Our Poem for Today

The Pulley by George Herbert (1593-1633)

   When God at first made Man,
   Having a glass of blessings standing by -
Let us (said He) pour on him all we can;
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
   Contract into a span.

   So strength first made a way,
Then beauty flow'd, then wisdom, honour, pleasure;
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all His treasure,
    Rest in the bottom lay.

   For if I should (said He)
Bestow this jewel also on My creature,
He would adore My gifts instead of Me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
   So both should losers be.

   Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
   May toss him to My breast.

I'm not so sure about all of the theology in this poem, but we all liked the poem anyway.  

Bryna - 7th grade

Term 1 (although some books go over the whole year)
Bible, etc.:
The Gospel of John: Beholding the Glory by Fr. Lawrence Farley
Memorize: John 1:1-7 in English, Latin and Greek
The Open Door: Entering the Sanctuary of Icons and Prayer by frederica Mathewes-Green
Saints and Heroes by George Hodges 
Ourselves - moving slowly through this per AO

History:
The Birth of Britain by Sir Winston Churchill
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People - selections that I have picked out; she is enjoying this already and reading parts to me
History of English Literature for Girls and Boys by H. E. Marshall - per AO
A History of Scotland - just ch. 1-4
This Country of Ours - Marshall (she never got to this book so we're doing it now)

Literature:
Beowulf
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Once and Future King - only book one

Poet:
Tennyson

Grammar & Composition:
written & oral narrations
studied dictation
copybook - copying selections from readings
Lost Tools of Writing - I started this last year; I hope to finish it with B. this year

French:
Rosetta Stone

Shakespeare:
Richard II

Biographies:
The Life of King Alfred
Abigail Adams: Witness to a Revolution

Short Stories:
Words Aptly Spoken - a Classical Conversations book

Life of Fred math program - we're trying something new this year...I can't seem to break the "math barrier" - my hope is that she'll get through all of the "Before High School Mathematics" books

Geography:
The Brendan Voyage

Drama:
Cincinnati Shakespeare Groundlings Jr.
South Dayton Youth Homeschool Drama group

Music:
Kettering Children's Choir - concert choir
Piano lessons

Bryna and I will do together:

Artist study - Giotto this term

Nature Study:

Lay of the Land

Classical Astronomy

The Friendly Stars

Greek: 

Classical Academic Press's Greek for Children primer A

The Gospel of John copybook 

We did some Greek together last year with a different book; we're taking a bit of a break and just keeping our elementary skills alive with these (we hope)

Latin:

Henle Latin is the plan - we haven't started it yet...I get my plates spinning one at a time over these first weeks of school :-)

Jared, Bryna and I will do together:
Psalms - reading and hopefully memorizing some
Memory work - Classical Conversations cycle 3 material

Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior - just reading bits over the next few years till done

Biblical Economics in Comics - I haven't done much on economics besides what we try to teach incidentally

Shakespeare - Taming of the Shrew

The Art of Poetry - we started this in the summer and I really like it; we're doing just one poem a day (when we get to it)

History of Western Music - instead of doing a composer study, we are doing a sweep using a book I found at a library sale - we're reading about and listening to Medieval music right now, and we're really enjoying it.
Some of our favorites:
Festival of Gregorian Chants
Canticles of Ecstasy
Miracles of Sant'Iago
Vox Sacra Ancient Voices
Four Centuries of Chant
And we have to include Byzantine chant :-)
Divna
The Glory of Byzantium

Lewis & Clark - The Journey of the Corps of Discovery -Dayton Duncan - we'll watch the video later

Nature walks/notebooks on the grounds of our church and local parks (we are hoping the Turri boys will be joining us at least part of the time) 

Drawing skills: Charles Bargue Drawing Course - I've already done the first 10 lessons or so in this; the children will begin it too

A Letter of Sir Thomas More to His Children's Tutor

Today (well, when I started this post it was 'today,' now it is 'yesterday') is the Feast Day for Sir Thomas More in the Roman Catholic church. More was a man of high integrity. In 1518 he wrote this letter and I had printed it up a while back to post on my fridge. Because of the day and because it was time to clean off the fridge, I decided to post it. It impresses me for several reasons.

Firstly, it shows that Sir Thomas More had his daughters educated in a time when girls were not. More saw to it that all of his children and his wife were educated in his home 'Academy.' His wisdom and honor go up in my estimation because of this. :-)

Secondly, he doesn't say that virtue comes *through* learning, but must be *joined* to it. This is very Charlotte Mason (and not very Classical). He rightly points out that learning not joined with virtue is "nothing else than splendid and notorious infamy."

Also, according to some other reading I did, More, like Charlotte Mason, and unlike the Latin-centered curriculum proponents, believed in a wide and varied curriculum for his 'Academy.'

He was devoted to his children. In a separate letter to his daughter, he wrote, "I assure you that rather than allow my children to grow up ignorant and idle I would sacrifice all and bid farewell to business in order to attend them..."

Seven Reasons Why a Charlotte Mason Education is Superior to Classical

1. Her views on the child’s mind -- actually on the whole child 
2. Her views on the sacredness of personality
3. Her views on authority and habits
4. Her views on curriculum 
5. Her views on reason and logic, and the will 
6. Her views on the motives for learning 
7. Her views on the role of the teacher

Catching My Breath

Well, it's been a busy time since I posted last. Two of those weeks were spent in France and England with my eldest. It was glorious. We went to Lyons (well, actually an hour outside of) and Paris, Oxford and London. We were obsessed with going to the Globe (as we were when we lived there). We saw All's Well that Ends Well twice and Hamlet once. Just fabulous! We always get the cheapest tickets - the Groundlings - because it only costs 5 pounds (that's about $8.50 for the highest quality theater a person can get anywhere on the...well...globe!) That means you have to stand the whole time (except for the 15 minute intermission), but you also get to lean against the stage and you begin to feel a part of the story. It's not the only way to experience Shakespeare, but it's the best. :-)

A couple of pictures from France. We ate here one day - Le Relais Hotel - they served us the best Mousse de Foie Gras I've ever had:

I had to take a picture of the public toilet. Isn't it nice that they provide those places for you to set your feet on as you squat over this hole?

At least it's clean.

Kiernan was embarrassed that I took pictures.

But I just couldn't use this restroom. I just. couldn't. And that's how we discovered the lovely hotel restaurant.

We stayed at a lovely organic farm B&B in a small town near Lyons. To have had such fabulous food in a small, quiet town (which is where the above two places are) is amazing to me. We just don't have that sort of thing in the States.

Also during this time there was the ending/finishing up of many activities for the year and all of the requisite closing ceremonies --

piano recital:

soccer:

This wasn't an actual tournament game (I haven't gotten those pics yet) -- it's just a regular game.

KCC:

CC, judging for two speech and debate tournaments, flying down to Dallas and the two day drive back with my daughter from UD, spending a too-short time for his 80th birthday with one of the best men who has ever lived (my dad :-),

and celebrating the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus.

I've also got to plan for going to NC to this next week with my eldest. Bryna will be in Shakespeare Camp I at Cincy Shakes next week (thanks for doing all of the driving for that, Jillian!) which means we unfortunately will miss her performance at the end of the week. Jared will be in Camp II the following week and I'm glad to say we won't be missing that. We go out of town the following week as well for...a long time.

Hopefully we will have internet and down time while away so I can read and write because I am eager to get back to that. It helps me to really think through things when I determine to also write about it. I'm wishing now I had a Kindle so that my luggage isn't so heavy with the books I want to bring with me!

Well, I'm rambling.

I really want to talk about classical education and Charlotte Mason. So I'm going to go work on those posts now.

Is it really Spring?

I realized yesterday that I have been so busy that I missed seeing the crocuses and that the daffodils were already blooming! I was surprised when my son said he was waiting for me to get him seeds and plants and such for his garden. What? Already?

My husband was not well a couple of weeks ago so I made about 10 quarts of beef bone broth for him. He is doing much better. My husband is rarely sick, but this laid him flat.

I'm trying to crawl out from under my to-do list and re-join the blogging world. I have a post on education that I'm working on. 

For the last 18 years, from February to August, I have traditionally been obsessed with planning the next school year, and this year has been no different. This year was a great year. I returned to some of my roots, my daughter added her passion and love of literature and languages to teaching the youngest two, we all grew in discipline and better habits, and I'm pleased with what I am seeing.

One of the goals that I determined while sitting at the kitchen table with my computer and books though was spending more time outside. I determined that while missing the blooming of spring flowers. :-) Not a great start! 

To My Nephew and his Bride-to-Be

A thought that I've been meditating on since our weekend in Kentucky

With us everything should be secondary compared to our concern with children, and their upbringing in the instruction and teaching of the Lord.

                                ~St. John Chrysostom

Apparently it's only fun if you get hurt at least little bit

Ok, I'm sitting here sick as a dog. Kiernan and Bryna are both extremely sick too. But I cracked a little smile when I heard Walt and Jared sharing sledding stories. Sledding on this ice has been great fun for Jared.

Then I heard Jared say, "It's only fun if you get a bruise out of it."

If you say so. :-)

Ten Ways: Way #2 - Never Leave Children to Themselves

Can I just say again that I loved this chapter? I think he's absolutely, spot-on, correct on the big idea of the chapter. The story of Tormentaria was brilliant. There were statements, many so poignant, that gave me goosebumps.

Most of the examples were of the daring-do of boys, so you'll get more ideas for feeding (or destroying) the imagination of boys than girls. My girls just have not been as interested in sports on the street or climbing trees much past the age of 12 or 13. But this chapter also brought to mind all of my dad's stories of his childhood, like many of the old-timers' stories. Being gone all day, knowing that the whole neighborhood was watching out for you (not just *watching* you), but still up to no good. :-) Singing  songs about the crotchety guy down the street as they passed his house. "Smarty, smarty, had a party, nobody came but Ol'Doc Farley." Dad had an older brother and a younger brother (and some sisters, but they don't show up much in his crazy adventure stories), and Dad tells about how he and his brothers found a nest of copperheads one day. Do you think they left that nest alone? Of course not.

Our family has moved about 6 times. We've lived in a 100 year old house in a small town, a development near DC, rented in another development, to 20 acres of mostly woods (lots of nature, not lots of neighbor kids), to a Victorian townhouse on a crowded street, to the development we are in now. When I think back on all of the houses, I realize that each house has been perfect for that time in our lives. At this house, we have some, but not a lot of woods for our son to roam. There's also a sizable creek. It's not in our back yard, and that makes it all the more attractive. There's enough here for him to test himself with his friends. He's goes into the woods with pocket knives and other real tools. They've built rickety treehouses (until we get in trouble with the neighborhood association and have to take it down) and have climbed much too high. I stopped watching how high. He's been allowed to ride bikes with his best buddy within a 5-10 mile radius of the house. He and the neighbor boys have spent many hours dividing themselves up into teams to play all sorts of sports.

I have noticed that the boy whose mom and dad butt their noses in too much is often not invited to play in their "reindeer games." He has gone whining to his momma one too many times. They aren't mean to him; they just don't go out of their way to include him.

I'm convinced that it's a mistake to not let my son have this freedom. There are predators in our town. I know. I've typed my zip code into those websites too. We have him take his pocketknife (hey, it's a little bit of protection) and take a cell phone. Do I pray for his safety? You bet. Do I worry? Oh, yes. But I know he needs this.

It's interesting though. Even with the freedom that my son has been allowed to have, it's not as much as my dad's was, nor as much as what was described in the chapter. But we're doing the best we can.

I do think that many of these activities would not be possible if it weren't for CM and her principles. The principles of authority and freedom do eventually sink in.

Esolen kept saying that he doesn't see kids playing outside. We've only lived in one house where that has been the case, and there weren't any other kids in that neighborhood. I had two little girls that just rode their bikes by themselves on the sidewalks. But I pass kids playing outside all the time. When we were traveling in upstate NY after Christmas, we passed a creek that was frozen over, and there were 5 or 6 teen boys playing ice hockey there. They were having a grand time. My experience hasn't been as dismal as Esolen's.

The middle paragraph on pg. 49 made me think of the Chinese mother article, and that made me think of mothers and fathers who end up having to take on the role of being the ones who rub the rough edges off their children because they don't let it happen naturally among their peers. We still do a lot of rubbing off, but it is good to not be the one to do it all the time.

(I didn't agree with the criticism of decorating with bright colors though. I love color. And most colors really are in nature - just not a big wall of it. We've just become so used to neutral that we are shocked by the use of color in rooms now. But that's another post.)

Esolen mentions electronic games. It's a part of our culture that I know next to nothing about. We don't have any at our house. My son has played some games with a cousin or a friend, they don't hold his interest for long. They rarely come up in conversation around here, so I thought I would talk to my son about them. What did he think of them? I found what he told me to be so interesting. He said that boys rate each other on how good you are at it. They consider what kind of game it is, the rating, and often how violent they are. The higher the rating, the cooler you are, and the more you are admired. How ironic -- we remove competition from every wholesome game, and then the boys just start competing over something else. He said the the ratings on the box just make it more tantalizing to the younger ones. They are cool if they can say that they've played something that is out of their 'rating range.'

Then he was on a roll, and I just sat and typed while he talked. He said these games hinder their idea of heroism. He said that when you're outside playing you have to think on your feet, and the environment is not controlled. Sometimes you have to really be brave or wise. And you have to make a good decision the first time around. No do-overs. You build a 'village' out in the woods and barter for things. You learn not to be fooled by a bad deal. You sure don't want to lose your pocketknife, so you learn to be more careful.

In a virtual game, things lose their value because you can always get them back; there's always the 'save' button or you start over. You don't really suffer consequences. He said if you have a real live little sister with you, you make better decisions because you can't do all of those dangerous things - you can't climb tall trees, you have to guide them past the trap hole that you dug to trap the other guys (hey, I'm just writing what he said.) He said you learn to treat girls differently, with more respect. But with a virtual game you blow up your friends.

He said that the fame a boy gets from these games is also virtual, but your fame lasts longer when you do something real. He thinks the attraction of the games is from the fact that boys are confined too much and can't get out and really do things because of suburbia, etc. He also felt that kids are more destructive when they can't get outside and do real things. He gave an example that involved somebody's hose and sprinkler. :-/

I liked this from pg. 64: "...boys simply will not develop their character if everything is always kept perfectly safe for them."

I also appreciated his inclusion of the "power of poetry to move us to virtue." It reminded me to get out those poetry anthologies and to search Cindy's site for poetry posts.  

The Climacus Conference

Yay! I've been watching for this for a while now. We're all registered and ready to go (well, we're not packed yet - that's not supposed to be done until the hour before, right?   just kidding.  But those who really know me know that's how I operate. :-))  

Anyway, we can't wait to hear John Granger speak. At this link is the talk John Granger gave last year (I didn't attend; I just listened online). After listening to it many times, taking notes, and having many fruitful discussions with my children, I thought, 'Next chance I get, I'm going to hear him speak.'  

But we're also going to be blessed by hearing Vigen Guroian, Andrew Kern, and Bobby Maddex. I've never heard her speak, but I'm intrigued by the title of the talk to be given by Rachel Leake. Also, Marriage as a Spiritual Resource and The World of Dostoevsky? Oh, my.

Don't those topics looked wonderful?

Two more things I like about where I live

See what counting your blessings does? I thought of two more things as I was driving around the other day. Antique shops and thrift stores. We have so many, and not not just the high priced antique shops either. We haven't always lived in a place where there are a lot of thrift shops, so this has been great.

Top Chapter Books that Feed a Child's Imagination

Paddington - Bond

Peter Pan - Barrie
Mr. Popper's Penguins - Atwater

The Tale of Despereaux, and The Magician's Elephant - Kate DiCamillo

Little House books

Pinocchio - Collodi

The Plain Princess - McGinley

The Courage of Sarah Noble - Dalgliesh

The Little White Horse - Goudge

Misty of Chincoteague - Henry

Charlotte's Web and The Trumpet of the Swan - White

Treasure in an Oatmeal Box - Gire

The Wind in the Willows - Grahame

The Ordinary Princess - M. M. Kaye
Just David - Porter (we used to say "we're having a Just David day" on the days we just did languages and music)

Sarah Witcher's Story - Yates

The Golden Goblet, and Mara, Daughter of the Nile - McGraw

The King's Shadow - Alder
The Gammage Cup - Kendall
Black Ships Before Troy - Sutcliff
Beowulf - Heaney

Redwall books - Jacques

Pollyanna - Porter

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle - Betty MacDonald

Chronicle of Narnia - Lewis

Prydain Chronicles - Alexander

Harry Potter books - Rowling

Adam of the Road - Gray

A Wrinkle in Time - L'Engle
The Pushcart War - we listened to this on tape - it was so much fun

The Treasure Seekers, and The Wouldbegoods, Five Children and It - and others by E. Nesbit

Anne of Green Gables (but I remember my girls did not like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms)

Sara Crewe/The Little Princess - Burnett

Little Women and others by Louisa May Alcott

Heidi - Spyri

All Robin Hood and King Arthur books

The Reluctant Dragon - Grahame

Princess and the Goblin, and The Light Princess - George Macdonald

Shadrach, and The Wheel on the School - Meindert DeJong

Pretty much all of the good old fairy tales - like the ones compiled by Andrew Lang, the color fairy books

The Hobbit - Tolkien

Plays by Shakespeare

Jane Austen books

Books on historical characters:

Davy Crockett

Childhood of Famous Americans

Jean Fritz history series - Can't You Make Them Behave, King George? and others

Top Picture Books that Feed a Child's Imagination

Amos and Boris, Abel's Island, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, and most others by William Steig
The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash - Trinka Hakes Noble, illustrated by Steven Kellogg
The Hungry Thing - Jan Slepian
If Everybody Did, They Didn't Use Their Heads - JoAnn Stover
Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey - Susan Wojciechowski
The Island of the Skog, Can I Keep Him?, Frogs Jump - Steven Kellogg
A Tale of Two Princes - Eckart Zur Nieden
A Country Mouse in the Town House - a hide-n-seek by Henrietta
There Once Was a Puffin - Jaques
The Story of Ping - Marjorie Flack
Rikki Tikki Tavi - Kipling
Tikki Tikki Tembo - Arlene Mosel
Little Bear/Old Bear stories by Jane Hissey
Richard Scarry books
Fritz and the Mess Fairy, Voyage to the Bunny Planet, Hazel's Amazing Mother, Max's Dragon Shirt, and Max and the Chocolate Chicken, and others by Rosemary Wells
The Peter Rabbit stories - Beatrix Potter
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom - Bill Martin, Jr.
The Little Engine That Could - Watty Piper
Lyle, Lyle Crocodile - Waber
Any Patricia Polacco books
Crinkleroot stories - Jim Arnosky
Roy Gerrard books - especially Croco'nile
All the D'aulaire books - especially the Lincoln one
Green Eggs and Ham, Ten Apples Up on Top, Go, Dog, Go, To Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (but not all Dr. Suess books)
Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel
Harry the Dirty Dog books - Gene Zion
The Five Chinese Brothers - Claire Huchet Bishop
James Herriot's Treasury for Children
The Egg - Robertson

A Hole is to Dig - Krauss

Little Bear books - Else Holmelund Minarik

Maurice Sendak books - especially Alligators All Around, Chicken Soup with Rice, etc.
The Wheels on the Bus - Maryann Kovalski
Percy the Park Keeper books - Butterworth
Madeleine books - Bemelmans
Velveteen Rabbit - Williams
My Father's Dragon - Gannett
Miss Rumphius, and Roxaboxen - Barbara Cooney
Ox-cart Man - Hall
Blaze books by C. W. Anderson
St. George and the Dragon - Margaret Hodges
Ruby, and Ruby to the Rescue - Glen
Alfie books by Shirley Hughes
Dogger - Shirley Hughes
Adventures in the Big Thicket - Ken Gire
Little Critter books - Mercer Mayer
The Gods and Goddesses of Olympus - Aliki, and other Greek myth books
Sheep in a Shop, and all of the Sheep books - Nancy Shaw
Angus books - Marjorie Flack
Snow White - Trina Schart Hyman
One Bear at Bedtime - Inkpen
Magic School Bus books
Tomie dePaola books - The Art Lesson, Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile, Strega Nona
Harold and the Purple Crayon - Johnson
Blueberries for Sal and all by Robert McCloskey
Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge - Mem Fox
Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing - Barrett
Piggies - Audrey Wood
The Big Orange Splot - Pinkwater
The Tempest, Midsummer Night's Dream, The Winter's Tale - Bruce Coville
If You Give a Moose a Muffin, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie - Numeroff
All Fall Down - Helen Oxenbury (we made up a tune and always sang this one)
We're Going on a Bear Hunt - Oxenbury
Owl Babies - Waddell
George Washington's Breakfast - Jean Fritz
Hank Aaron, Brave in Every Way - Golenbock
Casey at the Bat
Goodnight Moon - Brown
Least of All - Purdy
Golly Gump Swallowed a Fly - Joanna Cole
Goops and How to Be Them - Burgess
How a House is Built - Gibbons
Weslandia - Fleischman
The Little Red Lighthouse and The Great Gray Bridge - Swift
The Little House, Katy and the Big Snow, and Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel - by Virginia Lee Burton
David Macaulay books - Castle, Cathedral

Questions inspired by Ten Ways: book club - method 2

I am loving this chapter. Esolen is hitting his stride, imo. Thought I would copy and paste Cindy's questions over here.


Are there any local teams or bands in your community not segregated by age?
          Yes. Depending on the sport, they mix girls and boys in the younger ages, which I like. They separate older boys and girls for obvious reasons. 

Do you see children playing outside much in your neighborhood?    Yes! And I'm so thankful. We have lived in neighborhoods where this was not the case. 

What about in neighborhood pools during the summer? I ask this because I am always lusting, positively lusting over swimming pools in the summer but I rarely see people swimming in home swimming pools that I pass.


My brother and family have a pool and they use it. A friend also has a pool - again it is well-used. But they are both homeschool families. :-) Our neighborhood pool is always packed.
Is it possible to destroy a child's capacity to play?


Yes. Definitely. I've seen this too. I've watched these kids and had to teach them how to play. 
"We talk a great deal about independence, but we loathe it as much as we loathe the blessed freedom of nothing to do.Children no longer play because we have taken from them the opportunity and, I'll insist, even the capacity to play."

Why does he insist? Do you agree? I agree heartily. Maybe he is insisting because people may be inclined to call some things play that really aren't, so that people don't even know what play is anymore.

What do you tell your children when they say they are bored?


Honestly, they are not allowed to say it. If they did, I made them work. This served two purposes: they learned to make doing chores (scrubbing floors, for instance) more fun out of necessity (pretending to be Cinderella, for instance), and they got their juices flowing in play to avoid a job. :-) 
Is it possible that riding the school bus is downtime for modern children?


No, there's too much bullying, noise, and stress.
How do you avoid the 45 minute syndrome (Pg. 53) at home?


I don't have an internal clock so this isn't an issue for me. I never have any sense of the passage of time. 


"Not to worry; the momentary excitement of discovery will pass..."


I think the CM method of short lessons ensures that the child will want to come back to it. 
Are tightly scheduled days a help or a hindrance to wee free men?


There has to be some structure, but a tight schedule isn't human. I just always think that for hundreds and hundreds of years people went by the sun thereby not allowing any "tightness down to the minute."

How do we balance productivity with time to grapple?



This is one of my biggest frustrations with the world we live in. We've forgotten the principle of incubation. People and ideas must have time to develop slowly and be given "permission" to not display any perceptible signs of what's going on inside!

Fallow time is essential. Rest. Restoration.

What are your favorite children's books for fueling the imagination?


Oh, boy. One of my favorite subjects. My next post will list those.

A perfectly kept house is a sign of a misspent life

 by Mary Randolph Carter

I just got this and love it. (No, I didn't buy it used for such a ridiculous price. I bought it new a local bookstore.)

When the author started talking about the "beauty of the imperfect life," I knew I had to have this book. It's full of homes (lived in by real people, and real children, and real animals) that will never make it into glossy home magazines. I don't admire the homes in glossy home magazines. I do admire these homes because the spirit of them is different.

The author writes: "order can be liberating as long as it's not artificial or rigid..."

Bryna said the other day, "I do like my room to be clean, but I don't want to put away all of my projects!"

I'm finding that the more creative we become, the more it shows in our house.

Walking (or singing) down memory lane tonight...

My friends Jackie, Julie, and I loved this album when we were teenagers.

Ten Ways: Way #1 - Keep The Children Indoors

But if you want to feed your children's imaginations - make sure they spend hours, every day, outdoors. In every kind of weather.

I've laid in the grass with my children to look at the night sky. (My oldest daughter said that during particularly stressful times at college she would walk up onto the quad and lay down in the grass to look up into the night sky.) I've let them have old wood, and saws, and hammers, and nails, and let them take all of them down to the creek to build bridges. They've played rollerblade hockey in the street with neighbor kids. I made sure they saw lambs being born and goats being born at friend's houses. I tried to rescue baby rabbits with them, and let them catch pesky raccoons to "relocate" away from the house. I made sure they had their own dog. We've grown gardens. I've stood with them on the back porch of our house in Indiana to watch the sky turn green and wonder if we would see a tornado (my dad didn't like that one - I told him not to worry, that I'd heard on the radio that the tornado was in another county (showing him my map), to which he replied, "You know what? That tornado can't read this map.") But he had no room to talk. He has told me many tales of his own adventures with his brothers growing up in a West Virginia coal mining town.

I've let them do all these things and more. And I'm glad.

I read The Maker's Diet by Jordan Rubin years ago. I thought of this passage from it when I read Ch. 2:

"Countless numbers of microorganisms live in the soil, in and on plants, and in the human gut. Inside and out we are at one with the earth (or we should be). What depth of incomprehensible wisdom lies in the biblical statement in Genesis 2:7: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."
In 1989, Dr. David Strachan, a respected epidemiologist at Britain's London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, launched a tidal wave of debate with a complex theorem of human immunology development and disease control, saying, "We need dirt."
Dr. Strachan proposed that society's growing separation from dirt and germs may well be the cause of weaker immune systems resulting in the growing incidence of a wide range of maladies.
If Dr. Strachan is right (and a growing number of scientists and medical researchers believe he is), then dirt - or to be more specific, the microbes in earth's soil - may be some of our best friends. A recent report in New Scientist said researchers have discovered that microorganisms found in dirt influence maturation of the immune system so that it is either functional or dysfunctional. Technology may be expanding exponentially, but nature is not. We are a part of God's natural creation, so most of us will benefit by returning the missing soil microorganisms to our bodies."

Esolen mentioned the architecture of Roman churches. Eastern orthodox churches are built with a dome to invite symbolic identification with the "dome" of heaven.

This was an inspiring, and fun chapter, and I believe that Charlotte Mason would have enjoyed it immensely. :-)

Favorite lines:

"I was surrounded by a world of change, scarred and pitted, and I loved it, and wanted it never to change."

"Imagine, then, never being able to look upon the sky. That would drive us mad..."

I loved the paragraph on Virginia Woolf and Shakespeare - touche!

Also, this: "The object of our schooling, note well, is not to ensure that such poetry as this will never be written again. Of course it can hardly be written, when it can hardly be read. Our aim is more complete. It is to ensure that the feelings that inspired Hopkins' work will never be understood again." Oh, wow. That last really got to me. It's not just skills, it's emotions.
 

(And I'll refrain from quibbling over the few little things I disagreed with. ;-)

Ten Ways: Ch. 1 Truth is Your Enemy

I am behind in the book study, but I'm still working at it. I love thinking about the imagination. Am I imaginative? Have I encouraged imagination in my children? What does encourage it? I consider the imagination a sacred thing. And I have some thoughts on it, but I am not sure if I'm right. I'm going to put down some thoughts on Ch. 1 and then race over to the other ladies' posts to see what they thought of it. (I'm staying away from reading their comments until I'm done doing my own reading and writing.)

Before I get too far into talking about the content of this first chapter, however, I have to say that his changing voice can get a little confusing at times. Sometimes he's singing the praises of the thing that encourages imagination. Then he seems to remember that he's supposed to be telling us how to destroy the imagination, and he jumps back to a sarcastic voice and discouraging the use of the thing.

This first chapter of Ten Ways calls for the essential need of filling the memory with facts. I couldn't figure out why he didn't have keeping the memory weak and empty as one of his "ways" (except that the book would have been "11 ways." :-)

From pg. 9: "...A developed memory is a wondrous and terrible storehouse of things seen and heard and done. It can do what no mere search engine on the internet can do. It can call up apparently unrelated things at once, molding them into a whole impression, or a new thought. The poet T. S. Eliot understood this creative, associative, dynamic, function of a strong memory."

I couldn't agree more.

But I would disagree with what creates this creative, dynamic faculty. Mr. Esolen gave many examples of the kinds of things to memorize that he believes will feed the imagination, but I would make a distinction among them.

His examples on the bottom of pg. 4, pg. 5, and pg. 7 were examples of curiosity, which is not quite the same thing as imagination. I don't mean to be nit-picky, but I don't want to mistake curiosity for feeding imagination.

Imagination and creativity have always been very important to me. The books I have on my shelf show it. I have titles like "The Courage to Create,""Creators," "How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci," "Cracking Creativity," "The Liberated Imagination," "Human Accomplishment," "Keys to Drawing with Imagination," and many more. Many of the books I've read aren't that helpful, to tell you the truth. I think Charlotte Mason's writings have been the very best for that.

I looked up imagination, creativity, and curiosity in the dictionary so as to keep straight in my own mind the differences. Imagination means "the faculty or action (in the mind) of forming new ideas, or images, or concepts of external objects not present to the senses." And creativity means "the use of the imagination in the production of a work." Curiosity means "a desire to know or learn; careful attention to detail; inquisitiveness." 

Imagination is forming a new idea/image, and creativity is using the idea/image to produce something. As Esolen points out, schools pride themselves on being places of creativity, but they often leave out the first step - feeding the imaginative faculty in the first place. 

I also realized that a child or adult could have a vivid imagination but not actually create anything (or at least not for a very long time as it incubates, or they don't create anything because they aren't encouraged to go to the next step of creating something). And children and adults create things all the time that manifest no imagination at all (only pale anemic copies of other more vibrant things). And curiosity doesn't have to include the other two.  

It seemed at times that Esolen couldn't decide if Gradgrind in Dickens's Hard Times was a good example to follow or not. I've concluded that he was saying that Gradgrind's method was bad, and that dry, dull facts are bad, but they are better than what we currently have, which is no memorization at all. I didn't find this particularly helpful.

He knew that Gradgrind's method was in keeping with preparing folks for work in industry, and was no longer about giving a child the liberal arts, but it's "not a bad way to begin." The lesser of two evils? I can't agree with this.

In various places in the chapter, Mr. Esolen recommends memorizing: basic facts about things in our world - animals and science (not as good as living with them, but the facts do present 'a challenge to the mind' - in my opinion, they may and they may not), geography (admittedly they're inferior to reading about places in Greek literature, The Lord of the Rings, and being out in the woods, etc. - in his sarcastic voice calling these the "heights of ignorance"), history facts (saying they can be flat, but they can be "dangerous" too), Latin and Greek grammar (the point being, of course, learning all that grammar for the purposes of reading the poetry of Roman and Greek authors), rules, timelines, math, maps, poetry, music.

Esolen does say, "a fact may not be much, by itself, but it points toward what is true..." Yes. But if we're not careful, and I see this all the time, we stop at the fact, because we're already tired, and full, and out of time. We're always satisfied with the lesser things. 

And this is coming from a mom who has her child in CC. I'm not against learning facts or I wouldn't be there. But I don't think that all of the facts that she is memorizing is necessarily sparking her imagination. Her history books do that. Memorizing "After the church split into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, William the Conqueror defeated King Harold of England in 1066, and started feudalism" can't hold a candle to reading great books about those subjects where the characters are full-bodied, and an image can form in the mind.

Only some of these facts to memorize would be, it seems to me, fodder for the imagination. I would not call these unimportant things of life. These facts are goods, to be sure. And they can and often do support the production of new and beautiful things. But I've seen many a child not have the flame of their imaginations kindled by memorizing a ream of "grammar stage" (sorry, my own bit of sarcasm) facts. I don't think I've ever seen a child not come alive after hearing really great stories or singing songs, though.   

We watched a little girl for a time who hated to be read to. She wasn't read the right sorts of books, of course, and to make matters worse, the books were only ever used to put her to bed. They were "tricks" to get her out of the way. No one ever read to her just for the sheer joy of going into another time and place. By the time we no longer babysat her, we had won her over to loving story-time. It's one of my favorite memories of what I've done in my life. 

I love the example of Caedmon, one of my favorite figures in history. Caedmon, of course, had no storehouse of memorized facts. No Latin reading. Never any Greek. He lived and breathed real things all day long. Cows, and barns, and weather, and liturgy. But he did have a storehouse of memory of poetry and Bible stories. When God gave him the gift of song, he sang. He sang his own new songs.    

I have to add some quotes from Charlotte Mason's writings: 

"But let them have tales of the imagination, scenes laid in other lands and other times, heroic adventures, hairbreadth escapes, delicious fairy tales in which they are never roughly pulled up by the impossible--even where all is impossible, and they know it, and yet believe.

Now imagination does not descend, full grown, to take possession of an empty house; like every other power of the mind, it is the merest germ of a power to begin with, and grows by what it gets; and childhood, the age of faith, is the time for its nourishing. The children should have the joy of living in far lands, in other persons, in other times--a delightful double existence; and this joy they will find, for the most part, in their story books. Their lessons, too, history and geography, should cultivate their conceptive powers. If the child do not live in the times of his history lesson, be not at home in the climes of his geography book describes, why, these lessons will fail of their purpose. But let lessons do their best, and the picture gallery of the imagination is poorly hung if the child have not found his way into the realms of fancy." 

"The object of children's literary studies is not to give them precise information as to who wrote what in the reign of whom? -- but to give them a sense of the spaciousness of the days, not only of great Elizabeth, but of all those times of which poets, historians and the makers of tales, have left us living pictures. In such ways the children secure, not the sort of information which is of little cultural value, but wide spaces wherein imagination may take those holiday excursions deprived of which life is dreary; judgment, too, will turn over these folios of the mind and arrive at fairly just decisions about a given strike, the question of Poland, Indian Unrest. Every man is called upon to be a statesman seeing that every man and woman, too, has a share in the government of the country; but statesmanship requires imaginative conceptions, formed upon pretty wide reading 'and some familiarity with historical precedents. "

Some of my favorite lines in Ten Ways were at the end of the chapter on pg. 25,

"Keep the students busy and idle at the same time. Have them study Germany by cooking a bowl of bean soup, or frying some wienerschnitzel (rather like studying baseball by grilling a hot dog)."

"At all costs have the assignments devour time. Call them "creative" if you like. Appeal to the student's vanity - never a difficult maneuver - and enlist his good will as you rob his days."

"Schola edax emporis sit - let the school be the eater of time." Indeed.