A Week in the Life: Tuesday (Lydia's Grade Eight)

OK, so yesterday the schedule got interrupted, but the work missed (mostly the independent work) can be caught up over the rest of the week.  

Folk songs: oops, we never did do that.

Daughter of Time, pages 150-164 (chapter 13): got that done.

Composer Study: Wagner's "Love Feast of the Apostles" :  I read some notes on this and then we let it play (it's 30 minutes long) while Lydia worked on new bead-head dolls.

Latin: Our Roman Roots ( lesson from yesterday):  did that.
  
French Smart 7 (continue verb review and computer vocabulary): didn't get to that one.

I know Lydia did some readings herself from Bible Through the Ages and The Twelve Teas of Friendship. She did not get any math done but says she will be on it tomorrow.

Tonight is choir practice.

A Week in the Life: Monday (Lydia's Grade Eight) (updated)

Quote for the day, from today's Latin lesson:  "Moved by sense alone, the beast lives in the present, without thought of the past or future.  Man, endowed with reason, links the future with the past and prepares what is needful for the journey."  --Taken from "On Moral Duties" by Cicero (included in Our Roman Roots).

Hymns:  October's hymn, Lift High the Cross.

Things to do together:

Follow any news on this month's municipal elections.  Make a current events entry in the back of your Book of Centuries.

Plutarch's Life of Crassus, Lesson Six. From the AO study guide: Describe the atmosphere around the Roman elections. What does this tell you about Pompey and Crassus' confidence (or lack of) in their ability to win by a free and open vote?  Cato accused them that "they sued not for the office, but to get such provinces and armies into their hands as they desired." Dryden translates it as "These men did not so much aim at the consulate as at arbitrary government." What did he mean? Compare this to Jesus' teaching that to be first in God's kingdom, one must be the servant of all. What should motivate a Christian who wants to hold a position of leadership and authority?

French:  continue the unit on Internet vocabulary, and practice the present tense and imperative forms of verbs such as "download" and "click."

WHAT HAPPENED AT THIS POINT:  A friend phoned with a last-minute babysitting emergency.  She needed someone to go along to a family resource centre and entertain her toddler while she went to an hour-long class, after lunch.  So okay...we managed to fit in A Man For All Seasons and Lydia's own reading of Hamilton's Mythology (and a short discussion of mythology in the Percy Jackson books), before lunch and her getting picked up.  So that may be most of school for the day. But tonight Lydia starts a new drama class.

Daughter of Time pages 141-149 (chapter 12). "'You know,' Grant said, 'from the police point of view there is no case against Richard at all. And I mean that literally. It isn't that the case isn't good enough. Good enough to bring into court, I mean. There, quite literally, isn't any case against him at all.'"

Latin, Lesson II: "Education can improve our ability to reason."  Copy the Latin quote for the day, along with derivatives of the word rationalis (reasonable).  Meaning and use of the genitive case; practice exercise.

A Man for All Seasons, pages 20-top of 40. "The light is dimmed there and a bright spot descends below.  Into this bright circle from the wings is thrown the great red robe and the Cardinal's hat."

Things to do alone:

Westward Ho! Chapter 14, to the top of page 277. Narrate orally. "'Where is the other?' 'Dead as a herring, in the straw....' 'Carry him in too, poor wretch. And now, Yeo, what is the meaning of all this?'"

Write with the Best, Volume II; "Day 6" of the speech-writing unit.  

Math, a Human Endeavor:  Chapter 2, Lesson 1, Arithmetic Sequences.  "The 100th term of the arithmetic sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... is obvious; it is 100.  The 100th term of the arithmetic sequence 2, 5, 8, 11, 14... however, is not obvious at all.  One way to find out what it is would be to continue writing the sequence until we arrive at it.   There is an easier way, however."

The Easy Grammar Plus:  complete half of the Cumulative Review, Adjective Unit.  This includes review of past units such as past participle forms of verbs, possessives, plurals, and more recent work such as limiting adjectives.

Other AO readings and assignments:  choose from this week's list (history, geography, science, etc.)

School plans for the first of October: Befuddled? (Updated with monkeys.)

Some ideas for today's school with Lydia:

I'm trying to think of a way to work in the first audio installment of The Screwtape Letters, recorded by John Cleese in 1989, via a link at The Common Room today. Maybe it will be our school opener today--the first letter is about Screwtape's technique for basic distraction.  There's also a very important line in Letter #1, that might go by if you don't notice where Lewis snuck it in:  Screwtape jeers that "It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy's [God's] clutches.  That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier.  At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it.  They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning."

Screwtape insists that it's a demon's job not to teach but to "fuddle" us.  And that leads in...sort of...to part of a chapter of Daughter of Time.  Lots of fuddling there.

Lydia has the rest of the morning to figure out her own work:  math, AO readings, and so on.

Later we will read chapter 6 of Whatever Happened to Justice?, "Enforcement of Early Common Law." Mostly it's about restitution.  In the really early days (under common law), it was less common for someone to be imprisoned as punishment for a crime, because who wanted to pay taxes to support prisoners?  It was more common to pay fines and such to the victim, making restitution.

(What happened with that?  Well, I found this story about monkeys in a cage getting sprayed with ice water, in a book I am reading myself, and I thought it was a great introduction to chapter 7 of the book, about how custom is different from common law.  Why we do the things we do, and which of those things should be important enough to be laws.  So I just highlighted a couple of the main points from chapter 6 and said we'll get back to that when we talk more about force and policing.  I read the monkey story, and we focused on chapter 7 and then also read chapter 8 which is very short. What's homeschooling for if not to be flexible?)  (Monkey slide found here.)

And we'll work on French (Internet nouns and verbs, quite fun actually), and see if we can get into our review of Latin a bit (Mica, mica, parva stella).

When Lydia sets the schedule (Grade 8)

Lydia wrote out her own schedule for today's school.

Morning:

Folk songs (Barbara Allen, Star of the County Down)
Finish chapter in How to Read a Book
Finish chapter in Daughter of Time
Watch the second half of the Anna Russell guide to the Ring operas
Practice memory work
Write Unit One science test
Work on one "Be a Girl Guide" challenge (she is not a Girl Guide, but these are Things You Should Know How to Do)
Plutarch's Life of Crassus, Lesson Four

Afternoon:

Math: A Human Endeavor
Write in Reader's Journal
Do the next bit in the Writing a Speech Unit in Write with the Best
Go outside with a Nature Notebook.

(I couldn't have done it better myself.)

Lydia's Grade Eight: some things to do for school today

1.  Watch Anna Russell (in 1984) describing the plot of Wagner's Ring Cycle operas.  If anyone can handle those often un-lady-like stories and make them seem almost polite, it's Anna Russell. Her audience was obviously having a very good time too. (Some people, I don't know who, might still find some of the content offensive, so don't just hand them over to kids.)  (If you want to get just the gist of her stories--although you'd be missing the music and general mugging--you can read a transcript here.)



2.  Finish the chapter "Temptation" in Ourselves Book II. Charlotte Mason gets very tough on over-dramatized but insincere, misunderstood, or misapplied "repentance" here.  "...fourfold love and gentleness and service the repentant soul brings to God and his brother; but this is because he is glad: out of the joy of his heart there is nothing he cannot do; and, above all, he will away with the proud and sullen tears and regrets of so-called penitence."

3.  Read about the Egyptians and papyrus in The Story of Mankind.

4.  Work some more on deductive reasoning (math book).  If there's a big cube made out of a lot of little cubes, and each side is 12 little cubes across, how many little cubes are in the big cube, how many corner cubes, how many edge cubes, how many other outside cubes, and how many inside cubes that you can't see?

5.  Watch John Mighton's Ted Talk, live at CERN today. (Just Mama Squirrel watched that one.)

Penguin Syllogism found here.

Drawn from the P.U.S.: how Charlotte Mason might have taught a chapter on Ecosystems and Biogeography

Subject: Ecosystems and Biogeography.

Group: Science. Class III. Time: 30 minutes. By Mama Squirrel.
Book used: The World Around You, by Gary Parker.

Objects.
I. To increase the student's knowledge of biotic and abiotic factors.
II. To show how all living things are connected to each other.
III. To give some account of the different biogeographic realms, using Australian marsupials as an example.

By way of introduction, I would ask the student to tell me the meaning of an ecosystem, and, for any ecosystem, name some of the things included; for instance, in an aquarium, we would have particular plants, animals, but also factors such as light and temperature. (Don't forget the tiny organisms that we can't see unaided.)  We can label any of these factors as either biotic or abiotic.  How do the different "factors" interact with each other? (Example: plants releasing oxygen for the animals to use.)
 
I would have her read orally from The World Around You, page 11, the paragraph about the interaction in an aquarium ecosystem.
 
Then, after narration, I would show a map of the six (original) major biogeographic realms: Palearctic, Nearctic, Neotropical, Ethiopian, Oriental, Australian.  Recently this map has been updated.  I would give the student a printout of the updated map, and read from the accompanying article.  "Our study is a long overdue update of one of the most fundamental maps in natural sciences," lead author of the new research in Science, Ben Holt, said in a press release. "For the first time since Wallace's attempt we are finally able to provide a broad description of the natural world based on incredibly detailed information for thousands of vertebrate species."  
 
After narration, we could talk about why scientists believe it to be important to divide the biogeographic realms more accurately, and what has allowed them to do that. Something hard to think about: would creationists and evolutionists think about biogeography somewhat differently?  As an example of a creationist approach, we would read the rest of the chapter, about Australian marsupials.

Adapted from Class Notes, as printed in various Parents' Reviews.

Ten interesting things to do this week in school (Lydia's Grade Eight)

These ideas are drawn from Lydia's schedule; although she's setting the pace for much of this fall's work herself, it doesn't mean that all she should be doing for school is read, narrate, read, narrate. That really is one of the big challenges when our kids are old enough so that we're not standing over them, directing every lesson--to discourage just flying through a chapter, to encourage them to slow down enough to make it their own.

Quote for the week:  Ourselves Book II, page 115-120, Chapter XVIII, Temptation. "The battle of life for each of us lies in the continual repetition of what seems a most trifling act—the rejection of certain thoughts...at the very moment when they come." 

1. Math: In Chapter One, Lesson Five of Human Endeavor, Harold Jacobs explains inductive reasoning and describes the Soma Cube.  We don't have one of those here, but you can build one out of Lego. (scroll down for directions)

2. The Roar on the Other Side (reading and writing poetry):  Writing exercise on page 18, Nature Sleuth. Choose something that you've found or that you see outdoors.  Examine it, think about it, write about it, using words that are "resonant...carrying meanings that go beyond the literal." How is a poet's lens "more like a kaleidoscope than a microscope?"

3  Read the chapter about Sir Thomas More (1478 – 1535) and his Utopia, in History of English Literature.  Dramatize the Utopian attitude towards gold and jewels...or...write an updated version, in which one group of people show off their status symbols, but don't get the reaction they expect.

4.  Apologia Physical Science:  Learn to measure with cubits!

5. Whatever Happened to Justice?, chapter 4.  "Every child knows that the specific definitions of such phrases as 'on time' and 'too late' can be very important.  Loopholes are sought like gold nuggets.  The parents are under continual pressure to hone their rulings [not just about time!>] so that no misunderstandings are possible." Write and/or perform a (short) fractured fairy tale or operatic dialogue demonstrating this.

6.  Music appreciation:  there's a free lunchtime concert on Tuesday, featuring two violas.  Do you want to go?

7.  A Man for All Seasons (about Thomas More):  start reading the play together this week.

8.  Current events: put together a "news broadcast" on Thursday of anything that has seemed important over the week.  You might particularly pay attention to the Ontario municipal election campaigns that have just begun.  How many people are running for mayor here? When is the election?

 9.  Choose a poem or Scripture passage to memorize.  Make copies of the whole thing, or particular stanzas or verses, and put them in strategic places.  Practice whenever you get a chance. Set it to music if that makes it easier.

 10.  Fabric Flowers:  Choose one kind of flower to make from the book.  Do we have all the supplies?  Spend some time one afternoon working on this craft.

Lydia's Grade Eight: Looking at the week to come (how we do things)

The second week of school.   In some ways it usually goes better than the first week, because you know the whole thing's not going to come crashing down.

Someone asked me this morning if I have to do a lot of planning for our homeschool.  I said I got a lot of pre-planning done during the summer, but that I still have to keep on top of what we're doing. So what does that mean for this week?  What's the thought process?

Working together:

Monday
Calendar of current events

Science with Dad:  experiment from last week.

Read Whatever Happened to Justice, chapter 2, A Higher Authority

Reading Together: Daughter of Time, chapter 4

Listen to Wagner's Sigfried Idyll

Go over math and grammar as necessary.  Discuss literature or other books; narrate whatever needs to be narrated.

Tuesday
Read Charlotte Mason's Ourselves Book II, abut the function of conscience

French Smart 7--review work from last year, especially on verbs

Read Marshall's History of English Literature,  chapter 36: The Renaissance, which is mostly a history lesson about Constantinople, and that would be quite uninteresting except that it explains why so many Greek scholars ended up in Italy at the end of the Middle Ages, thereby helping to set off the Italian Renaissance.

Math and grammar.

Wednesday
Read Exploring the World Around You, chapter 1: Building on the Right Foundation. Discuss the belief that "struggle and death are normal...have been going on for millions of years..are what made life evolve into all the forms we see today."

Go over math and grammar as necessary. Discuss literature or other books; narrate whatever needs to be narrated.

Thursday
Calendar of current events

Read Whatever Happened to Justice, chapter 3, A Higher Law  "If Higher Authority has given us a Higher Law, how do we know what this Law is?"

French Smart 7--review work from last year, especially on verbs

Reading Together: Daughter of Time, chapter 5

Math and grammar. Discuss literature or other books; narrate whatever needs to be narrated.

Friday
Read Plutarch's Life of Marcus Crassus, lesson 2

French Smart 7--review work from last year, looking ahead to the next unit

If time:  Daughter of Time, chapter 6.

Math and grammar.  Discuss literature or other books; narrate whatever needs to be narrated.

Independent work:

Bible readings, throughout the week

The Bible Through the Ages:  10 pages/wk: Abraham; Storytelling (the oral tradition)

The Twelve Teas of Friendship:  pages 12-13, The Art of Finding Friends.  "Your next best friend might be someone you don't expect."

History of England by H.O. Arnold-Forster.  Finish chapter 35: Henry VII.

The Golden Book of the Renaissance,  pages 21-35

Read Mythology by Edith Hamilton, ten pages/week

Read Kingsley's Westward Ho!: chapters 3, 4, and 5, to the bottom of page 107.

Poetry: read The Roar on the Other Side, Chapter One, and do the writing exercise on page 18, Orange You Glad.


Grammar and Composition:  Easy Grammar Plus (workbook), pages 148-154.  Interjections; Conjunctions; begin Adjectives.  What are limiting adjectives?

Read Exploring Creation Through Physical Science,  Module 1: The Basics
o Read to page 10 up to Manipulating Units.
o In your lab book, draw a picture like the one in Fig.1.2.and write the notation on your drawing.
o Read pages 10-15

Keeping a Nature Journal, read page 35 "Draw and Write." Spend time outdoors and make entries in your nature journal

Geography:
Read Kon Tiki: Edition for Young People, Chapter 3: To South America.  Answer study questions.

Mathematics:  Balance Benders Level 3: do two per week

Mathematics: A Human Endeavor.  Chapter One, Mathematical ways of thinking
Lesson Two
o More billiard ball mathematics, Set I
o More billiard ball mathematics, Set II, Questions 1-10
Lesson Three
o Inductive reasoning: introduction.
o Inductive reasoning: finding and extending patterns.  Set I, Questions 1-15

Be a Girl Guide Challenge
o  Know two different hitches for tying ropes to objects: clove hitch, round turn and two half hitches.  Which one is better for tying up a horse?
o Make notes in your Enquire Within notebook.
Horse cartoon found here.

Commonplace Books, Copywork, and Recitations (Memory Work)
o Copy passages from poetry, plays, and other books read
o Practice Scripture passage(s):
o Practice poem(s):
o Other memory work:

Narration
o Oral narrations of readings
o Reader's Journal: one page, twice a week, on any of your readings
o Keep Book of Centuries and/or other notebooks handy as you read or listen; make entries at the end
o Other kinds of narrations: dramatic, musical, artistic...

Old Homeschool Moms

These days I feel less and less like a homeschool mom. Whatever that is.

My eighth grader is now doing so much of her own schoolwork, that when I do pick up the odd book to read out loud, she wants to know why.

She's choosing her own copywork from Les Miserables, which isn't a school book but which she's decided to read anyway.

She's managing a lot of her math work on her own.

I seem to have worked myself out of a job.

(I did teach her how to tie a sheet bend this week.  I was not a Girl Guide for nothing.)

Teacher training this week (one week till school starts)

One week to finish my "summer education?"

Old Mortality is on hold, temporarily, and that's okay; it's not on the schedule until the third term anyway.

I am in the middle of several library books, trying to finish them all at once.  I'm also reading The End of Ignorance, not from the library but one that I had postponed reading for too long.  It is both method-confirming and method-changing...kind of like a driving clinic that tells you how well you're doing but then points out all the times you were looking at something else or taking too long to make a turn.  I don't drive but I can still make a driving simile, right?  There are so many places where John Mighton echoes Charlotte Mason on education, it's uncanny.  (I know I said that a few years ago.  I still think so.)

There are several John Mighton and JUMP Math videos on You-Tube, but I particularly like this one.

Dollygirl's Grade Eight Road Map

Just a look inside this year's school plan.

Dollygirl's Grade Eight: Fall Term Handicraft

Fabric Flowers (Twenty to Make), by Kate Haxell.

What does a Year Eight week look like? (Lydia's Grade Eight)

In past years we have tried a LOT of school-organizing methods. Some of them were aimed at Mama Squirrel (keeping a binder of what was to be done next for each subject), and some were meant more for the Squirrelings (workboxing).  By the time the Apprentice and Ponytails reached Grade Eight, it was time for them to take on more responsibility, and to have more opportunity to schedule their own time.  That might seem to fly in the face of Charlotte Mason's strictly-timetabled daily work, but it didn't end up being as haphazard as it sounds; we did settle into a general routine, worked around independent / group / "With Mom" times.  For our older girls, giving them a checklist for the week turned out to be good preparation for managing their schoolwork in public high school.

Dollygirl Lydia and I will be doing the core subjects together, or partly together, and reading some books out loud. I've written out plans based on what we've been able to get done in the past, oomphed a bit for Grade Eight but again taking into account that doing more independently (and having to do more written work) might actually cut down on the number of pages read.  But that's okay.

So here's a sample of the plans for Grade Eight.  The little circles are for checkmarks.

Dollygirl's Lydia's plan for Week One (with annotations)

Commonplace Books, Copywork, and Recitations (Memory Work)
o Copy passages from poetry, plays, and the other books read
o Practice Scripture passage(s):
o Practice poem(s):
o Other memory work:

Narration
o Oral narrations of readings
o Reader's Journal: one page, twice a week, on any of your readings
o Keep Book of Centuries and/or other notebooks handy as you read or listen; make entries at the end
o Other kinds of narrations: dramatic, musical, artistic...

Bible and Church History 
Matthew 8; Psalm 112, 113; Proverbs 4:14-27  (Use Bible Reader's Companion as a commentary and study guide--you can write in the book.)
o   o   o   o   o

Read Beautiful Girlhood [last-minute change]
o 2 chapters/week

Read The Bible Through the Ages
o 10 pages/wk (starting on page 11): Introduction, The World of the Patriarchs

World History
Keep a Book of Centuries with all history studied (Bible, English, Canadian, etc.)
o

Read History of England by H.O. Arnold-Forster
o 35. Henry VII: (1) The Tudors, (2).The King's Title, (3)  Lambert Simnel; or, Carpenter, King, and Kitchen Boy; (4). Perkin Warbeck

Read The Golden Book of the Renaissance
o page 7-bottom of  21

Literature 
Read Mythology by Edith Hamilton
o ten pages/week

Read Westward Ho!  (see online study notes)
o chapters 1, 2

Poetry 
o England in Literature,  Sir Thomas Wyatt, pages 132-133 [read together]

Read The Roar on the Other Side: a guide for student poets
o  Introduction

Plays: A Man for All Seasons
o spread over the term

Grammar and Composition
Read How to Read a Book, Coming to Terms With an Author [read together]
o page 96-half of 106. Words vs. Terms; Finding the Key Words; Technical Word and Special Vocabularies.  "In this chapter so far, there have been only a few important words: 'word,' 'term,' 'ambiguity,' 'communication,' and perhaps one or two more  Of these, 'term' is clearly the most important; all the others are important in relation to it."

Earth Science
Read Exploring Creation With Physical Science,  Module 1: The Basics (spread over 4 weeks)
o Read Student Notes on Pages i & ii
o Experiment 1.1 "Atoms and Molecules."
o Write up the experiment for your lab notebook.

Ecology and Nature Study
Read [Reader's Digest] How Nature Works
o  pages 30-31, Ecology.  This is a two-page version of what you will be studying throughout the year in [Gary Parker's] Exploring the World Around You.

Keeping a Nature Journal
o p. 33 Where to roam with your journal
o  Roam somewhere and make at least one entry

Geography 
Read Kon Tiki: Edition for Young People
o Chapter 1: How it All Began.   Study questions at the end of these notes.
o Chapter 2: An Expedition is Born.   Study questions.

Citizenship 
Keep a calendar of current events in the back of your BoC.
o

Read Ourselves Book II, Section III, The Function of Conscience.[read together]
o page 109-114, Chapter XVII, Conviction of Sin.  "Then, when conscience says nothing we are all right? you ask.  By no means, for the verdict of conscience depends upon what we know and what we habitually allow."

Read Whatever Happened to Justice 
o  Introduction
o chapter 1, The Cause is Law

Read Plutarch's Life of Marcus Crassus [read together]
o one lesson

Mathematics 

o  Balance Benders Level 3: do two per week
 
Mathematics: A Human Endeavor.  Chapter One, Mathematical ways of thinking
Lesson One
o Introductory problems
o The path of a billard ball, Set I, Questions 1-8, on graph paper
o The path of a billard ball, Set I, Questions 9-15
o The path of a billard ball,  Set II, Questions 1-14
o  Optional: Set III (using a mirror)
Lesson Two
o Introductory problems
o  More billiard ball mathematics, Set I, Questions 1-11

French: French Smart 7 
o Story unit 1: A monkey fable
o  Folk song to learn: Ram'nez Vos Moutons, included in Canada: A New Land, page 130

Composer Study
o Wagner: Siegfried Idyll (orchestral)

Picture Study: Titian
o  The Descent of the Holy Ghost (c. 1545)

Be a Girl Guide Challenge
o Know how to make two different knots to join two ropes together.  (Guide Handbook page 202).
o Make notes in your Enquire Within notebook.

Handicrafts
o [probably making fabric flowers]

Teacher training this week

Still reading:

Why Geology Matters, by Doug Macdougall
Old Mortality, by Sir Walter Scott

Planning to read or reread:

Time as History, by George Grant (CBC Massey Lectures 1969)  (short book)
Formation of Character, by Charlotte Mason (that will probably keep me busy until school starts)
Fierce Wars and Faithful Loves

Watching:

TED Talk: Charles Leadbeater, Education innovation in the slums.

"So time and again, I found people like this. This is an amazing guy, Sebastiao Rocha, in Belo Horizonte, in the third largest city in Brazil. He's invented more than 200 games to teach virtually any subject under the sun. In the schools and communities that Taio works in, the day always starts in a circle and always starts from a question. Imagine an education system that started from questions, not from knowledge to be imparted, or started from a game, not from a lesson, or started from the premise that you have to engage people first before you can possibly teach them. Our education systems, you do all that stuff afterward, if you're lucky, sport, drama, music."  ~~ Charles Leadbeater

Teacher training this week

"Teachers are the lifeblood of the success of schools. But teaching is a creative profession. Teaching, properly conceived, is not a delivery system. You know, you're not there just to pass on received information. Great teachers do that, but what great teachers also do is mentor, stimulate, provoke, engage. You see, in the end, education is about learning."  ~~ Sir Ken Robinson

Reading:

Consider This, by Karen Glass (done re-reading)
The Seashell on the Mountaintop, by Alan Cutler (done and reviewed)
All for Love (done)
Why Geology Matters, by Douglas Macdougall
How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, by Edward Hirsch

Watching:
Sir Ken Robinson, How to escape education's death valley  (TED talk)

Charlotte's Lean and Mean Curriculum (School Education)

Charlotte Mason frequently refers to the Parents' Review School curriculum as wide and generous, but, paradoxically, it achieves some of its power by what it does NOT include.  There is a certain spareness to its subjects and its presentation that may not have been as noticeable at the time, but in comparison to many educational plans now, seems like a streamlined racing bike set up against one of these.

As I said in the last post, both school administrators and homeschooling parents can still be frightened off by a lack of detailed instruction, especially for difficult or unfamiliar books.  But there seemed to be (at least) two reassurances in this area:  first, if you weren't up to choosing your own books in 1903, you could join the Parents' Union and take advantage of experienced teachers recommending books that had, often, been used successfully for many terms already. Second, if you had at least that much confidence in the books, and some awareness of the "Charlotte Mason" philosophy and methods, you could feel free, in most cases, to jump in and read.

In The Art of Reading, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch gives a wonderful lecture to his English Literature students about "Children's Reading." Here's an excerpt, and please notice that he follows both the careful choosing and to the just-go-ahead, don't-interrupt style of reading also favoured by the P.U.S.:

If, then, you consent with me thus far in theory, let us now drive at practice. You have (we will say) a class of thirty or forty in front of you. We will assume that they know their a—b, ab, can at least spell out their words. You will choose a passage for them, and you will not (if you are wise) choose a passage from Paradise Lost: your knowledge telling you that Paradise Lost was written, late in his life, by a great virtuoso, and older men (of whom I, sad to say, am one) assuring you that to taste the Milton of Paradise Lost a man must have passed his thirtieth year. You take the early Milton: you read out this, for instance, from L’Allegro:

	Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
	Jest and youthful Jollity,
	Quips, and Cranks, and wanton wiles,
	Nods and Becks, and wreathed Smiles
	Such as hang on Hebe’s cheek,
	And love to live in dimple sleek;
	Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
	And Laughter holding both his sides….

Go on: just read it to them. They won’t know who Hebe was, but you can tell them later. The metre is taking hold of them (in my experience the metre of L’Allegro can be relied upon to grip children) and anyway they can see ‘Laughter holding both his sides’: they recognise it as if they saw the picture. Go on steadily...

So if Charlotte's curriculum is generous but not weighed down, what does it not include?  As already seen, verbose instructions to either the teacher or the students. Word-by-word scripts to follow.  Complicated methods of evaluation. But also, without constant dependence on readers and textbooks that include chapter questions and end-of-unit tests, there is a lightening of the expectation to teach the book rather than the child (Ruth Beechick's phrase).  If it's there to be used, you can feel very guilty about not using it. You paid for the program, you want your money's worth.

Last year I looked (briefly) at a contemporary grade 7 language-arts-and-literature textbook, which was basically a reader but with assignments included.  I kind of liked some of the assignments, but this is where I got stuck: if we spent all year working through those relatively few poems, short stories, and pieces of non-fiction writing, when would we have time to get through the Shakespeare play, the novels, and the rest that I expected would make up the meat of our grade 7 literature course?  So here's the crux: which approach is "leaner and meaner?"  Cutting down what the students get to read to a few poems and stories (and not particularly amazing ones), and a couple of newspaper articles?  Or cutting out the weight of the assigned projects, the chapter questions and so on, and just spending that time reading and narrating?

I guess it depends on whether you define "lean and mean" as skimpy and lacking, or as classic and powerful.

Teacher training this week

Reading:
Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (done that; lots of discussion about women's education)
Re-reading the last half of Charlotte Mason, School Education (got through that in one morning)
Making Sense of Adult Learning, by Dorothy MacKeracher (taking me longer)
Wendell Berry's poems
A surprisingly relevant newspaper column today about the science of relations (maybe I'll write a post about that)

Listening to:
Dr. Gwendolyn Starks, "Creative Writing with the Inklings and Friends"

Using all that to:
re-edit some of our Grade Eight plans.

Ten things I'm doing to plan Year Eight better (and a bonus if you read carefully)

1.  Because I try to homeschool frugally, and also because we're on the last Squirreling: I've been going through all our potential resources and seeing what might line up with or amplify something already on the list.  The ecology book we're using has the right idea but comes up short on examples, for example, explaining in an interesting way about different biomes: desert, grassland, rainforest, tundra.  But we have a couple of good books with extra information on those topics (one simple one we've had forever is the Usborne Living World Encyclopedia).  I wouldn't base a term's work around books like that (that are mostly pictures), but we do have them on the shelves. So those are going on sort of a second booklist of good reference stuff, and I'm making notes on the schedule at the places where we might want to haul them out.

2. Because I've been doing that, I can see, out of the books that did NOT make it into this year's main list or reference pile, which ones we are so unlikely ever to use again that I can happily send them to a church yard sale this weekend.  Which gives us more room on the shelves for the good stuff.

3. Because we go to a church that sings hymns, usually several of them, all the verses, in four-part harmony, AO's list of hymns is sometimes pretty basic for us.  We sing them, but we don't usually need to learn them.  So most of next year's hymns will be the mostly German-authored ones found in Mr. Pipes and Psalms and Hymns of the Reformation, ones that are not as familiar.  We read the book a few years ago but didn't learn many of the hymns; this year we'll just use it as a hymn reference.  I found that several of the hymns are in the old Mennonite Hymnal that we use at home--but that they are often different translations from the ones Douglas Bond includes. We will see which ones we like better, over the year.  (I also noticed that June's hymn, "Let Us with a Gladsome Mind," is by John Milton.)

4.  Because we don't have a passel of kids around anymore to just enjoy singing with (on the other hand), Dollygirl's Lydia's repertoire of folk songs has suffered over the last few years. (Scots Wha' Hae is the exception.) So the AO Year Eight folk song list should be plenty challenging as is.

5.  Because I don't like to waste time and materials on science experiments with negligible learning value, I've gone through the science textbooks we're going to be using, and written only the for-sure ones into our weekly schedule. That way I am not thinking that I need to track down a nine-volt battery, a stick of butter, or a fresh carnation for next week's science, if it turns out that we've a) done it before or b) wouldn't do it anyway.  That also leaves room for better experiments, demonstrations, or even online videos showing somebody doing the same thing (especially when it's complicated or expensive).

6. Because I'm kind of wobbling right now on the best English history textbook for Dollygirl (the Apprentice says "I kind of liked Churchill!"), I've scheduled in both Churchill's The New World and Arnold-Forster's History of England.  I'm planning on having her start with AF at least, and we won't do both at once, but if we switch over to Churchill at some point, the pages are ready to go.  Here's the bonus for careful readers: the page schedules for Arnold-Forster are now on the AO website, on the Year 7 Lite and Year 8 Lite 36-week schedules.  You can access the book at archive.org.  (Last year I downloaded it as a PDF file and printed out chapters as we needed them.)

7.  Because we've done a lot of Shakespeare already, and because there is going to be a lot of Shakespeare-era focus in Term Two, I'm using A Man for All Seasons as our Term One play, and All for Love in Term Three.

8.  Because I'm doing all this over-planning for next year, including marking in holidays, I can lighten up some of the weeks, or add in seasonal stuff.  Our Term II starts at the beginning of December, and we will get three weeks of it in before the Christmas break--but if whatever it is doesn't really need to get done then, it can go on the schedule for January.  The artist we're studying in Term II is Albrecht  Dürer, and we have a copy of Martin Luther's Christmas Book, illustrated by Dürer; we'll also look at his painting Adoration of the Magi during that time.

9. Because I've been going through so many of the Year Eight books, I've been learning lots myself, and that definitely helps.  I've written occasional quotes and notes and "why did he say that's?" into the schedule, like this:
-- chapter 22, Democracy and the Constitution. "The Founders were afraid of democracy, and to protect liberty they created the Constitution as a way to weaken democracy."

10.  Because I know I will probably come across some good stuff or want to make some changes before September, I'm holding off from printing out most of the schedule until the last minute.

Mission Possible: Year Eight!

The Ecology of AO Year Eight (Part Two)

Part One is here. 

The work for this school year takes a key thought from Whatever Happened to Justice, chapter 14, "The Human Ecology." "The two fundamental laws are part of the fabric of the universe, like the laws of physics and chemistry. Where these laws...are obeyed, life gets better."

So that gives us two important books right there:  Whatever Happened to Justice?, by Richard J. Maybury, and Exploring the World Around You, by Gary Parker (not on the AO list).  Parker's book on ecology is one of the Master Book series that includes Exploring the History of Medicine, which means it's about as Creationist as you're going to get.  Normally I do not try so hard to find Creationist-oriented science books, but concepts like survival are very fundamental, and it's important that we serve them right side up in the first place. Do we live in a kill-or-be-killed world? Do we want to live in one?  And how does global warming and that stuff fit into what we believe about Creation, about God?  A third key book for this year, discussing similar questions and other really big stuff, is How to Be Your Own Selfish Pig, which is listed now for AO Year 7 but which Dollygirl hasn't read yet.  And don't forget  How to Read a Book, which, this year, deals a lot with arguments and propositions.  Some of the writing assignments for this year tie well into the ideas from these books: there will be a speech, a newspaper article, and two essays, all of which can draw on the world and its problems of environmental and human ecology.

It's also a perfect time to read Ecclesiastes, and that's scheduled at the end of the year.

The rest of science for this year will be divided between two of Dr. Jay Wile's Apologia textbooks: the parts of Physical Science that deal with the earth's atmosphere, water, weather etc.; and the last four modules of General Science, about human physiology.  There will be some other nature reading, keeping a nature notebook, and making notes about the Apologia experiments and lessons.

We will be reading Edith Hamilton's Mythology, just for a change. I think Dollygirl will also enjoy Fierce Wars and Faithful Loves (The Faerie Queene Book I), by Edmund Spenser and Roy Maynard.

Through history and literature we get to see how these ideas play out:  the problems of North American colonization and different groups of people trying to live together (who was here first?) can be compared with similar issues raised in Kon-Tiki and our other geography book, Journey to the Source of the Nile by Sir Christopher Ondaatje (not in the Ambleside schedule).  There are  the life-and-death questions that John Donne raises (adults might want to read Philip Yancey's chapter on Donne in his book Soul Survivor, which gives it a rather poignant context); and the problems of government and justice in The Merchant of Venice, in the trial and death of Charles I, in the story of Sir Thomas More, in Plutarch's Lives, and in the novels of Sir Walter Scott. 

And on top of that, we get to use The Roar on the Other Side: a Guide for Student Poets.  If you did The Grammar of Poetry in Year 7 and feel a bit burned out by iambic pentameter, this book is an oasis on the poetic desert.  Plus it has enough hands-on writing exercises to qualify as a good chunk of a course in Creative Writing.  Plus it has a whole bunch of extra poems in the back.

Things come together.  The connections are there without our having to force them.

Related Post:  Ten Things I'm Doing to Plan Year Eight Better.

Let's talk about AO Year Eight (Part One)

"When I was young I told a tale of buried gold, and men from leagues around dug in the woods.  I dug myself."
"But why?"
"I thought the tale of treasure might be true"
"You said you made it up."
"I know I did, but then I didn't know I had."  ~~ James Thurber, The 13 Clocks

It has been nine years since I had a student going into Ambleside Online's Year Eight.  You forget a lot in nine years.  What I did remember, from our first round, was a lot of difficult, and most of it not as appealing nor as easy to understand as the Middle Ages, King Arthur emphasis in Year Seven.  I also remembered that Year Eight covered an awful lot of ground: from the start of the Tudor era, the Renaissance and Reformation, through the Elizabethans and the Stuarts, through Cromwell, the Puritans, and up to William and Mary at the end of the 1600's.   For Canadians, that period covers an introduction to the First Nations peoples, the founding of New France, and the beginnings of the fur trade. (Americans get to study the Pilgrim Fathers and the early colonies.)  I remembered the Apprentice reading Cavalier poetry, Utopia, Whatever Happened to Justice?, and a version of Everyman...and Children of the New Forest, since we were trying to coordinate somewhat with Ponytails' Year Three (same time period).  We tried reading some of The Betrothed on Project Gutenberg, but it was just too big a book for us to handle that way, and the public library didn't have a copy (still doesn't), so we dropped it after a few chapters.

Now might bring a certain knight of gay and shining courage--"But, no!" the cold Duke muttered.  "The Prince will break himself against a new and awful labour: a place too high to reach, a thing too far to find, a burden too heavy to lift."  ~~ James Thurber

That's an awful lot to dump on a middle-schooler.  Not to mention all the literature, science, math and everything else that's part of a school year.  How are they supposed to make sense of all this, and not get so burned out that they forget about love of learning?  How's a homeschooling mom supposed to get fired up by a curriculum outline where almost Every Single Book is by John something or other?  The mere fact that so many of this year's readings can be found in the Harvard Classics is worrisome.  It wasn't like we were going to desert Ambleside or anything, but I was feeling like Year Seven had been a bit of a picnic compared with what lay ahead.

A lock of the guard's hair turned white and his teeth began to chatter.  "The Todal looks like a blob of glup," he said.  "It makes a sound like rabbits screaming, and smells of old, unopened rooms.  It's waiting for the Duke to fail in some endeavour, such as setting you a task that you can do."  "And if he sets me one, and I succeed?" the Prince inquired. "The Blob will glup him," said the guard.  ~~ James Thurber

I was more interested in giving Dollygirl a wonderful and manageable Year Eight than I was worried about being glupped.  I looked really carefully at the original P.U.S. programmes that covered the same time periods as Year Eight (they're not on the Ambleside website, you will have to go to the CM Digital Archives if you want to see those terms).  There were a few differences: less incidental material for history and literature, more plant study, more writing spelled out.  I took the general format and started swapping books around.  What I came up with wasn't bad, but I wanted a way to communicate "here's what to do when" to Dollygirl--as in, more specific instructions and possibly a weekly checklist.  When Ponytails was in Grade Eight and using AO's Pre-Year-Seven, I used Carol Hepburn's outline as a weekly checklist and let her set much of her own schedule. Would that work?  By this time I was also looking at the AO 36-week schedule for Year 8 and wondering how much of that we were going to end up keeping and how much might be different.

So this is what I did: don't try it at home.  I copied Carol's outline into a file, thirty-six times, changed up the Pre-Year-Seven books for all the AO Year Eight, P.U.S., and other books I thought should go in there (like math books and Canadian history), and then started copying in the page breakdowns from the AO schedule.
Actually it didn't look so unworkable.  In fact, it was so workable that I started seeing where I could add in a few of the "extras" from AO Year Eight.  Science was going to include a unit about the heart and lungs--well, there's where we would read about William Harvey.  The writing guide we had included a sample essay by Francis Bacon which was also on the AO schedule.  If we dropped Shakespeare in Term Three, we could fit in Dryden's play about Antony and Cleopatra, All for Love, which is hidden in the Free Reading list.  Et cetera.

Then I cut stuff. It hurt, but I really pruned it down.  I chucked a useful but boring plant book; even if the P.U.S. did botany every single year, and the readings weren't long, it wasn't contributing much.  I trimmed down the literature and the geography.

And what I ended up with was...more or less...AO Year Eight. Or somewhere between Year Eight and Year Eight Lite.  Scrambled into our own sequence, but still mostly there.

Year Eight is going to be great.

The Golux gazed a last time at the Princess.  "Keep warm," he said.  "Ride close together.  Remember laughter.  You'll need it even in the blessed isles of Ever After."....A fair wind stood for Yarrow and, looking far to sea, the Princess Saralinda thought she saw, as people often think they see, on clear and windless days, the distant shining shores of Ever After.  ~~ James Thurber 

(Part Two will explain what we're keeping and what we're switching.)
Related post: Ten Things I'm Doing to Plan Year Eight Better.