Mrs. DHM and the Bad Squirrels: A Fable

Mrs. DHM was a little brown squirrel who lived in the tip, tip, top of a tall Common Room House. She didn't like to cook (well, sometimes she did), but she did like to move furniture and blog and teach her children, and she liked to sing while she worked.

Every morning Mrs. DHM made herself a bowl of crockpot cereal, and as she stirred it around she sang:

"Oh, I love to cook, I love to bake,
I guess I'll make an acorn cake and send it to Mama Squirrel."

Then she dusted her wooden toys and rinsed her mason jars and put her whole house in order.

At night Mrs. DHM climbed into her bed and looked through the topmost branches at the sky. She saw a million stars. She looked at her bookshelves and saw a million books, most pre-1985. It was very peaceful.

But one day a band of red squirrels came jumping and chattering to the Common Room House. Mrs. DHM was just putting her cake in the oven, when she looked up and saw a lot of strangers in her doorway. One, two, three, she counted, and one, two three more--six red squirrels. She didn't think they were there for the singing.

Then they told her she couldn't sell her used books online anymore. They drank up her whole winter's supply of Russian Tea. They broke her broom and threw out her mason jars. Then they chased her out of her Common Room house.

Poor Mrs. DHM! She didn't know where to go. And it began to rain. She scampered up the nearest tree with her laptop. Shivering and cold, she scrambled down a chimney and out of a hole in the chimney and into the attic.

There in the dusty, quiet attic she saw a beautiful sight. The whole attic was full of vintage children's books. Bound volumes of St. Nicholas Magazine. Entire shelves of Childhood of Famous Americans. First editions of Edward Ardizzone's Little Tim books.

"My, what a lovely attic!" thought Mrs. DHM. "What a shame there is no one to share it with me. It is so big!" She catalogued two whole bookcases on Library Thing.

Then she saw a box and opened it up. Well, what do you think she saw inside? A band of toy soldiers. They had been sleeping there for years.

"Thanks for setting us free," said the captain. "Is there anything we can do for you?"

"You could march to the Common Room," said Mrs. DHM, "and talk to those red squirrels who pushed me out. But, on the other hand, we don't want to use unnecessary force. How about you stay here instead and I'll read you stories."

"As long as we don't have to narrate afterwards," said the soldier captain.

Late that night the captain woke his men and gave them their orders. There were only five of them, but they were very brave, and their hearts were full of love. After all, Mrs. DHM had introduced them to The Bears of Blue River.

They marched to the Common Room and climbed through the window. The squirrels were making so much noise about government bailouts that they did not hear the soldiers until it was too late.

"This is Mrs. DHM's house," said the captain, drawing his sword. "Will you go peaceably, or must we fight?"

The red squirrels looked at the soldiers and screamed "Lead! Contaminants!" They ran out of the house as fast as they could and down the road.

"And don't come back!" shouted the captain.

Mrs. DHM was very happy to move back into her Common Room. She thanked the soldiers and made them promise to come for potluck dinners once a week. Then the soldiers marched off through the forest, singing The Cruel War.

That night when Mrs. DHM went to bed, she was very tired. And she still missed her Sadie dog. But she looked through the branches and she could see a million stars. She looked at her bookshelves and she could see a million books. And she looked through her blog comments and realized that she had...well, not a million friends...but a lot. And Mrs. DHM was very happy once more.

With Apologies to Miriam Young and her classic picture book Miss Suzy, copyright 1964 by Parent's Magazine Press, now classified as an illegal substance.

Books Read in 2009: Silence

Silence, by Shusaku Endo (also here)

Silence isn't a pleasure read, any more than you read The Power and the Glory or Heart of Darkness just for fun. But Terry Glaspey and Philip Yancey both said I should read this book, so I took it out of the library.

I avoided starting it. I left it to the bottom of the stack as long as I could. Finally I read it.

Even in translation, Silence is an excellent book, though so difficult to continue reading. The characters are strong, and the technique of writing much of the book as letters works; in fact, I think that the first-person parts of the book work the best. (The last section shifts to the third person.)

The main character is Father Rodrigues, a Portuguese Jesuit of the 17th century, who arrives in Japan interested not so much in converts as he is in looking for news of his seminary professor, Ferreira, who is said to have apostatized after being tortured. (Reminds me a bit of Conrad's character looking for Kurtz.) Things rapidly go from bad to worse for Rodrigues. The Christian peasants he encounters are starving and terrified; the government has a "zero tolerance" policy on Roman Catholicism and particularly on priests. After a period of hiding and running, Rodrigues is arrested, and from that point on he is pitted, physically, psychologically, and spiritually against one man: Inoue, the magistrate and leader of the anti-Christian forces. That's good storytelling; the strongest battle stories always come down to one on one.

And that's the toughest part of this story for Rodrigues; he, reasonably, starts to feel like he is facing all of this on his own, without any help from God. He sees few miracles, and much to make him doubt. Why does God seem to be silent?

Silence is about the impact both the evangelization and the persecution have on a particular society. It's about how someone's pride and faith are torn to the point of allowing him to do what he never thought he could stoop to do: apostatizing (denying his faith). (I'm not giving much away here, all you have to do is read the endpapers.) Endo suggests an alternative interpretation: perhaps the act of apostatizing, in this situation, was actually an act of faith.

Japanese Catholics criticized Silence when it was first published. They didn't want to read about a fallen priest; they would have preferred to hear about martyrs and glorious deaths. Others took the theme of the book to be the problem of Christianity as a Western faith being imposed, unsuccessfully, on Eastern minds. Endo insisted that he was writing literature, not theology, and I don't think he was wrong about that, although many theological discussions could come out of the book.

Finally, there's an extra reason to read this book soon. The only film version was made in Japanese in 1971; but Martin Scorsese has a new version in production, starring Daniel Day Lewis and planned for release in 2010.

Our Apprentice is going to be an apprentice

More details here.

(And she sings nice, too.)

Books Read in 2009: The Storm, by Frederick Buechner

"It was a miracle, Willow had said, that Violet Sickert had been clever enough to bully Dalton Maxwell into coming to the island for the birthday weekend, and a miracle too that he had let himself be bullied. Violet Sickert was really not very clever, and Dalton Maxwell was of all men least tractable. Neverthleless it had happened, and by calling it miraculous she sensed the working of some behind-the-scenes power that now and then made things happen in a way that was different from the way they would have happened otherwise. She thought about the death of her first husband as another case in point. Who could have foreseen it--a healthy young man done in by something as ridiculous as having his appendix out? Yet that's the way it had fallen out....Who could say how different her life would have been if he had bounced out of the hospital with nothing more than a small pink scar? At times such as that, the power seemed to work as darkly as some deep-sea current that could suddenly, or so she had heard, drag down to destruction an entire ship and its crew. But at other times it seemed to be almost friendly."--Frederick Buechner, The Storm

Can you ever have too many versions of The Tempest? This is the second one I've read in the past year.

You don't have to have read Shakespeare's play to make sense of the book; it's only loosely based on it; but it does help to give the characters and setting some context. There's an island, although it's a summer resort for the wealthy, and nobody's shipwrecked on it. There's an 70ish man named Kenzie Maxwell who is struggling with events in his past--I suspect he's more or less Frederick Buechner. There are the equivalents of the evil Sycorax (Miss Sickert), the handsome but aimless young prince Ferdinand (Nandy), the monster Caliban (Calvert, whom one character says looks like a werewolf), and the sprite Ariel (Kenzie's windsurfing stepson Averill). There are also traces of Shakespeare in the storm, the boat, strange music in the air--or of the air-- (Rumer Godden also used that heavily in her version), and Kenzie's bathrobe decorated with stars and moons.

One reviewer commented that Buechner spent more time developing his characters than he did really doing anything with them, and I agree that the action and conflict, such as it is, all gets resolved quite quickly in the last few pages of the book. Maybe like a Shakespeare play. But still, I liked it a lot--probably more than anything else I've read this month. I think it's because of the affection he shows towards even his most unsympathetic characters, more even than we'd like him to give some of them. It's also interesting to read yet another book with older-than-average main characters (Jan Karon's Mitford novels come to mind, and The Bone Sharps was another one).

In that and in other ways (the emphasis on fractured or patchwork families, the older brother who can only hold things together if there are no surprises and variations), this book reminds me of some of Anne Tyler's novels. For Buechner, the line is very finely drawn between saints and sinners; in that, his characters are somewhat like Flannery O'Connor's. I also read a review that compared some of his work to that of Charles Williams, but I haven't read Charles Williams so can't give an opinion on that.

You can read the book fairly quickly, but there are things you'll want to come back to--some of the musings about destiny, and the place of what some call the numinous or the fates, some call the workings of God, in the way things turn out.

A postscript: Right after I posted this, Mr. Fixit was listening to Supertramp's album Breakfast in America, and some of the lyrics really jumped out at me in connection with this book. Maybe it's just the clichéed thinking of someone still somewhat mired in the 1980's, but maybe not.

Cauliflower, not too complicated

Cauliflower is one of those vegetables I buy when it's reasonably priced but then have to find something to do with that will get eaten in one meal. Because leftover cauliflower--ugh. Unless maybe it's soup, and even that's sometimes hard to pull off successfully. It's the smell, you know?

Here's one easy way to cook it (raw cauliflower, that is) that's good for using up other leftovers as well. This is what I did:

Cut up one medium-sized cauliflower, put in a large greased casserole.
Add some cut-up cooked chicken and sliced cooked potatoes.
Add milk around the edges (how much, I can't say--think scalloped potatoes)
Add a blob of butter or margarine on top
Sprinkle with any cauliflower-compatible seasonings. (I had a homemade salt-free cajun-type mix; plain paprika would work too.)
Bake, covered, until the cauliflower is tender and the potatoes and chicken are heated through.
You shouldn't need to thicken the sauce if you've used a medium amount of milk--the potatoes will soak a lot of it up.

What do you call this one? The Apprentice suggested "Chicken Chowder Casserole." Or maybe Scalloped Vegetables with Chicken?

Uncrocking the chicken

I've made Applesauce Chicken in the crockpot before (thanks, Steph! ); we liked it and appreciated that it was a low-sodium-without-trying recipe. I wanted to make it today, but didn't have enough time for the Crockpot--also, the chicken breasts were taking forever to thaw.

So--gasp--I made it in the oven, with the still-partly-frozen chicken. It worked fine and kept the meat nice and moist. I left the red pepper out but made it otherwise as written. (Good with sweet potatoes and peas.)

Ah, that is the question

Jaimie wants to know "Is Frugality A Fad Or a Trend That Will Last?" (Frugal Hacks)

Well, the way I see it is kind of like this: I heard on the radio that McDonald's profits are up, not in spite of but because of "times-like-these." And yeah, even when I was pretty broke as a student, I ate out a lot (at the cheapest places I could find), because of various difficulties maintaining anything resembling a kitchen in a couple of the places I lived. There will always be people in boarding houses, single people, people running between one part-time job and another one who just need something to shovel in before the next shift starts.

But that aside, the fact that so many people are still holding onto the fast food lifestyle says to me that "frugal" hasn't really hit home yet. It's still seen as a choice. That's a fad.

When times are really bad, it's not "frugal" so much as "broke," and you don't have a choice about it. If times stay tough, it doesn't matter if the rich and social are playing frugal and buying economy-brand bottled water; the people out of work don't care if it's cool to be frugal, they just have to pay the bills and eat. Or not, if they can't, sometimes with tragic results. (There's been another story in the news about a family who couldn't face unemployment, but I won't link to it.) You might say that many of the "broke" aren't necessarily frugal, especially if they don't have many coping skills to stretch a small income.

That leaves the question of the rest of us, those who have been choosing to spend less for whatever reason or on whatever income, some of us since the last big recession, some much longer. We do know how to stretch recipes, how to make a whatsit out of what we have, how to keep wearing a pair of winter boots with a crack across the top (or, better, keep the boots from cracking in the first place). Some of us--like Kit's Aunt Millie--were raised to be frugal and will keep on being frugal; some have found ways to pass those values on to their children, others of us struggle with that. Frugal for us isn't a fad; some of us may have been pushed into it because of finances, and we don't necessarily find it 100% fun 100% of the time; but it's also a reflection of our values--environmental, spiritual, whatever--and those values are what will keep our frugal energy high, no matter what the economic times.

Wild, wild horses (The Silver Brumby)

One of The Apprentice's friends loaned her Elyne Mitchell's The Silver Brumby, and then Mama Squirrel read it to Crayons. This series of Australian wild-horse stories is way above the current run of Horse-Club type chapter books; and, unfortunately, seems to be almost unheard of in Canada. There was a 1993 film version with Russell Crowe, but I don't remember it; there was also an animated series (can be seen on You-tube). I checked abebooks.com for copies of the books and found very few in Canada at a decent price; the U.S. was not much better, but there were lots of copies in Australia and the U.K. Collins Modern Classics did a reprint in 1999 but it looks like it's also out of print. There are no copies of any of the books in our library system.

The book--the first one anyway--was published in 1958. It's kind of a cross between Bambi (the book, not the Disney movie) and Misty of Chincoteague. Thowra, a cream-coloured wild horse (brumby), is born during a stormy night; his intelligent and intuitive mother knows there are great things in store for him, but that he will always be in danger both from man and other horses (because of his unusual colour). She teaches him everything she knows about running, hiding, leaping over things, and general survival; and, though most mares forget their foals eventually, she never seems to be far away and reappears several times as Thowra grows up. (He also has a lifelong friendship with Storm, another stallion who was born at the same time.) By the end of the book, Thowra has defeated the other leaders of the brumbies (the fights are described fairly graphically), has his own herd (and foals), and has just escaped--in a final harrowing chase scene--from the stockmen (cowboys) who badly want to capture him.

The descriptive passages and the language--both the Australian geographical terms and the general writing level--may give problems to younger North American readers; maybe not your average homeschooler, but those who expect something on the level of the Horse Club books. The first book does have a short glossary in the back (candlebarks, flying phallanger, kurrawong, snowgrass, etc.). Here's a sample:

"Thowra and Storm moved back on to the Main Range as soon as autumn began changing towards winter. For a while they stayed in the timbered country below the Ramshead, and often spent the lovely bright days galloping on the snowgrass between the granite tors. Sometimes there were other young horses near--and once Thowra was given quite a beating by a three-year-old stallion who came along with two or three young mares and seemed to want to fight him just because he looked different--but mostly they were on their own, and day after day was filled with a sort of wild joy....The snow was late that year, and in the clear autumn light the rocks looked purple, and the snowgums blended every red and orange and green with their ghostly silver grey. Thowra became lighter in colour as he got his winter coat, and, even more than in other winters, he looked silver rather than cream."--Elyne Mitchell, The Silver Brumby

Luckily, The Apprentice's friend owns all four books in the series and Crayons is writing her a letter (and drawing her a picture) to say thank you and ask if we can borrow the next book.

Books read in 2009: Two books on writing

"Hear him, ye gods!" returned his companion. "I assure you, Mr. Pattieson, you will hardly visit this learned gentleman, but you are likely to find the new novel most in repute lying on his table,--snugly intrenched, however, beneath Stair's Institutes, or an open volume of Morrison's Decisions."

"Do I deny it?" said the hopeful jurisconsult, "or wherefore should I....may they not be found lurking amidst the multiplied memorials of our most distinguished counsel, and even peeping from under the cushion of a judge's arm-chair? Our seniors at the bar, within the bar, and even on the bench, read novels; and, if not belied, some of them have written novels into the bargain...."--Sir Walter Scott, The Heart of Mid-Lothian (1818)

In the last month I've read two books on writing: The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard, and How to Grow a Novel, by "editor, novelist, and award-winning teacher of writers" Sol Stein. (Stein edited books by Elia Kazan and Jacques Barzun, among others.)

In relationship to each other, they kind of remind me of Karen Andreola and Catherine Levison writing about Charlotte Mason. CM homeschoolers will understand that reference right away; I know nobody else will.

Annie Dillard writes about the poetry of writing; exploding typewriters (I hope that one was just a metaphor), how writing is like stunt flying, what it's like hiding out in a cabin in the woods or in a college library at night, getting a few workable sentences down and then and starting again when you get up at noon the next day.

Sol Stein explains how to maintain point of view even if your character is being murdered during the scene.

Annie Dillard says, "The art must enter the body, too. A painter cannot use paint like glue or screws to fasten down the world. The tubes of paint are like fingers; they work only if, inside the painter, the neural pathways are wide and clear to the brain....part of the brain changes physical shape to accommodate and fit paint." She quotes sculptor Anne Truitt: "The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one's own most intimate sensitivity," and also her favourite Thoreau: "Know your own bone."

Stein explains, in detail, the changes that he suggested when editing the first draft of a particular novel; the same sort of changes that he might suggest if he was working with you on your book. One of his major themes is revision, as much revision as necessary. I got the impression that Annie Dillard's method of writing is something like: get just to the right state, just the right amount of coffee but not too much, just the right amount of scenery but not too much, possibly cut off a chunk of your flesh (one of her metaphors), and the right words will magically come. Stein's method is more like: write it, grow it, "let your imagination go"; but then be prepared to chop the whole first half of the book if it's not working.

I would have liked to have had Stein's book around when I was struggling with university writing courses, particularly the chapter "Our Native Language is Not Dialogue." I like his advice about putting things in a "writerly" way. I love, love, love the pitching-baseball analogies for dialogue: fastballs, knuckleballs, sinkers. If you're not following this, here's his example of "an outstanding sinker by Ross MacDonald: 'Thalassa, the sea, the Homeric sea. We could build another Athens. I used to think we could do it in San Francisco, build a new city of man on the great hills. A city measured with forgiveness. Oh, well.'"

Annie Dillard might give you the inspiration to go out and find your "own bone" to chew on: "A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all." The Writing Life isn't a very long book; you can read it fairly quickly, and then take awhile to let the metaphors sink in.

And Sol Stein can give you the nuts and bolts to turn it into something readable. You might want your own copy of this one to keep handy, underline, circle and otherwise mutilate.

If I were teaching creative writing--I think I'd use both books together.

Crisp Seedy Oatmeal Cookies--or bars

I made this Canadian Living cookie recipe today--but part of the oven was already taken up with dinner and I didn't want to fuss with making individual cookies. So I pressed the dough into a 9x13 inch pan, and baked it at 350 degrees till the edges were brown and the middle was set--about half an hour. I cut it in bars while it was still warm, then let it finish cooling in the pan.

I didn't have any Rice Krispies, so I used up the end of a box of Koala Crisp, plus some puffed wheat. I ran the cold cereal and the rolled oats through the food processor because the grains of puffed wheat were so large, and I think it was an improvement. The cookies turned out really well, with a nice texture.

The only other change I'd make is to leave out the pumpkin seeds--substitute some raisins, or just leave them out. They may add some protein, but I don't think they really added anything to the cookies.

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn: narration by Crayons

Little Portly Otter is missing, and all the animals are concerned.

Mr. Otter sat at the place where Portly liked best, and Rat and Mole went out in a boat to find Portly. And they heard this marvellous singing, and they found this island, and they went to it. And they met this great big horned thing [Pan], and the great big horned thing had Portly. And then the great big horned thing left, and Portly woke up, and they took him in the boat back to Mr. Otter, and he was very, very happy.

And then Rat and Mole were very, very tired, and they thought they would sleep for a whole day. The End.

Crayons' Grade Two: Plans for this week

I'm going to set up this week's schedule a bit differently, by subject instead of day. That way I don't have to keep saying "Math," "Spelling" and so on ad nauseum.

Copywork and printing practice: Crayons is still copying line by line from my models; I am hoping that later in the year she will be able to copy better from printed material. She is also using Canadian Handwriting Book B.

Memory work: going very well. We are working on poems, catechism, and the words to "Like a River Glorious." I think this week we'll start another poem but keep reviewing Amy Lowell's "Sea Shell."

Old Testament: Stories from 1 Samuel 30 and 31, the end of the book.

New Testament: Matthew 22 and 23: Jesus' teachings and parables to the people in Jerusalem

Bible culture: People of the Bible, Life and Customs, pages 104-105--a birds-eye view of Jerusalem in Jesus' time

Spelling: Word list created on SpellingCity.com
Language lessons: Punctuation worksheet; using random words to start a story

Math: we have started the Green Book in the Miquon series and are reviewing subtraction

French: Just getting back into this after Christmas--I have to look through this week's lessons and see where we're at

Arctic study: Inuit Life in Nunavik

Canada Eh to Zed: R is for...

Wind in the Willows, chapter 7

Italian Peepshow, by Eleanor Farjeon

Among the Forest People: "The Wild Turkeys Come" and "The Travellers Go South"

Pilgrim's Progress: taking a week off

Poems: Come Hither, poems 10-12 and 471-473

Songs: still singing Lukey's Boat and Canadian Boat Song

Composer: More about Liszt (we are mostly using You-tube videos right now)

British History: Our Island Story, chapter XL: "Edward I and the Little War of Chalons"

Crocheting and sewing some small things for Crayons' dolls

Crayons' Grade Two: Plans for Friday

Read Psalm 117, sing O Canada, pray
Spelling test
Review week's memory work: Like a River Glorious, "Sea Shell," catechism

(Catechism lesson we're working on (from the Lutheran Small Catechism):
"Our Father who art in heaven.
What does this mean? With these words God tenderly invites us to believe that He is our true Father and that we are His true children, so that with all boldness and confidence we may ask Him as dear children ask their dear father.")

Picture study: finish looking at Andy Warhol books (from the library)
Bible lesson: 1 Samuel 29
Science reading: Arctic life (colour in the Arctic Life Dover colouring book)
Math drill page
Singing: Lukey's Boat, Canadian Boat Song (Thomas Moore)
Wind in the Willows: finish chapter 6.

Books read in 2009: Marva Collins' Way

"In [a poet's] youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat. Rembrandt and Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Gauguin, possessed, I believe, powerful hearts, not powerful wills. They loved the range of materials they used....The caring suggested the tasks; the tasks suggested the schedules....They worked, respectfully, out of their love and knowledge, and they produced complex bodies of work that endure. Then, and only then, the world flapped at them some sort of hat, which, if they were still living, they ignored as well as they could, to keep at their tasks."--Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

If you've read anything about Marva Collins or watched the movie with Cicely Tyson, you will know why I found that quote appropriate. Marva Collins is a teacher who became something of a phenomenon, a guest on talk shows, the author of books, the recipient of awards. (She still has a speaking schedule and a website.) My impression is that she ignored the "famous hat" as much as she could when it interfered with the actual work she felt she was called to do: teaching. (From her own account, she did appreciate the cash that the recognition brought in; in the early days of her private school, it was badly needed to pay the bills.)

Things that occur to me:

1. I'm not the first person to point out that Marva Collins wrote her first book, Marva Collins' Way, around 1980, during the first wave of national recognition for her work teaching underprivileged and underappreciated children. Her students, from the brief mentions I've seen, went on to great success in college and careers. Yet, as others have said--nothing much changed in the educational system. Like the doctor who proved that handwashing could prevent childbed fever, her achievements seem to have been treated as exceptional, an anomaly, not repeatable. Obviously she is an exceptional woman; but she did train others to teach with her methods, boshing the idea that it was only her intelligence or personality that allowed her students to learn.

2. Some things definitely have changed since that first book was written. (My two library systems don't have ANY of Mrs. Collins' books, not one, not even this book; so I don't have her later writings to refer to, to see if she has commented on some of these points. I found my copy at the thrift shop last month. I know you can buy a newer edition on Amazon, with a new introduction.) Some classroom things I noticed: insisting that each child should be physically touched every day, and mentioning that it took a long time for one student to smile when she was tickled...these days that kind of makes us cringe, the idea of a teacher being allowed to tickle a student.

3. Marva Collins' teaching methods are not identical to Charlotte Mason's, although they did share many of the same goals and ideas (such as believing that all children should receive a rich diet of great books). One difference I noticed (from the descriptions of her classroom talk in this book) is that she often seemed to tell the children, or push them hard into telling her, what the story was about, what they should learn from it. But it sounds like the students often did throw in their own comments as well. Another difference was the very strong, constant emphasis on phonics.

4. I found her frequent sarcasm off-putting, although it seemed to get through to the students. Typical example: a boy noisily scraped his desk forwards on the floor, and she interrupted her work with another student to say something like, "I guess your mother sent you to school this morning so that you could learn how to push desks." I think I see where she was coming from; she was constantly pushing for these students to remember why they were there in school, that they were going to make something of themselves. But she sometimes seems to contradict herself in that area; she instructed her new teachers not to embarrass the students, but some of the things she said herself sound like they were meant to cause some embarrassment. Somewhat like where Charlotte Mason once said that there was a time and place for a child to be called "stupid" (in the Victorian adjective sense of the word); that sounds absolutely incorrect to our ears, but we can only assume that Miss Mason and Mrs. Collins knew what they were about.

5. I found it interesting, just going by this first book, that certain things were taught and taught very well, and other subjects (even those that were dear to Charlotte Mason) were ignored. There is no mention of foreign language classes, although there was a great deal of work on meanings of prefixes, Latin and Greek roots, things like that. Mrs. Collins mentions having the students draw about something they had read, but not about other formal art or music study, or even physical education. She knew where she wanted to focus, and seems to have done that successfully. (Her website sells phonics and math materials.)

6. There is a great deal for teachers to learn even from this first book. Homeschool parents too. One thing that stood out is the tremendous amount of energy and intensity that it took to teach in her style--there was no sitting behind the desk, no expecting without inspecting (thanks, Coffeemamma), no letting students get away with less than a real effort in anything. I think that's one thing that Mrs. Collins shares with Miss Mason: that the students--each individual student--come first, before the teacher's personal needs or emotions at the moment.

7. And of course, one of the most wonderful discoveries that Mrs. Collins made, that Miss Mason's Welsh teacher acquaintance made, that Miss Mason herself described repeatedly: that children, even inner-city minority children who are slipping through the school cracks, can respond to great literature, given to them in the right way and by a teacher who believes that they can learn and be successful.

Verdict: well worth reading.

Books read in 2009: The Bone Sharps

I've finished one book from my "official" list, and another book I started late last year.

Here's the review of the first book: The Bone Sharps: A Novel, by Tim Bowling. (I'll write about the second book tomorrow.)

The thick paper cover and the feel of the inside paper of this book tell you that it's a bit out of the ordinary.

Reading it confirms that impression.

What's it about? World War I; dinosaur bones in the badlands of Alberta; Native issues; love, loss, and God. Very much about God.

The war parts are about as gory as you're going to get, so don't say I didn't warn you. But it's all necessary, and it all comes together in the end. Well, kind of, because everything ends in fragments.

Actually fragments are an ongoing motif of the book. Dinosaurs gone to pieces, a world gone to pieces, peoples' lives told in pieces. The question in life--as our Sunday School speaker said yesterday--is how you try to put it all back together, or how you see how things fit together. If you think they fit together.

Samuel Pane wrote a good Canadian Literature review of the book here.

And here's a neat thing: Tim Bowling is a homeschool dad! (From this interview)

"LP: In our memoir you indicate your dissatisfaction with the school system so I’m assuming your kids are home schooled? How does that affect your writing, what special allowances do you have to make to your writing schedule?
TB: Yes, my kids are home schooled. Not only do I think school is one of the great brainwashers into North American culture and capitalism (a culture not entirely repellent, of course, but one that could be resisted a bit more seriously), I just don’t want not to see my children for six hours a day, five days a week. I mean, I really enjoy them. I’m selfish that way...."

Baked Pumpkin Doughnuts

Sarah commented on the menu post and asked about the doughnut recipe--I saw it first on Grocery Cart Challenge and have made it a couple of times since. Gayle on GCC linked to the Recipezaar version, but it's been posted other places online as well, sometimes with variations such as using home-mixed spices instead of pie spice. You only need half a cup of pureed pumpkin to make a dozen doughnuts.

The first time I made it, I followed the instructions and squished the batter out of a Ziploc bag. The second time, I used an ice-cream scoop to drop blobs of batter on the pan, then poked a large hole in each blob with the end of a spoon. The holes mostly filled in while baking, but we still got the idea, and it was a whole lot easier.

You could skip the icing drizzle and just call them big pumpkin cookies. Really. I won't tell.

More snow, more school

Plans for Friday, including a couple of things we put off earlier in the week:

Singing
Make up two math problems for Mom to solve
Pilgrim's Progress, pages 84-91 in our edition
Short lesson on the keyboard
Review this week's memory work: catechism, poem, hymn
1 chapter from the book we are reading about the Arctic
Printing practice
Independent reading: Through the Year, pages 84-93
Spelling test on the computer
Composer study: Franz Liszt

Crayons' Grade Two: School Plans Today

We were already three weeks into the second term when we took our Christmas break, so we're just continuing with what we were doing. I want to put more emphasis this winter on memory work (poems, Scripture and so on)--chosen, scheduled, and with lots of review. We're also starting a make-it-up-as-you-go-along study of the Arctic. With the amount of snow we've had over the past two days, we could do a simulation right here. Except that we learned yesterday that some parts of the Arctic get less snow than Virginia does!

As a matter of fact, Crayons is playing in the backyard snow right now (risking the wrath of the non-homeschooling neighbours) instead of starting school. But how many days do you get the right combination of sunshine, not too cold, and lots of fresh snow? I have to remember to go out again later with her and point out the chipmunk tracks across the corner of the yard--I saw Chippy streaking past earlier today.

But when she comes in, we have this on the list:

Opening: sing along with a track from Judy Rogers' Never Be Shaken
Sing two of our new songs: Lukey's Boat and Canadian Boat Song
Bible reading: from 1 Samuel 27; narration
Copywork (finishing some lines from yesterday)
Math lesson
Memory work: "The Sea Shell" by Amy Lowell
Canada Eh to Zed: "Q" page
Writing Christmas thank-you notes
Two poems from Come Hither
"The Undecided Rattlesnake" from Among the Forest People
Spelling City website
After lunch: Sun and Snow Science
Fun readalouds

Lines for Epiphany

Light looked down and beheld Darkness
'Thither will I go,' said Light.
Peace looked down and beheld war,
'Thither will I go,' said Peace.
Love looked down and beheld Hatred.
'Thither will I go,' said Love
So came Light and shone;
So came Peace and gave Rest
So came Love and gave Life
And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

--Laurence Housman

There they're their: a present from The Apprentice

The perfect gift for a homeschool mom. Thanks, Apprentice!

20 library books I want to read in 2009

I'm hoping to read as many of these as I can this year, in no particular order. The titles came mostly from weekend-paper book reviews--I wrote them down a couple of years ago! I've figured out that if you can wait a bit, you don't get stuck on one of those long lists at the library. BL means Big Downtown Library, SL means Smaller Closer-by Library. Since I don't own any of these books, I need to know where I can find them.

[Update: I'm going to put the books I've finished in bold.]

1. Our Culture, What's Left of it: The Mandarins and the Masses BL
2. Story of French BL, SL
3. Freakonomics BL, SL
4. Half in the Sun: an anthology of Mennonite Writing BL
5. Bumblebee Economics BL
6. Of This Earth (Rudy Wiebe) BL, SL
7. King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, the man who saved geometry BL, SL
8. The Bone Sharps: a novel BL, SL
9. Rough Crossings: Britain, the slaves, and the American Revolution BL, SL
10. De Niro's Game BL, SL
11. The Skystone BL, SL
12. Black Swan Green BL, SL
13. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man BL, SL
14. Three-Day Road BL, SL
15. A Most Damnable Invention: dynamite, nitrates, and the making of the modern world BL, SL
16. On Chesil Beach BL, SL
17. Divisadero BL, SL
18. The Library at Night BL, SL
19. The Man Who Forgot How to Read (Engel) BL, SL
20. The Writing Life (Annie Dillard) BL, SL

A gift for Crayons (Opera for Kids)

World's Very Best Opera for Kids...In English

(Santa Claus knows that Crayons likes Carmen.)

Where are you from?--Frederick Buechner on Story

This is what I was looking for when I stumbled over that Grinch post.

"The Child in Us"

"We weren't born yesterday. We are from Missouri. But we are also from somewhere else. We are from Oz, from Looking-Glass Land, from Narnia, and from Middle Earth. If with part of ourselves we are men and women of the world and share the sad unbeliefs of the world, with a deeper part still, the part where our best dreams come from, it is as if we were indeed born yesterday, or almost yesterday, because we are also all of us children still....The child in us lives in a world where nothing is too familiar or unpromising to open up into the world where a path unwinds before our feet into a deep wood, and when that happens, neither the world we live in nor the world that lives in us can ever entirely be home again...."

Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth, included as the "May 6" reading in Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner.

What's in your hand: Extreme Edition

"What's in your hand" is a favourite phrase of the Deputy Headmistress. Just to give proper credit.

Do you remember that Little House Christmas chapter where things are in a bad state, gift-wise and otherwise? As Laura falls asleep that Christmas Eve, she hears Ma saying something like "there's still the white sugar." The bag of white sugar is a huge treat, usually hoarded and saved for company. But the next morning, in their stockings they each find a sugar-topped cookie. (Apologies to Birdie.)

I get a similar impulse around this time of year, usually in the last week or so before Christmas when the present list seems a little thin (and it's almost too late to start making things). Use it up! Pour it out! What good is it doing just sitting around if we could use it for something? And I don't mean just the butter and sugar...although I did finish off the part-bag of brown sugar and the whole box of raw sugar, two pounds of butter, and all the eggs. (Groceries today.)

Without trying to give away too many secrets, we used up the last of the tacky craft glue, a package of black pompoms (bought several years ago) plus a few leftover coloured ones, most of the cotton yarn, some dollar-store scrapbooking paper bought last February, several vintage hankies, the last of several spools of thread, and a couple of large pieces of fabric that were sitting...just sitting, not pulling their weight. Not to mention that green cord and the glitzy napkins. And some other things I'm not allowed to name.

We bought a roll of white paper at the toy store in the summer (to make a Pilgrim's Progress scroll and also a life-size paper girl; last week Crayons noticed the Snowman Factory idea (think giant paper dolls) on the Canadian Living website. Perfect!--four large snowmen now in progress. (That's where the pompoms and scrapbooking paper are going.) She also wants to make some smaller paper-chain snowmen like the ones she saw on the wall at Ponytails' school.

Last year's last-minute making was much the same: I used up all the craft stuffing we had plus a big piece of quilt batting and most of our yard-saled bulky yarn to make The Apprentice a sausage-shaped pillow. That doesn't mean I went right out and bought more stuffing, either; actually we didn't buy any until last week.

At certain times in your life you might go through a "nesting" phase--a time to gather it all up, acquire, stock the shelves. At Christmas my instinct is to do the opposite: not with a feeling of using up unwanted rags, not scrounging, but rather using the best that we have, and all of it if necessary. Enjoying it, sharing it, --the most beautiful treasures and the favourite ingredients, used and given freely. Some of it, we'll replace quickly: eggs and brown sugar are easy to come by, and we can get more glue. Other things we may do without for awhile...I don't know if or when I'll ever have a whole package of black pompoms around again.

But next year we'll make something else.

Glitzy Gift Sacks

Back in September I bought a brand-new set of holiday table placemats and napkins at a church sale, for a very small amount of money. The fabric was that shiny, Lurex-ish kind of stuff that you just have a feeling wouldn't launder well and would feel awful if you wiped your face with it. Besides which, a whole table set with that stuff could give one a migraine or at least tacky-induced nightmares.

But that wasn't why I bought the set. I saw it and thought "Fabric. Gift bags." And that's what I did with them, including the long runner (that's the tasselled bag without any drawstring). There was no need to cut the fabric--a good thing, because I think it might ravel easily. But since someone else had gone to the work of serging all those edges, all I had to do was sew them together. A couple of the large mats, I folded in half to make small bags; the others were made of two mats sewn together.

(I love straight-line sewing, especially when the machine gets going fast--I feel like the Grinch.)

The casings for the drawstrings were really easy except for getting the cords through the seam allowances (a common problem). I was using a large yarn needle with the cord threaded through it and still found it a bit tough going; but I poked my way through eventually.

The red bag with "Stop! No Peeking" is just plain broadcloth. The STOP transfer and the iron-on letters also came from old (1970's?) yard-saled craft stuff; the letters didn't come out quite as neatly as they might have if I'd let them cool a bit longer. But not bad anyway.

The print bag is something Crayons asked me to make out of a scrap of Christmas fabric we had; I added a pocket for a candy cane.

When it's nice to be cheap

Last Christmas we had a big spool of red ribbon that got used for all kinds of things including, finally, a hot-glued Barbie dress masterpiece.

This year we've been using a large spool of wired metallic green cord--I think that's what you'd call it. Anyway, it's very strong but it can be used as a package tie or even as the cord in a drawstring bag (photo post coming soon).

I don't remember exactly where this came from, but I'm guessing one of the church sales we went to where I picked up quite a few things like that. So I paid--at most--a couple of dollars for the spool, and there was a lot on it.

When I turned it over, I noticed the original price for this cord was 89 cents a metre. There were a hundred metres (originally) on the spool. SOMEBODY went out and paid Ninety Dollars And Tax for that spool of wired cord.

SOMEBODY might have had some 'splainin' to do that night.

Thank you for the lovely Butterfly

I'm a bit late in saying Thank You to MomtoCherubs at Beck's Bounty, who recently awarded us this Butterfly Award. Thanks!--it's an honour to know that you consider us cool!

These are the Butterfly Award rules:

(1) Link to the person / blog that gave this award to you.
(2) Post the graphic on your blog.
(3) Pass the award on to up to 10 other blogs you consider cool.

So I'd like to pass the Butterfly on to these blogs:

Percival Blakeney Academy, in honour of today's Seven Quick Takes post. (Our Squirrelings enjoy playing with our childhood toys too--especially Daddy's Johnny West set.)

The Beehive, in honour of all its Adventicipations. (I can hardly spell that.)

Bona Vita Rusticanda Est, for warming things up with All those Hawaii Posts.

Liberty and Lily, for helping us remember a beautiful fall.

Cardamom Addict, in honour of her pickle post (and the joke about the former Governor-General and the perogy recipe was funny too).

And Grocery Cart Challenge, for keeping me inspired.

You're all cool!

Newspeak Dictionary Censors Bad Words Like--Nun

Sebastian shares my own worries when I hear about dumb, dumb, dumb things like this.

Don't they want people to understand our language?

Friday Evening Advent Gathering

[Thanks to our blogging friends who continue to provide us with quotes, links, and ideas during this season.]

Light the first candle

Father: “As we prepare the manger for the Christ child, we also make room in our hearts and minds for Christ’s daily coming. We long for the Christ to return to fully express God’s wonderful ways once again. Such patient waiting and loving preparation embody the essence of Advent. Focus your thoughts on God’s wonderful ways and learn the goodness of waiting in God’s presence.” (Lutheran Advent devotional)

Listen to Chris Rice singing “Welcome to Our World.” (linked from this post on the Dominion Family Blog)

Reader 1: Think about the simple things at Jesus’ birth: the stable, the animals, the shepherds, the manger.

Reader 2: Mary and Joseph understood inward simplicity. They received their child with joy, as a gift from God.

Reader 3: They cared for Jesus and taught Him the best they could; but they knew that it was God’s business, not theirs, to protect Him and to take Him wherever He was supposed to go.

Father: And in the end, they didn’t try to keep Him all to themselves. As He gave Himself away, He gave us a gift as well: the gift of God’s salvation.

Listen to Alison Krauss and Yo-Yo Ma performing The Wexford Carol (linked from this post)

Father: Inner simplicity is not a reality until we can show it outwardly as well. On the next page we have ten rules of outward simplicity—how we can live simply. [note: not included here; I don't want to violate copyright laws.] They should not be seen as laws, but only as an attempt to show what simplicity can mean for our own lives. Let’s read through the ten rules, and talk about how our holiday shopping, eating, decorating, and other celebrating can reflect those ideas. If you look in the Advent booklets, you’ll see some ideas for games and other things we can do together. Maybe each person could pick out one thing they’d like to do over the next few weeks.

(Time for discussion)

Blow out the candle and end with this comment from Queen Shenaynay:

"My father once told me about a small-town ministers' breakfast where all the preachers were asked to share a verse in the Bible that they were particularly fond of and tell why. As they went around the room, one preacher after another cited some well-known verse, the type of verse you would expect to hear at such a time, if you know what I mean. But then they got to an elderly and much-beloved black preacher. He said, "Here's the Bible phrase I lean on every day, my friends: "And it came to pass..." Because everything that comes upon us on this hard old earth, no matter how bad it may be, it doesn't come to stay. Eternity with Jesus Christ is the only thing that will ever come to stay! All the rest just comes to pass." Isn't that wonderful?"

How not to get caught: a family Advent time

We divide up these readings for an evening time around our Advent wreath.

Light the first Advent candle and sing one of our Advent songs.

Read "How to Catch a Monkey."

"If what we have
we believe we have gotten,
and if what we have
we believe we must hold onto,
and if what we have
is not available to others,
then we will live in anxiety.

"Such persons will never know simplicity
regardless of the outward contortions they may put themselves through
in order to live “the simple life.” –Celebration of Discipline
Another old Sunday School illustration: have you ever had somebody ask you to fill a jar with unshelled walnuts and rice? If you put the rice into the jar first and then try to put the walnuts on top, they don’t fit. But if you put the walnuts in first, the rice fills in the space around them, and then everything fits.

"The goal of simplicity is to seek the kingdom of God and the righteousness of his kingdom first, and then everything necessary will come in its proper order….

"It can’t be about just wanting to get away from the noise and the “rat race.”

"It can’t be about giving things up just so that we can spread things out more fairly among rich countries and poor countries, rich people and poor people.

"It can’t be just about saving the earth.

"But: when the kingdom of God is genuinely placed first, ecological concerns, the poor, the fair distribution of wealth, and many other things will be given their proper attention.

"And just because you don’t have much doesn’t mean that you’re truly living in
simplicity. Paul taught us that the love of money is the root of all evil, and often those who have it the least love it the most. It is possible for a person to be living simply on the outside and to be filled with anxiety on the inside." (adapted from Celebration of Discipline)

When our Apprentice was little, we read two picture books that showed both of those different attitudes. One was Journey Cake Ho! by Ruth Sawyer. The old man in the story liked to say, “A bother, a pest! All work and no rest! Come winter, come spring, Life’s a nettlesome thing.” When times get hard, he and his wife send their hired boy off on his own because “what will feed two won’t feed three.”

The other book was Good Times on Grandfather Mountain. "When his cow, Blanche Wisconsin, jumps the fence and runs away, Old Washburn whittles the useless milk pail into a milk bucket drum. When the raccoons sneak in at night and eat every ear of sweet corn, he makes corn cob whistles. And when a fierce mountain storm causes the worst misfortune of all by blowing his cabin down, he finds the wood for a new fiddle. And the new fiddle starts one of the "best times" on Grandfather Mountain." (from the author's website)
"Freedom from anxiety is characterized by three inner attitudes.
If what we have
we receive as a gift,
and if what he have
is to be cared for by God,
and if what we have
is available to others,
then we will possess freedom from anxiety.
This is the inward reality of simplicity."--Celebration of Discipline

Blow out the candle and read the Advent Prayer posted on Beck's Bounty.

Keep your nose out of my lunch bag, or, how's that possibly hurting you?

Saturday's Toronto Star published an article by Daniel Dale called "The Thrift Paradox: Want to help? Leave that lunch at home." "You can't blame people for cutting back these days, but what feels [?] right now might end up hurting later."

Never mind the strange grammar for the moment.

What bothers me more is the strange logic.

You know where they're going with this. If I don't buy lunch out, the restaurant suffers. If I wear my boots another winter, the shoe store suffers. If I decide to put off whatever Large Purchase I had in mind, the purveyors of that Large Purchase suffer. And the factories close and the jobs are lost, and it's all my fault because I didn't spend that $10 on lunch.

Um hm.

And here I thought I was just being creative by re-using some construction paper (crayoned on one side) to make a school-time Christmas booklet for my second grader. I guess I should have gone out and bought all-new paper and markers to do that properly, or probably bought her a commercial workbook instead. If Scholar's Choice goes under, it'll be my fault. (Do you know we still have some markers around that The Apprentice had before she started school? Fifteen years ago things were still made to last.)

Googling the words Frugality Hurts The Economy brings up these thoughtful responses:

Want What You Have: Can You Be Too Frugal? I don't for a minute believe that frugality hurts the economy. In fact, it seems pretty clear that the lack of frugality in this country is what's gotten us....

Does living frugally hurt the economy? Wise Bread
When I advocate for frugal living, people sometimes ask, "What if everybody lived like that? Wouldn't it hurt the economy?"

Are Your Frugal Ways Hurting Us All? Wise Bread
Not being frugal is what has reduced our economy into it's current poor state....

Are frugal people ruining the economy? - Smart Spending Blog - MSN ...
Frugal people actually have money to spend! How does that hurt the economy? Frugal people have mortgages they can afford and are not swimming in credit card debt....

I like that last point especially. Those who have lived with restraint won't be the ones squawking the most about having to cut back on life's little luxuries. The frugal will be the ones who have the skills to survive when times get hard, when certain commodities disappear or become too expensive for most people.

So, Mr. Dale: "Where's my civic spirit?" Right here in my kitchen, making my own hot chocolate mix and experimenting with low-sodium bread recipes (that last, I might point out, to try to help keep my husband from having to spend any more time in the hospital where they've just announced more bed closures and nurse layoffs); in my dining room, re-using last year's perfectly good Advent calendar and my husband's grandmother's dishes (sorry, china store); and in my rec room/classroom, keeping at least one of my children from taking up a costly seat in the public school system (and yes, I do pay school taxes, everybody does). [And oh yes--last but not least--trying to stay out of debt and otherwise out of trouble so that we don't end up being a burden on somebody else.]

Climb on up and maybe we can swap sandwiches.

Advent I: A truth too simple for us to grasp

(Reposted from August 2006)

"Two Quotes"

"But let their zeal be according to knowledge. Lay the foundations of their faith....Put earnest, intellectual works into their hands. Let them feel the necessity of bracing up every power of mind they have to gain comprehension of the breadth and the depth of the truths they are called to believe. Let them not grow up with the notion that Christian literature consists of emotional appeals, but that intellect, mind, is on the other side. Supply them with books of calibre to give the intellect something to grapple with––an important consideration, for the danger is, that young people in whom the spiritual life is not yet awakened should feel themselves superior to the vaunted simplicity of Christianity."--Charlotte Mason, Studies in the Formation of Character


"True spirituality covers all of reality. There are things the Bible tells us as absolutes which are sinful--which do not conform to the character of God. But aside from these the Lordship of Christ covers all of life and all of life equally. In this sense there is nothing concerning reality that is not spiritual.

"Related to this, it seems to me, is the fact that many Christians do not mean what I mean when I say Christianity is true, or Truth. They are Christians and they believe in, let us say, the truth of creation, the truth of the virgin birth, the truth of Christ's miracles, Christ's substitutionary death, and His coming again. But they stop there with these and other individual truths.

"When I say Christianity is true I mean it is true to total reality--the total of what is, beginning with the central reality, the objective existence of the personal-infinite God. Christianity is not just a series of truths but Truth--Truth about all of reality. And the holding of that Truth intellectually--and then in some poor way living upon the truth, the Truth of what is--brings forth not only certain personal results, but also governmental and legal [and educational] results."--Francis Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto.

(Both quoted in For the Children's Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay.)

"The weight of too much liberty"

I've been working on the same post for days and can't seem to finish it properly. Maybe this is one of those interactive things that needs your comments to be "done."

"During a furlough in North America, one of [the] children said at a family reunion potluck, 'I sure will be glad to get back to Africa where we just have to eat manioc.'"--The More With Less Cookbook

"One year the only material I had to make costumes was from a pile of old black Navy uniforms. I told the children they could be anything they wanted to be as long as it was something black."--Amy Dacyczyn, The Tightwad Gazette

Jennifer Duenes (Life from the Roof) wrote a guest-blog post last week on Money-Saving Mom. (Her blog is about "her insights from life in Uzbekistan and tips on making the most of your resources in high-cost urban areas.")

This is the part that struck me:

"....when I returned for the first time to the US after my initial 2 years in Uzbekistan. I went into Wal-Mart to buy shampoo, and ended up just standing there for a few minutes staring at an entire aisle of shampoo.

"I was so overwhelmed, I ended up just turning around and walking out without buying anything. While it was hard at times to be deprived of access to certain products in Uzbekistan, I now understood what Wordsworth commented on in his poem Nuns Fret Not at their Convent’s Narrow Room. Instead of being limited by what we cannot buy, perhaps sometimes we should look at having too many liberties as a weight, and at our limitations as true freedom."

What homeschooler hasn't had a similar reaction in a conference vendor hall, or when confronted with one of those telephone-book-sized American curriculum catalogues? (The Big Book of Home Learning was called that for a reason.) I feel the same way in those 100-variety coffee shops: I just ask for their "regular coffee." (Side note: don't ask for that in the donut shop, though, unless you want coffee with cream and sugar. I once really messed with a Tim's cashier's head by asking for a "regular coffee without anything in it.") (For a 2008 look at a Yikes shopping trip, read Black Friday on Beck's Bounty. Photos, too.)

Recently I finished reading Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede, a novel about Benedictine nuns set during the 1960's, when their lifestyle became less cloistered and their veils were updated with front hair showing. ("Who knew that Sister X had red hair??") The older nuns who refused to go along with the modern "dishtowel" veils had their reasons: the completely-covered habit kept them from having to spend any time at all worrying about what their hair looked like. Another point made in the book is that 19th-century English nuns had to fight in the first place to be allowed to be cloistered; it was seen as a privilege.

And what more can I add? The theme for our first week of Advent will be Simplicity--an attempt to keep from buckling under the weight of too many choices...too much liberty.

Your turn...

Everything else just comes to pass

Dear Queen Shenaynay--can I stencil your whole Thanksgiving post on my dining room wall?

Grade Two Exam Questions, Fall Term

This is my first draft of Crayons' exam questions that we'll begin tomorrow. I may change/shorten them between now and then. (I borrowed some of the questions from Jeanne's Year One exams.)

Bible

1. In your own words, tell as much as you can remember about King Saul.
2. What is special about Matthew's gospel (the story of Jesus that Matthew wrote)?
3. Tell the Parable of the Sower (the man who planted seeds).

Memory

1. Recite Psalm 23 to Dad.
2. Tell me your address and phone number.

Writing

1. Print the alphabet in lower case letters in your very best printing.
2. Print this verse:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5
I caught a fish alive
6, 7, 8, 9, 10
I let it go again.

3. Write for five minutes about playing in the snow.

Reading

1. Read to Dad for 5 minutes from Dangerous Journey.
2. Read for 5 minutes from a book I will give you.

Canadian Studies

1. What do you know about David Thompson? How did he become interested in mapmaking?
2. Tell me what three of these Canadian things (or people) are: loon, lacrosse, Lillooet, lumberjack, Arctic, Bluenose, caribou, Terry Fox
3. Tell the story of the picture on the Canadian ten-dollar bill.
4. Sing O Canada.

British History

1. Draw me a picture about life in a castle.
2. Tell all you remember about the battle between King Harold and William of Normandy. (Our Island Story)
3. Tell about how Duke Richard of Normandy escaped from King Louis' castle. (The Little Duke)
4. Who was Robin Hood? (Our Island Story)

Geography

1. Show me where we live on the map of Canada. Show me where your cousin lives. Where is Hudson Bay? Where are the prairies? Which way is North?

Natural History

1. What are some things that the children have learned this fall in Miss Adams' class? (Through the Year)
2. Pretend you are an animal (any animal) that stays awake at night and sleeps during the day. Write in your diary all the things you did tonight.
3. Owls in the Family: How did the boy in the story get his pet owls? What happened at the end of the book?

Literature

1. Tell the story of “The Paradise of Children” (Pandora's Box) or “The Golden Touch” (King Midas).
2. What did Betsy do to celebrate her birthday? Tell as much of what happened to her that day as you can.
3. Pilgrim's Progress: Draw a map of Christian's journey so far. Try to include as many important places as you can remember (I will help you label them if you like). Make sure you include a starting place, at least one good place, one scary place, and the place where Christian wants to go.

Canadian stories

1. Tell the story of one of the following (Stories for Canada's Birthday):

a. "Talking Birchbark for Ne Tannis"
b. The girl who was "Lost in the Woods" OR
c. "The Stepfather" (Mr. Tupper).


Mathematics

1. Complete the sheets I will give you.
2. Count backwards from 100 to 0 in fives.
3. Draw one of each of these: a rectangle, a triangle, a trapezoid, a hexagon.
4. Go through some of the clock flashcards with Dad (I will pick them out).
5. If an orange rod is called "one," what is a yellow rod called? If a red rod is called "one," show me "two" and "four." If a blue rod is called "one," what rod must be one-third?

French

1. Can you tell me some colours in French? Point to things that are those colours as you say the words.
2. Sing "Tourne tourne mon moulin" for Daddy.
3. Show me these parts of your body: le nez, la bouche, les dents, la tête.
4. Draw a picture of "un gateau" with "bougies." Draw as many "bougies" as you can count, and count them out loud. Then show me how you would "souffle" them.


Picture Study (Canadian painters)

1. What is the name of one of the artists we studied this term?
2. Describe your favourite picture from this term's picture study.
3. Can you think of any others?

Composer study

1. What is the name of the composer we have been studying for most of this term? How was his ballet music different from what others had composed?
2. Make up a dance to one of his pieces of music. Perform it for one of your sisters.

Last day of the term: school plans for Friday

Winding things up! Next week is exam week...then we'll do three weeks of Term 2 before our Christmas break.

O Canada

Fall songs--review some of the things we've sung this term

Bible stories from 1 Sam. 19 & 20

Practice Bible memory passage

French: finish Denise and Alain's birthday

Math

Pilgrim's Progress, 5 pages

Play Perfection and name as many shapes as you can

Poems 260 (When Icicles Hang By the Wall) and 25 (I Sing of a Maiden) from Come Hither (choir version) (UPDATED--I'm not sure why I had the Yule poem in there)

Composer: finish Stravinsky

Spelling test

Finish The Little Duke

Writing

What a doll

Crayons' doll in her new nightgown (made to match Crayons').

(Created in Paint by Crayons, November 2008)

The Cuckoo Clock (book review)

Crayons and I are reading The Cuckoo Clock, by Mary Stolz. It's the type of European-village fairy tale that reminds me of Tolkien's Smith of Wootton Major or maybe Walter Wangerin Jr.'s Elisabeth and the Water Troll (which we also just finished reading). It's also the kind of magical story that I can't imagine writing--at least, not going through all the "normal" drafting and editing processes. It seems, like some of Rumer Godden's stories, to have sprung to life complete and whole, like the wooden cuckoo bird itself that begins to sing all the songs of the forest.

You can find short descriptions of the plot anywhere, so I won't go into it much. A needy young boy, Erich, manages to connect with the one kindred spirit in town: the elderly clockmaker, who begins to train him as an assistant and allows him to help carve his final masterpiece. When the clock is finished, the clockmaker dies--shattering the small security Erich has found with him, but leaving him a fiddle and his carving tools. That's only the first half of the story: the rest of the adventure is Erich's.

I found this description on the Amazon site:

"Stolz' delicate ironies and precise writing style save her story from sentimentality, enabling it to teach an interesting and rigorous lesson about the liability of the self-involved to understand the true beauty of the world. Original, wise, and thoughtful. Christine Behrmann, New York Public Lib. (Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

And that's very true; the abused-orphan story has been done to death, and Stolz herself pokes fun at this tradition: "Boys even younger would leave unhappy homes and go into the wide world seeking their fortunes, which, according to the stories, they always found." It would be easy for this story to become forced and overdrawn. But in the hands of a master craftsman, even such a plain stick of wood can become something beautiful.

School plans this week (last week of the term)

What are our goals this week? (Mama Squirrel's homework is to write exam questions for next week.)

Hymns and songs: The Ambleside Online hymn for November is "Jesus Shall Reign," and we've been singing that. We haven't been doing the term's folk song, but we've been singing several of our own choosing.

Bible: the plan is to read 1 Samuel through chapter 20, and we're almost there; and Matthew through chapter 15. Maybe we can build in a bit of review this week as well.

Math: we're caught up on the Miquon pages I planned for this term, but there are lots of things we can work on before exams. This term we've worked on addition, subtraction, multiplication AND started some work in fractions--so I'll try to figure out some fun things we can do this week to review. (Practice in time telling, shapes and money also falls under Math.)

Language workbook: we should probably review again what synonyms and antonyms are. I planned to do a few "thinking"-type pages this week as well.

Memory work: we should be putting a bit of a push on to finish learning Matthew 2:1-12, but if she gets even half of it learned without a hitch by the end of the week, I'll be happy, and we can keep working on it between now and Christmas. Crayons is also supposed to be memorizing a poem, but she keeps changing her mind about what to memorize. I think I'll give her one short thing to work on this week.

Copywork: Not Crayons' favourite thing by any means, but we are keeping up with it.

Spelling: going very well, I've posted about that before.

Among the Forest People: we have a story this week about a Little Bat, and I know that bats interest Crayons, so I'll try to add in a bit of extra nature reading about bats.

Through the Year: I give this to Crayons to read to herself, but it's almost too easy, she whips through the pages and wants to read the rest of the book. This week's three pages about starting bulbs won't take us too long--Coffeemamma loaned us Linnea's Windowsill Garden, so I'll check and see if Linnea can offer any further advice on starting our own.

French: we're supposed to get through Denise and Alain's birthday, count their candles, talk about their clothes, and sing a birthday song.

Composer: we need to finish up Stravinsky.

Artist: we've read through William Kurelek's Prairie Boy's Summer; I think we need to review our 3 K's: Paul Kane, Cornelius Krieghoff, and William Kurelek. I might download some paintings and have Crayons play a guessing game--who painted what?

Poems: I have a few picked out to read this week.

Canada Eh to Zed: L is for Loon, Lacrosse, Lillooet, and Lumberjack. If we get to the library, I'll get out a copy of William Kurelek's book Lumberjack.

Canadian studies: Review David Thompson (briefly). Start reading Barbara Greenwood's A Pioneer Christmas.

An Island Story: the first chapter on Richard the Lionheart.

Child's History of the World: chapter on the Crusades.

Other reading: Mr. Popper's Penguins, The Little Duke.

Pilgrim's Progress: the copy we're using is divided into chapters, so I want to be done Chapter IV; that is, just before Christian meets Faithful. Chapter IV ends with Christian singing:

"Yea, snares, and pits, and traps, and nets did lie
My path about, that worthless, silly I
Might have been catched, entangled, and cast down;
But, since I live, let Jesus wear the crown."

Must have been those Vegetarians again

One Squirreling to another (watching the Christmas parade go by in the rain): Look at all those elves!

Second Squirreling: Those aren't elves, those are people from the war.

(Well, they did have sort of pointy hats. Actually it was the Cadets (Armed Forces youth).)

Crocheted Snowflake

I found this pattern online and had to look twice to see if it was tatted or crocheted (relief, I can't tat). The plastic ring in the centre gives it more depth than most crocheted snowflakes--reminds me of old-fashioned blind pulls.

I enjoy making small trims like this--they're a good way to dress up holiday food gifts or other small packages. Also, after you figure out the first one, you can easily make several more! (It's always the first time through a pattern that I mess up.)

[Update: I've made several of these and they work out quite well, once you've figured out the math of centering the loops. I think the edges need a little bit of Stiffy or something like that, so that they don't flop over.]

Crayons: Things to Do Today

Sing some songs from Canada Is for Kids Volume 2. Here's an (old?) video of Au Chant de l'Alouette.

Talk about World Kindness Day. (Crayola's Kindness Castle mailbox?--we already have a cardboard castle we could use.)

Do some fractions with Mom.

Have a French lesson (review what Denise and her family are wearing)

Read a chapter from A Child's History of the World.

Do your spelling test on Spelling City.

Do ten dancing twirls.

Clean up your laundry.

Listen to some Stravinsky. (maybe while cleaning up your laundry?)

Read The Little Duke with Mom. Narrate to Mom.

Printing page.

Practice memory work.

Read to yourself pages 44-53 from Through the Year. Narrate to Mom.

Help bake something for the weekend.

Thanks to all our brave vegetarians

Crayons, trying to read the label on a wreath while watching the national Remembrance Day ceremony on T.V.:

"What's that say? Vegetarians of Canada?"

Why are we doing spelling, again?

This is supposed to be a Charlotte Mason-inspired blog, right?

And Charlotte Mason homeschoolers don't do word lists and weekly spelling lessons. Children learn correct spelling through their reading, through copywork, and through studied dictation.

Well, for our oldest Squirreling that worked well--she was an intuitive speller and just seemed to know how most words should be spelled.

For our others--it works better to be more systematic about it. They just seem to need that extra boost, especially in the early years of school.

So I'm using the grade one/two spelling words from Kathryn Stout's Natural Speller, and plugging ten of those a week into the Spelling City website. Crayons can practice, play games, and then do a final test using whatever words we choose. Not everything on the site works perfectly (there are some problems with the crosswords), and I still haven't found the button that's supposed to let you create handwriting sheets with your spelling words. But overall it's been a big help, and using the keyboard is easier for Crayons than having to print the words with a pencil.

And that's why we're doing spelling.

Crayons' School Week: The Home Stretch

We are in Week 11 of a 12-week term, so we're close to finishing a lot of our fall books. Some things will go on through the year.

If you've looked at previous schedules, you'll have an idea of some of our "regular" stuff, so I'll just say that the daily work includes Bible reading, language (copywork/printing book, spelling lessons, some language "enrichment), memory work, Miquon Math, French, singing, and poems.

We're also reading Mr. Popper's Penguins when we remember to, and just finished the first Dr. Dolittle book. Unanimous approval for that one--Mama Squirrel thought it was very funny.

Monday:

"Social Studies"--we're going to look through Linda Granfield's book The Unknown Soldier. This just arrived for our homeschool group's library and I thought it would be useful for Remembrance Day.
Composer: Stravinsky
The Little Duke

Tuesday (which also happens to be Martinmas):

Pilgrim's Progress
Canada Eh to Zed
Artist: William Kurelek, A Prairie Boy's Summer
Watch the national Remembrance Day ceremony on T.V.

Wednesday:

Among the Forest People: "The Biggest Little Rabbit"
Finish the David Thompson activity book (geography)


Thursday:

A Wonder Book: "The Paradise of Children" (Pandora retelling)
An Island Story--continue the story of Henry II
Artist (continue)

Friday:

Child's History of the World: "A Pirate's Great-Grandson, 1066"
(also look at some of our castle-times books again)
Through The Year, pages 44-53--How the days grow shorter

Crayons' narration of Thomas à Becket

Dictated by Crayons after a reading from An Island Story

There was a man called Thomas à Becket. He was great friends with King Henry II. Thomas was the chancellor.

But one day King Henry II quarreled with Thomas à Becket. It was because the king wanted Thomas to become Archbishop.

So Thomas said, “But then we won’t be able to play and stuff anymore. I won’t be free anymore. I won’t be able to play like we used to.” But the king said, “I’ll make you Archbishop anyway.”

But all of a sudden the Pope came up, and he said, "I want to choose some bishops." But the King said, “No, Thomas is supposed to do that. And I am supposed to do that.” But Thomas agreed with the Pope. So the king and Thomas quarreled even more. They quarreled and quarreled and quarreled. The king said “Isn’t there anybody can take this guy away from me?”

One night the people went to Thomas, and they said, “You agree with the King, or we’ll come back for you.” And Thomas said, “I will be right here waiting for you.” With that, all the bishops and everything began to shake and worry. “Oh, come into the cathedral,” they said to him. “No, I have promised to remain here,” Thomas said.

So that night there was church. So he said, “All right—but I won’t stay in the church. I said I’d be waiting here for them.” But he walked along so slowly, because those bishops they kept pulling him along and pushing him, push pull push pull. Pull pull pull, push push push.

So while he was reading the sermon in the church, four knights rushed in. But Thomas motioned the priests to turn off the lights. And the people ran out of the church to their homes. And the knights were like, “Hey, where did you go?” But it only echoed back to them for a little while. And then Thomas said, “I am right here.” So they went over to him and tried to grab him. “Agree with our King or die,” they said. But it was very very unallowed to kill somebody in a cathedral. So Thomas caught hold of one of the pillars and held fast when they tried to drag him out. And the cross-bearer caught hold of his arm to protect him, and all four of the knights swung their swords and they broke the cross-bearer’s arm.

And then while the cross-bearer was rubbing his arm because it felt sore, they took a swing at Thomas’s head. They got him. “I die in a holy place,” said Thomas, and no more words were heard from him. Quickly the four knights crept out of the church and the bishops and priests began to weep over the dead body of Thomas à Becket.

What we did today (homeschooling)

Old Testament: Samuel anoints David

Singing: Donkey Riding, Flunky Jim, I'se the B'y

Memory work: Working on Matthew 2:1-12

French: Head, eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, ears, hair; singing verses of Alouette about parts of the face

Parts of a dollar and quickly counting coins: using our old flashcards for review

Copywork

Spelling: Word search and practice test on SpellingCity.com

Language: Two pages about "context clues" (filling in the blanks in a sentence logically), done orally with me

Math: Two Miquon pages of adding and multiplying

Keyboard lesson: 5-minute lesson

A Wonder Book: started The Paradise of Children (retelling of Pandora's Box)

Canada Eh to Zed: Jasper, Juno (award), Jack Pine, (Blue) Jay (the bird, not the team)

Picture study: Browsed through a book about Cornelius Krieghoff and noted which of his paintings "look like Krieghoff" and which ones are outside of his usual subject matter and style. Crayons spent the next little while working on a new picture, "The Submerged Tepee."

After lunch we worked on a few geography pages in the David Thompson activity book (looking for differences in a picture, measuring the length of his trip down the Columbia river); finished the last chapter of More All of a Kind Family, and then Crayons, being Crayons, created a new person with cardboard tubes while I cleaned out a cupboard.

Crayons says her favourite thing was finishing More All of a Kind Family. "But I hated the end of the last chapter. Because it's the end of the book!" Her favourite character is Charlotte.

How 7-year-olds think

Walking through the toy department, already stocked for Christmas:

Mom: Most of these dolls are pretty junky.

Crayons: (In a most adult tone) Oh yes, I know... (wistful pause) But they can be very pretty.

Those pink boxes go right to a girl's heart, don't they?

Artisanal puppets anyone? (Holiday grace)

Marsha at Hot Water Bath echoes something we've said here before in her post Plus ça change :

"Who among us wants to be the one who tells a working-two-minimum-wage-jobs mom that she needs to be getting online (digital divide, anyone?) and ordering artisanal puppets for her children because that's better for the environment....Or that she should kitting up to make those puppets, with the required expenses of fabric and glue gun and needle because that's what moms of yesteryear would have done....Meanwhile, the dollar store has adorable puppets in a range of styles that are deemed by a privileged class to be less-than because of where they were made or how much energy they required to get here. Well, that's not a conversation that I am willing to have."

Last Christmas we did make a lot of our gifts (more, more, more). It was just that kind of a year. I posted some frugal thoughts about it afterwards.

But other years we have depended heavily on the dollar store.

And we have occasionally bemoaned the trend to artisanal-and-homemade (anybody else getting tired of that word artisanal?) that's so artisanal-and-homemade that even regular-old-homemade doesn't cut it.

But, as one woman put it in a Canadian Living article several years ago--Christmas "isn't about the flippin' wrapping paper." Or the flippin' cookies. Or where the flippin' hand puppets come from, although it's true enough that how we shop or where we shop for holidays does say something about our worldview (and that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown).

Christmas is about grace.

(As an update on that last link...when I read Shepherds Abiding last Christmas, I hadn't read any of the later (or earlier) books in the Mitford series. I didn't know that the character "hammering down on a cashew"--the one who unexpectedly points out the need for grace--would die in the next book. But somehow it adds even more poignancy to his words.)