Shakespeare and poetry

 

A great video for AO7 Grammar of Poetry students. And for the rest of you that love the Bard.

 

A Christmas present for you

A couple of weeks ago a friend posted a couple of pages from Adventures with a Microscope on FaceBook. The pages were headed 'Useful Supplies for your Laboratory Table and Shelf', and she was looking for help in purchasing the items for her daughter.

I must say that it was a formidable list indeed.  Not only were the names of the reagents and chemicals archaic - things like caustic potash, chlorinated soda and xylol, some of them were downright dangerous, like chloroform (really), and most of them are impossible to purchase nowadays anyway, even if you wanted them.  Which it turns out you don't.

What I started out doing was to write a revised list of equipment and reagents for use with this book.  What I ended up with is a 20 page booklet that I've called An Introductory Guide for Adventuring Safely.  I've put it online at google docs, and if you would like a copy, you can download it from there and print it off.  Well, you can if I've done it right. Wry grin.


Just call it a Christmas present from me to you.

Ambleside Online has recently listed Adventures with a Microscope as part of its AO7 Science selections.  It is a wonderful book, written in engaging and informative literary language, and I''m excited to be using it with Jemimah next year. Hopefully this guide will allow you to join us safely.

As a caveat - I haven't yet used this book, so the guide is sure to change as we work through its pages.  My suggestions may not work, or we may find a better way of doing certain things.  I'll be sure to let you know if and when that happens.

Merry Christmas!

Amy Mack's nature books

The book of Genesis places man at the head of creation, but makes it clear that he is dependent on nature for his continued existence. In spite of the technology which makes possible synthetic food, clothing and shelter, the human species is still, primarily, a hunter and gatherer of food. Plants must be identified and processed, animals tamed and brought into subjection for the welfare of society. Small wonder that the educators of the nineteenth century emphasised the need for a knowledge of natural science, and that Rousseau's Emile was to be a child of nature. Knowledge was thought to bring mastery.

H. M Saxby, A History of Australian Children's Literature p184

We Aussies have long been proud of our native land. We delight in our strangely fascinating animals and our uniquely beautiful flora, and right from the very first Australian children's book, A Mother's Offering, written in 1841 by Lady Gordon Bremer, natural history has featured largely in our literature. Initially, children's books were meant to instruct, and A Mother's Offering is pointedly educational, moralistic and judgemental, and, to be honest, fairly boring as well for the most part, but it was not long before our new settlers came to love their new land and to delight in passing their love on to others.

It is easy to see that Amy Eleanor Mack (Mrs Launcelot Harrison) loved the bush. Her writing, both for children and adults, was intended to arouse interest in nature, and is is because of that great love that her books can counted amongst the great Australian living books, even when they are used to teach us to be good...which they generally do!

Bushland Stories, Mack's first book written for children, uses fictional stories to explain the facts of natural history to encourage a love of nature and life. The wind, waves, trees, and of course the animals and birds, are all anthropomorphised. They speak and have emotions, and have much in common with the characters in Gatty's Parables of Nature, of which this volume very much reminds me. The things of nature are used to explain the happenings of natural history to her young readers, as well as to teach character traits such as contentment, kindness and satisfaction with what we have. Because Mack was interested, primarily, in conveying botanical and zoological knowledge, however, the plants and animals still behave like their real counterparts enough that we can learn a great deal from them. In The Cocktail's Party, Bluetip the Blue Wren learns with astonishment that as he has grown his plain brown coat has turned to brightest shining black trimmed with gleaming blue.

"But I don't understand," he said. "I thought I was plain brown, like you, but there I am just like father.""When you were a little boy you were plain brown," explained his mother, "for brown is the safest colour for children and mothers. It is not easily seen and so our enemies do not notice the children who are weak, or the mother when she is sitting on her nest. But now you are a strong bird, Bluetip, and able to take care of yourself, so you need not wear your dingy brown coat any longer, and have got this nice blue suit.""Oh, I am so glad," cried Bluetip. "I have always wanted to have a coat like my father's. I am so happy," and he broke into a joyful song.

Man is the enemy, but not frustratingly so, and he can be kind too. Kids are like that, aren't they? Kind one day; cruel the next. Perhaps we all are.

There are 25 stories in the original 1910 edition, although later editions seem to contain between 15 and 18. Keep an eye out for a full version. I read Bushland Stories to Jemimah as a read aloud, somewhere about AO2 or AO3, but I don't seem to have listed it in our curriculum choices, for some reason. I think it is more worthwhile than that, and would certainly recommend that you include it somewhere between AO1-AO3. You can read a story from the book online at Homeschooling Downunder, here.

Bushland Stories was the first volume in Mack's nature series for young children, followed by Waterside Stories and Birdland Stories, all published in 1910. Be careful of overkill with these stories, but they're worth looking out for if you love the first book. Scribbling Sue, illustrated by May Gibbs, was also a book of stories about how nature can teach us to be good. It's probably a bit too moralistic for my taste.

Probably the best known of Mack's books in Aussie homeschooling circles is A Bush Calendar (1909), despite the fact that it is an adult book, and was actually a compilation of articles written for the women's page of the Sydney Morning Herald. It is written as a first person monthly diary of Amy's own wanders in the bush around Sydney, and is illustrated with black and white photographs. It is just delightful - a peaceful type of book - the sort that inspires you to get out into nature to experience it all for yourself.

November 1

It was two butterflies that did the mischief to-day. I had quite made up my mind to have a nice day's sewing, and had planned two blouses to be made; but while I sat at breakfast on the verandah those blue butterflies came floating by, and the blouses were forgotten. In and out amongst the red tips of the gum saplings they flittered, living turquoise in a frame of burnished copper. A little wind, too young to be rough, flittered softly after them and set the red leaves dancing as it passed. Some sunbeams, seeing the dancing leaves, came to join in the fun, and butterflies, leaves, and sunbeams danced and sparkled together in the soft sweet breeze.

It was irresistible. I set down my coffee cup and stood up. "It's no use," I said to myself, " no one could be expected to sit still and sew to-day when all the world's a-dancing. It's a day for the bush!" So off to the bush I went.

Jemimah read this beautiful book in AO7, coinciding each monthly chapter with the correct month of the year. The book begins on August 1, but it lost little by being read January to December, and the benefits of reading the correct months were evident. Each chapter ends with a detailed list of flowers in bloom and birds to be found in and around the coastal areas of Sydney, and Jemimah found it interesting comparing these lists to happenings in our own region.

A Bush Calendar has been reprinted by the lovely Michelle from Homeschooling Downunder. Thanks, wonderful lady, for all that you do for us. It is also at Archive.

A Bush Calendar was followed quickly afterwards by Bush Days in 1911. Written in a similar style, Bush Days is a series of undated stories, quite as delightful as those in A Bush Calendar. My favourite story in this volume is about one of my favourite birds, the Silvereye. It's the story of a young lad who learns to his amazement that the 'sivie' sings as sweetly as a canary:

"I had no idea that silvereyes could sing at all," said one of the men, still gazing up into the branches.I laughed. "It's a case of the prophet in his own country.""Evidently," agreed the man. "I must listen to them in future. It's a good thing to know that we have birds that can sing.""It is," I assented, "the pity is that more people don't know it."Then we all went on our ways, leaving the small singer alone. And he, regardless of his audience, and heedless of their ignorance, still sat amongst the glossy leaves, pouring forth his song of joy and thanksgiving unto the world beautiful.

Until I read this chapter, I didn't know that Silvereyes could sing either.

Jemimah read Bush Days in AO7 as well. On the first week of each month she would read the entry from A Bush Calendar; on the other weeks she read from Bush Days. Bush Days is available from Archive.

Amy Mack also wrote another book for adults, The Wilderness, in 1922. I haven't used this with Jemimah yet, but plan to in a couple of years. I'll keep you appraised!

 

Coming to the end

Today is the first day of the last week of AO7 term 2. By the end of this week we will have finished:

::The Pursuit of God

:: The Brendan Voyage

:: A Taste of Chaucer

:: Twain's Joan of Arc

:: In Freedom's Cause

:: Ivanhoe

:: The Daughter of Time

:: The Sword in the Stone

:: The Return of the Word Spy (Australian grammar)

:: Tennyson's Idylls of the King (Epic poetry from this term's poet)

:: How Did We Find about About Black Holes? by Isaac Asimov (CM science)

:: The Thunder: A Novel on John Knox by Douglas Bond (for our trip)

:: The Von Trapp Family Singers (AO6)

:: Consider This by Karen Glass (for the second time) (CM education)

:: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Free read)

:: How Sleep the Brave! by J. H. Hunter (for our trip)

:: The Radium Woman by Doorly (CM science)

:: Ten Fingers for God by Paul Brand (as an adjunct to Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. Also CM Science.)

Eighteen climactic endings! What a week! I tried to find a clever collective noun for climactic endings, but I had no success. Bliss works for me.

Are you finishing any books this week? What are you looking forward to reading next?

(My friend, Jacqueline suggested I label the books that are not on the AO7 list, so I've done that. The books without brackets are from the regular AO7 Booklist.)

 

Physics books in order

Sometimes I use my blog so I don't forget stuff. This is what this post is.

I have been really pleased with the way our physics books have worked, one leading into the other; knowledge building on knowledge. Here are the books we've used, in the order we've read them, just so I don't forget. Please notice that some of the books are not physics books, but they are useful in the next stage of physics study, so you sort of need them to move to the next level.

I'll try to write more about some of these books later, but at least I have them written down now. Maybe they'll be useful to some of you, too.

Just one more thing. Only the first two of these are official AO books. I take the blame for the others.

AO6

Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity by Robert Cwiklik - Physics

Secrets of the Universe: Discovering the Universal Laws of Science by Paul Fleisher - Physics

The Mystery of the Periodic Table by Benjamin D. Wiker - Chemistry

Who Made the Moon? A Father Explores How Science and Faith Agree by Sigmund Brouwer -Christian old earth creation

The Search for Planet X by Tony Simon

 

AO7

The Wonder of Light: A Picture Story of How and Why We See by Hyman Ruchlis.

A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking -Cosmology and Space

How Did We Find Out About Black Holes? By Isaac Asimov - Astrophysics and Space

 

 

Longtime Passing

Teddy Truelove is one of my childhood friends, as real to me as the girls who lived down the street, only perhaps more so, because I could read about Teddy over and over again. She lived with her family in the remote Candlebark forests of the Blue Moutains of New South Wales in a hut that her father, Edwin, hewed from bark slabs for his wife and children, cutting the logs from the forest that surrounded them and provided their livelihood. Teddy's father has settled in Longtime with his brothers, Merlin, Sean and Vance, because doctors have told him that only the fresh mountain air will keep his beloved daughter, Teddy's elder sister, alive. It is a life of hardships, of failed orange orchards, bushfire, and the Depression, but for Teddy and her siblings, it is also a life filled with freedom, adventure, and fun. Family are always present - the uncles woo their girlfriends, the aunts helping to manage the household.

Children and older folk, too, when they planted the freshly turned earth, somehow planted themselves. So that always and forever, wherever they went, whatever season it might be, whatever the time of day, those roots would draw them back... This was Longtime as I remember it. This was the country of my childhood.

Lettie, Teddy's mother, ‘felt as though she and the children were the only inhabitants of a lost world’. Born to a life of leisure in the genteel suburbs of Sydney, she dedicates herself to supporting her husband and raising and educating her children as best she can, disappearing at night into endless re-readings of Pride and Prejudice.

Longtime Passing tells the history of the early Australian explorers and the problems they encounter 'going west', through the seemingly impenetrable barrier of the Great Dividing Range. It talks of the convict labourers, the struggles of the first settlers - and, of course, the Aborigines. Brinsmead is sometimes criticised for telling what is probably a fictional story of the ritual sacrifice of a young aboriginal woman who leads white man across the mountains, but Longtime Passing also deals sensitively with the aborigines and their cultural heritage and spiritual beliefs.

Teddy seems real, because she almost is. Longtime Passing is the only slightly fictionalised story of Brinsmead's own childhood. It is the first of three books in the Longtime trilogy, along with Longtime Dreaming, the memoir of Brinsmead's father, and the delightful Christmas at Longtime. They're out of print, but easily available through my friend Abe. We read them in AO7. You should too.

 

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made II

I updated my Fearfully and Wonderfully post with more videos this morning, if you're watching along.  I also added the link to a YouTube playlist containing them all, which you will find here.  I've been updating the list more quickly than the blogpost, so if that is important to you, you know where to find them!

I also wanted to add that we started Ten Fingers for God as a read aloud last Friday, and I am so very, very glad we did.  I have already mentioned how much I loved reading this book as a teen, and I am enjoying it even more this second time round.  Many of the anecdotes in Fearfully and Wonderfully Made are fleshed out (terrible pun) in this older book - we meet up with Sadan again, and learn ever so much more about Dr Brand's work and about leprosy in general.  We're only up to Chapter 5, but I'm quite confident that I'm onto a winner here.  If you're looking for a great adjunct to your readings, this is it.



You can find the full documentary here.

Science books AO7

Let's make a start on science, shall we? The year will be over before I know it. Here are the subjects we've covered this AO7 year so far, and the books we've used to learn about them:

Physics: Light Waves and Colour

The Wonder of Light: A Picture Story of How and Why We See by Hyman Ruchlis.

Astronomy: Introduction to Classical Astronomy; The Southern Constellations and their myths and legends

Signs & Seasons: Understanding the Elements of Classical Astronomy (Prologue and Chapter 1) by Jay Ryan

A Walk Through the Southern Sky by Milton D Heifetz

Microbiology: The Germ Theory of Disease

How Did We Find Out about Germs by Isaac Asimov

Biology: Classical Genetics, Variation and Inheritance, Meiosis, Mitosis, Sex-Linkage, Vegetative and Sexual Reproduction

How Did We Find Out about Genes? by Isaac Asimov

Gregor Mendel: The Friar Who Grew Peas by Cheryl Bardo

How Did We Find Out about DNA? By Isaac Asimov

Also, the K'NEX DNA:Replication and Transcription model

Botany: Biography of Carl Linnaeus, Classification and Binomial Nomenclature

Beloved Botanist by Adrien Stoutenburg and Laura Nelson Baker

Physics: Biography of Marie Curie

Radium Woman by Eleanor Doorly

Physics: Cosmology and Space

A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Chemistry and Physics of Flames

Chemical History of a Candle by Michael Faraday (just started this one)

Australian Natural History

A Bush Calendar by Amy MackBush Days by Amy Mack

Nature Study: Seed Dispersion, Carrot Seed Production, The Grey-Headed Flying Fox, Saunders Case Moths and more!

Australian Nature Study (Selected readings) by J A Leach

If you go and buy these books you're going to be irritated at me, because most of them are only jumping blocks into further study. Mitosis was introduced in the genetics texts, but we did quite a lot of extra work as well. Similarly, we did a lot more work on classification once we'd been introduced to it in the Linnaeus book.

We have a lesson about once a week that is based on the things we have learned about in our books - sort of a traditional lecture type lesson. Once a week we do a nature study topic in some depth. Once a week we read a biography. If there is an experiment or demonstration we can do from a reading, then we do it. Every day something is drawn into the Science Notebook. Science takes about 2 1/2 - 3 hours each week, not including a nature walk.

I will continue writing about science as we go through the year, but at least now I've started the Booklist so I don't forget what we've read! Is there anything you'd like me to cover in depth?

 

In which I think out loud

I brought my laptop with me to Jemimah's dance studio today, intending to do a bit of blogging, only to discover that the OS X installation still has 4467 hours remaining. Yup. In the meantime, I'm pecking on my iPad. One finger at a time. Life is hard. It is.

I've been fretting a bit over how I'm going to fit everything in this year, with an extended holiday in the middle of it. I know I said only a few posts back that finishing the year wasn't as important as what we'll learn on our trip, but it's different now that I'm trying to juggle it all around to make it work. I mean, some stuff is optional, but there is a minimum, right?

I thought you might like to see how I muddle this sort of stuff through. Consider this a wee peek into the workings of my brain. Okay?

So. By squishing a couple of weeks together at the start, we have exactly enough weeks for AO7 term two. We will finish Week 12 the day before we leave. I might even manage a day or two of exams there. It is term 3 that is the problem.

I have 7 full weeks on our return. Now I'm happy with 7 weeks of maths and science and Latin and 'extras' ( We'll be practising our French and Japanese in situ and will have plenty of nature study), but I really want to fit in all the AO books. I'm thinking I really need to read How The Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to the British Sources of Children's Books before we go. It's about a family's literary journey around Britain, and we might get some inspiration, I'm guessing. Maybe I could add that to the Family Free Read list. I've added a book on the two Margarets, Against the Tide by Hope Irvin Marston into our evening Family Devotions, and I could probably follow that with Douglas Bond's bio on John Knox, The Thunder. I want to cover these two books because we're going on a week long Covenanter Tour of Scotland, remember? We've read Douglas Bond's Crown and Covenant Trilogy, but it was a few years ago, and we sort of need the reminder of the events of the Reformation to get the most from the tour.

I can finish Ivanhoe in term 2 if we schedule two chapters a week, and then read the left overs in the last week. That one is easy. Fearfully and Wonderfully Made I will continue as written, leaving five weeks to carry into AO8. Many people choose to wait until then to do this book anyhow, so that should be fine.  By reading a full chapter of A Taste of Chaucer per week instead of dividing each story in two, I can fit that into a term as well.

The Daughter of Time and the third of The Lord of the Rings can come with us for reading while we're travelling. We're halfway through the second of the Ring trilogy, so I just need to get that done before I go.  We still have a couple of free reads to complete.  David Copperfield is the only one that might have to continue into the summer.  Dickens isn't known for being concise.

If I do all of that, we're left with a slimmed down term 3 that should fit neatly into our 7 weeks.  What think you?  Achievable?  What would you do differently? Should I cut something out?   Is there anything that you think we really need to add before our trip? I'd love your input.

Incidentally, speeding up the AO schedule isn't something I really recommend.  You can certainly manage the readings, but something has to give, and it is generally the stuff that makes for a rich and generous liberal education  - the picture study, composers, poetry, nature study, science experiments, handwork, languages, that sort of stuff.  I'm doing it this time because our upcoming trip is filled with cultural experiences, but I wouldn't want to do it very often.

Oh, in case you're wondering, there are 2532 hours remaining on the installation now.  Seems this post has taken me 1935 hours.  Whodathunkit?  Time certainly flies when you're doing school planning.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
1 Corinthians 12:12-14 NIV

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Dr Paul Brand and Philip Yancy is a difficult book to classify. Part biology text, part devotional, it manages to successfully take the words written by the Apostle Paul in chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians, examine them through the microscope of modern scientific discovery, and make the analogy fit maybe even better than it did 2000 years ago.

Dr Brand was a missionary doctor in India. I first heard of him many years ago within the pages of Dorothy Clarke Wilson's enthralling biography of his life, Ten Fingers for God, (If you haven't read this book, you really, really should. Really.) and this book is filled with illustrations from his incredible life. Brand takes his medical knowledge of the human body, and then applies it to the body of Christ, his church. He writes beautifully - almost poetically, and his imaginative description of the structure, function, and inter-relationship of our cells, bones, skin, and nerves, and his comparisons with God’s work are quite unique.

There are many reviews of this book online, and I am not about to add another. I can't, in all honesty. I'm reading this book along with Jemimah in AO7 Term 2, and so far we're only up to chapter three. As I have been reading, though, I have found that the book has been enhanced by our learning a bit more about the bodily structures Dr Brand is describing. When he uses the body as analogy, it's sort of useful to know what he's talking about, ya know.

So far we have used one or two short videos per chapter. I don't know if we will find a video for each chapter useful, but if we do, I thought I'd post them here so you can find them. I'll also post them to a YouTube playlist for you, soon. Sound good?

I'll start with the first three chapters, and add as we read. I hope they'll be useful to some of you.

ETA: You'll find the Youtube playlist here.  I am updating it more quickly than this post - if that makes a difference.

Chapter 1



Chapter 2





Chapter 3



A couple of old earth comments in this one.

Chapter 4



Chapter 5





Two really short snippets this week!
Chapter 6



Chapter 7



You only want the first few minutes of this, where you can see the lipoma. I didn't choose to have Jemimah watch the surgery.

Chapter 8

Canterbury Tales

This was not my idea. It was suggested to me by my friend, Bonnie, but I'm so taken with it, that I thought I'd do it. Or have Jemimah do it, anyhow. Heh. I love the 'Royal We'.

Anyhow, Bonnie suggested having our students memorise the prologue of The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. Such a simple idea when you have this YouTube video to listen along to. I must say, I never realised how much like Scots the language was until I listened to this.

I never fail to be amazed at how much kids can memorise, and how simple it is. We simply read the passage daily ( or in this case, play the video), and very quickly some parts are learned. Then it's a case of filling the gaps. I find Jemimah learns more quickly if she reads the passage silently a few times before I read it aloud. Perhaps having the words on the screen will do the same thing.

Canterbury Tales - or selected child friendly selections from it - is an AO7 book. I remember it fondly from school English Literature, where it was read aloud to us by the inimitable Danny Spooner, the 'artist in residence' one term. I can still remember his wonderful tenor Cockney voice reading the words of these tales. He didn't expurgate them for young ears either. Oh my!

Here's a YouTube of Danny for you to listen to if you want to. It's totally unrelated to the topic, but I think his voice is great. Imagine the words of Canterbury Tales as you listen to this.

 

Have your kids ever learned any Middle English like this? How did it go?

 

The science notebook

We don't know much about Charlotte Mason style science notebooks.  I'm inclined to think that a lot of what we call science today would have fitted into the general nature notebook with a more serious study of science topics integrated with general nature observations, but we don't really know.

 In her book on note booking, The Living Page, Laurie Bestvater mentions seeing science notebooks in the Mason archive, so at least we know that they are not contrary to her philosophy:

There are science notebooks present in the Mason archive wherein House of Education students recorded notes on all different science topics within one cover, simply dating the page and adding the appropriate headings, "Botany," "Astronomy," and even "Architecture," and presumably these teachers in training would have set up their upper year students in the same integrated manner.
Laurie Bestvater, The Living Page, p 26

What I do know, is that if I try something and it works, the likelihood is that Mason has been there before me. For us, science notebooking works.

Here she goes again, I hear you mutter.  One student, only one term into secondary school, and she already knows it all.  Well, I don't, of course, but Jemimah's science study has been one of the great successes of this year so far, and a lot of that is due to her science notebook.  And so, even though I most certainly do not profess to be an expert, I thought you might like to see it and hear a little bit about how it's working.

Okay, here are a few pages.  As you can see, they're an eclectic mix, because we have been doing the type of integrated science that Laurie describes Mason's students doing.  All-in-one science of this type is the norm in Australia, and the UK, where our schools do not follow the US system of one science per year. This past term we covered introductory classical genetics, the botany of carrot plants, astronomy, the history of immunology, the physics of light and how you see, Linnaean classification, and much more.  Pages from all these subjects appear in the notebook, all in the chronological order in which they were studied.

Each entry comes from a living science book, and I'll tell you about those in another post. Jemimah reads a chapter or so of her assigned text, narrates orally, and then makes a notebook entry.  What she chooses to illustrate is up to her, but the task is not optional.  We study science most days, so she makes four or five entries per week. Mostly, she enjoys this part of her day very much.  I must say, I enjoy seeing what she comes up with as well.

She is expected to date the entry.  Some of the examples here cover more than one page, and the date is earlier; on other pages she has just forgotten.  I can live with that.  Illustrations also must be explained.  It is the written explanation that shows me that she understands what she has drawn.

Mason valued neatness and perfect execution highly.  Sadly, you will not always see Jemimah's best work in these examples.  What I did discover, though, is that the neater the drawing, the more time she invested in the work, the higher the accuracy of the illustration, the better her retention during her end of term exams, and the more scientifically correct was her answer. We will remember that next term.

Science note booking takes a long time, and reduces the number of pages of science pages that can be covered in a term.  When you add to that the requirement to perform experiments wherever possible, the low page count that we see in Mason science programmes makes more sense.  I must say, though, that we did do a few more pages this term than Mason's students did.

Science in total takes about half an hour a day.  This includes special studies, which are also illustrated in the science notebook, but does not include a longer weekly nature walk.  A couple of times Jemimah also illustrated a reading from her natural history text in her science notebook, but most weeks she found that they fitted more readily into her normal nature notebook.  That choice I left to her, and for the most part it has worked well.

So there you are.  Our first term of science note booking the Charlotte Mason way.  I have noticed heightened accuracy and retention using this method, and I am really impressed with how it is going.  We'll be working on neatness next term, but otherwise we'll continue on just as we are.  It has been great.

You can see some much neater science notebooks in this post of Nancy's. She keeps me humble.

Idylls of the King

 

Our reading of The Iliad last year has created a monster. Or rather, it has created a great love of epic poetry in my daughter and me. It that the same thing? Last term we devoured Beowulf and The Green Knight. This term, to our great delight we have started Tennyson's Idylls of the King.

The photos here are a bit of a fraud ( it is April Fool's Day, after all), since my book of poetry abridged the Idylls, and so we're reading off a kindle version, which is far more practical, but produces somewhat less atmospheric photographs. In our kindle version, we need to read five pages per day to get through the poem in a term, and so we just read to there, and then look for a sensible place to end. This poem is such a delight, that we're finding it hard to stop, but it is early days as yet.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, is the scheduled AO poet for this term, AO7 Term 2. He was probably the most important poet of the Victorian period, and his works include some of the finest poetry in the English language. It is exciting to be studying him together with Jemimah. The Idylls of the King is one of his best-known compositions and it is a delightful read aloud.

One of the things I love about CM homeschooling is the opportunity to continue my own education. Despite having studied English literature in the upper forms, I had never read epic poems, and I just adore them. I'm so glad Jemimah has a chance to know and love them too.

Maybe next term we'll read Keats' Endymion!

 

AO7 Term 1 is nearly done!

We're coming to the end of AO7 Term 1.  How can that possibly be?

Things are going pretty well.  It is a terrific time period, and Jemimah and I are enjoying the book selections very much.  Watership Down has proved a big hit, which is a relief, because Jemimah watched the movie as a young dot somewhere, and was convinced that the story was filled with strange dreams and fields of blood. She seems to have recovered from that experience somewhat, as time has passed, and is nearing the end of the rather long book now.  She has been reading a chapter a day, which has worked well.

Other literature choices have included Scott's Ivanhoe and The Once and Future King.  The latter I have been reading aloud, and I'm glad, because it is a very clever book, and I have enjoyed Jemimah's reaction to the things that are out of place to a book set in Old England.  Merlyn, in this version of the Arthurian legend, is living through life backwards, making him a wise old man who is getting younger.  This allows him to make very amusing and often perspicacious observations on events in recent history.  He remarks on education in the British Public School system, World War II and 'the Austrian', and advances in medicine and health, amongst other things.  I find him most amusing. I have also been reading aloud the poetry selections - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Beowulf, and Cormac the Skald.  We adore, adore, adore, epic poetry, the legacy of of our Iliad reading in AO6, and we just can't get enough.  Tennyson's Idylls of the King continues the poetry next term.  Hurrah!  Don't you think poetry is so much better when it is read aloud?  Right now as we wait for Tennyson, I'm reading aloud the prose book Feats on the Fiord by Harriet Martineau. I know nothing about this book or this author, and I was interested to read that she died in Ambleside - possibly one reason why Mason may have known of her.  I wonder if they ever met.  Anyway, her book on Norway is just delightful so far, and Miss Mason obviously liked it:

Have you read Feats on the Fjord? Miss Martineau, who wrote the book, never visited Norway, but no one could describe the life on the fjords more vividly than she has done; that is because her Imagination was at home in distant lands, as no doubt it was also in past ages...In order to have a richly-stored picture-gallery of the Imagination we must read much, and, as the French say, figure to ourselves, as we go on, that which we read.

Charlotte Mason Ourselves pp 48-49

My fear for the year was Churchill's Birth of Britain, because so many people complain about how hard and dry it is.  We haven't found it that way at all.  I have divided the rather long chapters into short sections that Jemimah reads daily, following on with very good maps.  For me, the map work has been the key, probably, and I have been getting really good narrations, both written and oral from this book.  We're up to Alfred the Great right now.  The Churchill book has been supplemented with additional readings from The Venerable Bede and Asser, and Jemimah has really enjoyed reading the same original sources that Churchill cites.  They're fairly easy reading, and are mostly short, and again, we follow on with the maps.

I was initially worried about how we would go with C S Lewis' Mere Christianity, a book I struggled with at a much older age than Jemimah.  I forget, I think, how much more advanced her reading and comprehension is than mine was at the same stage as a consequence of a Charlotte Mason education from the beginning.  It warms my mummy heart to hear the insights she is having into God's word.  Her youth group is reading John Piper's book Risk is Right - Better to Lose Your Life Than to Waste It this term, and she is quite disparaging about how easy it is.  "He says some good stuff, Mummy, but does he really have to repeat himself over and over?"

We started learning Japanese this term, a third language after French and Latin.  I must say that I have found it rather daunting to be teaching a language I don't speak at all.  We have begun with learning Hiragana, and I'm afraid my old brain makes me rather slow.  Still, we both enjoy it. We are doing Japanese copywork every morning, and working our way through a text book three days a week with a combination of oral and written lessons.  I think the different alphabets makes this a necessity, despite it being different from Miss Mason's methods. She never taught Japanese.  We are also learning some little Japanese nursery songs.

Everything is harder in AO7.  There is significantly more reading, we are attempting three written narrations a week, we are learning three languages.  Maths is possibly the exception to the 'harder' rule.  Everyone tells you that MEP7 is easier than MEP6, and they're correct.  Jemimah is coasting through the highest Express stream of this level, and has just commenced MEP7b this week. Spending less time on maths has been very welcome as we commence this heavier workload, so I am happy not to add anything else at this stage.  She could certainly do more if I needed her to, but what's the point?

That brings me to science.  I've been attempting to do science without textbooks, and I'm really pleased with how it has been going.  The science notebook has been the key to our success here, and her scientific drawings act like narrations - if you can illustrate something and explain your drawing, then you probably understand the material.  I'll post pictures of this notebook in its own post, and go into detail on what we're using for science then as well.  So far we have read a biography of Carl Linnaeus, leading into a study of classification and binomial nomenclature, books from Isaac Asimov's "How Did We Find Out About" series on germs and genes, the latter, along with a book on Mendel leading into a study of variation and inheritance, covering classical genetics, meiosis and mitosis.  Light and astronomy have been other studies, as well as in depth nature study.  All of this goes into the science notebook.

My daughter's education is the education I wish I had.  My husband said this very same thing last week.  I love her grasp of history.  I like her command of the English language.  I am so pleased with her deepening knowledge of God's word and about what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.  I like the way she is beginning to understand herself and the world around her.  My Jemimah is becoming a charming young lady, but she is still my little girl.  She is only just 12 years old, and she still has lots of bad habits and many of areas of academic and personal weakness.  As do I.  So far, though, I am content with where she is on the journey.  I feel that she is on the right track.  And a whole lot of that is due to Charlotte Mason and Ambleside Online.  I am continually grateful for them both.

Dear Mother

...or Jemimah has a Wicked Sense of Humour.

Before you get all up in arms and hoity-toity, I know this is not correct Latin. It is, in fact, about as poor as Google Translate even. That's okay, because this wasn't supposed to be Latin. It's a Plutarch written narration. Well, part of one, anyhow.

This week in our Plutarch study of the life of Timoleon, Anne White's Study Guide suggested having the child write a letter in the person of Hicetes of Leontini. This year we're getting more adventurous with our written narrations, as well as practicing writing about books read earlier in the week. This exercise seemed perfect!

Jemimah decided to have Hicetes write to his mother, and she figured that as an educated man he would probably write in Latin. Here, on lovely stationery, written with a quill pen, complete with ink blots, and in pseudo Latin font, is his letter home.

In case you wonder, she did wrote a translation in English in her narration book as well because she knew I'd be cranky if she didn't.

I thought it was fabulously clever and creative, and a whole lot of fun. Just like my beautiful girl herself. What do you think?

 

The illustrated Beowulf

 

The monster wrenched and wrestled with him

but Beowulf was mindful of his mighty strength,

the wondrous gifts God had showered on him:

He relied for help on the Lord of All,

on His care and favour. So he overcame the foe,

brought down the hell-brute. (1269-1274)

 

Jemimah and I finished reading the inimitable Seamus Heaney's translation of the gripping Old English epic, Beowulf, this afternoon. We loved it.

Composed in Anglo-Saxon somewhere between the seventh and tenth centuries (a muckle big time range), Beowulf tells the story of a hero from the land of the Geats (in Sweden) who saves the Danes from a seemingly invincible monster called Grendel, and later from Grendel's mother. It is a thrillingly exciting story, and it very beautiful - even when translated by Heaney into modern English blank rhyme.

I read it aloud - as it is meant to be read - from the illustrated edition edited by John D. Niles. In this edition, each facing page of Heaney's text is illustrated with a photograph of some Anglo-Saxon artefact relevant to the action of that part of the poem. The images add so much to the enjoyment of the story.

Beowulf's men have boar- shapes on their helmets, maybe like this one, mounted on a helmet from Benty Grange in Derbyshire.

The Danish Princess, Freawaru, may well have worn jewellery as beautiful as this pair of sixth century eagle brooches.

Exhausted after his underwater fight in Grendel's mere, Beowulf retires to bed. The King and queen spend the night in a separate longhouse, maybe reclining in a beautifully carved bed like this one, a reconstruction of one from 800-850.

Most of the illustrations are artefacts - helmets, spears, swords, but there are also photos of reconstructed mead halls and long houses and tombs, as well as landscapes, showing the country. Some of the pieces are extraordinarily beautiful - gold jewellery looking just as it would have done in Beowulf's time, drinking vessels of exquisite glass, magnificent swords. Viewing a reconstruction of the Viking-era fortress at Trelleborg on the island of Zealand, as you read about King Hygelac's hall, makes you appreciate the magnificence of the structure, just as photos of the snow make you appreciate the hardships.

This illustrated version of Beowulf is more than just a pretty picture book, although it is certainly that. It is all your google image searches bound into one book, but with an expert selecting the images because they illustrate the poem's lines perfectly, not just because you need to find another picture of a helmet or a gold ring. If you have an opportunity to read from this book, I thoroughly recommend it. We loved it.

 

So, the maps

They're beautiful, aren't they?

What's more, they're online and free. Wow.

They're the work of cartographer/calligrapher Reginald Piggott, and despite the fact that his work graces the pages of many books, and he is even cited as author of a couple, I can tell you nothing about him apart from the fact that he was born in 1930, lived in Norfolk, and has now died.

Fortunately his beautiful work lives on, and is available for viewing - and to print from Kemble, the Anglo-Saxon Charters Website.

It was hard to choose which to print for this term on Ancient Britain. I would have loved the full set, but I settled for two - Bede's Britain, shown above, and Southern England in the time of Alfred the Great, below. Perhaps I'll give in ad print more as we move through the year. Given their beauty, it is certainly possible.

I had the maps printed professionally (my brother-in-law works for a photographic company) in A3 size. They're just perfect, and I love them. I hope you will find them useful as well.

Not just reading

Read, narrate.
Read, narrate.
Read, narrate.
Read, narrate.
Read, narrate.
Maths.

Is this all there is to a Charlotte Mason day really?  Do kids really just read books and then tell them back all day long?  Of course not, although you could be mistaken for thinking so sometimes.  As Jemimah was working today, it struck me just how many other things she did in the course of her school day, although she did read a lot of books, and she did tell them back.

Here are some of the other things.  Today, Jemimah...

• Read from the Bible and recorded her thoughts in her Scripture Notebook
• Listened to me read aloud 300 lines of Beowulf and looked for examples of alliteration, which she studied in grammar last week
• Sang a folksong.  And then another. Then a Psalm.  We like singing, okay?
• Read aloud some poetry
• Studied her memory passages - Scripture in French and English and a poem
• Read a passage of French and then narrated it in French
• Practised writing perfectly some Japanese hiragana
• Read The Birth of Britain, narrated the passage, and then used a map to show where the action occurred and where the kings lived
• Wrote out a passage of copy work
• Did map drill of Anglo-Saxon Britain and added the seven kingdoms of the heptarchy to her map
• Observed the maturation of carrot seeds according to the position of the umbels on the plant, and the location on the head, and made accurate labelled drawings in her Science Notebook
• Fashioned a wise man out of Sculpey for her miniature nativity set (polymer clay modelling has taken over handwork in our home, for better or worse.)
• Read and narrated orally Watership Down and our Australian natural history book, Bush Days. then looked up Christmas Bells (Blandfordia nobilis) online and made a quick sketch in her Nature Notebook
• Read a chapter of The Brendan Voyage, narrated, and made a drawing of St Brendan's boat in her Book of Centuries
• Completed a revision lesson on fractions for maths
• Read a chapter of Mere Christianity on Psychoanalysis and Morality and discussed it with mummy
• Kept fit doing a ballet class followed by jazz and tap and then a class of musical theatre. (Yes, she makes me tired.)
• Read a couple of chapters of her free reading book.

So yes, there is a lot of reading there.  This year Jemimah reads from about five books each day, since she prefers to divide the longer books into shorter, more manageable chunks over the week.  Every reading needs narrating - sometimes written, today only orally.  There was maths there as well.  But this is only the beginning of a full and rich liberal education.  Every day there is some science and a notebook entry.  There are maps and copywork and poetry and music and art and the dreaded Sculpey.  There are in-depth grand conversations with mum.  There is drawing, memorisation, language study.  There is exercise - dance, swimming, basketball.  Every day there are books, but every day brings something different as well.

Miss Mason frequently describes this liberal education as a feast or banquet, or a broad room filled with delicious ideas.  It is generous, rich, never boring.  There are books, yes, but there is so much more.  I can't believe how much Jemimah is learning, and many days it doesn't feel like school at all.  Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life, after all.  A life filled with inspiring, uplifting ideas.

Children make large demands upon us. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. Thou hast set my feet in a large room; should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking––the strain would be too great––but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests; we prefer that they should never say they have learned botany or conchology, geology or astronomy. The question is not,––how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education––but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?

Charlotte Mason School Education pp 170-171

Ash Road

A friend asked me recently if I recommended Ivan Southall's books, and I couldn't really answer. I knew that I had loved them as a child, and I knew that Southall as an author was still very highly regarded, and I knew that his books had won lots of awards, both here and in America, but would they live up to the standard of a Living Book? I wasn't actually sure.

Last Sunday, the 12th of January 2014, I started reading aloud Ash Road, coincidentally on the very same day that the book was set - 12th January 1962. And so we have been reading about Victorian bush fires and north winds and temperatures in the 40s (or 100s) during a week that those very same conditions have been repeated in real life. Temperatures of 44°C for days on end, that same, hot, dry, unbearable north wind sapping our energy and removing the very last drops of moisture from an already dry landscape, and fires burning out of control all around our state.

And so now that we've finished the book, is it Living ?  Definitely yes.  With a capital Y.  Let me tell you about it.

Ash Road is the story of three boys who accidentally start a terrible bushfire.  Very quickly it is out of control:

The fire was getting away from them in all directions, crackling through the scrub down-wind, burning fiercely back into the wind.  Even the ground was burning; grass, roots, and fallen leaves were burning, humus was burning.  There were flames on the trees, bark was burning, foliage was flaring, flaring like a whip-crack; and the heat was savage and searing and awful to breathe.
"We can't, we can't," cried Wallace.  "What are we going to do?"
They beat at it and beat at it and beat at it.
…"What have I done? We've got to get it out!"

But they can't get it out, and the fire keeps growing, and growing, and growing.

Then they saw flames to the right, flames at tree-top height exploding like surf on rocks: waves of flame, torrents of flame, flames spraying in fragment, in thousands of pieces, in flaring leaves and twigs that rained on the road in a storm of fire.  It was upon them in seconds, or they had come upon it so swiftly that there was no turning from it: no time to turn, no chance to turn, no place to turn.

Just over the range from the fire lies Ash Road.  It is home to the Tanners, the Fairhalls, the Robertsons, the Georges, the Pinkards, and the Buckinghams.  On Ash Road are their farms, their homes, and their children.  When the fire gets bigger, all the fathers on Ash Road leave to fight the fire. All the mothers leave to help in the first aid centres.  Leaving the children at home alone…

Southall paints an incredibly realistic picture of that terrible day.  Time moves so slowly.  Everything is surreal - the sky, the heat, the smoke, the strange behaviour of the adults. Finally, the children realise that they are alone.

Southall is renowned for his ability to understand the way young people grow and change in the face of adversity.  The way he does that in this novel is extraordinary.

Ash Road begins with the climax of the story - the realisation that the boys have started an uncontrollable, terrible bushfire.  It is a rare novel that can maintain suspense of this type from beginning to end, but this book does it incredibly realistically, and incredibly well.

We read Ash Road as a Free Read in AO7, but I highly recommend it not only for the Aussie, but for anyone who wants to know what summer in Australia is all about.  You won't get a better description that this.

Ash Road was the winner of many awards including the 1966 Children's Book Council of Australia for Book of the Year, and the1966 New York Times Book Review for Children's Book of the Year.  It was also commended for the 1966 American Library Association Notable Book.

Believe it or not, this book is actually in print.

Mapping the world

Perhaps no knowledge is more delightful than such an intimacy with the earth's surface, region by region, as should enable the map of any region to unfold a panorama of delight, disclosing not only mountains, rivers, frontiers, the great features we know as 'Geography,' but associations, occupations, some parts of the past and much of the present, of every part of this beautiful earth. Great attention is paid to map work; that is, before reading a lesson children have found the places mentioned in that lesson on a map and know where they are, relatively to other places, to given parallels, meridians. Then, bearing in mind that children do not generalise but must learn by particulars, they read and picture to themselves the Yorkshire Dales, the Sussex Downs, the mysteries of a coal-mine; they see 'pigs' of iron flowing forth from the furnace, the slow accretions which have made up the chalk, the stirring life of the great towns and the occupations of the villages.Charlotte Mason Towards a Philosophy of Education pp 224-5 (Bolding mine.)

Something of a literary character is preserved in the Geography lessons. The new feature in these is the study of maps which should be very thorough. For the rest the single reading and narration as described in connection with other work is sufficient in this subject also. Children cannot tell what they have not seen with the mind's eye, which we know as imagination, and they cannot see what is not told in their books with some vividness and some grasp of the subject. The thoroughness of the map study is shewn by such a question to be answered from memory as,––"What part of Belgium does the Scheldt drain? Name any of its feeders. Name ten famous places in its basin. What port stands at the head of its estuary?"Charlotte Mason ibid pp 227

We know from old Parents' Union School Programmes that Miss Mason's students spent ten minutes a week in mapping exercises, but unless I'm mistaken, I don't believe we know much about how these exercises were actually done.

What we do know, is that Miss Mason's students spent a lot of time playing with maps. They found the places they were reading about in their lessons before they read, so they could picture the distances and terrain in their mind's eye as they read about them. If the Saxons begin attacking the coast off Sussex, the children knew where that was. This preparatory map work brings the story alive, and in our home we keep maps for this purpose for a significant number of our books, whether they are officially geography books or not.

Personally, I don't think this is what the Programmes mean by map exercises. I think this ten minutes of map work is probably what is described in the appendix of School Education on p338, where she describes a geography lesson on Norway in detail. In this lesson, Mason takes the mapping questions from her Geographical Readers, and demonstrates how they are used to highlight particular geographical features, bringing the names on the maps alive, and allowing the children to imagine what Norway's fiords looks like, and how they're used. I think that mapping as part of geography was quite a rigorous subject - oh, so simple, like so many of Mason's techniques, but with so much power.

My family probably has an advantage when it comes to geography in that we have travelled so extensively. I've seen the fiords of Norway. I can describe their grandeur and their majesty first hand to my daughter, but even I am not familiar with the major industries, the fierce storms, the largest cities and the beautiful buildings without extensive pre-reading, which I don't have time to do. Sadly, my daughter will have to settle for Mummy's best instead.

This Year in AO7, Jemimah has begun Map Drills of her own. They aren't up to Charlotte Mason's exacting standards, I'm afraid, but already I am impressed at how much Jemimah has memorised and learned. This term we are doing map drills on two regions - Roman Britain from our history readings, and the Northern Hemisphere from our geography book, The Brendan Voyage.

Like most subjects in our home the process is simple, and takes ten minutes once a week. First, I hand Jemimah a map of the region. In the photos, this is a map of Roman Britain printed from the pages of her history text, Winston Churchill's The Birth of Britain. I also give her a list of regions and towns to find - in this early lesson she was asked to label the modern countries of England, Scotland, France, Wales and Ireland as well as the civitates (tribal regions) and principal towns.

After identifying the list and writing them onto a blank map (I remove the names using Photoshop; white-out tape would work as well), she then studies the completed map for a few minutes, much the same way as she studies a picture for picture study. When she is ready, she turns the map over and completes a second blank map from memory. Since Jemimah's spelling is not that good, I allow her to keep the list of names for copying from. To me it is important that the names are spelt correctly.

That's it for the first lesson. In subsequent lessons we added in the names of the oceans and then later the sites of battles - this is a history map, not a geography map, after all.

In our geography map we will mark Brendan's voyage, only we're only up to Chapter 4 in that book, and the boat hasn't left the safety of its Irish harbour as yet. This voyage will lend itself far more to a world geography mapping exercise.

Charlotte Mason's method of education works best if you follow it closely. Each step is deceptively simple, and takes little time, but together they build a formidable educational method. Every time I begin something new, I am impressed anew at these words. Map work is no exception. I encourage you to give it a go.

Read more about map work CM style with my friends, Nancy and Amy.