What I learned from a French teacher

I was watching an online video produced for Canadian public-school French teachers in one of the western provinces.  Because that province has several different options for French teaching, they have produced a series of 15-minute videos explaining and comparing them.  This one was about core French (so just "regular" French classes) at the middle school level, and it showed both students working and comments from teachers.  One of the teachers said something like this:  "I used to plan my lessons around what I wanted the students to hear me saying.  Now I plan around what I want them to be able to say."

To clarify that, she did not mean parroting back phrases or canned dialogues.  Her students now spend a lot of their class time talking with partners and in groups, asking questions and answering them, in planned "situations" or just in friendly French chitchat.  The middle schoolers in the video were having conversations on the level of "What time does the movie start?" "6:30."  "I can't come then, I have to do my homework."  "Should we go later?" and so on.  This may not seem particularly profound, but it certainly beats only being able to talk about the plume of your tante.  She (and other teachers) mentioned the challenge of getting students to take risks in the target language--being encouraged to try.  It's a bit like being given a verbal blank page, instead of a worksheet.

I thought that what she was saying made perfect sense, in situations outside of language teaching.  Sometimes the way school subjects are taught seems like a swimming class where the teacher talks about swimming and demonstrates swimming, but the students never go into the pool themselves.  Of course we wouldn't put up with such a silly class at the Y--so why does it seem like such a fresh idea for school classes to take a hands-on, or in this case mouths-on, approach?

When I used more open-ended math materials with my Squirrelings, I found that evaluating what they were actually learning each day was not always obvious or immediate; but they really were learning.  It would be nice to think, even with math, that every answer has one method and one solution, that there are arithmetic and algebra and geometry and they're quite distinct; and that, really, all you have to do is keep assigning lesson after lesson and that sooner or later they'll know everything they're supposed to know.  In other words, that everything has an answer key, that you can check everything off and move on to history.

You can either settle for routine and memorization, or you can take some risks, let the students go right into the water and see if they've learned enough to at least dog-paddle. Teaching in a more natural, open-ended way is more challenging, riskier, than just filling in the blanks.  But the rewards are also greater...what we struggled to achieve using traditional methods, we may find now coming naturally.

Mama Squirrel's Library Pile

From the public library, reading and leafing through:

The Map That Changed the World, by Simon Winchester
Why Geology Matters, by Doug Macdougall
The Seashell on the Mountaintop, by Alan Cutler
Eric Sloane's Weather Almanac

Quote for the day: Two sorts of men

"I have tried to hint to you two opposite sorts of men. The one trying to be good with all his might and main, according to certain approved methods and rules, which he has got by heart; and like a weak oarsman, feeling and fingering his spiritual muscles over all day, to see if they are growing. The other, not even knowing whether he is good or not, but just doing the right thing without thinking about it, as simply as a little child, because the Spirit of God is with him." ~~ Charles Kingsley, Westward Ho!

If it weren't for them

Who or what were your early (or middle, or late) influences on homeschooling?  I was thinking today that if certain people hadn't been around, hadn't written books or magazines or blogs, hadn't tried new things, new ways--or rediscovered old ones--the way I taught my children could have taken a different course.  So here's a list of, especially, my early mentors and influences.  Some of them might surprise even regular Treehouse readers because they've never come up here before.

The late Nancy Wallace, who wrote not only about the adventure of unschooling her children before homeschooling was cool, but about life in general with gifted and eager little ones.  She gave me permission to read big books to little bodies.

Mary Hood, who wrote a little book called The Relaxed Homeschooler.  Not that we ever put a lot of her specific ideas into practice, but during a time when it felt like you were either a secular unschooler or a Christian textbook user (or unit study groupie), there was an acceptable place between the two.

A Canadian offshoot of Lifetime Books and Gifts, which became known as Maple Ridge Books.  For the relatively few years that they were in business, they carved out a unique little niche here with their excellent catalogue and great book reviews. One Christmas I loaned my mom their catalogue, with a bunch of books circled as gift possibilities.  She bought EVERYTHING I'd circled, for the Apprentice.  We still have most of those books, too.

The "guest stars" who helped train our team for a summer library job, years ago.  We were so lucky.  We had children's music makers, puppeteers, and I think even a mime artist come in to do workshops--and we were getting paid to be there.  Minimum wage, but still.

For The Children's Sake, of course.  But again it wasn't so much for the homeschool aspects that I first read it--it was the idea of a different way to look at learning, even for very little children, and how that connects with what we believe we are, and our relationship with God and the world.

My husband's grandmother, who told us that parents were idiots to send three-year-old children to school, and who was surprised when we agreed with her.

Ruth Beechick.  John Holt.  Valerie Bendt.  Diane Moos (The Frugal Homeschooler).  Mary Pride. Cathy Duffy, who published one fat curriculum guide that had a short chapter about homeschooling on the mission field, which stuck in my head as a reminder that less can be more, especially when real life is happening all around us.

The homeschooling families at church when we were first married...did they know how big an influence they were just by being there and doing what they were doing?

The homeschoolers in the local group...those with big families and happy crunchy lifestyles, and those with one child (like us, for awhile) and who didn't like kneading bread so much.

And, in the end, my "peeps" on the CM email lists and message boards, which became websites and newsletters, and eventually online curriculum and blogs and FB pages and other things I don't keep up with.  Brenda, if you're reading, you were one of them.

There are others that will occur to me after I've hit Publish.  Maybe a Part Two sometime.

Linked from the Carnival of Homeschooling: Thank You Edition, at Notes from a Homeschooled Mom.

Using School Books, Part Four: Hammering the point home

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Let's take a history book, says Charlotte Mason.  Or it could be a science book, or a story of travel, or an essay of Bacon's, but let's use a history book as our example.

Let's really use it.  Let's narrate it, yes, but as we go on we may find there are other equally valid ways to use school books. Maybe we don't have to have older students constantly narrating in the usual sense, if they're also learning to question and analyze what they see and read.

Let's "analyse a chapter." Not just observe and tell back, but, since we have bigger students now, they're allowed to look at the underpinnings, how things are put together, how writers work and how thinkers think. Mortimer J. Adler spends quite a bit of time on analysis in How to Read a Book.  Can the students pick out and line up the points of an argument?  Can they take a chapter and make up subheadings for the different sections?  Can they discuss how a character's character drove the plot (or the historical events)?  Can they see how one event caused another?  On getting to the point in Ivanhoe where the castle lies in ruins and several people are dead, does it occur to the students that the whole mess was caused by De Bracy's mischievous kidnapping plot, and more than that, by his lack of Will?  And who is the real villain of the story?--Brian de Bois Guilbert, because of his own defects of character; or the master of the Templars, who uses even Brian to further his own agenda?  But these questions are not necessarily to be asked by the teacher and responded to (in a double-spaced paragraph with a topic sentence and conclusion) by the student.  The student should be learning to ask the questions for him/herself.

"Let the pupil write for himself half a dozen questions which cover the passage studied; he need not write the answers if he be taught that the mind can know nothing but what it can produce in the form of an answer to a question put by the mind to itself."

And oh yes, a P.S. from Charlotte:  what do the teachers do?

"The teacher's part is, in the first place, to see what is to be done, to look over the work of the day in advance and see what mental discipline, as well as what vital knowledge, this and that lesson afford; and then to set such questions and such tasks as shall give full scope to his pupils' mental activity."  We are responsible for making sure that the students have lots of opportunity to engage (that favourite new word of educationalists) with the material--that they have to think.

And then when the bell rings, or our homeschool equivalent?  Do the students then run off into the sunshine and throw off what belongs to school time and the teacher?  If that's what happens, something has gone wrong.  The lessons are to inspire life and conduct, or, as Charlotte Mason says elsewhere, they are to instruct our consciences, to teach us how to live. She also points out (in Ourselves) that consciences are kittle cattle--capricious, unpredictable, and able to sniff out a lecture and stuff up their ears (so to speak) in rebellion. It is not a case even of "a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down"--that's twaddle. We are not looking for medicine at all, or even energy drinks, but solid food.  And we need to beware of sacrificing the "soul of books" to the demands of Analysis.

"Let us not in such wise impoverish our lives and the lives of our children; for, to quote the golden words of Milton: 'Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was, whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. As good almost kill a man, as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a good reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself––kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.'" ~~ Charlotte Mason, School Education

Using School Books, Part Three

Part One is here. Part Two is here.

Charlotte Mason never wanted to give too-pat answers about anything.  By her ambivalence here about listing particular books, she unintentionally fostered a long-standing gulf between those who say that "Charlotte Mason refused to list particular books for children so there is no such thing as a Charlotte Mason curriculum," and those who point to the fact that she did indeed spearhead a complete curriculum, with a long list of books, some of which is included in this same volume under the heading of work suitable for a twelve-year-old.

But in general, in the sense that she is meaning here, she leaves the choice of school books open to the (assumed) educated and intelligent adult who should be able to make those choices. Even in those days, though, one imagines the quick reaction--"Make it easier for us! Give us some examples!"  She insists that "we cannot make any hard and fast rule––a big book or a little book, a book at first-hand or at second-hand; either may be right provided we have it in us to discern a living book, quick [meaning full of life, not speedy], and informed with the ideas proper to the subject of which it treats."

She wants us to look for books that, like the Bible stories read to De Quincey, have the power of "giving impulse and stirring emotion." What seems to matter is whether a book has the power to awaken ideas, stir up children's curiosity, help them to look outside themselves and see the world in new ways. "The ideas it holds must each make that sudden, delightful impact upon their minds, must cause that intellectual stir, which mark the inception of an idea."  
.

So our pile of good books is something like a mine full of many kinds of treasures, although we can't always be sure which ones are going to be wanted or picked up at any time.  And the work of mining them is what each student has to do for him or herself.  Here is where Charlotte does get specific, because it is clear that this "labour of thought" is a complex task. She wants the books to be used in such a way that the students can "dig their knowledge, of whatever subject, for themselves out of the fit book." "He must generalise, classify, infer, judge, visualise, discriminate, labour in one way or another, with that capable mind of his, until the substance of his book is assimilated or rejected, according as he shall determine; for the determination rests with him and not with his teacher."  The "single, careful reading," here described as "which the pupil should do in silence," although we know that some books were also read aloud, is key, as is requiring the child "to narrate its contents after a single attentive reading."

If you can read attentively, you should be able to give the main points of a description.  You should be able to tell a series of events in the right sequence.  You should be able to explain how someone argued a point.  You are a reporter!  You are a lawyer!  You are a historian!  You are a Scout studying first aid, and what you are reading and remembering about snake bites or burns will save someone's life.  You are a business person and if you miss something in a report--or fail to report it yourself--you could lose a lot of money or get fired.  You are, potentially, the mayor or the governor or the president, and if you can't make sense of the reports on a situation, and communicate those points to your people, you are going to put everyone in danger or, again, cost them lots of money and trouble. Or you just might not get re-elected.

To engage with the book (or, as Adler puts it, to play ball with the author, learning to catch what he throws); to pay close enough attention to verbally map out a, b, and c for someone else, and to do it "intelligently," is a power which even adult scholars "labour to acquire."  This is true literacy; this, Charlotte Mason says, separates readers from non-readers.

Part Four will finish the chapter.

What's for supper? And how to make a spaghetti squash cake

Yesterday's ranch-spiced chicken, chopped smaller, wrapped in tortillas and heated in chicken broth mixed with a bit of tomato paste
Choice of frozen spinach or frozen beans and carrots
Short-grain brown rice

Spaghetti squash cake!

(How do you make spaghetti squash cake?  Basic sour-milk muffin batter; run some cooked spaghetti squash through the blender along with all the rest of the wet ingredients; blend in a bowl with dry ingredients, including half a cup of rolled oats; sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar before baking.  Spaghetti squash is so mild and almost flavourless that you do need to add a bit of cinnamon or other spice; the cake won't be the colour of pumpkin or butternut squash, but more like an applesauce cake.)

Using School Books, Part One

This month's Charlotte Mason blog carnivals are based on her Volume 3, Chapter 16, How to Use School Books.  The first one was posted yesterday at I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes Unto the Hills, but there will be another on the same chapter in two weeks.  So I'm going to work through that topic too, over the next few posts.

Point One:  Charlotte says that first we should have "cleared our minds as to the end we have in view." 

In some cases, discussion could stop right there while we work that one out.  Do we know where we're going?  What's it all about?  But she assumes that, having read and given thought to the previous fifteen chapters, we're good to go.

Point Two: "We ask ourselves––'Is there any fruitful idea underlying this or that study that the children are engaged in?'" The key word here is "idea."  "Some great thought of life."  We are looking for subjects and studies that encourage the development of intellectual habit and "muscle," but (she says about three times here), it's not about "faculties," it's about "persons" and relationships.  Making connections.  Discovering "other minds."

Mr. Fixit and I were watching Foyle's War the other night, and there was a scene in which a character named Willis is being interviewed for a position with the secret service.  The department head turns Willis down because he didn't go to the right schools, but Foyle remarks, "I understand we're looking for people who are astute, with an ability to see the other person's point of view."  (Later in the episode, Willis has the opportunity to prove Foyle right.)   

That's the definition of "education" that this chapter is taking.  You cannot make wise judgments if you do not have the imagination to see that there can be more than one side to an issue.  And you cannot develop that imagination without wide experience, both real-life and through the medium of books (even if it's just Jemima Puddleduck). It is not even, always, an imagination that allows only pleasant, sympathetic, optimistic views of people and their motives.  For fictional detectives like DCS Foyle, Brother Cadfael, and Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, it's imagination that allows them to try to think like the criminal and (usually) solve the case.

But, assuming that we're not applying to MI5, what kind of goals do we have for ourselves and for our children?  According to the next paragraph, we need to care about being:

responsive and wise,
humble and reverent,
recognising the duties and the joys of the full human life.

Charlotte optimistically adds, " I suppose every life is moulded upon [that] ideal."

In her upcoming book, Karen Glass points out that classical education teaches that moral or right thinking must lead to action.  It's not enough just to be imagining ideals and recognizing duties; a verb is implied there. In the Foyle episode, Willis shows exactly what he is made of by risking his own life to rescue someone else. Conversely, Charlotte Mason mentions (years later, after the war) that she is disappointed in the way that "education" seems to fail so many:

"If we ask in perplexity, why do so many men and women seem incapable of generous impulse, of reasoned patriotism, of seeing beyond the circle of their own interests, is not the answer, that men are enabled for such things by education? These are the marks of educated persons; and when millions of men who should be the backbone of the country seem to be dead to public claims, we have to ask,––Why then are not these persons educated, and what have we given them in lieu of education?" ~~ Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education

Using School Books, Part Two...this wasn't what we were expecting?

Part One is here.

I just finished re-watching Disney's Frozen with Dollygirl.  If you haven't heard and seen it multiple times by now, one of the supporting characters is a snowman named Olaf, who "hasn't had much experience with heat" but who sings a song about all the things he's looking forward to in summer.  At the end of the song, one of the watching humans mutters, "I'm going to tell him," and the other replies, "Don't you dare."  It is a cheerful song, but of course it has implications of the snowman's expected eventual end, and of the increasing perils of the human characters as well.

And on the next page of School Education, chapter 16, we have a quotation from writer Thomas de Quincey, something about his early memories of hearing Bible stories and thinking of hot weather and Palm Sunday.  Charlotte Mason, perhaps because she thought we would already know it or perhaps because it wasn't part of her point, has given it to us without much context. But the rest of the story is readily available in De Quincey's Autographic Sketches.  He is remembering the sudden death of his sister, when they were both children. He is told that she has died, and creeps into her room, wanting to see her once more, but the bed has been moved and all he can see is an open window: "through which the sun of midsummer, at midday, was showering down torrents of splendor. The weather was dry, the sky was cloudless, the blue depths seemed the express types of infinity; and it was not possible for eye to behold, or for heart to conceive, any symbols more pathetic of life and the glory of life."

He then explains why, then and afterwards, he made such personal connections between summer and sunshine, mortality and death, and this is the quotation about early Bible impressions that CM includes, that through the "younger nurse's" comments on the Bible stories, the impression he had gotten of Palestine, and Jerusalem in particular, was that it seemed to be a place of everlasting summer, but a summer particularly connected with death (because of the death of Christ). He seemed to think of death before resurrection, saying, "There [in Jerusalem] it was, indeed, that the human had risen on wings from the grave; but, for that reason, there also it was that the divine had been swallowed up by the abyss; the lesser star could not rise before the greater should submit to eclipse. Summer, therefore, had connected itself with death, not merely as a mode of antagonism, but also as a phenomenon brought into intricate relations with death by scriptural scenery and events." (italics mine)

Now obviously De Quincey was a more than usually perceptive and sensitive child.  But what is Charlotte Mason's point in including this story, which in its briefer form implies there is some value in reading the Bible to young children, but which, put in context, gives us a possibility of an even deeper sense of life (and perhaps death) given through those early impressions, and the gift of that understanding when death became real?  Clearly this is one of those places where, "if only we were wise," we would draw back from tampering or commenting on the stories as much as we often do; and at the same time, she seems to imply that we dare not deny our children the opportunity to hear them, and to know them deeply.

Olaf the snowman enjoys his dreams of summer, but he also recognizes his own fragility (he keeps breaking apart and getting put back together), and he sees the mortality of the humans around him--he tries to keep Princess Anna from freezing, and tells her that "some people are worth melting for."  Can we learn as much from a Disney supermovie as we can from Genesis?  No, although it might be worth thinking about the fact that such stories may be the only source of discussion material that some children have.  But we have the opportunity to give our children something much, much richer and more mysterious--a sense of eternity that must be given, as for little Thomas De Quincey, with reverence, and without much explanation and comment.

     But who shall parcel out

His intellect by geometric rules,

Split like a province into round and square?

Who knows the individual hour in which

His habits were first sown even as a seed?

Who that shall point as with a wand, and say

'This portion of the river of my mind

Came from yon fountain'? (William Wordsworth, Prelude II 243–249)

To be continued in Part Three.

Our Canada Day Weekend

What have we been doing?

Well, we visited two museums in two days, one of them free for Canada Day.  The first one had both a special exhibit of Egyptian replicas (all the classic stuff), and the Cosmopolis Toronto exhibit by photographer Colin Boyd Shafer. "Shafer set out on a yearlong journey (June 2013 – June 2014) to photograph someone born in every single country of the world who now calls Toronto home. For each person participating in the project, a portrait is taken of them in a place where they feel  ‘at home’. A second photograph features them holding an item that connects them to their birthplace." The personal objects, particularly, are so carefully chosen and photographed that they do seem to tell a thousand words. 

The museum had a map of the world on one wall, with red dots you could use to add your country of origin or ancestry.  Ponytails puzzled over where to put our dot, but settled for a point between Germany and France, because we are from "'everywhere."

The other museum is more about the history of this area--natural, industrial, ethnic, everything.  Most of the Squirrels hadn't been there since before it opened properly a couple of years ago.  (We had seen some of the exhibits before the official opening.)  It was really packed--both with Canada Day visitors taking advantage of free admission, and with permanent and special exhibits.  I would like to go back when it's quieter, and have another look at some of the photographs and artifacts.

We got pizza from our favourite place down the street where they don't mind making it with half one set of toppings, half another.  The advantage of "buy local" is that when I phone in the order, the owner asks if we want our usual half and half, and when I pick it up she wants to know if we're going to the fireworks tonight.

No, not this year.  But Mr. Fixit and I are entertaining ourselves by listening to an original 1957 boxed record set he bought for a dollar, Satchmo.

(Enthusiastic review of the reissued version here.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mission Possible: Year Eight!

The Ecology of AO Year Eight (Part Two)

Part One is here. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Year Eight is going to be great.

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

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

Books for Year Eight, from across the pond

Last year we read chapters from H.O. Arnold-Forster's History of England, using a downloaded PDF and printouts.  Enough of that, I thought.  Doesn't anybody out there have a hard copy?  The best deal, between the book price and shipping, was from a shop in England.  They also just happened to have quite inexpensive vintage copies of Van Loon's Story of Mankind and Marshall's History of English Literature.  And a paperback of The Trial of Charles I.  So, click click, there we were.  Canada Post helpfully delivered them to the wrong house--right number, wrong street--but we're used to that, and the neighbour there (who must have been puzzled at receiving a laundry-sized mail sack) brought them over on Sunday.

(like one of these)

The Arnold-Forster has been messily repaired with tape which is coming off too.  But I was not looking for a pristine copy--something with covers and real pages to turn was all I wanted.

All photos except the mail sacks by Mr. Fixit.  Copyright 2014 Dewey's Treehouse.

Treehouse Bookshelves

Books new, books old:

Photos by Mr. Fixit. Copyright 2014 Dewey's Treehouse.

What's up in the Treehouse

The weather is hot and sweaty.

Ponytails has one grade 11 exam left to go today, then she's free free free for the summer.

The Apprentice has been doing some odd jobs.  Today she's training for one of the oddest yet.  (It's legal. Just unusual.)

Mr. Fixit (and the Apprentice) did a bunch of fixit stuff around the house, involving cement work, water pumps, and plastic tubing.

Mama Squirrel has been cleaning out books (some are going to a church yard sale), typing up a schedule for September's school, and doing a few other homeschool-related things now that we're not actually doing school.  We just received a few lovely new (old) arrivals for the bookshelf--photos to come.

In the Treehouse this week

What's happening around here?

Dollygirl is writing exams and reading a load of library books.  One of the questions asked her to draw a cat in three poses.  She drew one ordinary cat, one with a ball of yarn, and one with a top hat and a cane.  Dollygirl's cats are obviously a bit hammy.

Ponytails' ancient history teacher required the students to come up with a hands-on project demonstrating something related to the course.  Ponytails borrowed a head from the hairstyling lab and created a Hera Updo (it had little snake braids to show wrath).  Some of the boys did a gladiator fight.

The Apprentice is looking for a job--summer or forever, whichever comes first.

Mama Squirrel is doing "teacher training" with her own load of library books.

Mr. Fixit said goodbye to his 1972 desk that has lived in our bedroom since forever. It was made to fit a little boy, not a big Squirrel, and it wasn't in great shape, and losing it meant that we had more space for a bench that was blocking the closets.  And someone picked it up right away from the curb. Still, sometimes little changes are what you notice--like when I went in to dump the mail on the desk this morning, as per the last twenty-so years, and it wasn't there to be dumped on.  Oh.

It looks like our apple trees will have no apples this year.  Two years ago the blossoms got killed off by a frost.  But this year the spring was just too cold and they missed blossoming at all.

But we do have parsley.

Exam Questions for our Year Seven, Term Three

These examination questions are adapted from the examination for Form III, Programme 94, a term which used much of the same history and literature we have been reading.

Bible Lessons.
1. What does it mean that a Christian is "never lost again?"

2. Write what you know of the travels of the Israelites in the desert, and/or the duties connected with the Tabernacle.

3. Tell the story of Balaam and the [donkey].

Writing (writing will be considered throughout the Papers.)

Dictation. (Spelling will be taken into account throughout the Papers.)

Composition. (This subject will also be considered in all answers.)

1.. Write (a), a scene for a Christmas play from Ivanhoe, or (b), a letter to a friend in another country on general news (not so much your personal news, as things you have heard of that are going on locally or in your province or country).

2. Write some verses on "The end of school" in the style of Goldsmith's "The Deserted Village."

Literature.

1.  Who was the bravest character in The Lord of the Rings, and why? (One sentence will not do; this requires at least a paragraph.)

2.  What creates the humour in the book Knight's Castle?  Give examples.

OR

2. "Athelstane, arrayed in the garments of the grave, stood before them, pale, haggard . . ." Tell the story.

English History.

1.  Tell what you know of "the breaking of Wales, the making of Scotland, the shaking of France."

Citizenship.

1.  (Ourselves) Why do we need to have an Instructed Conscience? What are some of the ways to achieve this?

2. (Plutarch) Give an account of one of the trials in which Cicero acted as defence lawyer. What was it about? What was the outcome?

3.  Tell what you know of the recent Ontario elections.

Geography.

1.  Name ten countries in Europe. Which of them is the northernmost?

Natural History and Botany.

1.  Tell about some things you have observed on a nature walk. Where did you go? What kinds of trees or plants have you noticed?

3.  Describe five birds you have seen in your backyard or in other local places; their appearance, habits, what they eat, etc.

Architecture.

1.  Describe the building of a Welsh castle (and its surroundings) around the year 1300. Add drawings if you like.

General Science.

1. Tell what you know of the Periodic Table. Name ten different elements and describe, if possible, where they are found, what they are used for, and/or any special properties that they have.

2.  Give an example of a chemical reaction.

Picture Talk.

1.  Using coloured pencils, create a picture in the style of the Dutch artist Jan Vermeer.

OR

2. Tell as much as you can about what made Vermeer's art special.

Drawing: Choose Two.
      1. A cat in three positions.
      2. An illustration for King John.
      3. A memory sketch of "Squirrels."

Music.
      1. Name some Romantic composers, and/or their works. Choose one and tell what you know of his life.

Mama Squirrel's Reading List: Math and more

In my library pile:

Kepler's Conjecture: How some of the greatest minds in history helped solve one of the oldest math problems in the world, by George G. Szpiro

Painless Algebra, by Lynette Long, Ph.D. (a Barron's guide I'm looking at maybe for Dollygirl in the fall)

The Teaching Gap: Best Ideas from the World's Teachers for Improving Education in the Classroom, by James W. Stigler and James Hiebert

Mathematics: The Science of Patterns, by Keith Devlin.  This looks like a very cool book: it's not a how-to, it's more of a why.

Friday School Plans

School plans for today:

Finish Basic Bible Studies, "Never Lost Again"

Read Dallas Lore Sharp, "Things to Do in the Summer"

Plutarch's Life of Cicero, last lesson

Key to Geometry

Read as much of Ivanhoe as we can

Play the Periodic Table Board Game

Fill out the "checklist of what you learned this year" and compare with the same one that you filled out in September and March--have you had any new doors opened?

Pat yourself on the back.

Hug your teacher.

Pray together.

What's for supper? Thrown-together Southwestern, I think

Tonight's dinner menu:

Rice-with-chicken-broth

A can of Romano beans, plus corn, onion, chili powder, cumin, and chopped peppers, simmered in a skillet

A few frozen beef-cheese taquitos (they're about the size of primary pencils)

Salad: spinach, mushroom, carrots.  And leftover bean-pasta salad for those who didn't have it for lunch.

A few tortillas, a bunch of whole grain tortilla chips, Triscuits.  A bag of Tex-Mex shredded cheese.  Cottage cheese and yogurt.  And some icy-cold canned pineapple.  Something for everybody.

What's for supper?

Tonight's dinner menu:

Pasta (penne) with a cobbled-together chicken-spinach skillet dish:  chopped leftover honey-mustard chicken with a bit of its sauce still attached, fresh spinach, a cupful of chicken broth plus a bit of cornstarch and extra lemon-herb seasoning, with plain yogurt stirred in at the end.  So sorta Greek.

Reheated sweet potatoes, leftover bean salad, cottage cheese, applesauce, crackers

Four thawed brownies

Fresh-made raspberry-rhubarb sauce, with rhubarb cut from our garden just before supper.

As we head into Week 36 (Dollygirl's Grade Seven, and I won't be writing that too many more times)

What's left to do?  We are in Week 36, but we might take two weeks to wind things up before exams.  Depends on how fast we read.

Basic Bible Studies, by Francis Schaeffer: #18, Never Lost Again.

Ourselves Book II: continue reading about some instructors of conscience

Ivanhoe--to the end!

Key to Geometry, finish Booklet 2.  Balance Benders.

French Smart, Unit 2 (marine life, irregular adjectives)

Shakespeare's King John (we have only a couple of pages to go)

Pllutarch's Life of Cicero--we still have a couple of lessons left

Summer, by Dallas Lore Shrp

Money Matters for Teens

Castle, by David Macaulay

Science:  complete the planned work on elements and the periodic table.

Reposted quote for the day: We are all on pilgrimage here

First posted June 2012.

"We are all on pilgrimage here: and though to beguile the road I have sung a song or two, and told perhaps too many stories, there has also been time to make a notebook of a few good thoughts I met on the way and pondered and sometimes took to rest with me.

"Perhaps the best of all, for all weathers and for every business, is the following of Fenelon's, which I have kept for my preface:—

'Do everything without excitement, simply in the spirit
of grace. So soon as you perceive natural activity gliding in, recall yourself quietly into the presence of God...'

"You will find yourself infinitely more quiet, your words will be fewer and more effectual, and, while doing less, what you do will be more profitable. It is not a question of a hopeless mental activity, but a question of acquiring a quietude and peace in which you readily advise with your beloved as to all you have to do."--Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, Preface to The Pilgrims' Way

School Plans for Friday

Cute salt shaker found here.

School plans for the end of the week:

Read two more pages from Ourselves

Finish "The Deserted Village"

Science: Read "Salt Through the Ages" and "Designer Salt," written by a university student

Read more of Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang

Work on some French

Read "How to Borrow Money" in Money Matters for Teens

Do some Balance Benders

Read some of King John.

Thursday school plans, with no Ivanhoe spoilers

Indoor plans:

Continue "The Deserted Village" (poetry)

History (a short section. the Hundred Years' War and the remaining years of Edward III are summed up in a very short space).  Book of Centuries.

How Math Works: drawing daisies with a compass.  And what does one do with a daisy drawing?  Check out this page on timber framing.  Who'd have thought?

Old Testament:  begin the story of Balaam in the Book of Numbers.  We had not intended to get into this part of the book this term, but we have a couple of weeks to spare.

Ivanhoe

Outdoor plans:

Nature walk on a city trail!

On time, space, CM and 2014

1. Fit in seven minutes a day..."for the time-crunched masses," promises the online article.  You exercise intensely for half a minute, rest for ten seconds, and so on.  And that, if you're "time-crunched," promises health and fitness.  Fast fast fast.

2. "Do you work out?" the doctor asks my husband.  My husband mentions lawn cutting (we have a lot of grass), gardening, cleaning, fixing, and the hundred other active things he does.  But they don't seem to have a category for those.

3.  An Ontario school board is trying an iPad pilot project to encourage "essential literacy skills." They have provided electronic devices for whole classes. "I can't imagine going back now," says a teacher.

4.  I found Goldsmith's "The Deserted Village" online, something I wanted for today's school--but we also have it in an old book of poems, with a student's name and "1915" inscribed in the front in pen and ink.  I decided to read it from the book.  We also used five minutes of a video on castles to follow up the book we were using, and a super page on chemical reactions to clarify a new and difficult concept.  I have nothing against using the wonders of technology in the classroom.  But not as the only or even the main teaching tool.  And I somehow doubt that the seventh graders I saw on the news are Googling Goldsmith.

5.  Bus drivers who text AND write while driving.  We were uncomfortably close to one such today...any closer and we would have lost some paint.

6.  "I just realized," says a longtime CMer, "that I've been reading Charlotte Mason's books too fast.  I need to slow down."

School plans for Wednesday

1.  Opening time: hymn

2.  Oliver Goldsmith, "The Deserted Village" (we started this, will finish it in one or two more readings)

3.  Science:  DK Chemistry, pages 220-223 (start these pages anyway).  Look at this page too.   What is a chemical reaction?

4.  Plutarch's Life of Cicero, lesson 9.  "Cicero not only smashes the tables of the laws that Clodius created during his absence, but he declares every act invalid that was passed during that time, because Clodius wasn't legally entitled to be a Tribune anyway. Why does Cato feel that that is going a bit too far?"

5.  French: continue the workbook pages (marine animals, grammar)

6  Castle: pages 44-63 (read together).  Drawing in Book of Centuries. Watch a bit of this video (it corresponds with the book), from about the 17 minute mark to 23 minutes.
just short of that because the "garderobe" part was a little too realistic. yech.



7.  Key to Geometry

8.  Ourselves Book II:  two pages about our need for Nature.

"Teach us how to be outside": Clare Walker Leslie

Nature journalist Clare Walker Leslie promoting her book The Nature Connection: An Outdoor Workbook for Kids, Families, and Classrooms:

School plans for Tuesday

Plans for Tuesday:

1.  Art study: wrapping up Jan Vermeer, and giving us a chance to play around with the Art Stix we found on the weekend.

2.  Balance Benders.

3.  Ivanhoe:  what happened after the castle burned down?  Did everyone get out?

3b.  Writing time based on Ivanhoe.

4. Science:  this week we're looking at water and what's in water, including salt. We are also going to read this really interesting analogy for the question of why the periodic table is set up as it is--for instance, why are there only two elements in the first row?

5.  French:  Marine animals.

6.  Money Matters for Kids: how loans work.

How do you take a week's work and make it a day's?

So if I write out the academic goals and subjects for the week, how do I break them down into what (for us) is a normal day's homeschool work?

Well, I know that most days we can get through about eight or nine "lessons," sometimes ten if some of them are short.  And most days we are doing some kind of Bible study and some kind of mathematics.  So that takes care of two of them.  But also, today is going to be shorter than normal because Dollygirl has a dentist appointment after lunch.

MONDAY

Bible:  Old Testament, read more in the Book of Numbers

Mathematics:  do another lesson in Key to Geometry, Booklet Two. (Mom check the answer key ahead of time because occasionally there are teaching points as well.)  Turns out that these three pages are not well-explained (although Dollygirl appears to be getting the answers right and says she understands it so far), so we will also read through this teaching page on the same topic.

Most days we have either history, science, or some of both.  Lately we are doing both because it's the end of the year and we're trying to finish things up.

Fun thing that Dollygirl suggested: a game of Fluxx.  Actually two games because one of them was over too fast.

History:  History of England, "Edward III, The Ruin of France," sections called "The Beginning of the Great War" and "Crécy."  We ended up just reading through these sections; Dollygirl narrated a couple of times.  The last part we read was a good summary of why Crécy was an important battle: first is just because it was, second, because having such a victory early on meant that the British were motivated to keep fighting, whereas a faillure might have made them give up and the war might have ended sooner; and third, because it's the first time that cannons were used.  So we talked about cannons.

Usually we get at least one literature reading in, and today we decided to finish The White Mountains. (And we did!)

(We may be able to get in a few lessons after the dentist's, but I don't know for sure yet.)