February 25th, 2010 by Janet Goodrich
 I couldn’t pass up Read Aloud Thursday this week — not when we’re reading a tale our gracious host is reading! The difference is that this one gives us the story without the Dickensian trademark of (often delightful) long-windedness. An abridgement for children, Malvina Vogel’s Great Illustrated Classics version of A Tale of Two Cities contains black and white illustrations (the style reminds me of Dick Tracy comics) on almost every other page. The typeface is fairly large, and the pace moves quickly. It concerns the period of history we’ve studied lately, and Older Daughter could read it herself. I’m reading it because I love the story so much, and this way I get to revisit it too. It’s a big hit so far with Older Daughter, but Younger Daughter isn’t much impressed.
 On Younger Daughter’s list this week is the heartbreaker I’ll Always Love You by Hans Wilhelm. It explores the subject of a pet’s death with extraordinary sensitivity. A little boy tells the story of the phases of his dog Effie’s life from puppy to elderly dog. Everyone in the family loves the dog, but the child narrator is the only one who tells her every night, “I’ll always love you.” It gives him some comfort when she dies. I appreciate the gentle emphasis on expressing affection for those you love. There are many good reasons for doing so, not the least of which is the way loss doesn’t have to get so complicated by regret. The story is impossible to read without tears, and I’m not sure what led Younger Daughter to think of it this week. But maybe it’s a good book to become familiar with in the “off-season,” so that when it becomes relevant we’ll be more prepared.
Those are the highlights: war and death. (Good grief… So much for children’s books as an escapist enterprise!) Visit Hope is the Word for more Read Aloud Thursday posts.
February 23rd, 2010 by Janet Goodrich
 I’ve missed the last several Nightstand carnivals over at 5 Minutes for Books. The last time I participated was in November! I think I need the inspiration of others’ booklists.
I’ve only read two books in February, though I have a long string of tried-and-derailed titles. I’ll probably finish my current read, The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia, in time to raise the tally to three. Not sure what’s causing the malaise, but I’ve missed taking the time to reflect back over the literary terrain. Without further ado, here’s a list of the books read in the last several months, with links to my reviews.
February:
A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hosseini): “By turns, this story of two women living against the backdrop of the last 40 years of Afghanistan’s turbulent history horrified me, inspired me, informed me, and broke my heart. In a few spots, I felt physically sick with tension. Once, around 100 pages short of the conclusion, I gave in and read the last page. A few times, I wept.” Rest of my review here.
Westmark (Lloyd Alexander): “The effects of propoganda, war, and corrupt governance all figure into the story, as does the question of whether killing is ever justified or right.” Full review here.
January:
The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins): “Though I liked this novel and thought it was very readable and well-paced, it didn’t hit me as hard as I expected. Maybe all the association, instead of making it richer, made it seem like a mere intersection of other books and movies.” Rest of my thoughts here.
Brother, I’m Dying (Edwidge Danticat): “A memoir as absorbing and beautiful as the best novels, this book is an unsparing introduction to the complex reality of the ‘poorest country in the western hemisphere.’” Full review here.
Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll): “It’s all quite dazzling. To me, it doesn’t make for a terribly engaging story, but it’s a great show.” Full review here.
Christian History Made Easy (Timothy Paul Jones): “There’s an unintentional (I think) irony in this title, because there’s nothing “easy” about this whirlwind voyage through church history.” Review here.
On the Incarnation (St. Athanasius): “Reading Athanasius alongside the book of John had the effect of putting on 3-D glasses and looking at a picture that had appeared merely 2-dimensional before.” Review here.
December:
God in the Dock (C.S. Lewis): “What makes this collection distinctive is the picture it develops of Lewis as a social entity, a person attuned to the issues of his age and engaged in discussion about them.” Review here.
Hiding from Love (John Townsend): “Written by one of the authors of the bestseller Boundaries, it… focuses on how sometimes, we respond to injury in ways that build defenses against the very things that bring healing.” Review here.
Orthodoxy (G.K. Chesterton): “I admit that at times I found his writing wearying: it’s relentlessly epigrammatic. I learned to set the book aside when my mind clenched into a single spasm of simultaneous hard thinking and laughter, and my eyes glazed over.” Review here.
February 22nd, 2010 by Janet Goodrich
 Monday brings The Week in Words at Breath of Life. We’re invited to share something from our reading during the week. Click on the button to find out the details.
Here’s what I choose for today, from The Magician’s Book by Laura Miller:
A lot of people remember the bliss of their earliest reading with a pang; their current encounters with books offer no more than faint echoes of what they once felt. I’ve heard friends and strangers talk about the days when they, too, would submerge themselves in a story, surfacing only to eat and deal with the minimal daily business of childhood. They wonder why they don’t get as much out of books now. If you dig deep to the roots of what makes someone a reader, you’ll usually find the desire to recapture that old spell.
What do you think? Are you looking to recapture the old spell? Do you agree with Miller that part of the problem is that we acquire another set of reasons for reading — self-improvement, information, an assignment, filling time in a waiting room, keeping abreast of the bestseller list? In my case I think it’s that I have more responsibilities, all waiting in the wings. The daily business of adult life is no longer “minimal,” and it’s rarely absent from my consciousness at some level — unlike childhood, when responsibilities could be more easily shed.
February 21st, 2010 by Janet Goodrich
 I’m reading The Magician’s Book, in which Laura Miller examines why she has continued to love the Chronicles of Narnia even after her initial feeling of betrayal that they contained so many Christian themes. I’m really enjoying it, even though I come from a different direction spiritually, one in sympathy with Lewis’s Christian faith. Like Miller, in my first reading of the Chronicles I totally missed their symbolic content, so I am glad to find this book that explores other sources of their power than just their religious dimension.
Here is a passage that makes me stop and think as a Christian who loves these stories:
Although as a girl I adored Aslan, he is another part of the Chronicles that no longer moves me as it once did. This is only partly because I now see, all too clearly, the theological strings and levers behind Lewis’s stagecraft; the great lion seems less a character than a creaking device. I also stopped loving Aslan because I have since grown into the autonomy I was only tentatively experimenting with at seven. The kind of story in which a distant, parental presence hovers behind the scenes, ready to step in and save the day at the moment when hope seems lost — a narrative safety net of sorts — now annoys rather than comforts me. I no longer need this device in the same way that I no longer need to hold someone’s hand while crossing the street.
The condescension of this characterization is almost palpable. As a literary complaint — viewing Aslan as a “creaking device” and a “narrative safety net” — this reminds me of Orwell’s complaint with That Hideous Strength:
Unfortunately, the supernatural keeps breaking in, and it does so in rather confusing, undisciplined ways. [Lewis] is entitled to his beliefs, but they weaken his story, not only because they offend the average reader’s sense of probability but because in effect they decide the issue in advance.
Such criticisms mask themselves as literary judgments when in reality they are metaphysical. They are insisting on a worldview devoid of the miraculous, a closed system. A book that reflects a different worldview seems to them defective. But in reality these criticisms are not really literary.
Miller’s depiction of Aslan as a “distant parental presence” is a way of characterizing my faith that makes it seem no more than a crutch, intellectually and personally. Surely only a coward needs a god, it seems to suggest — only someone who’s never grown up. Real adults don’t need a parent — and don’t need God.
February 19th, 2010 by Janet Goodrich
 After I closed A Thousand Splendid Suns , I sat speechless, trying to come to terms with what I’d just read. “This is the reason books exist,” I realized.
By turns, this story of two women living against the backdrop of the last 40 years of Afghanistan’s turbulent history horrified me, inspired me, informed me, and broke my heart. In a few spots, I felt physically sick with tension. Once, around 100 pages short of the conclusion, I gave in and read the last page. A few times, I wept. Khaled Hosseini knows how to tell a story, and this one is worth every second of the pain that it brings.
The plight of Mariam and Laila parallels the plight of Afghanistan itself. Both women have a unique beauty and value that’s either missed entirely, or brutally mistreated, by the men on whom they’re forced to depend. In the same way, Afghanistan is taken by force and dominated by political and military entities indifferent to its culture. Just as the women are slowly whittled down, the country’s infrastructure, economy, agriculture, and artistic traditions crumble with each successive occupation.
It’s not a scenario that inspires cheerfulness, as Mariam realizes:
Seasons had come and gone; presidents in Kabul had been inaugurated and murdered; an empire had been defeated; old wars had ended and new ones had broken out. But Mariam had hardly noticed, hardly cared. She had passed these years in a distant corner of her mind. A dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment. There, the future did not matter. And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion.
It sounds pretty bleak, doesn’t it? Yet the story, which begins in a garden setting that evokes Eden and descends into a chaotic and war-torn Kabul, ends on a note of hope for Afghanistan and for Laila. Mariam, despite the desolate frame of mind reflected in this passage, arguably becomes the most courageous and resilient character of all.
The personal connection to Afghanistan I’ve felt since reading The Kite Runner was renewed in this book. I’ve waited to read A Thousand Splendid Suns till I felt ready. Once I opened it, I couldn’t put it down. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend it. But be ready. Reading it isn’t an exercise in entertainment, but in transformation.
February 19th, 2010 by Janet Goodrich
“Looking at Stars,” by Jane Kenyon
The God of curved space, the dry
God, is not going to help us, but the son
whose blood spattered
the hem of his mother’s robe.
This poem prefaces Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter. Though I’m not planning to delve much into the book as a whole this year, this poem has always struck me: its brevity, its visceral grasping for the personal when confronted with the seemingly infinite, its boldness. The God of curved space and the son are one. But in its honesty this poem acknowledges how difficult it is for our human minds to reconcile the two.
This year, I find myself reading George MacDonald. His sermon on Jesus’ 40-day fast in the wilderness gives me much to chew on — perhaps the equivalent, for my mind, of the “meat to eat that ye know not of” that Jesus described.
In addition, I’ve reserved a copy of Reliving the Passion at the library. Though I’ve tried and failed to read The Book of the Dun Cow, I’m looking forward to my first taste of Walter Wangerin’s nonfiction. This is a book of daily readings, so I’ll have to play catch-up when it arrives. Good thing I have Unspoken Sermons to keep me busy in the meantime.
I’m not too keen on sharing with the world anything I may or may not be fasting from this Lenten season, but I can barely restrain myself from sharing morsels of George MacDonald now and again, as anyone who’s visited this blog over the past few weeks will know. Here is one for today that reflects on a verse my daughter asked about the other night, and that I’ve often puzzled over myself:
I think this will throw some light on the words of our Lord, “If ye have faith and doubt not, if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, it shall be done.” Good people, amongst them John Bunyan, have been tempted to tempt the Lord their God on the strength of this saying, just as Satan sought to tempt our Lord on the strength of the passage he quoted from the Psalms. Happily for such, the assurance to which they would give the name of faith generally fails them in time. Faith is that which, knowing the Lord’s will, goes and does it; or, not knowing it, stands and waits, content in ignorance as in knowledge, because God wills; neither pressing into the hidden future, nor careless of the knowledge which opens the path of action. It is its noblest exercise to act with uncertainty of the result, when the duty itself is certain, or even when a course seems with strong probability to be duty.
February 18th, 2010 by Janet Goodrich
 Just one book to mention for Read Aloud Thursday this week: Sam the Minuteman, by Nathaniel Benchley, illustrated by Arnold Lobel.
I picked it up from the library last week in connection with history, but the cover didn’t appeal to Older Daughter. When she finally read it, she changed her tune and wanted me to read it aloud too because she liked it so much. Then Younger Daughter resisted. It looked like an uninteresting chapter book to her. But after we finally read it, she wanted it repeated several more times. It’s unanimous; I really liked it too.
This bit of historical fiction is not a chapter book. It’s about a little boy, 8 or 9 or so, whose father is a minuteman in Lexington, Massachusetts. One night his father is summoned and takes Sam with him. The next morning Sam is involved in the first skirmish of the American Revolution. It strikes just the right balance of suspense and adventure, and conveys a young boy’s frame of mind pitch-perfectly. The illustrations are wonderfully interesting and detailed and have Arnold Lobel’s characteristic warmth.
We’ve read some other books this week too, but I’m being stern with myself and choosing just one. Check out Hope Is the Word for what others are reading!
February 18th, 2010 by Janet Goodrich
In his sermon on the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, George MacDonald makes the point that Jesus and Satan use scripture in different ways. In the second temptation, when Satan urges Jesus to throw himself from the pinnacle by quoting, “It is written, ‘He will give his angels charge over Thee,’” Jesus replies, “You shall not put the Lord thy God to a test.”
MacDonald draws this distinction between two ways of using Scripture:
Again with a written word, in return, the Lord meets him. And he does not quote scripture for logical purposes — to confute Satan intellectually, but as giving even Satan the reason of his conduct. Satan quotes scripture as a verbal authority; our Lord meets him with a Scripture by the truth of which he regulates his conduct.
Even the capitalizations seem significant: Scripture with a capital S regulates conduct, scripture with a small s provides intellectual justification.
 James Tissot's painting of the second temptation How does this work out in my life?
- “Verbal authority” vs. truth that regulates conduct. It seems like the first difference is in the order of things. If the word of God (and by this MacDonald doesn’t mean just the written word, but all sources of God’s truth as discerned by the spirit of God within the believer) regulates my action, it is consulted before I act. It is part of my motive. But if it is “for logical purposes,” it comes after I act, as a way of reconciling what I’ve already decided to do with what I say I believe. ?
- The word used as “verbal authority” is abstract. It belongs to the world of intellect, one step removed from the world of action; it is disembodied. The word used as “truth” motivating behavior has more wholeness and is more closely connected to my experience as both a spiritual and a physical being. “Truth” wouldn’t be irrational, but it may be paradoxical. Experience proves it, though logic may be stymied by it. Conversely, we can make things appear correct logically without their being true.
I don’t feel like I’m seeing this distinction quite as clearly as I need to yet, but it seems important.
*For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)
February 13th, 2010 by Janet Goodrich
I’ve been thinking about our eclectic reading, and remembering this paragraph from The Well-Trained Mind where Jessie Wise shares the library habits she worked to develop in her children:
…I was known at the local public library as ‘the lady with the laundry basket’ because I took my children in every week and filled a laundry basket with their books. On each library visit, I had them check out the following books: one science book, one history book, one art or music appreciation book, one practical book (a craft, hobby, or ‘how-to’), a biography or autobiography, a classic novel (or an adaptation suited to age), an imaginative storybook, a book of poetry. They were allowed to choose the titles, but I asked them to follow this pattern. And they were allowed to check out other books on any topic they pleased.
 It’s interesting to me that while at first glance this seems quite rigorous, I’ve noticed that our library collections each week reflect a similar variety even without trying to create “a pattern.” I usually have a list of books (there are always great corresponding literature lists in the history activity book, and in the course of finding the titles I discover others at the library). But given free rein, children have eclectic tastes. Last week one daughter checked out a book about Pakistan, which made me chuckle because it had nothing whatsoever to do with anything we’re doing in school. Poems and animals often show up in the stacks, and sometimes weather or other science phenomena, as well as occasional crafting and drawing books.
I never read information books as a child! But maybe because some of the children’s encyclopedias on our shelves are so appealing visually, my kids acquired the habit early on of poring over them. It’s nothing new; one of the only books Laura Ingalls mentions is Pa’s green book on the wonders of the animal world.
It’s just been on my mind lately. Classical education sometimes sounds very structured and confining, like it crowds out all knowledge unrelated to “the plan,” but I’m not finding it to be so. There’s an underlying structure, but the hours and shelves and minds get filled by all kinds of independent treasures.
February 12th, 2010 by Janet Goodrich
Time to take a look at the texts we’re using this year. In this post I discussed some of the global issues of our home school, but here I want to think about the specific texts and tricks.
Kindergarten:
I have very modest goals for my kindergartner. She turned 6 in December, so she has a fair amount of maturity, but I wanted to start gently into formal schooling. I find that if I give her some room and don’t push too hard, she’s more motivated; she usually does more than I would have expected. I gleaned as much wisdom as I could from her nursery school teachers last year, and observed how much the kids learned in an environment that left them a fair amount of freedom. There would be three learning activities per 2.5-hour class, but the kids were called up one or two at a time to do them with the teachers and helpers. The rest of the time, they played, with a few scheduled group activities thrown in — snack and circle time.
 Younger Daughter has just three formal school subjects, each of which takes about 15-20 minutes a day. One is math, for which we’re using Saxon I. She blew through a kindergarten workbook earlier this year, so this is the first grade text. Saxon can be tedious, and I rarely do every single thing in the Meeting Book. I hope this isn’t a disservice to her. There’s so much drill built in that I feel like she’ll come out all right.
The other subjects are handwriting, which she enjoys practicing each day, and reading. We’re using the Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading, which Older Daughter enjoyed, but Younger Daughter doesn’t really like. The lessons are quite short, and it does take us systematically through an introduction to phonics.
In addition to these three assignments, she’s free to sit in on science and history and art with her older sister. She loves history and usually does a coloring page or a map along with each chapter we read. She’s getting plenty of chemistry between her sister’s work at home and the class she’s in (which I teach) at co-op, too.
Co-op gives us some welcome interaction with other families, as well as classes in chem., music and “Community Helpers” (an introduction to people in different professions — mail carriers, firemen, doctors…). In addition, she’s playing basketball through the Upward program at our church.
Lots of reading aloud is the backdrop of it all, of course.
Third Grade:
Math: Older Daughter is also using Saxon math (III). My impressions aren’t much different this year than in the past: somewhat tedious if you try to do all the drills, and the so-called incremental development isn’t always intuitive. But overall she is developing an ability to think mathematically and bring a range of skills to the table. Now if we can just get her to believe in her math ability, we’ll be in great shape. (Her automatic answer to any math question is, “I don’t know… Oh, is it [correct answer]?”)
Handwriting: She finished Zaner-Bloser 4 and is practicing her handwriting in the narrations and dictations we create.
Language: First Language Lessons Volume 3. These lessons are supposed to take about 1/2 an hour or 45 minutes, but they take about 15 minutes, tops. This is not an exciting text (or is it the subject?), but I’m impressed at the amount of analytical grammar being covered. She’s diagramming sentences, memorizing poems, taking dictation, and writing the occasional summary just over the halfway point of the year, and the lessons are short and manageable. All of it is being reinforced by…
 Latin. We’re using Latin for Children Primer A, and as far as I’m concerned this is the pleasantest surprise of the year. Latin is one of the aspects of classical education that I was skeptical about — “My child is learning Latin” struck me as unbearably pompous. But I do see the value of a language and thought we’d give it a try this year. At this point she’s learned well over 100 vocabulary words, three verb tenses, and two noun declensions. The chant cd provides the vocabulary for each week in a format perfect for my auditory learners, and the teaching dvd features the curriculum’s creator teaching each week’s lesson in his home. (There are other children learning Latin on the dvd too, along with short playful segments following each lesson.) The Primer provides practice in writing, and there are downloadable supplemental worksheets at the Classical Academic Press website.
I can’t get over how well this is going. Apparently this goes along with Shurley Grammar, but it’s going along fine with First Language Lessons too.
The acid test is that both girls seem to enjoy it. When Older Daughter found an advertisement for a kindergarten-grade 1 Latin cd of songs and showed it to Younger Daughter, YD exclaimed, “Oh, we have to get that! I want to do ‘aqua-aquae water-water’ too!” I’m not sure how long we’ll be committed to Latin, but it’s been enjoyable and challenging this year.
Writing: Writing with Ease, which I reviewed here. My only complaint is that the standards seem to vary widely between First Language Lessons and this text. The dictation exercises in First Language Lessons are easy enough to get right without a single repetition — sentences on a par with, “The dog sat on a log.” But these are very difficult, much longer and more complex. They’re all but impossible to get right without any errors. Even the errors teach things about the conventions of written speech vs. spoken speech, though, so the challenge serves a purpose.
Let’s see: what else?
Spelling Workout D for Spelling. We do about a page a day. The approach is sensible and I like that Older Daughter can work independently, but I’m not always sure how well the skills are retained.
Story of the World volume 3 for History. This is always a hit, and the audiobooks read by Jim Weiss are a must. The level of complexity is definitely increasing in comparison to the texts of the last two years. This year I’m having Older Daughter write a narration for the first section of each chapter (the first of our two history classes each week), and a map and a test for the second section/class. I want her to have some practice taking tests, and it introduces some variety.
 Science I’ve written about plenty already (here and here, for instance). Currently we’re enjoying The Elements, and in general I’m glad we broke away from our method in the past of using an encyclopedia, writing narrations, and doing experiments. It’s really nice to be using an already-prepared prepared curriculum. It’s impossible to find one for this age level that spans the entire year, but by combining resources I feel like we’ve got a year’s worth of knowledge just the same.
Older Daughter is also in co-op, taking 5-In-a-Row, gym, and art this semester, and she’s playing Upward basketball too. She still enjoys being read to and has a silent reading period of probably 45 minutes to an hour a day. We make reading pages for two books a week. I’m very pleased to see how all the narrations we’ve been writing since first grade are developing. One strength of this method is that it teaches kids to summarize reading in ways college freshmen in the English classes I used to teach hadn’t yet learned. There’s plenty of opportunity for creative writing in free time and art projects, but where school is concerned the emphasis in these early grades is text-based writing. Will it pay off? I think so, but only time will tell.
Schedule: As far as the daily schedule for the book work, school takes us a little longer this year. Having a schedule and starting by 9:00 would be a great thing for us, but the problem with that is Yours Truly. I like to exercise in the morning, and though I used to be able to roll out of bed and have at it, my body needs time to wake up. It’s 10:00 when we get started in the morning. We usually start with handwriting for Younger Daughter and spelling for Older Daughter, followed by math for Older Daughter. Then writing, grammar and Latin, and while Older Daughter works on her written stuff I do a reading lesson with Younger Daughter and a math lesson. After lunch we tackle either history or science on alternate days. By Fridays we’re ready for the change of pace co-op provides.
Sum-up: This is work, but it’s rewarding. Three years into this endeavor I am beginning to see some satisfying results. When I think of my own school experience, I don’t remember it being thrilling, which is really no one’s fault. I enjoyed learning, but I didn’t learn to really work hard until I was studying for my qualifying exams in grad school and had to essentially teach myself. I learned to find joy even in reading dry texts (18th century prose) and to work through the material systematically myself.
What if I had learned to do that sooner? Would my life have followed the same course?
 With this approach, I feel like my daughters have already caught onto the fact that learning is work, but it can be done. They’re comfortable with books. They remember things. And there is joy, even though it’s not the kind of “fun” suggested by the cover of the Sonlight catalogue with its picture of a child holding up a note begging to do school. It’s less the joy of games, and more the joy of accomplishment, and the foundation slowly building is a solid one. We’ll keep building, one rock at a time, and see what happens.
|
|
Recent Comments