How to get good and excited about two chapters of science (Dollygirl's Grade Seven)

Yes, we are still using Exploring Creation With General Science (Apologia, first edition) this school year. When The Apprentice did this book about ten years ago, I had her do the study guides and the tests.  With Dollygirl I think we have done one or two of the tests, but that was it.  I am more interested in having her pick up the big ideas in the book than memorize every component of DNA.  We also don't do a lot of the experiments, either because it's the wrong season, we don't have the stuff, or it just doesn't seem worthwhile because you can figure out ahead of time exactly what's going to happen.  You know that if you leave a jar of chicken broth on the counter for a couple of days, it's going to get all cloudy and gross.  We would rather eat the chicken broth first and just imagine the rest.

I also find one particular thing irritating about this volume, and I don't know if it's been improved in later editions: it could have used some editing to take out a large amount of repetition, and also the too-frequent phrase "You'll learn more about this when you take Biology."  That pops up about as often as references to Mr. Pipes' wiggling eyebrows in Douglas Bond's books, and if you don't get that, never mind.

However, there is one thing I do like about the book, and it's one of the main reasons we're using it.  It encourages the "science of relations."  One topic works its way into another one, just like real life.  It's a bit like Charles Kingsley's Madam How and Lady Why in that way; in Kingsley, a conversation can start with a rock on the ground, and end up talking about prehistoric oceans and sea life.  In this book, we were talking about geology in Module (Chapter) 6, which led to fossils in Modules 7 and 8, and because fossils had to come from living things, that led to the question "What is Life?" in Module 9, and then classification in Module 10.  Both of those modules kept coming back to the question of cells: cells that did not have organelles but did have DNA (Monera), animal cells with organelles, plant cells with organelles; and then the idea that "all life forms have a method by which they take energy from the surroundings and convert it into energy that helps them live."  Every living body makes food from something else.  And the big word that's coming up is:  COMBUSTION.

Well, before that, we do have to get through some basic human body components: bones, muscles and skin.  The chapter compares our physiology to that of other organisms.  But then we get into Module 12: Energy and Life.  How do organisms get their energy from food?  Didn't you always want to know that?  Isn't that more relevant than ever in these days of trying to force fast-food restaurants to post the calorie counts of milkshakes and burgers?  What actually gets burned for energy?  There's a discussion of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, and our basal metabolic rate...and all this combustion happens within the cell.  Does that amaze you, get you excited to think about how this is more than just a lesson on digestion?

We are, as we've been told, fearfully and wonderfully made.  If any science book, textbook-shaped or not, can get that idea across, I am content.

Charlotte Mason and the Not-Just-Reading Challenge, Part Two

(Part One is here.)

Even when looking at the few samples we have of actual Parents' Union School timetables, the "what you do when and how" question looms....

People talking about Charlotte Mason's philosophy of education sometimes use the word organic.

Yes, organic does mean natural, real, of living things, not artificial.

But another definition is "consisting of different parts that all fit together well." Different organs, working together to make a functioning whole. Yet another is "happening or developing in a natural and continuous process."  

And the word that seems to fit in right after that is "holistic."   The idea that the total effectiveness of a group of things each interacting with one another is different or greater than their effectiveness when acting in isolation from one another.  The whole philosophical and educational package, made up of many small lessons over many days, multiple terms, a number of years, turns out to have a greater meaning and value than we could have forseen.

'Open, Sesame.'––I think we should have a great educational revolution once we ceased to regard ourselves as assortments of so-called faculties, and realised ourselves as persons whose great business it is to get in touch with other persons of all sorts and condition; of all countries and climes, of all times, past and present. History would become entrancing, literature a magic mirror for the discovery of other minds, the study of sociology a duty and a delight. We should tend to become responsive and wise, humble and reverent, recognising the duties and the joys of the full human life. We cannot of course overtake such a programme of work, but we can keep it in view; and I suppose every life is moulded upon its ideal. ~~ Charlotte Mason, School Education

Many living books.  Many ideas.  Many glimpses of the divine, of Eternity, of something beyond ourselves. ("God Sightings.")

And, unfortunately or fortunately (I think fortunately), it's impossible to program all that ahead of time, because we're not programmable beings.

We can plan books, do a little research ahead of time, think of good "narration prompts."  But we can't always predict where it's going to take us.

I spent Saturday in a large room

Have you ever read this 2011 post on the Childlight USA website?

The "Large Room" CM community described by Sandy Rusby Bell is still very much alive, and its leaders took time out today to show-and-tell how it works to a very eager group of Ontario moms.

I wound up going at the last minute, and I mean the very last minute.  But I'm glad I did.

(You do not want to mess with those black locust thorns.)

Charlotte Mason and the not-just-reading challenge, Part One

Even when looking at the few samples we have of actual Parents' Union School timetables, the "what you do when and how" question looms; there's a large gap between a term programme that gives a certain number of pages to be read, plus suggestions for notebook keeping or related work, and then seeing twenty or forty minutes on a timetable simply labelled "Writing" or "Botany."  In a group or classroom situation where everyone is listening to the same story and then taking turns narrating, or exploring the same patch of ground and then getting out their nature notebooks to write and draw, the advantage of numbers may fill in the gap naturally.  But if you are teaching or caring for several children who are working at different levels, how do you fit everybody's work and play time together?  And if you are teaching only one, especially a naturally sociable one, how do you provide an atmosphere that motivates?

Are older students supposed to handle the timetable themselves, including the extra work needed to make each subject really come to life, plus the clock-watching needed to keep on "schedule?"  Do we show them what needs to be done, and simply trust them to get down to business, everything completed by the end of the day or the week? Or do we micro-manage, set timers for everything and refuse to let them write or discuss anything past the buzzer?  If we use daily or weekly checklists to help students stay on track, do we again just write in "Botany?"  Or do we we pre-write or email or verbally tell them everything they're going to need to know and to do?  Where does our direction or authority meet their need for the "meeting of minds," their time for (very necessary) choice and personal response?

Finally, are there situations where a CM-style timetable, 20 minutes of this on Monday, 30 minutes of that on Tuesday, wash your hands and the school day is done, just does not work?  I notice, for instance, that on an early PUS timetable for Form III, there is no mention of music study or picture talk; there is very little time given for reading literature; and there is no in-class time for anything in the "work" category--handicrafts, home skills and so on.  Presumably all this, including the "evening and holiday reading," would have been part of the afternoon's work, and where there were interested teachers and Guide leaders to direct those crafts and nature walks, that would have worked quite well.  But in our particular home situation, perhaps like Jeanne's, we find that some of the variety in our school day comes from mixing desk work or book lessons with a kitchen project, a short walk, or a bit of handwork done while listening to a reading.  And when school time is "done" for the day, there is resistance to reading yet another book with Mom or "for" Mom (even a not-school book), or doing something that might turn up on an examination.  For us, those "extras" (very important extras) have to be worked in as part of the school day, not left for the tail end, if they're going to happen at all.

If we are educating lifelong learners, if education is an atmosphere and a life, then we do need to make "school" a part of the life that we have, and that may mean a life with several children and multiple interruptions, or with one child and the need to keep things interesting when others aren't around.  It may mean a busy farm life or mission field life or travelling life, or life with other challenges such as chronic illness. (You can add your own variations to those.) Yes, a predictable schedule is preferable to a when-we-can one; education is a discipline, too; but we may find that our own version of "predictable" might work better than someone else's--even the PUS's.

Your thoughts?

Charlotte Mason and Wide Open Spaces

"Ultimately, the blank page makes us examine our thoughts for metacognition, and intrinsically, it insists upon space and time for learning." ~~ Laurie Bestvater, The Living Page

I've learned so many new words lately.  From going to free lunchtime concerts, I've learned quodlibet. From doing newspaper crosswords, I've added "olio" (a mixture of things) and "ana" (a miscellaneous collection of information). And while rereading Laurie Bestvater's chapter "The Grand Invitation," I had to look up "metacognition."

Metacognition is knowing about knowing, or thinking about thinking, or noticing that we are noticing.  So how does a blank page (in a notebook) make us examine our thoughts for metacognition?  Laurie says it's because it forces us to stop before we start.

It's like the difference between me grabbing a pencil and trying to fill in crossword blanks as quickly as I can, scanning for a few easy or obvious definitions that will get the thing moving, and facing a diagramless puzzle that begins with a blank grid and doesn't even tell you where to start.  You can't cherry-pick the easy bits on an empty grid, or on a blank page.

(not my puzzle--I found this one online)

But the advantage, rather than just the fearsome aspect, of a blank page is that it gives you space to learn. Laurie says (page 65) that it insists on it.  If our children should learn to run and climb and do all those gross-motor things that Charlotte Mason encouraged and that we're now finding out actually put little bodies in right relationship with the planet--that is, if we must find ways to give them physical space and let them find out what they can do in it--doesn't the same thing apply to other areas of learning?

Narration begins with silence. Silence, like blank pages, or a tree to climb, can be disconcerting.

One of my children was once handed a cassette recorder and sent off  to record some examination answers. In an attempt to cover up the fact that she couldn't remember anything about one particular story, she recorded a few words and then gave us several minutes of feigned static, via some noisy crinkling paper. The cassette recorder had inexplicably developed technical trouble.  And I believed it, for about twenty seconds.

But often it's the adults who don't welcome large spaces, white pages, silences.  There is some risk involved with these things.  Multiple-choice questions give you a defined start, a fixed stop, and, if they're to be computer-answered, you had better not colour outside the little circles.

It's a bit like imagining ourselves flying through the air, or sailing over the sea, or galloping across an open field, vs. staying on the footpath.  Yes, there are lots of places where habit and duty and reason make life easier.  Some things just have to be roads, rails, and structure, and that's a good thing too.  But here we're talking about giving our students' minds room to stretch, play, run, and fly.

"Mr. Quimby set his cup down. 'I have a great idea! Let's draw the longest picture in the world.' He opened a drawer and pulled out a roll of shelf paper....Together she and her father unrolled the paper across the kitchen and knelt with a box of crayons between them.
'What shall we draw?' she asked.
'How about the state of Oregon?' he suggested. "That's big enough.'
Ramona's imagination was excited. 'I'll begin with the Interstate Bridge,' she said.
'And I'll tackle Mount Hood,' said her father....
Ramona glanced at her father's picture, and sure enough he had drawn Mount Hood peaked with a hump on the south side exactly the way it looked in real life on the days when the clouds lifted." ~~ Beverly Cleary, Ramona and her Father

To do my duty (Charlotte Mason and Moral Training)

(Photo of Canadian Girl Guides ca. 1924 found here.) 

A very long time ago I belonged to the Girl Guides of Canada.  I was a Brownie,  then a Guide, then a Pathfinder.  In those days we did a lot of singing and marching (Charlotte Mason would have called it drill).

We also did a lot of vowing and promising.

The Brownies promised "to do my best, to do my duty to God, the Queen and my country, to help other people every day, especially those at home." Guides jacked it up to "help other people at all times and obey the Guide Law," which started "A Guide's honour is to be trusted."

A Brownie was expected to be "cheerful and obedient" and to "think of other people before herself."  Kind of the Proverbs 31 Lady of Browniedom. Which didn't mean that we weren't awfully silly at times, but still we were given an ideal. We tried to get along with each other, we folded the flag properly, we helped wash the dishes, and we didn't litter.

(Yeah, that's me in the knee socks.)

Duty, obedience, patriotism, respect for others' rights and property: right out of the Common Law, as Uncle Eric would say; or right out of Charlotte Mason's writings on topics like Duty and Moral Training.

"High Ideals.––It is time we set ourselves seriously to this work of moral education which is to be done, most of all, by presenting the children with high ideals. 'Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime,' and the study of the lives of great men and of the great moments in the lives of smaller men is most wonderfully inspiring to children, especially when they perceive the strenuousness of the childhood out of which a noble manhood has evolved itself. As one grows older no truth strikes one more than that 'the child is father to the man.' It is amazing how many people of one's own acquaintance have fulfilled the dreams of their childhood and early youth, and have had their days indeed bound each to each in natural piety." 

"Virtues in which Children should be Trained.––One more point: parents should take pains to have their own thoughts clear as to the manner of virtues they want their children to develop. Candour, fortitude, temperance, patience, meekness, courage, generosity, indeed the whole role of the virtues, would be stimulating subjects for thought and teaching, offering ample illustrations."

"We know what is required of us, and that the requirements are never arbitrary, but necessary in the nature of things, both for the moral government of the world and to gratify the unquenchable desire of every human soul to rise into a higher state of being." ~~ Charlotte Mason

Frugal Finds and Fixes: The Apprentice Does the Math

In this edition of "Frugal Finds and Fixes," we interview our resident university student, The Apprentice.  

Mama Squirrel:  You are a busy full-time student, and a lot of money-saving things (the housekeeping, cooking kind) take time. You also have the problem of limited/shared space. How do you manage to do all that and stay sane?

Apprentice:  You're right, a lot of money-saving things do take time. To be honest, I'm definitely no Amy Dacyczyn. I do what I can, but am fine with spending a bit more money to save time or frustration..

One of the biggest examples of this is my living situation. Last year I was living in a student house with five other students. This year I've moved to an apartment shared with two people. The rent and utilities are significantly higher, but the advantages I have living here are worth the money. I have an above-ground room, quiet study space, and a large kitchen with tons of cupboards and a full-size fridge. I'm also closer to school. This living situation is more conducive to sleeping, studying, cooking, and travelling to school from, which are what my house is for! For me, frugality isn't about spending less money, it's about getting the most out of the money you do spend.

A smaller-scale example is food. I really like cooking, but often coming home after a late class I can be fairly tired and not feel like cooking. I know I could spend less on food, but having a few convenience foods around for a quick dinner is still cheaper than eating out when I don't feel like cooking. Yesterday I bought 2 kg of chicken fingers for $10, which will last me for many many meals and costs the same as going to a restaurant and ordering chicken tenders once. I do cook actual healthy meals most of the time, but the point I'm trying to make is that there are less frugal things and more frugal things that you can do. Both of them will save you money compared to a non-frugal thing like eating out.

At the same time, I certainly try to use frugal strategies that take a little (but not too much) time. Examples include baking my own treats, taking lunches and snacks to school, and fixing things that break. What I'd recommend most though are frugal strategies that don't really have a time element to them, just frugal thought. Since I was little I've learned that store brands are just as good as name brands, just without a fancier package. You can find clothes and household items at the thrift store for a tenth of the price, sometimes even new with tags. Textbooks are cheaper bought used from another student, and when the next year I just sell them to someone else and make most if not all of my money back. Taking a walk or bike ride outside costs much less than a gym membership.

Entertainment is a tricky category. It depends on what you like to do. Lots of activities have lower-priced alternatives, but those alternatives are not really the same thing, so it may be worth it to you to spend the extra money if that's something you really want to do. Going out to a movie and watching a movie at home are both fun, but a different experience. There are lots of free concerts and music festivals, but if you want to see a big name artist, you'll have to pay the big money for a ticket. Staying in is always cheaper than going out, but don't let that limit you every time.

Mama Squirrel:  What have you learned since being on your own that you didn't know before?

Apprentice:   Honestly a lot of the things that I do now are things that I picked up growing up, it's just that I didn't need to apply them until I started living on my own. I've tagged along with my parents at all sorts of activities, and helped out a lot at home: I often surprise myself by just doing something I didn't even know I knew how to do. I can pick out a cut of meat at the store, paint a room, bake a birthday cake, and build furniture. None of these things were something I had ever done on my own until I had to, but the knowledge was there and I just had to retrieve it.

Mama Squirrel: Any advice for the young and frugal?

Apprentice:  If there's something you don't know how to do, websites like eHow are incredibly useful. Even just Googling "what temperature bake turkey legs" will help you out a lot.

Definitely make smart choices at the store. If you're not much of a cook, that's okay. But buying a case of drinks, box of cereal and some lunch supplies will save you hundreds of dollars even if you're still eating out for dinner. A 500mL bottle of pop out of a vending machine costs about $2.50 around here, whereas cases frequently go on sale for $3, which works out to 25 cents a 355mL can. That's $5/L versus 70 cents/L. A box of cereal and litre of milk will give you breakfast for over a week for $6 or so. Buying store brand will save you even more.

Mama Squirrel:  Thanks, Apprentice!

"Mom, who is that strange man hiding in the corner of the basement?"

Some unintentional humour in a radio ad we heard today:  a local furnace company promises that they will stand behind their product for at least a year.

Things we did for school today, and a Dollygirl photo link

Just another (cold) homeschool Tuesday?

Well, it is Shrove Tuesday so we had pancakes and sausage and strawberries (thawed ones) for dinner.

But oh yes, school.

We sang John Bunyan's "pilgrim" hymn "He Who Would Valiant Be.". I asked Dollygirl to define a pilgrim; she suggested "an adventurer."

We read about "Prudence" in Charlotte Mason's Ourselves.  Alexander the Great scolded his men for their post-victory indulgent, excessive lifestyle.  Some of them apparently even had special mud shipped in to rub themselves with (beauty or health treatment, I'm not sure which).

Anyway, Alexander warned them that too much leisure and self-indulgence can bring its own form of enslavement.  Which is a timely thought since Lent starts tomorrow.

Dollygirl read about pilgrimages from a Reader's Digest book of Bible history. (That wasn't planned to go with the hymn--just serendipity.)

Dollygirl dd two of the hardest-type Gauss math problems, and got them both right, earning herself an early "morning recess."

After the break we moved upstairs where it was warmer.  Dollygirl checked the progress of a weeklong science experiment (does yeast make things decompose faster?), and then we studied two pages about cell structure and organelles in the Usborne Illustrated Dictionary of Science.

We read a poem about wild horses, and most of a cheerful chapter (for once) in The Return of the King.  (Book VI, Chapter Four.). After all that gloom-and-Mount-Doom for pages and pages, people and hobbits and wizards are back together and singing happy songs.  I can't explain exactly why I liked this chapter so much; it felt a bit like the last parts of The Last Battle, when the children finally get into the New Narnia.  Frodo's friend Sam says, "but then I thought I was dead myself.  Is everything sad going to come untrue?" I like that.

After lunch, Dollygirl did map questions on a map of Ukraine.  She also read a description of teaching English in a Ukrainian school, an essay I found online.  Charlotte Mason says that students should be aware of "places coming into the news," so that's what we're doing.

She also finished the "verb review" section of Easy Grammar Plus, and had a chapter to read in Watership Down.

Later in the afternoon she watched The Magic Schoolbus (her choice, not assigned), and I helped her just a bit with the dress she is making for a dollhouse-sized doll.  

And that's about it.  How was your day?

Frugal Finds and Fixes: Learning Curves

Sometimes frugality means learning something new. Or taking a risk.

For the past few years we paid someone to figure out our income tax returns.  This year Mr. Fixit used free online software and did it himself.  Besides saving money, it made him feel that much smarter, once he figured out how the program worked.

Ponytails has a favourite embroidered sweater, but the ribbing at the neckline was separating from the rest. She asked Mama Squirrel to fix it.  Mama Squirrel said she had no idea how to do it without ruining the sweater, especially since the pulled-apart spot was on the front, very visible.  The sweater sat unmended. Ponytails reminded Mama Squirrel that she really, really liked that sweater, and she couldn't wear it at all with the collar coming off.  Mama Squirrel decided that there was nothing to lose by trying, and rounded up a needle and purple thread.  It worked!  The repair required two stages: I sewed it together with thread, tucking in all the rough edges; then I went back over it with fine yarn, as close to the main colour as I could find in the scrap bag.  There was what looked like a running stitch at the base of each rib of the collar, and without the extra yarn stitching it would have held together but the repair would have been more obvious, so that's why I did both. If you look really closely, you can see that the stitching and yarn is slightly different; but you'd have to be looking for it.  So Mama Squirrel learned something this week too.

Dollygirl also picked up a project that had lain dormant for quite awhile: a small stuffed doll about five inches tall, meant for a dollhouse, with clothes to be sewn separately.  She had cut out two dolls from the same pattern (one I bought in the 1980’s and had never actually sewn); we had sewn the bodies, arms and legs together, and then she tried to embroider a face on one but it sort of got away from her and she packed the whole thing away for a long time.  This week she pulled the dolls out, finished the face on the other one, got it stuffed and sewed on the hair; she's now working on the dress which is a bit challenging--it is small, but it has a few tucks and pleats. I am really proud of Dollygirl for not giving up on what seemed too hard at first.  (photo to come when the dress is done)

What else have we fixed and found?  The usual baking and cooking experiments, this week featuring cranberries since they were the only reasonably-priced frozen fruit.  Ponytails discovered that her favourite microwave-in-a-mug treat works just as well without the egg that the recipe calls for--always good to know.  Mama Squirrel also noticed that the next-size-up bag of sugar offers a decent saving over the size we usually buy--that sounds too simple to mention, but sometimes you do get into a rut and don't think about small changes.

Oh, and we have been appreciating a variety of frugal entertainment, from free lunchtime concerts (we brown-bagged our lunch) to old radio shows (we had never heard "I was a Communist for the FBI" before), and even some vintage sitcoms online.  We recently upgraded our Internet service (the provider offered extra online time as an incentive to stay), so that makes it more feasible to watch whole shows sometimes.  This week it's been The Partridge Family.  Never say I don't tell all.

On notebook keeping and copybooks, slightly controversial here?

The ongoing Living Page discussion on Wildflowers and Marbles is up to the several kinds of notebooks that fall in between Nature Notebooks and Books of Centuries. As Jen at Wildflowers says, "many of the notebooks discussed in this section can be accurately described as themed commonplace books with a couple of exceptions."  I mentioned some thoughts on the Fortitude Notebook last week.

But many of these sorts of notebooks are most suitable for the highest grades, or for adult notebook keepers.  As many of us know from our own or our children's early attempts at "keeping," the risk with young children is either that the parent or teacher does the majority of the work, such as by providing printed forms to fill out, or that you end up with personal journals (one form of notebooking that is not part of the CM canon, at least not as part of the educational experience), or multiple drawings of pink ponies.

There are a few notebooks described in this section that would be useful for the elementary grades, including copybooks.  I agree with Laurie Bestvater that Charlotte Mason really does reach far ahead of her time here, in suggesting that students use "words that spoke to their hearts" (Bestvater, page 28).  I thought I was doing pretty well a few years ago in creating "left hand, right hand" type copybooks for my children; that is, I printed out a few words, a sentence, or a verse on the left hand page of an exercise book, and they copied it on the right hand side--just once, not multiple times.  I also used some of the make-your-own-handwriting ideas with the various fonts that our computer has been able to provide over the years--such as graying-out a font similar to manuscript or cursive, and printing it out in a size big enough for them to first trace over, then to copy.  This doesn't even take into account the various workbooks and other writing systems we have tried.  Having two lefties and another child who, though right-handed, just did not seem wired to produce beautiful handwriting, presented some challenges that we never quite overcame. 

Can we just put it that I felt like we were doing our best at the time, though we never did achieve such beautiful written work as some other homeschoolers I knew did? And that I sincerely did attempt to keep the writing practice personalized and meaningful, even if often it was my choice of text rather than the children's?  Perhaps that really is what works well for many of the youngest ones, especially those who have difficulty copying directly from a book; although Charlotte Mason does suggest that young ones be encouraged to copy out verses from their favourite poems.  But at least for those of upper elementary age and over, it seems important that they begin to choose, just as they should be choosing what to write about and draw in their nature notebooks, just as they will begin to choose what to enter in their Books of Centuries.  They may not exactly be keeping commonplace books yet, but they should begin to be given the choice of material to transcribe, even if the "choice" is limited to "from the term's play" or "from this poetry anthology."

Unhappy as this makes me to say it, that emphasis on choice pretty much rules out a lot of the other uses of copywork as we know it, and most of the commercial copybooks and penmanship programs (I mean those that go beyond teaching the formation of letters and how you connect them into words). Many of us have made much use of the Ruth Beechick methods of teaching grammar through copywork, or at least choosing copywork (even for older students) based on spelling patterns, particular forms of sentence construction, or just valuable thoughts.* It may provide great "natural" spelling practice (a term Dr. Beechick likes), it may be a good way to practice handwriting (something even my middle schooler still needs), and it does help to model great writing style and examples of character.  But here, I think, is Charlotte's point: other than demonstrating particular points of spelling or grammar, most of those benefits can be had even if the student chooses his or her own texts to transcribe.  And possibly there are some side benefits that we haven't fully realized.

Your thoughts?

*In fairness, I think Dr. Beechick does offer a good, useful method of evaluating older students' handwriting, in her book You CAN Teach.  She suggests periodically having a sort of "handwriting clinic," where the teacher/parent examines a sample of handwriting and makes suggestions of areas that could be improved; and/or a few weeks out of the year are used to focus on handwriting improvement.  That way it doesn't seem like such a never ending source of friction, but rather puts responsibility for correction on the student herself.  Rather CM there, don't you think?

Linked from The Living Page Discussion #3 at Wildflowers and Marbles.  Linked from the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival, Feb. 25/14.

School plans for this week (Dollygirl's Grade Seven)

This week will be a full one, and we have a couple of extra things to fit in.  The free lunchtime concert on Tuesday is going to be a woodwind quintet with members of the local symphony orchestra.  And some homeschoolers we know are putting on a performance of The Pushcart War this week, so we bought tickets to that.

What else?

We are up to the hardest type of math questions in the practice Gauss competition pages.  When I've marked Gauss contests over the years (they're multiple choice and you get an answer key), I've noticed that most students answer all the A questions, most of the B questions, but usually only a couple of the C questions.  They take longer and you have to think harder about solving strategies; they often involve hypothetical dice or checkerboards or number patterns.  They're grade seven or eight questions (the Gauss has two levels), but they're fiendish ones.

Science:  we read about Kingdom Monera last week, and this week's readings are about the other Four Kingdoms.

English and French history:  Stephen's reign, although Mr. Arnold-Forster doesn't give him much page space. Some French kings from the same time (twelfth century).  (Virtual twelfth-century shortbread if you recognize the two people in the above photo.)

And the rest is just continuing what we've already been doing.

Magic Blueberry Muffins

Magic because they looked so weird going into the oven, but they turned out fine--actually one of my better blueberry efforts.  Blueberry muffins can come out strangely green if the berries react with the other ingredients; these started out frighteningly purple, but baked into just a nice brownness.

I don't have the exact recipe, but this is what I did: combined all the wet ingredients for basic muffin batter, plus some frozen blueberries and a spoonful of strawberry jam, in the blender.  I combined the dry ingredients in a bowl, stirred in more whole blueberries, and then mixed in what looked like the purple smoothie from the blender.  It looked seriously yucky at that point, but since I had gone that far, I carried on, spooned the batter into muffin papers, and baked them.  Success!

Two other things: they peel out of the papers better if you let them cool first.  Most muffins do, but fruity ones especially.  And store any leftovers in the fridge.

Something Dollygirl made

What is it?  A stage, for Dollygirl's Doll-scars Awards Ceremony.  Mr. Snowman appears to be doing a sound check.

Thrift shop finds from last Saturday

(Photos to go with this post.)

Math archives #5: What's the longest prime number? --with an update

First posted on November 11, 2011.  (11-11-11.  I just thought I'd mention that.)

What would we do without the Internet...

I mentioned recently that a quick check on the current population of Burundi--the subject of a French lesson--showed that there were way more people there than even the (fairly recent) teacher's guide suggested.  That lined up with the fact that we were heading for 7 billion people on Earth by the end of last month.

Today's math history lesson was about the Sieve of Eratosthenes, and the hunt for very large prime numbers.  John Tiner's 2001 book Exploring the World of Mathematics mentioned that the largest discovered to date was over 4 million digits long, which would take about a thousand pages to print out.

On a hunch that that fact too might have been updated, I looked it up.

Yes, the 4-million-digits longest prime was correct in 2001.  

But as of 2008, we are up to a number that is 12,978,189 digits long.

And you thought your ID numbers were hard to learn.

2014 Update from Wikipedia:  As of January 2014, the largest known prime number is 2^57,885,161 − 1, a number with 17,425,170 digits.  (Sourced from this article.)

What's for supper on our ninth blog birthday?

I knew there was something special about today.  What would that be in squirrel years?  Probably way over the hill.  Well, I like round numbers; let's go for a decade.

Tonight's dinner menu was going to be marinated chicken chunks, pan-cooked and served with pasta and tomato sauce.  I decided to skip the tomato sauce and make it more of an Alfredo thing with cream cheese, Parmesan,  and milk sauce.  And lots of garlic.  Peas on the side.

School plans and fortitude (Dollygirl's Grade 7)

This is a short week because Monday is a holiday. The Apprentice is here for a few days too because it's reading week.  On Friday, a local museum is offering cheap admission for homeschooled kids, and parents get in free.  So we'll have to fit school in from Tuesday to Thursday.

In Ourselves Book Two, we will finish the chapter on Fortitude (don't show off your suffering like the lady in Our Mutual Friend who tied a black ribbon around her face*).  And look what pops up at the end of that paragraph on page 47: "...it would not be a bad plan to keep a note-book recording the persons and incidents that give a filip to conscience in this matter of Fortitude." This is one of the incidental notebooks mentioned in The Living Page.  Really, it's not hard to come up with good literary examples, in both children's and adult literature. Charlotte even suggests a list of examples on the same page. Charlotte also answers any objection to why she has placed "fortitude" under the heading of the "house of body" rather than the mind or the heart; she says that "it is in the body we must endure hardness, and the training comes in the cheerful bearing of small matters not worth mentioning."  In other words, we're not entitled never to feel cold, or tired, or hungry, or overworked, or unwell, and it's a mark of maturity to be realize that and to put up with at least some discomfort without complaining.  I'm always impressed by the characters, even children, on long journeys, in books like Narnia and Lord of the Rings, who sleep wherever it's safest and eat (mostly) what's available along the road.  It's people like whiny Cousin Eustace who spoil the adventure by fussing over hard beds and no lunch.

What else is up this week?  "Bacterial Growth" in science class.  "Quebec Culture and Pea Soup" in French.  Sounds like the makings of a bread and soup meal sometime in the week (or maybe a batch of yogurt).

We move on to Henry the First in English history.  More chapters from Ivanhoe, Watership Down, and Tolkien.  A lesson from Plutarch's Life of Demosthenes; more Bible study on the topic of salvation; an alliterative poetry assignment; and some work in math.  If we get all that done in three days, I'll be very content.

*I am not sure that Charlotte remembered the details of Our Mutual Friend quite exactly here; Mrs Wilfer does go around with a handkerchief tied around her head, but not a black ribbon that I know of.

Illustration found here.

Saturday thrifting finds

This and that from a trip to the thrift store:

Two plastic embroidery hoops for Dollygirl to use

A big bag of (26) mini wreaths and (9) grapevine hearts, the kind you hot-glue things on for ornaments, all for two dollars.  These must have been around somebody's craft room for awhile, because a lot of them still have clearance price tags on them from a store that went out of business here years ago.  There were a couple of small baskets in the bag as well. (These ended up going to the church for VBS
 crafts.)
A very old copy of Smith's Mennonites of America

And a copy of Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator, because we didn't have one.  

What's for supper? Honey garlic pork and peppers

Tonight's dinner menu:

Honey garlic pork and peppers (ground pork, sliced peppers, and A Year of Slow Cooking's honey-garlic sauce--this is really, really easy to make)
Frozen mixed vegetables, frozen spring rolls, rice

Thawed frozen blueberries and vanilla ice cream.

The meaning of life (Dollygirl's Grade Seven)

Dollygirl's science assignment: to design a creature and demonstrate how it meets all four criteria of living beings.

This is what she came up with:

New! Exclusive! It's...BLUB™!!!  (She included a drawing of a fluffy-looking thing with horns, fangs, large round eyes, and a bow tied on its long tail.)

She can suck up her BLUB™ Pellets!  (demonstrating ability to convert energy and derive nourishment)

She turns blue if you put her in the sun!  (demonstrating ability to respond to changes in the environment)

Turn off the lights, and her cells glow!  (demonstrating that she is made of cells, which we assume contain DNA)

ALSO BUY Her Children:  Blub™, Bib™, Bob™.  (Demonstratng her ability to reproduce.)

(I gave Dollygirl full marks.)

What's for supper?

Tonight's menu:

Turkey-pasta casserole from the freezer
Leftover crockpotted chicken from last night (partly bones, but it is easier to just heat and eat it than to pick it apart)
A pan of little potatoes, cut in half and sprayed with olive oil before baking
Lettuce and celery salad

"Pumpkin" bars made with butternut squash

School plans for the week (Dollygirl's Grade Seven, Term Two, Week 8 of 12)

Instead of a day-by-day schedule for this week, here's a shorter list by subject area.  Some things (like art and music) aren't decided yet.

French:  Review the geography lesson from last week (French words for things like South Pole, map, "the earth is our spaceship,"Atlantic Ocean).  Begin "The Alphabet Lesson."  Also start working on "My First Visit to Quebec."

Christian studies:  Begin the second-last chapter in The Accidental Voyage.  Continue the topic of Salvation in Basic Bible Studies, or possibly read My Heart, Christ's Home in honour of St. Valentine's Day.

Charlotte Mason's book Ourselves Book II, on Fortitude, using literary examples from The Talisman and Middlemarch.

Math:  Do four pages from the middle sections of old Gauss competitions: that is, the slightly harder questions but not the real challengers from the last section.  Keep track of anything new that we haven't covered yet in math.

English history:  Feudalism and William Rufus.  No French history this week.

General Science:  Experiments with leaves and potatoes and iodine (but not fruit flies).

Watership Down, Ivanhoe, and The Return of the King.

How to Read a Book...talking about different kinds of books.

A few pages of grammar--still working on verb tenses.

Plutarch's Life of Demosthenes.

A new lesson from The Grammar of Poetry, on alliteration. Make sure we make time to just read poetry too.

If we have time: the very last bit of Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?

How I became a math teacher?

The question mark in the subject line is deliberate.  I am a very un-mathy person.  I like Scrabble, cryptograms, word-based logic problems, crosswords; I shy away from number puzzles.  Not that I can't do math or handle numbers, at least in the everyday world; it's just that if I were sign up for a course in something that interested me, it probably wouldn't be math.  My idea of probably the dullest job in the world is accounting.

But teaching math--that does interest me.  Ever since I started looking at math curricula and homeschooling The Apprentice (and the later Squirrelings), close to two decades ago, I've been fascinated by the history of how math has been taught, especially over the last century, especially at the elementary levels.  I was there for a lot of it, good, bad, and ugly. What might be abstractions for some are clear memories for me.  I liked this, I learned from that; or not.  This teacher knew how to get math ideas across; that one made us fall asleep.

And I like teaching elementary math (and basic algebra and geometry) at home, seeing the girls learn new ideas and gain confidence in their numeracy. Even when they struggle or complain that math is hard or boring...that's a challenge.  I like being able to work at our own pace, and to use whatever's handy for illustrations.  I like feeling free to just say "here's the rule, here's how you do it" when that makes more sense than endless demonstrations and discovery learning.

I liked using our stash of rods and hundred charts and games and software.  I liked helping people who didn't get Miquon Math.  (I still think it's a brilliant primary curriculum.)  I liked reading about people like John Holt and John Mighton who believed that all children could learn math if it was carefully taught.

So does that make me a math teacher?  Well, I do teach math, and as I said, I have been teaching math to at least one child each year, sometimes two, for almost twenty years.  (Sometimes Mr. Fixit has been the math teacher too.) While I'm not a mathematician, did not major in math, do not even have math credits beyond Grade 13 (and I struggled for that one), I seem to have steered the Squirrelings towards acceptable levels of numeracy.  Other homeschooling parents, many without specialization in math, have done the same.

How?  I can't speak for all the other families out there.  For some it might be nothing more than buying a solid textbook or workbook series and doing whatever comes next.  For myself, I just decided that the process of teaching elementary math was not that much more mysterious than the teaching of any other subject.  If I could teach reading, writing, history, there was no particular reason I couldn't also handle elementary arithmetic and middle-school math topics. And since I was very aware of the booby traps and swamps in my own math adventures, I was determined to avoid as many of them as possible, including the infamous Fifth Grade Slough of Despond (girls often fall into it around the time they meet up with Giant Long Division).  If public school gave me only a mediocre appreciation of math, I could do at least somewhat better with my own girls.

Now here's the big point.

In Ontario, scores on standardized math tests are dropping.  Why? Some blame the teachers.  Some blame the curriculum.  Some blame society.  Or the weather.

One proposed solution is to have elementary math taught only by math specialists.  Because even the classroom teachers don't seem to be able to teach math well using the new approaches.  Does that imply that there's a) something wrong with the students, b) something wrong with the teachers, or c) something wrong with the curriculum? Votes?

It reminds me of a situation where an office bought a huge, expensive, complicated copier that required advanced training just to make ordinary copies.  Yes, if you were properly trained on it, you could use it to copy, sort and bind entire encyclopedias, but most of the usual copying chores were much more mundane.  It would have made more sense to buy a simpler machine, and send the occasional complicated jobs to a print shop.  It didn't make sense to blame the office staff, either, just because they didn't want to be full-time slaves of the Copying Beast.  And it wouldn't have made sense to put blame on the clients--because, in the end, they didn't care how big or expensive the copier was--they just wanted their letters and documents.

And what we really need is for schools to teach math (and other subjects), in a way that the teachers can handle, in a way that delivers what the children require, in ways that help them to grow and learn and include numbers and measurement and shapes and mathematical relationships in their lives.  Because they aren't impressed by how big the machine is, either, if it's not working for them.

For them, all you administrators out there. Take it from this question-marked math teacher.

Linked from Math Teachers at Play Carnival #71.

Math Archives #1: Can they do enough math to know they're being cheated?

First posted April 2012; but this is a post-within-a-post, and part of it is from 2007.

I had planned to repost this 2007 post today (both the part about our own homeschool and the comparison with the third grade math class at the end of the post), and then someone sent me a link to a recent Macleans' Magazine article on the sorry situation in Canadian math teaching.  It reminded me even more of the educational Blerwm (see the old post) that continues to spew, particularly in the elementary schools.  If this situation doesn't make you furious for our children--that is, the children of this generation, even if we homeschoolers have taught our own offspring better--I don't know what would. And it's not just that they grow up cheated on math:  the same applies to standards in reading, writing, and other skills that, until recently, were considered within the normal scope of a child's education.

And what makes me even angrier for these children is that we non-experts, the home-teaching parents who may or may not have college-level math courses or education credentials (many homeschoolers do have advanced degrees), seem to be doing better than the current average at math education, almost without trying.  Some of it's the curriculum homeschoolers use--certain popular programs are known to be a level or two over traditional North American math goals, so kids using them would seem a bit ahead anyway. But even if we take math slow and simple, we have this crazy advantage over the current hands-tied school situation: most of us parents, especially those of us over a certain age, were taught with traditional math methods, and that's what we pass on to our kids.  Here's how you multiply fractions, here's how you divide them.  None of this messing with paper strips.  

It doesn't matter why we do it, though, so much as whether or not it works.  Can our kids add, subtract, multiply, divide?  Can they make change?  Can they figure out a percentage?  Do they just have a good sense of how numbers work?  Apparently the kids taught with the any-way-that-works-for-you method can't, and don't. When they get to high school, where math is still taught using more traditional methods, a lot of them flounder.

Are you laughing in disbelief at this point?  I'm more ready to spit.  Crayons has been suggesting that she might like to go to public school for grade six, just to try it out like Ponytails did.  Sorry: with this amount of un-teaching going on in Canadian schools, that would be my last choice for her for next year.  

Here's the relevant part from our 2007 post:

But on the other hand, there was an article today in the local paper about math teaching in public schools, that tipped things back towards thinking again that we must be doing all right.

"Recently [the grade 3 teacher] taught the children to count by fives, using Popsicle sticks. She had them sit in a circle and line up four Popsicle sticks in a row, with a coloured one laid diagonally across each pile.

"Then she asked how many Popsicle sticks there were. One student crawled into the middle of the circle and counted up the piles: "Five, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 45 . . ." he said and paused at the final two sticks. "Forty-seven" he called.

"The class applauded him. 'Good job!' she praised, and then sent the children to sit down with worksheets where they again had to add the "bundles" of lines arranged five to a pile.

"Instead of having the children write down the correct totals, though, she had them choose the right answer from some numbers printed on the bottom of the sheet. They were to cut out the right number and glue it in the proper spot.

"The children were enjoying cutting and feeling the texture of the glue stick under their fingernails.

"'Children at this age are very visual and very kinesthetic,' she said. They learn by seeing and often need to move around while learning, even if it's just working with glue."

OK, I know it's still September, and maybe that was a review lesson--but cutting and pasting answers in grade 3? And Crayons (grade 1) has been doing that same kind of counting-by-fives-plus-whatever's-left. Without crawling on the floor, I might add. Or needing to get glue stick under her fingernails.

Frugal Finds and Fixes, Featuring Dollygirl

I think Dollygirl gets this week's Treehouse prize for frugal creativity and, well, a bit of luck here and there too.  Over the past while she has won several doll-related blog giveaways, which makes watching for the mail truck much more exciting.  She's received a free (girl-sized) t-shirt, buttons, and craft materials.

(Photo by Dollygirl)

 She found an awesome clearance-aisle deal (a dollar a pack) on several sets of small doll clothes that fit Only Hearts Club girls and others of about the 9-inch size.  (Official Only Hearts Club clothes run about $20 an outfit, which is why Dollygirl's 9-inchers have so few clothes.  I don't like sewing for small dolls much either.).

She also searched online for the doll hairstyling kit that we couldn't locate for her at Christmas, found it on a Canadian website for a very reasonable price, and ordered it; she's still waiting for that one (there are supply issues, which is why the store here didn't get them in either).  She has been working really hard earning extra money this week, shoveling a vacationing neighbour's snow...I mean, really, REALLY hard.  .

(CTV News photo)

Also, in the past week or so, she has built a doll sewing machine from Lego, a fabric-draped stage and other necessities for a doll awards show (an idea she had for a blog story), made a pair of bead earrings (for herself, not the dolls), and used a gift of fabric to make a very cute mini bed.

As for the rest of us...well, sometimes frugal is just deciding not to replace what's no longer needed: in this case, an answering machine that suddenly started misbehaving.  It used to be a necessity; now, not so much. We could have gotten message service added to our phone line, but again, it's not worth it for the few callers who can't email us or don't have Mr. Fixit's cell phone number.  The last message we got on the machine was a very confused telemarketer (which is what alerted us to the fact that it wasn't delivering our we'll-call-you-back properly).

We've done some of the usual baking--muffins, oatmeal raisin cookies--and made some fairly frugal meals like turkey-pasta casserole, Polish wieners with sauerkraut, and bean soup.  We've used the dryer a lot less this week. I've re-read Liss Burnell's 2012 grocery guide (free book still on my e-reader).

And Mr Fixit and Ponytails each got a needed pair of running shoes at a buy-one-get-one event, plus Ponytails has a student price card that gives her an extra discount at that shoe store.

How was your week?

What's for supper? Soup and snowflakes

Tonight's dinner menu:

Barley-split pea-vegetable soup

Bread Snowflakes (Mama Squirrel's were rudimentary, Dollygirl's were much prettier)

Cranberry-blueberry-strawberry crisp

What's for supper? Taco Turkey Pasta and a Hot Fudge Sauce recipe

Tonight's dinner and dessert menu:

Taco Turkey Pasta, a casserole I made up with browned ground turkey meat, homemade taco seasoning, macaroni, chopped celery, cheese, a bit of tomato sauce, and water as needed.  We had enough left to freeze some for another night.

Broccoli

Very small slices of leftover Chocolate Microwave Cake, dressed up with Gary's Microwaved Hot Fudge Sauce.

Gary's Microwaved Hot Fudge Sauce came from MyRecipe.org about seven years ago, but it's no longer there, because MyRecipe.org is gone.  So here is the recipe, because it is very good and because Mr. Fixit says he wants leftover chocolate microwave cake with fudge sauce for his birthday cake next summer.

In a microwaveable container (I use a four-cup glass measuring cup), combine 1/2 cup white sugar, 3 tbsp. cocoa, 1 1/2 tbsp. cornstarch, and a dash of salt.  Stir in 1/2 cup water.  At this point I cover the container lightly with plastic wrap, although Gary didn't say to--I just like to be careful.

Have a spoon ready, plus something to lay the spoon down on (trust me on this), and maybe a damp cloth in case of drips.  Microwave the sauce for between 3 to 4 minutes total, stopping to pull it out and stir every 30 seconds.  Gary says not to skip this step--it's important.  Stop cooking when it begins to thicken, and stir in 1 tbsp. butter or margarine and 1 tsp. vanilla.  Serve hot, cold, or rewarmed; thin with a bit of water if it gets too thick.

School plans for this week: On weekly timetables and the second half of the year (Dollygirl's Grade Seven)

Charlotte Mason approved of school and home classrooms following a predictable weekly timetable.  Lots of variety, but a definite pattern to Monday and Wednesday geography, or Tuesday Shakespeare, or Saturday review.  (Yes, back then they went to school on Saturdays.)

Our problem with that is that, sometimes, often, we get Monday or Friday school cut off by a holiday:  religious, government-mandated, or all-the-other-schools-in-town-have-today-off-so-why-don't-we.  But never on Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday, unless it's weather-related.  So that means we have to either never schedule anything important or interesting or at least weekly on Monday or Friday (unless we want to move whatever it is to Tuesday or Thursday that week)...or try a slightly different method of scheduling. (Also there are a couple of homeschool group field trips and events that also take place on Fridays...sigh.)

For the rest of Term II, a season that has more than its share of interrupted weeks, we're falling back on a different method, one we've used before.  I took the 28 scheduled school days that are left in the term, and just divided up the lessons and readings as evenly as I could.  For the two Apologia modules we're doing, I used the schedule from Donna Young's Homeschool Resources. (Except that we won't be doing the experiments that require digging up worms and dirt...um, not in February.)

So we have Day 1, Day 2, and so on, each with its own work, rather than a definite plan for Mondays and Tuesdays.  It may not look as neat on the wall as a weekly schedule, but at least it's laid out.

Also, we're doing some slightly different math for the rest of this term:  working through old Gauss competition pages, as review and also as a kind of diagnostic tool to see what we've missed.  In the third term we'll probably use Key to Geometry.

So this is the plan, more or less, for this week's school.  The lessons are not in the order we're doing them, but the way I have them written down by subject.  I've left off our opening-time routine: hymns, sometimes a poem, a reading from Ourselves or a Bible passage.

And  a bonus for this week: something fun for teatime, Snowflake Buns or Bread Snowflakes.  (You gently fold circles of bread dough and snip them with scissors, as if you were making paper snowflakes. Then bake and sprinkle with powdered sugar.  Idea from Electric Bread for Kids.

Monday: 
Basic Bible Studies: continue study of salvation
Math page
Watership Down chapters 13, 14
Start Ivanhoe together
Copywork
English History:  Short chapter on the Saxon cultural traditions such as shires
Nature study
Science: wrap up the previous module
French: start a lesson about the map of the world (continuing through the week)

Tuesday (planning to go hear a jazz trio at lunchtime)
Math page
Watership Down chapters 15, 16
Return of the King
Easy Grammar Plus page 92
Geography:  Heidi's Alp, finish the chapter where they arrive in Germany
Write dictation from Geography chapter
Science  Read pages 217-219, introduction and "DNA and Life"
Grammar of Poetry: review old work (only if we have time)

Wednesday: 
Mr. Pipes, The Accidental Voyage: Finish chapter 10.
Math page
Watership Down chapters 17, 18
Ivanhoe
Easy Grammar Plus page 94
Architecture: finish the chapter on Norman architecture
Write in the Book of Centuries
Science: continue reading about DNA; build a model of DNA, and I hope I remembered to buy pipe cleaners for that. If I didn't, we may have to get out our old plastic dollar-store model instead.

Thursday:

Basic Bible Studies
Math page
Watership Down chapters 19, 20
Return of the King
Easy Grammar Plus page 95
English history:  one chapter
Science:--continue chapter..
Music history: starting chapter on Haydn and Mozart.
Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?--almost finished this book.

Friday:
Basic Bible Studies
Watership Down chapters 21, 22
Ivanhoe
Copywork
Heidi's Alp, part of chapter 6 (about Germany)
Science:  see Thursday.
Plutarch's Life of Demosthenes, Lesson 7, The Battle of Chaeronea
Picture Talk.

Parents' Review Quote for the Day: On Children's Books and Uncle Podger

"The very genius of childhood demands that it should be screened by parenthood from evil influences, and laid open to benign ones, and we need not therefore stint the babies in bright and pretty pictures full of sunshine, in fun, frolic, and beauty, as much as a Caldecot [sic] can find to give.

"...I am convinced that it is sufficient to teach children what to do, and ignore lessons on what to leave undone. Miss Sinclair--"Holiday House" [Aug.. 2014, try this link instead] --says incidentally:--"Such mean vices as lying and stealing are so frequently and elaborately described that the way to commit those crimes is made obvious".... It may be argued--I hope it will not--that children cannot appreciate humour at an early age. To anyone who does take up this position I would like to suggest that the scenes of Uncle Podger and the packing up from "Three Men in a Boat" should be tried on infant minds. It is quite true, of course, that these scenes are pictures of really painful experiences, but I verily believe that the author meant the reader to laugh over them, and he will be pleased to learn, if he did not know before, that it is scarcely possible to fix an age so young at which the fun cannot be understood. "Oh, mother," said a little girl of four in baby tones, "do get father to buy you 'Three Men in a Boat' for your birthday; it would be so delicious!" The copy out of which Uncle Podger had been read was a library one."



"If pictures and fun are to be the delight of the very young, it is also very necessary that the latter should be put into intelligible words. To use intelligible words it needs to speak of things which can be understood, and the things which can be understood are those with which the babies come in contact daily. It is not necessary for authors and authoresses, prim and perfect, to choose sweet words and dole out moralities which miss their mark; the plain words which are regularly used for the facts stated are the best. Has it never happened to the reader to reproduce the polished sentences of a children's author, and at the end to be saluted with the exclamation, uttered by the auditors amid a rustling of relief, "Now, mother, tell it us?" This request gives us a key to the writing which suits the young--I do not say either that it is unsuitable to the older folk. What they want are curious and interesting facts; such situations as they may place themselves in, in imagination, the adventures of a grandmother, as a child, in India, "Little Susie's [sic] Six Birthdays," the doings at "Holiday House." Hence if we will only treat childhood with the respect due to it, and speak in simple and forcible language, not in the pigeon dialect and style so common, we shall attain our end more completely. "  ~~ "Childrens Books," by George Radford, in The Parents' Review, Volume 2, 1891/92, pgs. 496-504.

How to cheap some soup

We have been making the Hillbilly Housewife's recipe for Taco Style Lentils and Rice since discovering the site several years ago.  I usually make it in the slow cooker, and use it as a substitute for refried beans at a tortilla meal. There are other versions of the lentil-rice filling out there, some much spicier than that one, but I like Miss Maggie's simple (kid-friendly) combination of seasonings.  One change I do make is to use a cupful of lentils to half a cup of rice, rather than equal amounts.  I don't usually have beef bouillon cubes around, either, so I just leave that out.

The recipe does make quite a bit, and we usually end up eating about half of it and either freezing some or turning it into Creative Leftovers.  This time around I had quite a bit left, so yesterday I made Mexican-Style Soup. Amounts of ingredients depend on what you have:

About half a recipe of lentil-rice taco stuffing
Enough water or broth to make it soupy (I used water plus some chicken broth powder)
1 can pinto beans, drained
Some frozen corn
Half a cup or so of salsa

I brought the water and leftover lentil-rice mixture to a boil, then added the pinto beans and let it simmer a bit.  The corn and salsa were last-minute additions, but they really improved the texture and flavour.  It was even better (as most things are) leftover for lunch today.