, and we have great fun playing duets together!

Our first composer for 2012 will be Edvard Grieg. We'll read the Sybil Deucher Biography, Boy of the Northland, as well as listen to the Classics for Kids radio shows. Apart from that we'll just listen to the music. What a hardship - 12 weeks of this!



Singing

Three folksongs, three short French folksongs, three Psalms, three French Psalms. Yet to be decided, basically.

Handwork

Embroidery using Doodle Stitching: Fresh & Fun Embroidery for Beginners. Looks fun don't you think?

Science

We'll be using a vastly simplified and slowed down version of Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology by Jeannie Fullbright. We'll leave out the busy work, but we'll read, narrate, and experiment from this book. In addition we'll be using Anne White's study guide to cover the second half of Kingsley's Madam How and Lady Why, a book that we began last year. This book is difficult, and I think the study guides will help us get alot more out of each lesson. Isaac Newton as a science biography, reading from Isaac Newton - Inventor, Scientist, and Teacher, by John Hudson Tiner. We'll do a few experiments from Physics Lab in a Housewares Store if we have time, but only because we love these books.

Having used Nuri Mass' Wonderland of Nature as a field guide for many years, next year we are going to read through it and do some of the activities from Homeschooling Downunder's Nature Journal. I purchased this, along with the copywork books that I mentioned above, before Jemimah started school. I know - sometimes I'm slow. Some other plans for Nature Study as well, but I will need to tell you about this after...that C word... because it might spoil a little girl's surprise if I talk about that now.

Kitchen Garden

We continue to grow, harvest and cook each Wednesday afternoon. We'll be using Cookery the Australian Way next year. How many of you grew up cooking from this old standard. It's a keeper.

Faith

I've been keen for a while now to try transitioning Jemimah into her own personal Quiet Time each morning and night as her father and I do, instead of having Devotions together at the start of the school day. It concerns me that she tends to think of this as a school lesson, rather than as a skill of everyday life, and I want her to value this time alone with God and his Word.

I'll write about this more in a separate post, but with this as our aim, next year we will be using the Child's Story Bible Reader published by The Board of Christian Education. This little book lays out a series of Bible readings in the mornings, and then in the evenings a story read from Catherine Vos' Child's Story Bible becomes a commentary on the child's reading for that day. There are activities to 'think and do' and verses to learn. Better still, the whole process should only take five minutes of so. I do not want this to become a burden.

While Jemimah consolidates these skills we will commence an afternoon tea read aloud together on the topic of practical religion, beginning with Mabel Hale's Beautiful Girlhood. Later we will look at some of Edith Schaeffer's books. Both Jemimah and I are excited about teatime.

We will continue memorising the Westminster Shorter Catechism in 2012. We're up to Q87 of 107. Twenty to go. We also revise five earlier questions a day. We'll also continue memorising Psalms and Scripture (in French and English), but I've not decided these yet. Revision of the Books of the Bible is the plan as well.

And that, I think, is that. Except for that reading list. Therein is another whole post. There you will find history and geography and literature. There also is where the need to Australianise is greatest, and I'm still working on that. Getting there though. I'll post our revised and Australianised booklist soon.

Am I done? What have I forgotten? Ah yes, poetry. Our Aussie-ised poetry rotation is here. Kipling as per the AO recommendation in first term using the AO selections from the website.

Anything else? PE.

Jazz and Tap again next year. Jemimah won a medal for Most Consistent Dancer at her end of year concert, so she is inspired!! Swimming lessons in first term, basketball, badminton and tennis with her friends from town. Bike riding and skiing with Daddy. A bit of horse riding. Some bush walks. Sounds heaps when written out like that, but PE is pretty relaxed around here. Call it 'socialisation' if you want. We aim for three hours of physical exercise a week.

And now we're off as a family to a CPR course. Jemimah included. You can never be too young to know how to save a life.

I'll try and post pics. If I can. This computer is driving me spare. That's why there are no pictures to accompany this long and boring post. Please try to imagine pictures of piles of books and kitchen gardens and Jemimah cooking and other interesting stuff like that. That's what would be there if I could get them there. Sigh.

Has anybody actually read this far, or am I typing to myself? At least I'm not being too controversial anyhow. Bye. I'm gone now.

Sometimes pre-packaged 'Chemistry' sets can be pretty fun. This one makes superballs. It was a gift from a lovely friend.

Superball-cool, eh? What are you and yours up to this fine summer holiday Tuesday?

I was struggling to free myself from the Sandman's clutches yesterday morning in time to get ready for church. I was struggling because...well, never you mind, but I was. Anyhow, I was lying there listening to the bedside radio when suddenly the following song started playing.



Suddenly I was wide awake. This song - a real blast from my past - is the wonderful Banjo Paterson poem, Clancy of the Overflow set to music, and I just had to know who sang it. The announcer kept me in suspense for another three songs until the end of the set, but then finally reminded me that the band was named Wallis and Matilda. Which you may scornfully already know I guess, but I'd forgotten in my haze of early-morningness.

I couldn't wait to leap up to google to discover whether the band had set any other Paterson poems to music, which it turns out they have. Dozens of them. Oh joy!

It strikes me that these will be a fantastic adjunct to our poetry studies, and I hope they might help some of you too. (Please listen to Paterson's words carefully. Many of his poems contain blasphemy and other profanity that make them unacceptable for my family. You may also be concerned by the drinking and gambling contained in some.)

We only have to think of all the songs we know word perfectly to to realise that setting text to music facilitates memorisation. Unfortunately, it also appears that the melody and text are learned as a unit, which makes learning Scripture to music slightly less than desirable, unless you always want to sing your verses to remember them. Try reciting the National Anthem without the tune, and see if you have trouble preventing yourself at least rehearsing by singing it silently first, to see what I mean. (Shameful admission: I remember the books of the Old Testament by singing them under my breath. Shhh.)

To me this linkage of melody and lyrics to not nearly so important with poetry. I really don't mind if I need to sing to words of Clancy of the Overflow in order to remember them, really I don't. I also don't mind if Jemimah does. And so, as she goes around singing snatches of Clancy today merely from me playing the song a couple of times yesterday while learning about the band and another couple of times just now whilst writing this post, I feel really quite excited about the possibilities.

I now have a couple of Wallis and Matilda albums on my wish list. I reckon they'll be great.

Here's another tune to get you interested:



(Please don't be angry at me for the questionable theology contained therein.)

As an aside, during my wanders on the Wallis and Matilda site, I also learned about this reply to Clancy of the Overflow written by the real Clancy, Thomas Gerald Clancy in 1897:

Clancy's Reply

Neath the star-spangled dome
Of my Austral home,
When watching by the camp fire's ruddy glow,
Oft in the flickering blaze
Is presented to my gaze
The sun-drenched kindly faces
Of the men of Overflow.


Now, though years have passed forever
Since I used, with best endeavour
Clip the fleeces of the jumbucks
Down the Lachlan years ago,
Still in memory linger traces
Of many cheerful faces,
And the well-remembered visage
Of the Bulletin's "Banjo".


Tired of life upon the stations,
With their wretched, scanty rations,
I took a sudden notion
That a droving I would go;
Then a roving fancy took me,
Which has never since forsook me,
And decided me to travel,
And leave the Overflow.

So with maiden ewes from Tubbo,
I passed en route to Dubbo,
And across the Lig'num country
'where the Barwon waters flow;
Thence onward o'er the Narran,
By scrubby belts of Yarran,
To where the landscape changes
And the cotton bushes grow.

And my path I've often wended
Over drought-scourged plains extended,
where phantom lakes and forests
Forever come and go;
And the stock in hundreds dying,
Along the road are lying,
To count among the 'pleasures"
That townsfolk never know.

Over arid plains extended
My route has often tended,
Droving cattle to the Darling,
Or along the Warrego;
Oft with nightly rest impeded,
when the cattle had stampeded,
Save I sworn that droving pleasures
For the future I'd forego.

So of drinking liquid mire
I eventually did tire,
And gave droving up forever
As a life that was too slow.
Now, gold digging, in a measure,
Affords much greater pleasure
To your obedient servant,
"Clancy of the Overflow".

I did not know this before, and I think it is really cool. Do you?

Yesterday at 5.00 pm saw me unexpectedly standing in the back room at work, raised hand clutching a (lovely little old red Stewart tartan) Bible and swearing in the presence of the Lord as witness that I was who I said I was, and what I said I was doing was what I'd done, "so help me God". As I was reading the words of the oath, two little verses flashed through my mind. The first was this:

Above all, my brothers, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your “Yes” be yes, and your “No,” no, or you will be condemned. James 5:12 NIV

The second was this:

Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name. Deut 6:13 NIV

My words faltered as I began wondering to myself - which is right? Should I be doing this? As I found my mind wandering from the solemn and serious words that I was saying, I drew myself back to the task at hand, but still I pondered.

Later, I was thinking through what I had done. I found myself recollecting a fine English Presbyterian couple that I know who a few years ago decided that they would take up Australian citizenship. Feeling very strongly that their "Yes" should be yes and their "No" no, they chose to take an affirmation rather than swearing an oath on the Bible. To their wry amusement, during the ceremony and watched on by family and Church friends, they found themselves grouped with the predominantly Muslim non-Christian minority watching on as the rest swore with God as their witness to be good Australians. Funny, but sad, they thought, but to them they had done the right thing. To them swearing is wrong.

The Westminster Divines would disagree with them. The Westminster Confession of Faith in Chapter XXII says:

Yet is it a sin to refuse an oath touching anything that is good and just, being imposed by lawful authority.

I found the experience of swearing an oath on the Bible to be a solemn and weighty matter of extreme importance. I believe that I treated the matter with seriousness it deserved, and I do not belive I did wrong, but I did not enjoy the feeling of being placed in the uncomfortable position of doing something serious without being entirely sure it was what I believed. I will not find myself in that position again. Next time I shall be sure.

What do you think? Is swearing right or wrong? Do you know what you believe? Have you ever taken an oath? How did it make you feel?

Do share. Please.

This is the rest of the section of Westminster Confession of Faith on oaths:

CHAPTER XXII
Of Lawful Oaths and Vows

A lawful oath is a part of religious worship, wherein, upon just occasion, the person swearing solemnly calleth God to witness what he asserteth, or promiseth; and to judge him according to the truth or falsehood of what he sweareth.

Deut. x. 20; Exod. xx. 7; Lev. xix. 12; 2 Cor. i. 23; 2 Chron. vi. 22, 23.

II. The name of God only is that by which men ought to swear; and therein it is to be used with all holy fear and reverence. Therefore, to swear vainly or rashly, by that glorious and dreadful Name; or, to swear at all by any other thing, is sinful, and to be abhorred. Yet, as in matters of weight and moment, an oath is warranted by the Word of God, under the New Testament, as well as under the Old; so a lawful oath, being imposed by lawful authority, in such matters ought to be taken.

Deut. vi. 13; Exod. xx. 7; Jer. v. 7; Matt. v. 34, 37; James v. 12; Heb. vi. 16; 2 Cor. i. 23; Isa. lxv. 16; 1 Kings viii. 31; Neh. xiii. 25, Ezra x. 5.

III. Whosoever taketh an oath ought duly to consider the weightiness of so solemn an act; and therein to avouch nothing, but what he is fully persuaded is the truth. Neither may any man bind himself by oath to anything but what is good and just, and what he believeth so to be, and what he is able and resolved to perform. Yet is it a sin to refuse an oath touching anything that is good and just, being imposed by lawful authority.

Exod. xx. 7; Jer. iv. 2; Gen. xxiv. 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9; Num. v. 19, 21; Neh. v. 12; Exod. xxii. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

IV. An oath is to be taken in the plain and common sense of the words, without equivocation, or mental reservation. It cannot oblige to sin: but in anything not sinful, being taken, it binds to performance, although to a man's own hurt. Nor is it to be violated, although made to heretics, or infidels.

Jer. iv. 2; Ps. xxiv. 4; 1 Sam. xxv. 22, 32, 33, 34; Ps. xv. 4; Ezek. xvii. 16, 18, 19; Josh. ix. 18, 19 with 2 Sam. xxi. 1.

V. A vow is of the like nature with a promissory oath, and ought to be made with the like religious care, and to be performed with the like faithfulness.

Isa. xix. 21; Eccles. v. 4, 5, 6; Ps. lxi. 8; Ps. lxvi. 13, 14.

VI. It is not to be made to any creature, but to God alone: and, that it may be accepted, it is to be made voluntarily, out of faith, and conscience of duty, in way of thankfulness for mercy received, or for the obtaining of what we want; whereby we more strictly bind ourselves to necessary duties; or to other things, so far and so long as they may fitly conduce thereunto.

Ps. lxxvi. 11; Jer. xliv. 25, 26; Deut. xxiii. 21, 22, 23; Ps. l. 14; Gen. xxviii. 20, 21, 22; 1 Sam. i. 11; Ps. lxvi. 13, 14; Ps. cxxxii. 2, 3, 4, 5.

VII. No man may vow to do anything forbidden in the Word of God, or what would hinder any duty therein commanded, or which is not in his own power, and for the performance whereof he hath no promise of ability from God. In which respects, Popish monastical vows of perpetual single life, professed poverty, and regular obedience, are so far from being degrees of higher perfection, that they are superstitious and sinful snares, in which no Christian may entangle himself.

Acts xxiii. 12, 14; Mark vi. 26; Num. xxx. 5, 8, 12, 13; Matt. xix. 11, 12; 1 Cor. vii. 2, 9; Eph. iv. 28; 1 Peter iv. 2; 1 Cor. vii. 23.

I was quite taken with the Christmas fairy bread that Carolyn posted on Facebook this morning. You all might have thought of this ages ago, but I hadn't, and I thought it was a marvellous idea. Such a simple, fun and effective activity for the lead up to Christmas. Yummy too.

Jemimah cut them out using our Christmas cutters and decorated them with different coloured sprinkles. Then we ate them for lunch. Of course.

Which lead Jemimah to enquire how come I was letting her eat such an unhealthy meal. To which I had no reply.

Excepting that it is Christmas.

And perhaps that's the best answer of all. Later this afternoon we both had tummy aches from too much junk. Ah well. We had fun anyhow, and Christmas comes but once a year.

Ho Ho Ho.

Did you know that it's now over a year since all of our camera equipment was stolen from the back of our car?

Yup.

I knew at the time that I was going to find it difficult to blog without it, but I didn't realise that we would be without it so long. One day we'll be in a position to replace it again, but in the meantime I'm using a point and shoot that fits on to a clever piece of equipment hubby uses at work. It works quite well, but our computer is on the way out and the camera photos won't upload anymore (among many other problems) which means I have to wait for my clever husband to do it for me when he gets time. Often the inspiration that I have to write a post relating to an immediate event evaporates and I find myself lost for words. So there you are.

I couldn't let the Annual Delivery Of The Book Orders pass without so much as a Hurrah, despite all the problems, so I snapped a piccy of yesterday's stash lying on the floor and posted it to Facebook using Instagram so that I could cut and paste it here. And here they are. Don't they look delicious? Oh, this time of year is just so scrummy.

Some of these are from Amazon; others came via Abe, but they all arrived yesterday. Oh the pleasure those little red and white Australia Post cards can bring to a girl - it's criminal, really.

It is always a bit of a lucky dip purchasing books online. I so much prefer leafing through my books in a real life bricks and mortar bookstore. Jemimah is disappointed by the lack of pictures. Thems the breaks, kiddo, when you grow up. There are a few disappointments for me too. The hardback edition of The Family Under the Bridge that I ordered to replace my flood loss is a poor quality letdown, and a couple of the others are amateurly printed, but these are strongly outweighed by all the beauties. I am particularly inspired by Hillyer's A Child's Geography of the World, which you can see in the foreground. I'll definitely be using that in AO5.

Despite my concern about using Jeannie Fulbright's Apologia books as part of Ambleside Online because of the sheer bulk of work contained therein, as well as the chatty veneer on what is effectively a series of textbooks, I went ahead and ordered the Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology text, believing it would be a great fit for Jemimah's interests right now. I am delighted with it. It is, if anything, even more work than her other books, but I think that by being very selective in the parts of it we use, in will be marvellous. Jemimah has a very well developed 'Busywork' meter, and so I will allow her to chose which, if any, of the myriad activities she will do. I will not expect written narrations from this book, and nor will we plough through it at the incredible pace that Fullbright recommends. I've yet to decide where we will do the Christian Liberty Nature Reader that is part of AO5, or whether that will be overkill. I'm inclined to think that it may be, but I haven't looked closely at the reader yet.

I've been working hard on my plans for AO5. Despite appearances, it is now only a few short weeks before we begin the new year on January 9th, and I'm not ready. I'll post the schedule when it's done. I'm finding the Australianising of this year difficult to be honest. I've finally decided on Term 1: Expansion and Exploration, Term 2: Gold, Bushrangers and Federation, Term 3: WWI, but I haven't get managed to fit it all together. I haven't decided on the history bios to include either - nor which books in the AO line-up to replace.

Having the books here to look at will help in that I feel, although it is frustrating to purchase books and not use them. Many of these I will add to the Free Reads pile though, so we will get some use from most of them.

I am reluctant to talk to you about Christmas since it appears to distress many of you so. We have been reading some lovely books together each day - some new to us, others much beloved old friends. We have particularly enjoyed Madeleine L'Engle's The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas as new-to-us this year. Today we are decorating gingerbread Christmas tree ornaments. So much fun! We're baking flapjack as well. We are listening to Paul McMahon singing Gaudete! with Aussie chamber choir, Cantillation. So beautiful. It is on this CD.

This isn't them singing, but this version is similar. Lovely.



Enough about Christmas before I get hate mail.

I am expecting some further book deliveries in the next few days, along with the arrival of our Mission Monde curriculum and the Minimus readers. I shall post on both of those separately when I've had a chance to have a look through them.

Until then the kitchen and the gingerbread call. Enjoy the music, my book-loving friends.

Love to you all from me.

Before I became a mother I'm afraid I was rather harsh on the children of others. My child would never cause mayhem like that little boy. If my child has a tantrum in the middle of Myer then I'm just going to leave him. He won't try that on me. She should get some control. My child would always be respectful of her parents. She would never talk back or be rude or smart. She would always say please and thank you. That child's far to old to be speaking to her father that way.

As time has past, of course I've had the wool pulled from my eyes.. My child is not perfect. She does talk back and she often forgets her manners. She is sometimes untidy and lazy and she has lots of other less than desirable habits as well. We're working on them; she's getting better, but there you are. I was wrong. My child would do those things. Most of them. (Okay, she never had a tantrum in the middle of Myer, but the rest. I am far easier on my friends who are parents now as well.

Recently I received a text from a close but childless friend complaining about some behaviour of Jemimah's that she found less than desirable. I cried when I received the text. It seemed so condemning, and was so harsh put in writing like that. I wondered what I was supposed to do with the information. The incident had happened several weeks prior to the text, so it was too late to discipline my daughter, although I would have done so had known about her actions at the time. It appears from the few words of the message that nothing was damaged or broken, so my friend didn't expect compensation. It is not that I don't care - I do. I just don't know what on earth what she wants me to do next. Why did she even tell me about it in the first place? Am I supposed to have done better perhaps? Am I a failure of a mother? Would she have done better if it were her hypothetical child?

When Jemimah was just a little dot her father and I began writing a bucket list. We didn't call it that, of course - the film had not yet been produced - but that is in effect what it was - a list of attainments we wanted for our daughter before...well before it was too late.

Some of the items on the list are obvious. We wanted her to come to know Christ as her Lord and Saviour at an early age. We wanted her to be catechised and to have hidden God's word in her heart. We wanted her to glorify God. Others are skills - to be able to play tennis, a great social sport available in towns and cities of all sizes. We wanted her to be able to swim and to ride a horse. Her ex-champion ballroom dancing father wanted her to be able to tango and foxtrot and waltz, unlike her mother. We wanted her to be able to eat out at a top restaurant and know the correct cutlery and etiquette. We wanted her to feel comfortable and know how to interact with all echelons of society. Some items are specific only to us. We wanted her to have a working knowledge of French - some of our closest friends speak that language. We wanted her to love Asian travel and people of all races and religions. We wanted her to be mission minded. We wanted her to be able to behave appropriately at an Embassy Ball. "Eh what?" you ask, and yet her father in his three years living in Saudi Arabia spent many evenings at such events and saw how important it is to teach your children this stuff early. He was continually grateful that he also had been taught this behaviour while young.

There are many more items on our bucket list as well.

To me, the wonderful thing about this list is that it is not condemning. It is positive - I want her to be able to... rather than negative - She will never do... . To tick an item off the bucket list Jemimah's daddy and I need to work towards making it happen. In order for Jemimah to learn to swim we had to take her to the swimming pool. Regularly. We had to enrol her in swimming lessons. We had to arrange transport. It is up to us. In order that Jemimah feel comfortable at restaurants we had to eat out with her - not at Michelin restaurants, but at places with place settings and napkins. We had to explain what to do with her knife and fork, how to eat with her mouth closed, how to politely interact with the waiter. It is up to us. In order that she know her catechism we had to begin early and we had to persevere and we had to keep going when it got hard. And at some stage when you are learning - and remembering - 107 Questions and Answers it's gonna get hard, believe me. It is up to us.

As Jemimah nears her tenth birthday we are beginning to tick things off her list of attainments. In other areas she has - and therefore we also have - a way to go. On our list of attainments is the behaviour that my friend was so condemning about in her text. We're working on it. Jemimah is improving. One day soon, I hope, I will be able to put a tick next to this item as well. But only if I keep working on it. Only if I persevere. On our list this behaviour is a positive not a negative. It doesn't say she will never do this specific thing. It says she will behave in this way. And one day she will.

I don't know yet quite how I am going to reply to my friend's text. It is taking some time because I am prayerfully working to get the answer to say what it needs to say, but I hope my friend comes to understand that being a parent is wonderful, but it is also hard, and is full of disappointments. I love my daughter completely, but she is not the paragon of virtue I expected and fully intended that she would be. I am not the perfect parent, and sometimes I fail. On the other hand, every so often I get to put a tick on our list. Every so often I do enough right as Jemimah's mother that she is able to achieve something valuable. One day she might just turn out to be alright after all.

Maybe.

By the grace of God.

In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

Philippians 1: 4-11 NIV

I wonder what you all think of audiobooks. SCM seem to think that a lot of homeschoolers use them. Do you?

My brother loves them. Enough that he even bought a specially designed waterproof iPod so that he could listen to books while he swims laps. (He says it works well, but that the water makes quite a lot of background noise. In case you're interested.)

One of my bloggy pals, a single mum, homeschooled her two children whilst working full time. They covered a significant proportion of the AO literature list by listening to audiobooks in the car to and from work. Without them she would have struggled to find time to cover the curriculum. Nowadays the drive to work is done alone, but my friend, a voracious reader, continues to listen to many of her books in the car. She often comments that a particular narrator has enhanced her pleasure in a particular series, or conversely that a poorly selected narration has destroyed the book for her.

I haven't used audiobooks much, but we do have two. The Loaded Dog and more Classic Favourites by Henry Lawson is read by Colin Friels. Friels has a great voice - strong and distinctly Australian, without becoming a parody of Australiana.He articulates well, and I find him a pleasure to listen to. My only criticism of this audiobook comes from the author himself, Henry Lawson. When I read these stories aloud, I do some judicious editing to remove the profanities and blasphemies, thereby making the classic Aussie stories acceptable for their 9 yo audience. Colin doesn't do this, and I find his use of God's name unacceptable. Sadly.

The other audiobook is also read by Colin. C J Dennis' A Book for Kids. This one is great, and I highly recommend it if you can get a hold of it somewhere. The problem with this one, for me, is that the print version of this book is one of our dear friends, and I'm afraid Colin just doesn't read the poems right. He doesn't know when I pause, and when I-read-really-fast-and-run-all-the-words-together and when I wait for Jemimah to fill in the missing word. He doesn't know because he is not my daughter's mummy. I am.

They tell me that there are a lot of advantages to audiobooks. Apparently they improve reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. Your auditory processing improves, as does your memory. Apparently you are better able to analyse a book that you listen to rather than one you read. They will get your non-reader interested in reading. They will develop vocabulary and pronunciation, and encourage and nurture a love of reading.

Apparently.

Some of these claims may, indeed be true, in that the audiobook is simply a story read aloud. The skills that Jemimah has attained from read-aloud books are impressive, particularly in her vocabulary, auditory comprehension and listening skills. Jemimah's ability to listen to the spoken word developed from a one time reading, translates to so many situations - the sermon in Church on Sunday; a list of instructions by her parents (pick up your clothes, brush your teeth, refill your drinking glass and hop into bed, please. Let me know when you're ready for a story.) All of these skills apply directly to audiobooks as well, I feel sure. Other claims I am less convinced about. I can't see how a child's reading comprehension improves, for example, by listening to a book on tape (or its modern equivalent!). Most importantly, I do not see that audiobooks nurture a love of reading. In fact, I am inclined to think they do the opposite, cultivating a lazy child who is not willing to master the mechanics of reading for himself. Miss Mason speaks of this in Home Education:

We must remember the natural inertness of a child's mind; give him the habit of being read to, and he will steadily shirk the labour of reading for himself; indeed, we all like to be spoon-fed with our intellectual meat, or we should read and think more for ourselves and be less eager to run after lectures.

Home Education p228

Later she says:

A child has not begun his education until he has acquired the habit of reading to himself, with interest and pleasure, books fully on a level with his intelligence...Once the habit of reading his lesson-book with delight is set up in a child, his education is - not completed, but - ensured; he will go on for himself in spite of the obstructions which school too commonly throws in his way. ibid p229

The real reason that I don't use audiobooks is because one day when I'm dead and gone, I want Jemimah to remember my voice when she thinks of the Triantiwontigongolope and recites it for her own children. I want her to pause where I do: So try. (pause) Tri (longer pause) Tri-anti-wonti- (even longer pause, and then running quickly together:) Triantiwontigongolope! That's the right way to say it, Colin Friels. Why? Because that's the way I know it, and that's the way I want my daughter to know it. That's all. It's just right.

A friend recently was reminiscing over the audiobook of Jonathan Toomey: "I hope you got Jonathan with the cd - it is wonderful in the car at night to hear such a lovely story...we lost our cd in a car accident, but I can still hear it in my mind 'pish posh...'" See, this is my point. I don't want to remember the sound of a narrator utter Jonathan's 'pish posh'. That's my part. I want Jemimah to remember me saying it. I make him sound all English. He's not of course, but my Jonathan Toomey has quite a plumy English upper class accent. Don't know why, but he does. That's just the way it is.

Speaking of which, I can see an advantage of audiobooks with accents. I would love to have read the Brer Rabbit book by Joel Chandler Harris to Jemimah in the original African-American dialect:

"'Hit's so much trouble fer ter kindle a fier,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'dat I speck I'll hatter hang you,' sezee.

"'Hang me des ez high as you please, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, but do fer de Lord's sake don't fling me in dat brier-patch,' sezee.

"'I ain't got no string,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, en now I speck I'll hatter drown you,' sezee.

"'Drown me des ez deep ez you please, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'but do don't fling me in dat brier-patch,' sezee.

"'Dey ain't no water nigh,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'en now I speck I'll hatter skin you,' sezee.

"'Skin me, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'snatch out my eyeballs, t'ar out my years by de roots, en cut off my legs,' sezee, but do please, Brer Fox, don't fling me in dat brier-patch,' sezee.

"Co'se Brer Fox wanter hurt Brer Rabbit bad ez he kin, so he cotch 'im by de behime legs en slung 'im right in de middle er de brier-patch. Dar wuz a considerbul flutter whar Brer Rabbit struck de bushes, en Brer Fox sorter hang 'roun' fer ter see w'at wuz gwineter happen. Bimeby he hear somebody call 'im, en way up de hill he see Brer Rabbit settin' crosslegged on a chinkapin log koamin' de pitch outen his har wid a chip. Den Brer Fox know dat he bin swop off mighty bad. Brer Rabbit wuz bleedzed fer ter fling back some er his sass, en he holler out:

"'Bred en bawn in a brier-patch, Brer Fox-bred en bawn in a brier-patch!' en wid dat he skip out des ez lively ez a cricket in de embers."

Nope, Sorry, this white Aussie girl ain't gonna attempt that. No siree, I sez. An audiobook of Brer Rabbit would have been marvellous. An audiobook of Rabbie Burn's poems would be too. I just can't roll my Rs like my Dad.

Apart from examples like these, though, I'm going to stick with read alouds. As the time I have left to read to my daughter diminishes as her skill in reading increases, I'm going to make the most of every minute I have left. I'm going to snuggle together on the sofa with my daughter and read, read, read. I'll edit the American grammar (and references to 'barfing' - what kind of a word is that, I ask you?) in The Penderwicks, and remove the profanities in Little Britches. I'll omit the references to evolution in our natural history books, and edit the brothel scene in Playing Beatie Bow. I'll make Granny Tallisker sound Scottish, and Abigail (formerly Lynette) sound like an Aussie. My Jonathan Toomey will be English. Rosalind, Skye, Jane and Batty speak like nice Australian girls, their Professor father sounds absent and dreamy and pronounces his Latin the Classical way, like we do. I'll attempt the Yorkshire accent in Lassie. Sometimes when it gets exciting I run-all-the-words-together-into-a-big-long-phrase-with-no-punctuation. When it gets scary I pause. When it gets predictable I expect everyone to guess what happens next. When the suspense is killing I stop in the middle of a chapter. Hah! I'm cruel.

When she is grown, I hope Jemimah remembers these days with pleasure. I hope she will be able to hear her old friends speaking aloud to her, each in her own special voice. And behind it all, I hope she hears the love in her mother's voice as she says, Try. Tri. Triantiwonti. Triantiwontigongolope.

I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

Their faithful Friend and Servant, C.D.

December, 1843.

School Library Journal posted yesterday about some of the new versions of the classic Dickens tale, A Christmas Carol. Zip off and have a read, and then come back, okay?

Remarkable Reads: 'A Christmas Carol'

Right then. Comfy?

They are remarkable reads indeed, are they not? Most of them (four of the five) leave me with a dreadfully sour Scrooge-like disapproving look on my Charlotte Mason face. We have an abridgement - "less threatening to those who tend to avoid the classics". There's a graphic novel collection of classics by well known authors including Mark Twain, O. Henry and Willa Cather as well as Dickens - "Teens won't be able to walk by the spooky cover without picking it up!" There's a version with a twist - Scrooge is a broken hearted teen, and it's set on Valentine's Day. (Wonder what they've done with Tiny Tim's "God bless us, everyone"?) The final offering is a doozy. It's called It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Zombies: A Book of Zombies Christmas Carols. Need I say more? I won't. SLJ say that it's "A great jump-starter for a teen program during the winter break!" Apparently it's hysterical. Bah Humbug!

There is so many versions of this classic Christmas tale that it's impossible to make a list of them all. There are a dozen different movies - including this one, which I do like:



I love this 1910 silent version by Thomas Edison as well:



There are also some wonderful books. I'd like to, if I may, show you three of the versions contained (still) in our Basket of Delights. They are, all three wonderful.

I'll begin with this one:

This unabridged version is one of my favourite Carols because of the divine illustrations by P J Lynch:


The pages open well, the paper is rich and creamy, and it's well bound. The perfect read-aloud version, this one. It's out this year in an affordable paperback version as well.

The next Carol is this one that I posted about last year.



It's Chuck Fischer and Bruce Foster's magnificent pop-up version. It's also unabridged - the whole story is included in five richly illustrated booklets (A sixth provides a bio of Dickens and an interesting essay entitled "The Enduring Appeal of A Christmas Carol"). Jemimah and I poured over this one last year - and no doubt will again this season, but this is probably not the version I'd chose as a read-aloud, at least, not more than once. As an adjunct, though, Foster's paper engineering makes it incredible!

This final Carol is my favourite. You can't imagine how happy I was to discover that it had survived the flood.

It's a tiny - 7x10cm leatherette version with gold edged pages. It's old, I don't know how old, but I doubt that it was ever read.

Here are the illustrated endpapers:

Contented sigh, I just love this dear little book.

Anyhow, those are my three favourite print versions of A Christmas Carol. If I had to add a fourth it would be this one illustrated by Robert Ingpen, but I don't have a copy, and so I haven't talked about it. I like it though.

To me, all of them are better than the SLJ offerings. Ugh.

Which is your favourite version of A Christmas Carol? Do share.

Amazon have a special on the wonderful Puffin Classics 16 Book Set. It's a great way to start a library of living books, I reckon! The whole kit and caboodle for A$51.65. (That's just over 50 bucks Australian. Plus postage if you live in Australia. That always hurts a bit. Okay, a lot.)

Anyhow, check it out.

This is what you get:

AO1 Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
AO2 The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
AO3 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
AO3 A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
AO4 Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
AO4 The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
AO5 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
AO5 King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
AO5 Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
AO5 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
AO5 Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
AO6 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
AO6 The Call of the Wild by Jack London
AO6 Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
White Fang by Jack London
The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

If you live in America you just can't go wrong with that little lot. Just in time for Christmas too. Ho Ho Ho

The Christmas Books are back in my sidebar, where they belong for the month of December.

Only this year it's sort of false advertising, because this year they show the books that were in the Basket of Delights before the flood, not those that remain. Which is about half.

I no longer have Bush Christmas, Little Grey Rabbit's Christmas, Christmas at Longtime, A Bush Christmas, Father Christmas, The Mysterious Toyshop (terrible sob) or The Christmas Mystery. Lots of other lovely titles are gone as well. Including Jemimah's favourite, which we can't remember the name of and so we can't replace. (Funny, I thought all of our Christmas books were included in that list, but I was wrong. There are many titles that don't appear.) She is upset about that. But not as upset as I am. I was really dreading opening the Christmas boxes this year, but I think the losses from the books are worse that ever I dreamed.

Richele somehow knew how heart wrenching unpacking the Basket of Delights was going to be. A few weeks ago she sent me a beautifully wrapped parcel. You can see what was inside it above. Christmas books and music. I was overwhelmed. I am just so blessed to have friends like Richele. Bloggy friends like you that I've never met. Thank you for caring for me.

Tonight we're playing New Orleans Christmas as we decorate our tree. We'll drink Glögg and eat mince pies and shortbread. We'll unpack the Christmas boxes and discover what we still have and what we don't. It's gonna be really hard, I know that already.

I'm putting the Basket of Delights in my sidebar not as some primitive form of torture, but because that's where it belongs. Some of you might even find some new ones amongst them.

I snuck a few of the missing titles onto my Amazon order yesterday. It just ain't Christmas without Jonathan Toomey. Perhaps eventually I'll replace them all.

And thanks to Richele, this year I even have a couple on new ones to read as well.

To be a successful Ambleside Online user in Australia necessitates a passion for books that is outside the realms of what may be defined as normal well adjusted human behaviour.

Bibliophilism may not yet have its own DSM-IV listing, but it surely must come close to an illness in the lives of a true Australian AOer. The AOer must enter every bookshop she sees. She must organise her travel itinerary around second-hand bookstores and enter every-single-one. She must allow at least an hour - preferably more. The Aussie AOer must be on a first name basis with Abe, and be well acquainted with Amazon and The Book Depository, whilst holding a special affection for her very own Independent Bookseller. She must mourn the closure of Borders as Australia's foremost stockist of American AO type books, and celebrate the glorious rising from the ashes of Reader's Feast. She must allocate a significant portion of the household budget to the ongoing accumulation of books whilst foregoing other less important frivolities, like clothes and food. (Chocolate is a necessity, not a frivolity.)

The Australian AOer must recognise the exciting possibilities offered to her by the advent of the Kindle and the iPad and the whole phenomenon of ebooks realising that finally she may be able to splurge a little on new underwear and shoes for herself and her family; whilst still harbouring an affection for the smell, feel and sound of the printed page and continuing to maintain and add to her large and highly varied paper based collection of children's literature, Australian natural history books, reference tomes, Scripture study guides, pedagogological treatises and Charlotte Mason ephemera. She will recognise that the Australian environment - its humidity and bright sunlight - is toxic to books whilst being highly desirable for children, so if there is room in the home for only one of the two, then it is the children who should sleep outside with the family pet and not the books.

Whilst acknowledging the need to Buy Australia Made, the Antipodean AOer must realise that obtaining the books of the AO booklist in any way, shape or form is her primary objective, and if that means that she must purchase online from an American megastore, or even upload an electronic copy onto her ereader, then well, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

The Aussie AOer will recognise instinctively that the advent of the ebook does not spell the end of literacy as we know it; that reading print off the static screen of a Kindle or iPad is still reading, with the added capacity of being able to increase font size for her developing or emerging young reader. She will understand the distinction between ebooks that you read and book apps that you play with. She will embrace technology, excited about the possibilities of accessibility to out of print books immediately and cheaply, and the portability that the ereader allows. Imagine - all of those deliciously lovely AO books in your handbag when you're waiting at the doctors, or on a trip away.

The Aussie AOer will be forever thankful for sites like Project Gutenberg Australia with their wonderful collection of free ebooks on topics like Australian history and geography, as well as primary sources and Australian Classics. She will look forward to the day that many more Australian books will be available online, but in the meantime will be grateful for the lists at Aussie Book Threads, From Wonder...to Wisdom, and CMandFriends.

Above all, to be a successful Aussie AOer, one must show one's undying appreciation for those intrepid homeschoolers that have gone before - for the AO Advisory, for parents at AmblesideOnline, the lovely community at Aussiehomeschool - and for those wonderful Aussie CM bloggers that share what goes on behind the doors to their homes. Without these lovely people, all those difficult to find AO books would be just a disease - bibliomania, perhaps, instead of a rich, liberal curriculum of the highest literary standards where the whole child is taught to be the best that he can be using great books and great ideas.

Thank you all for helping me to be a successful Australian AOer. I couldn't do it alone.

I'd still have a passion for books though.