A story to tell your children:

The Bell and the Judge

In China there was once a wise judge named Chen Shu-ku.  A rich man came to him and complained that somebody in his household had stolen from him, but he did not know who it was.   Chen Shu-ku put a large bell in a curtained palanquin and brought it to the rich man’s house.  He smeared it all over with ink, but kept it behind the curtains.  He told all the household it was a magic bell that would always ring when a thief touched it.  Then he had each person reach through the curtain, one by one, to touch the magic bell.   Then he examined everybody’s hands and discovered the thief. 

How to tell it: 
Read it to yourself a few times, maybe once or twice a day for a week. Every time you read it, narrate it back to yourself.  Change it however you like- Use voices for the judge and the rich man.  Describe a few of the servants who reached in their hands to touch the bell - something like, 'first came the girl who made the dumplings in the kitchen.  She was quick and impatient to get back to her dumplings.  Then came the boy who worked in the garden. He was nervous because he wasn't sure if snacking on a peach once in a while was stealing or wages.  Then came the tutor for the rich man's children.  One by one the other servants came."
Write down the  the bare outline for the story.   Tell it to yourself, or the dog, or plant in the bookcase.

Then tell it to the children, nonchalantly, while doing dishes together, or folding laundry, or taking a break from chores.  Begin, "Did I ever tell you the story of the wisest judge in China?"  And go on.  Let the children think about how the judge knew who was the thief (he is the only one with no ink on his hands, because he was afraid to touch the bell).

Why do you want to collect a few stories to tell aloud?  Because it's part of a CM education.=)  She encouraged parents to collect a 'repertoire' of oral stories to tell.  More on that here.

There is also a good article I find on how this oral story telling builds emotional connections which I included in this edition of Education for All



$5.00- Education for All, vol 2- the Imagination (and more) issue!- transcript of the imagination talk from the AO Camp meeting, with additional material I had to cut to save time.  
   
 $5.00- Education for All, a new CM journal,   Feed Your Mind!  This issue contains several articles on handicrafts, outdoor play, nature study and science. See sidebar for purchasing options if you are in the Philippines.


 $3.00 Five Little Peppers and How They Grew Copywork (grades 2/3, carefully selected with an eye toward finely crafted sentences, lovely bits of writing pleasant to picture in the mind's eye, and practice in copying some of the mechanics of grammar and punctuation typically covered in these years.

  $3.00 Aesop's Fables Copywork for Year One!  Carefully selected with an eye toward well written sentences, memorable scenes, and some practice copying sentences that model the basics of capitalization and punctuation.   Suitable for use with children who have already mastered the strokes and letters for basic penmanship.

Picture Study!  Miguel Cabrera's beautiful, diverse families, painted in 18th century Mexico this package includes 9 downloadable prints along with directions for picture study and background information on the artist and his work. $5.00

Common Kitchen:  What's for lunch?  Isn't that a common problem in homeschooling families?  What to fix, what is quick, what is frugal, what is nourishing?  How can I accomplish all those things at once?  We homeschooled 7 children, and I was a homeschooling mom for 29 years on a single income.  I collected these recipes and snack ideas from all over the world.  These are real foods I used to feed my family, my godsons, and sometimes my grandkids.  Includes some cooking tips and suggestions for sides, and for a variety of substitutions.  I think every family will find something they can use here. $5.00

Ancient History Study

We did a couple of studies of ancient history with my children when they were younger. By ancient history, of course, I mostly mean what most of us in the West mean- Egypt, Greece and Rome, perhaps a smattering of the Phoenicians. It's interesting that when we speak of ancient history, we are not usually thinking of the incredible advances happening in China and other parts of Asia or the rest of Africa beyond Egypt in ancient times.

That said, the Miller and Synge books below are Western, but also do include more information about the eastern part of the world.   The whole history of Asia is well worth reading as well,  but I can only share what I know, not what I aspire to know.

 We used a lot of different books because I am a reforming book gobbler and too often I stuffed the children’s days with dozens of books and subjected them to death by reading over-load; like drinking from a fire hydrant. Don’t do that. I may have made you laugh, and that is what I meant to do, but I am not kidding.

 Of the books we used, these are the ones that stand out to me as being worth repeating if I were to do ancient history with middle school or below again- not that we’d repeat all of these, because remember what I said about subjecting your kids to an avalanche of books and how, DON’T? I meant it. So, I’d choose from some of these- but I would try to gauge the number of books I chose based on what we and/or independent readers could read and narrate from in just under three hours a day.

  This reading from the books mentioned below isn’t all we’d do- we’d still have math, music, foreign language, poetry (In addition to Home and Virgil, we'd read On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer; Ozymandias), copywork and dictation (dictation for year 4 and up), Bible, picture study, geography, etc, and etc. That’s why the reading plan you create from these books would have to be limited in number and spread out such a way that they could complete it in 3 hours or less in a given day. So much will depend on your family dynamics and the reading levels of your kids.

 History spine, choose from: Greenleaf Press– I really love their guides to famous men of Greek and Rome, their Old Testament study guide, and their Egypt study guide. I think most of the supplemental reads are better suited for fun free reads, not as living books for school, but the main study guide and primary text for each one is outstanding.

 Boys’ and Girls’ Herodotus : Being Parts of the History of Herodotus by John S. White- this is very readable, probably for about year 4 and up.

 Olive Beaupre Miller’s history series. These books are fantastic, but you have to be careful with your searches. Many booksellers are careless and will send you the wrong volume. They’ve also been published in a couple of different formats- a 9 volume set, a four volume set that combines volumes under the title Picturesque Tale of Progress and also as Story of Mankind. I prefer the red hardbacks of the shorter set- I personally like the cleaner look, the pages are better quality material so they don’t yellow and tan, and the pictures are more interesting to me, even though they are largely black and white outlines (they do have some nudity, just so you know but you can colour over it). T
Whether you choose the 4 or 9 vol set is a personal preference- I have a good friend whose opinions I respect a lot and she prefers the 9 volume, older Picturesque Tale of Progress.

IF you get the version republished by Dawn Chorus, you want these volumes: Beginnings I starts with ‘Early Man’, including wonderful illustrations of early cave art, followed by excellent coverage of the rise and fall of Egypt. Beginnings II covers Babylonia, the Assyrian empire, and an extensive overview of biblical history from Abraham to the Fall of Jerusalem. Conquests I follows the history of Crete and then Greece, from their rise as political states through to the conquests of Alexander the Great. Conquests II teaches the history of Rome, and includes extensive coverage of early Christianity, including the missionary journeys of Paul and the peaceful conquest of Rome by Christianity. New Nations I covers the Fall of the Roman Empire, and then turns to the Byzantine Empire, the Medieval Church, the Vikings, and the Feudal Age.

 These books are very readable, and full of illustrations and maps, so don’t let their size intimidate you. The text is engaging as well. And you wouldn’t do the entire series- just those volumes that cover ancient history.

 Synge is every bit as engaging as Miller, so you might prefer: On the Shores of the Great Sea (Illustrated) (The Story of the World Book 1)  It's also free online.  Many CM homeschoolers in the Philippines use this one because it has more world history rather than western history and geography only.

 Some people really like Guerber’s: The Story of the Greeks and the companion Story of the Romans 

For Egypt, The Book of Pharoahs

 And some might like Alfred Church’s Carthage, or the Empire of Africa - he has a lot of books you could use for a study of ancient history and he's an engaging writer with meaty ideas and excellent prose. Here's a whole page of his work at Amazon.

 I know choosing is hard, but you must. It’s important not to bury your students in an avalanche of reading (my progeny all are rolling their eyes and saying ‘Now she figures it out!’) . I mainly mention these various possibilities because if you have any of the above, that should be your choice- as I often tell people, the best book you could choose is often the one on your bookshelves already.


History supplement:
The Riddle of the Rosetta Stone 

 A biography or two: (two only if the second one is not by Jacob Abbott, he’s fantastic, but too long to do two of his in a year): Cyrus the Great Makers of History' Darius the Great Makers of History Alexander the Great Makers of History;   History of Julius Caesar...   I really like Jacob Abbott’s biographies. They are long, however, and very deep. So just pick one.

All Times, All Peoples, A World History of Slavery by Milton Meltzer- highly recommended

 Science:Famous Experiments and How to Repeat Them .  I love this book. You MUST do the experiments. And also write Brent Filson a note and beg him to consider republishing this one. Suitable for about 9-12, with some over/under with extra parental help for younger, with more external reading and writing assigned for older.

 This is also a good time to read a good book on the science of archeology, as well as the thought-provoking Motel of the Mysteries by David MaCaulay - but don't do this book with students younger than about sixth grade or 12 or so.  Remember, we do not not want to make cynics of children too young. It does not increase their discernment, it makes them unbecomingly opinioned, arrogant, and judgey far too young.

 Continue nature study as usual in whatever fashion is suitable for your students' ages.

 Literature: Alfred Church’s renditions of: Stories from Virgil, The Iliad for Boys and Girls, The Aeneid for Boys and Girls, The Odyssey for Boys and Girls,  Stories from Ancient Rome, Carthage, and others by this author

 Padraic Colum’s retellings are also fantastic. You could mix and match: The Odyssey, or The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy or  The Golden Fleece  (hardback: The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles), or use this multi-volume set.

D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths

 Government/statesmanship: Also continue Plutarch, naturally. I am very pleased with the series by my dear friend Anne White, of course.  Here's the first: The Plutarch Project, Volume One: Marcus Cato the Censor, Philopoemen, and Titus Flamininus (Volume 1)
 By the way, do not let anybody try to tell you the ancient Greeks were all about head knowledge and didn’t care about character.  This is so untrue that it baffles me as to where the notion comes from, and I cannot trust any related information from those who espouse this view.

 Hymn study:Learn about what may be the oldest known Greek Christian notated hymn

 Shakespeare: Julius Caesar (preferred) or  Antony and Cleopatra

 You might also find some choices for biography or statesmanship or supplemental history reading in John Lord’s Beacon Lights of History, free online at Gutenberg.

 For parents: Why Read Plutarch 
 Mortimer Adler: Why read the Great Books? 
Why REad Challenging Older Books?
 Read this summary of an excellent address by the late Daniel Boorstin,  historian par excellence, as well the 12th Librarian of Congress.  He said that trying to plan for the future without a sense of the past is like trying to plant cut flowers. We’re gathering a lot of cut flowers and trying to plant them.

~ …The Greeks said that character is destiny, and the more I read and understand of history, the more convinced I am that they were right.

 Gods, Graves & Scholars: The Story of Archaeology 

 Most of the above are affiliate links. However, you can find many of them free online as well.

How to schedule:
How many weeks long do you plan your study to last?
Add up the number of pages total in the books you choose, divide it by the number of weeks.  That's how much reading your student will have to do each week (plus their other work in other subjects).  Cut back books until you have a fairly well rounded list and a couple hours worth of reading to do in Ancient history studies each day.
It's really much simpler than it sounds.  Let the books do the teaching. Let the narrating do the processing.  Don't overdo it.    God bless!

Made by Wendi!  I put together a couple of ezines, a collection of recipes and some other goodies that I think you'll enjoy.  Take a look below!
 https://gumroad.com/wendiwanders



$5.00- Education for All, vol 2- the Imagination (and more) issue!- transcript of the imagination talk from the AO Camp meeting, with additional material I had to cut to save time.  
   
 $5.00- Education for All, a new CM journal,   Feed Your Mind!  This issue contains several articles on handicrafts, outdoor play, nature study and science. See sidebar for purchasing options if you are in the Philippines.


 $3.00 Five Little Peppers and How They Grew Copywork (grades 2/3, carefully selected with an eye toward finely crafted sentences, lovely bits of writing pleasant to picture in the mind's eye, and practice in copying some of the mechanics of grammar and punctuation typically covered in these years.

  $3.00 Aesop's Fables Copywork for Year One!  Carefully selected with an eye toward well written sentences, memorable scenes, and some practice copying sentences that model the basics of capitalization and punctuation.   Suitable for use with children who have already mastered the strokes and letters for basic penmanship.

Picture Study!  Miguel Cabrera's beautiful, diverse families, painted in 18th century Mexico this package includes 9 downloadable prints along with directions for picture study and background information on the artist and his work. $5.00

Common Kitchen:  What's for lunch?  Isn't that a common problem in homeschooling families?  What to fix, what is quick, what is frugal, what is nourishing?  How can I accomplish all those things at once?  We homeschooled 7 children, and I was a homeschooling mom for 29 years on a single income.  I collected these recipes and snack ideas from all over the world.  These are real foods I used to feed my family, my godsons, and sometimes my grandkids.  Includes some cooking tips and suggestions for sides, and for a variety of substitutions.  I think every family will find something they can use here. $5.00

Laundry Preschool

When my 6th child was three a relative came to visit and expressed consternation because our three year old didn't know her colors yet, and somebody else's younger grandchild did. This would have upset and worried me with my firstborn, but by my sixth child I'd learned a thing or two, so I wasn't worried about it. I told my relation that when this child was ready, she'd know her colors, and she would not be 'behind' when she did.

I had learned that little children really are sponges for knowledge, and they are gathering information and knowledge all the time. After all, it's not like we all walk around our homes in isolation, never speaking. We mention these things as part of daily life (I like the blue shirt better, those red flowers are pretty, orange starbursts are my favorites,this toast is burnt black as midnight, has anybody seen the other green/red/blue/purple/yellow/white/black/white/brown/pink/orange/chartreuse
sock?).

Sure enough, about six months later, my little girl knew all her colors without any particular effort on my part- and she knew lots of other things, too, because while that other mother was expending a lot of time and focused attention getting her much younger child to learn that one thing ahead of everyone else, my child was picking up all kinds of knowledge as naturally as a bird pecks up crumbs. By the time the children were five years old, if you had to guess, you would not guess that it was _my_ child who learnt her colors last.  This wasn't about which mother loved her kids more or which kid was smarter.

This isn't about being smug.  I had been that other mother with my first.  I had just learned that I could work really, really hard and diligently and teach a one year one her colours, or I could just wait and it would happen naturally, with far less focused attention on my part, and that freed me up to do other things with my child.

We have had the same experience with counting (my children learn to count from playing hide 'n seek with their siblings), the alphabet (reading aloud alphabet books, and taking our time), and sizes- big, biggest, small, smallest, middle sized- these concepts we generally learn from the Story of the Three Bears or from choosing which piece of cake we want.

With our smallest children we had become, in other words, big fans of natural learning.

 Years ago we were preparing to adopt two children, the elder of the two was nearly six years old. I wasn't sure if we should home school the eldest or not, since she had so many special needs. Chief among them is a severe developmental disability. I visited her classroom. I looked at catalogs for special needs materials. I read books on teaching kids with developmental delays and disabilities. I noticed that over and over, the materials used were expensive representations of things found at home. For teaching matching skills there would be flash cards with photographs of socks, shoes, utensils, and clothing. I could see why this would streamline things in a classroom setting, but I wondered if I couldn't just use real socks and shoes. For teaching counting there were impossibly colored little plastic bears, and while there's nothing wrong with that,  I thought we could do the same thing with naturally colored seashells, buttons, acorns, or raisins. Since so many of the materials for the disabled were imitations of things found in a home, I wondered if maybe her new  home just might be the best place for our soon-to-be-new-daughter to be, so that's what we did.  Then I realized the same principles apply to other younglings.  They could learn all those preschool skills at home, naturally.

Laundry is a great time for working on the skills of sorting by color, size, or style and of matching up pairs of like things. Do you know how many pairs of socks a family of nine goes through in a week? We had six little girls who liked socks in colours like blue, yellow, orange, pink, purple.  They liked patterns, too, so we had stripes and polka-dots, hearts, flowers, stars, and occasionally, fruits and  diamonds, a veritable Lucky Charms of socks.  Boy, did we have multiple opportunities to do some matching!

Laundry is also a good opportunity to hone some early connections and thinking skills. As you fold or sort, you can be asking your young child questions such as "who wears this?
Do we wear this when it's hot or cold? Does this go on your hand or your
foot?  Is this a good thing to wear hiking in the woods?  Would this fit Daddy? Why not?  Would this fit the baby? Why not?  What would happen if a porcupine tried to wear this?"

When you want to teach shapes you can use the laundry again if you use cloth napkins, washclothes, and towels. Fold them into squares, rectangles and triangles.  Or look for shapes on the clothes, in their patterns and in the buttons.

 Lunches and snacks are also good places to learn shapes- slice bananas into circles, cut an apple sideways to look at the star, eat a spherical cherry tomato. You can also learn shapes from neighborhood street signs.

Lunch and laundry folding are great opportunities to learn basic fractions (fold it in half, fold it in half again, cut it into thirds, divide that sandwich in fourths) and cooperation. You can also count socks, sing "this is the way we wash the clothes...", sing "One little, two little, three little undies" to the tune of Ten Little Indians, and develop habits of order all just by doing laundry together.

When it is time to clean up a game or playthings, you can work on colours by asking a small tot to pick up all the red toys, or all the round things. You can play 'I spy' and look for round or square things on a page in a book or in the living room, or at the grocery store.  You can look for red things at the grocery store, or count the produce as you put it in a bag.

If you need to work on scissors skills, you can have a child help cut out coupons, or use the grocery fliers and cut out pictures of food for a pictorial shopping list, or a birthday list, or to make cards for relatives or people from your church.

When you want to teach your child your phone number and address, set it to music (a simple tune you already know) and sing while doing dishes, wiping the table, or dusting together.  Small tots can dust the legs of chairs or tables, or spray and wipe door knobs and light switches. They can be given a small metal creamer and told to water plants by filling that creamer with water *one* time to water each plant, or six times to fill the dog's water bowl.

They learn one to one correspondence (an early math skill) by setting the table- one plate for each family member, one fork for each plate, one napkin for each fork, and so on.

All chores are _great_ opportunities for bonding. I've always found that working together on a project is a wonderful way to foster a spirit of cooperation and togetherness.

Make the chores and daily routines part of your rhythm as a family. Don't isolate the children from real life by creating institutionalized preschools at home. God put them in a family, use the life and routine of your family.

For instance, we have to eat. But we don't have to eat the same way every day. Sometimes we have picnics outside (to a small child a sandwich on a tablecloth in the grass is a grand picnic.. We've even had picnics in the living room on the floor (popcorn, cheese and fruit is a
great nutritious, easy, living room picnic). Sometimes we have had candle-light dinners,
with a fancy table setting and our macaroni and cheese or black bean sloppy
joes, or a fancier meal of chicken and artichoke crepes.

Finish up doing the dishes with some water play in the sink. Give your child a
ride on the vacuum cleaner while you vacuum. Play marching games while picking
up the toys. Talk about things you care about while doing the dishes, cutting up the vegetables for a salad, or making the beds. Weed the garden together, and talk while you're doing it.

 I am much more impressed by a small child who can match socks and fold pillowcases than by a small child who can quote his numbers by rote- the first child knows what
she's doing. It has meaning for her. She's proudly making a contribution to her family. She's building brain connections that matter. I'm not worried about counting, she'll pick it up with out trouble.

The second child has a skill that he understands little, and it's useful for
impressing others, but for all the meaning it has to him in his real life, he
might just as well memorize license plates or commercials. They'd be equally
useless to him *at that age,* and there's no reason they won't be able to pick up the rote memory streams of facts like numbers of alphabet letters later.

Years ago I tried teaching my small people some rote facts that did not have much meaning for them. I did this because I had read about it in a description of one educational approach. According to what I read, children find rote memorization so easy that this is a good time to feed them lots of lists to memorize and they can figure out what it's all about much later. We didn't have a lot of success with this method, although we did have a lot of frustration. One of the things we tried to help the girls memorize was a little song about bacteria from Lyrical Life Science. They almost learned it well enough sing along with the tape, but they could never sing without the tape, and it was always a source of frustration for them. Years later those girls took a biology course, and after their biology class they happened to hear that song again. "Ohhhh," said one of them, "that song makes a lot more sense now. It would be easier to learn now that I know what they are talking about, too." For my children, having some understanding of the ideas behind a concept is vital before they can memorize the facts and details.

So my smaller children may not have learnt the alphabet until they were six, while their neighbors half their age might be reciting the names of the Presidents and the alphabets of three languages.  I believe small children ought to be spending those preschool years helping out around the house, listening to stories, singing nursery songs, reciting Mother Goose, hearing Bible stories,  climbing trees, splashing in puddles, digging in the mud, playing hopscotch, sliding down hills, rolling, jumping, skipping, and having teaparties and making mud pies, daydreaming, and generally " wasting their time "in other seemingly frivolous play while others are inside working over flashcards and workbooks.

There is plenty of research indicating that any early apparent gains made by learning the alphabet at 2 disappear quickly.   By the time kids are 8-10 years old, one would be hardpressed to accurately guess which child learned the alphabet last.

 It doesn't always have to be an either/or situation, of course, but it often is, because parents, being busy people, sometimes focus on academics to the exclusion of other things, and for young children, pretty much everything else *but* academics is more useful and important to their development.

For those interested in learning more, I strongly recommend reading Jane Healy's _Your Child's Growing Mind,_ anything by Ruth Beechick or John Holt, and volume one of Charlotte Mason's six volume series.

And don't forget to play.

$5.00- Education for All, vol 2- the Imagination (and more) issue!- transcript of the imagination talk from the AO Camp meeting, with additional material I had to cut to save time.  

   
 $5.00- Education for All, a new CM journal,   Feed Your Mind!  This issue contains several articles on handicrafts, outdoor play, nature study and science. See sidebar for purchasing options if you are in the Philippines.

 $3.00 Five Little Peppers and How They Grew Copywork (grades 2/3, carefully selected with an eye toward finely crafted sentences, lovely bits of writing pleasant to picture in the mind's eye, and practice in copying some of the mechanics of grammar and punctuation typically covered in these years.

  $3.00 Aesop's Fables Copywork for Year One!  Carefully selected with an eye toward well written sentences, memorable scenes, and some practice copying sentences that model the basics of capitalization and punctuation.   Suitable for use with children who have already mastered the strokes and letters for basic penmanship.

Picture Study!  Miguel Cabrera's beautiful, diverse families, painted in 18th century Mexico this package includes 9 downloadable prints along with directions for picture study and background information on the artist and his work. $5.00

Common Kitchen:  What's for lunch?  Isn't that a common problem in homeschooling families?  What to fix, what is quick, what is frugal, what is nourishing?  How can I accomplish all those things at once?  We homeschooled 7 children, and I was a homeschooling mom for 29 years on a single income.  I collected these recipes and snack ideas from all over the world.  These are real foods I used to feed my family, my godsons, and sometimes my grandkids.  Includes some cooking tips and suggestions for sides, and for a variety of substitutions.  I think every family will find something they can use here. $5.00

Revival of Learning

My Very Dear Friends, It gives me particular delight to welcome you here just now...as staunch fellow workers labouring for what one of us- a P.N.E.U.member- describes as a new Revival of Learning.
The note of joyousness which I usually find in Old Students' letters and in the examination papers of their children is to my mind the note of the revival we are working for, because it is almost always joy in books, in knowledge.  You remember that delightful schoolmaster of the Middle Ages, who called his Mantuan school La Giocosa because it was in truth a house of joy, the joys being those of plain living and high thinking, and of great delight in learning, joys shared by prince and peasant, for Vittorine did not believe that the love of knowledge belonged to any one class. Your little schoolrooms often remind me of La Giocosa, in fact, each of them is La Giocosa because the children are vitalized by their delight in knowledge.

From an address Charlotte Mason gave to a meeting of old students from her teaching school, republished in L'Umile Pianta : For the Children's Sake. 1914, May. p. 1-83.

I will say that I consider one of Miss Mason's faults to be her unfailing optimism.  It is not my experience that every child finds the process of education to be a joyful experience.  It's still worthwhile, and one hopes they will learn to find joy in knowledge at some point, but one carries on regardless.



$5.00- Education for All, vol 2- the Imagination (and more) issue!- transcript of the imagination talk from the AO Camp meeting, with additional material I had to cut to save time.  
   
 $5.00- Education for All, a new CM journal,   Feed Your Mind!  This issue contains several articles on handicrafts, outdoor play, nature study and science. See sidebar for purchasing options if you are in the Philippines.


 $3.00 Five Little Peppers and How They Grew Copywork (grades 2/3, carefully selected with an eye toward finely crafted sentences, lovely bits of writing pleasant to picture in the mind's eye, and practice in copying some of the mechanics of grammar and punctuation typically covered in these years.

  $3.00 Aesop's Fables Copywork for Year One!  Carefully selected with an eye toward well written sentences, memorable scenes, and some practice copying sentences that model the basics of capitalization and punctuation.   Suitable for use with children who have already mastered the strokes and letters for basic penmanship.

Picture Study!  Miguel Cabrera's beautiful, diverse families, painted in 18th century Mexico this package includes 9 downloadable prints along with directions for picture study and background information on the artist and his work. $5.00

Common Kitchen:  What's for lunch?  Isn't that a common problem in homeschooling families?  What to fix, what is quick, what is frugal, what is nourishing?  How can I accomplish all those things at once?  We homeschooled 7 children, and I was a homeschooling mom for 29 years on a single income.  I collected these recipes and snack ideas from all over the world.  These are real foods I used to feed my family, my godsons, and sometimes my grandkids.  Includes some cooking tips and suggestions for sides, and for a variety of substitutions.  I think every family will find something they can use here. $5.00

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch on Reading Aloud (Hint: Don't Interrupt for Vocab lessons!)

“Don’t stop (I say) to explain that Hebe was (for once) the legitimate daughter of Zeus and, as such, had the privilege to draw wine for the Gods. Don’t even stop, just yet, to explain who the Gods were. Don’t discourse on amber, otherwise ambergris; don’t explain that ‘gris’ in this connection doesn’t mean ‘grease’; don’t trace it through the Arabic into Noah’s Ark; don’t prove its electrical properties by tearing up paper into little bits and attracting them with the mouth-piece of your pipe rubbed on your sleeve. Don’t insist philologically that when every shepherd ‘tells his tale’ he is not relating an anecdote but simply keeping ‘tally’ of his flock. Just go on reading, as well as you can, and be sure that when the children get the thrill of the story, for which you wait, they will be asking more questions, and pertinent ones, than you are able to answer.”—(“On the Art of Reading for Children,” by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.)

This precisely how Miss Mason approaches reading to children. A tiny bit of preparatory remarks, sufficient to fill a few minutes at most is recommended for books that may need a bit of seasoning to draw the children. However, endless worksheets, long lists of vocabulary words, fill in the blank questions, and even (dare I say this), lapbooks, are simply not necessary. In most cases, they are a distraction from the real work of the mind, which, as I have said before, occurs in the mind. A final and important step in that work of the mind is for the mind of the child to reproduce some of his mental processing for others, to communicate that knowledge. This is narration.

I found the quote at the end of Van Loon’s- The Story of Mankind

It’s in Lecture VII of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s book On The Art of Reading

Children's Literature the Law of the Right Vocabulary

Nancy Bond is the author of several books, but the one we know is her first, The String in the Harp. Set in Wales, it’s an eery but compelling fantasy with time travel elements. The Time-travel element is unusual in that characters can witness some events from the past, but they cannot participate or interact, like ghosts, only they haven’t died; they haven’t even been born.

One of the main characters has found an ancient harp-key that at times seems to open a window into the past- but this is fraying the fabric of both past and present. Peter, the main character, must find a way to return the object to its rightful owner. My fourth daughter may have summed it up when she said, “It was weird, but I read it twice.”

Those uncomfortable with anything smacking of magic or fantasy won’t like this one, and I would recommend looking for it at your library before buying it. I did enjoy it and we have a copy on our bookshelves. We picked up ours at a used booksale.

There is an interview with her here. Budding writers will find it interesting because she talks about the craft of writing.There is a tantalizing reference or two to Charlotte Guest’s retelling of the Mabinogion, as well as the books of Rosemary Sutcliffe and TH White’s Once and Future King.

I found myself more and more interested in Bond and her ideas about writing and how she goes about it, and then I was brought up with a jolt by this:

If I were to write for younger children, I think I would have to be very aware of the kind of language and number of words I use. I deliberately chose to write for older children because I didn’t want to think about such matters. I just wanted to write a story.

It’s true, she would have to be very aware of the ‘number of words’ she used if she was writing a book for younger children to read themselves and she wished a publisher to accept that title. But isn’t that sad? It reminded me of this quote from Phyllis McGinley’s Sixpence in Her Shoe (a book every reading mother should have on her shelves):

From the first nursery rhyme to the last Arthurian legend, they [children] should have what even their elders do not often get in a story- accomplished style, honest motivation, characters proficiently drawn.

And while those qualities can be found here if one searches, the mass of the writing is limp, listless, unoriginal, mediocre, and humdrum. Plots are insipid or mechanical. Too many pictures smother the story. And even when the writing lifts itself above accepted ‘juvenile standards, its vigor is drained away by that leech among publishing structures- the Law of the Right Vocabulary….

Emphasis mine. Mrs. McGinley then tells a charming story about the day her 5 year old daughter was home from school ill and confined to bed. To while away the time her mother began to read to her. She merely picked up the closest book to hand, and it was The Wind in the Willows. Even Mrs. McGinley began to have misgivings, she says:

“Look dear,” I said, “preparing to shut the pages, these are awfully hard words. I think the book is too old for you.”
The patient was not only firm, she was distraught. “I don’t care,” she cried. “I don’t care if it’s too hard for me. I don’t care if I can’t understand the words. I just want to hear that story.”

And so she read on, and her daughter absolutely loved it.

I wonder how many fine writers of the same caliber as Nancy Bond have been dissuaded from writing for younger children because they believe they would have to count words and syllables and measure them out with a parsimonious and cheeseparing hand.

It's a tragedy we cannot even measure.

Charlotte Mason and Ideas, part II

Previously

The House and Home, A Practical Book, Volume 1. Published 1894-1896, and edited by Lyman Abbot. I borrowed this picture from the Smithsonian. My copy is faded, water stained, and in very poor condition, which simply means I can read it without worrying about messing it up.=)

One section is by Kate Douglas Wiggin (author of several books, including  Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, the Birds Christmas Carol, and my favourite, Mother Carey's Chickens and others) .  Her section in this book is titled "on The Training of Children." She’s really writing about the education of children. In many ways her ideas dovetail Miss Masons’- they were roughly from the same time period, after all, and the ideas and assumptions of the time permeated their thinking no less than the ideas and assumptions of our era permeates ours. The two women also read and esteemed many of the same authors.

Wiggin was a proponent of Froebel’s ideas- she, perhaps more than any other single person, introduced and promoted the kindgergarten in America. Miss Mason did admire Froebel and she was grateful for his work. But while she agreed with some of his ideas, she did not agree with some of his over-riding principles and several of his specific ideas and practices (you may remember she called the Kindergarten songs 'inane' for one example).

Wiggin explains in this volume (House and Home) that her ideas on the general training of children come from her study of and experience with Froebel’s educational philosophy. She recommends him as a source of “insight into child nature, for a vision of the ideal *relationships* your child should sustain toward all created things…” (emphasis mine) She says that Froebel’s great distinction was that he was the first to apply the theory of evolution to education and practice it, and that the “details of actual practice are the outcome of sound psychological principles.” That emphasis on relationships is certainly something that resonates with those who have read Charlotte Mason.  The idea that practice arises from principles (which come from philosophy) is also quite compatible with Mason's approach.  I'm not so sure about the application of evolutionary theory to education.  Mason seems more nebulous on this point to me.  My sense is that she is inclined to accept evolution generally, but when it came to evolution or recapitulation theory as a key to childhood development, she is faced with the contradictions of the children themselves:

"Even Professor Sully, in his most delightful book, [Studies of Children]... is torn in two. The children have conquered him, have convinced him beyond doubt that they are as ourselves, only more so. But then he is an evolutionist, and feels himself pledged to accommodate the child to the principles of evolution. Therefore the little person is supposed to go through a thousand stages of moral and intellectual development, leading him from the condition of the savage or ape to that of the intelligent and cultivated human being. If children will not accommodate themselves pleasantly to this theory, why, that is their fault, and Professor

Sully is too true a child-lover not to give us the children as they are, with little interludes of the theory upon which they ought to evolve. Now I have absolutely no theory to advance, and am, on scientific grounds, disposed to accept the theories of the evolutionary psychologists. But facts are too strong for me." (volume 2)

Wiggin also says that many others recognized the value of play in early childhood- "Plato, Quintillian, Luther, Fenelon, Locke, Richter-” but Froebel alone recognized its true evolutionary meaning. It was Froebel, according to Wiggin, who was a proponent of the idea that  child development is best approached through the training of the faculties because of evolutionary development.  This is exactly what Mason is talking about in the passage above- that evolutionists were claiming this, but the children themselves did not support the notion.

In this recent post I pointed out that in volume 3 Miss Mason came right out and said that the whole idea about developing these separate ‘faculties of the mind’ was a “pestilent fallacy which has, perhaps, been more injurious than any other to the cause of education.”  So while Froebel and Mason have many theories and ideas in common, she sharply rejects portions of his philosophy in other key points.

Froebel wanted the children to exercise their minds-or rather, he wanted for the teacher to do this for the children.  While Mason did envision an important role for the teacher and parent in the children's lives she didn’t want the teacher coming between the children and the books.  Froebel also believed that this exercise of the mind must be the right exercise at the right time, and the mind exercises must grow continuously higher and more varied in character, growing naturally out of preceding stages- almost like Haekel's recapitulation theory of human fetal development(long debunked because it was fraud to begin with). Froebel’s method was to train the faculties through organized play, a unique use of stories, a unique system of object lessons to arouse the senses. This, again, is the antithesis of Mason’s approach. Or rather, her approach is the anthesis of his, since she was largely rejecting certain of his ideas and replacing them with her own or ideas she had found through her research which preceded Froebel's.

Froebel felt it was important for the teacher to make the connections and point them out for the children, to teach them things in the properly correct order that would draw out those faculties - it mattered *how* they learned because they needed to learn these things in the correct evolutionary order.  Miss Masons did not believe in those faculties  as separate targets for education, and she felt that even if she was wrong about their existence, it was not necessary to train them- giving the children knowledge, ideas, and the faculties would take care of themselves.  Nor was it necessary, apart from the first six years being spent in play, to develop those faculties in a perfect order devised by scientific theories. Miss Mason believed strongly that the children should make their own connections.  She observed, and it has been my experience as well that the person making the connections is the person doing the learning, or at least the majority of it. I know I love doing the learning myself, but my goal in homeschooling was for my children to be the primary beneficiaries of this home education.

According to Wiggin, Froebel also wanted children to learn self-expression through creative activity. This is another area where you have to know something of what Froebel taught in order to understand what Miss Mason is saying, to see a very specific, details point of clearly stated disagreement with Froebel and the Kindergarten. Mason plainly stated that we do not encourage self-expression in these small children, as they most of them come by it naturally anyway, and more importantly, it makes them a bit false in their judgments of themselves. It makes them think of themselves more highly than they ought- after all, Miss Mason pointed out, the child has little to express and few skills to express it. Rather than fostering self-expression as a goal in and of itself, Miss Mason suggested that we give them lots of ideas so that they will have ideas to express and the literary tools to express them.  We don't squelch self-expression, but we don't have to pull it out with false praise and cheesy projects.  We give them real things to think about and worthwhile things to do instead.

Froebel, according to Wiggin, believed “the mind moves on from its perceptions and love of nature’s
symbols to a realization of the truth symbolized.” He emphasized the importance of symbols- there were certain shapes that were to be the child’s first toys because they were important ‘symbols,’ and he wrote things like “

plants, especially trees, are a mirror, or
rather a symbol, of human life in its highest spiritual relations;

” He wrote also of the ‘higher symbolic meaning’ of the games children played, and which he later developed for use in his kindgergartens. He even saw vowels and consonants has being symbols for some deeper, metaphysical meaning-

the vowels _a_, _o_, _u_, _e_, _i_, _ä_,
_au_, _ei_, resembled, so to speak, force, spirit, the (inner) subject,
whilst the consonants symbolised matter, body, the (outer) object.

He saw a world where a lily was not a lily, but a symbol of longing for peace and tranquility, and a ball was not a ball, for a symbol of something else, and toys and games were chosen for his kindergarten based on their symbolic associations.

Once I knew this, when I read Miss Mason’s plea for children to “let them play with real things, not with symbols,” I understood her to be rejecting at least this portion of Froebek;s work.

Wiggin wrote that “Kindergarten games are a systematized sequence of human experiences, in which the child interprets more and more clearly to himself his own life and the life of mankind,” and the kindergarten child did this through ‘child culture’ and games called ‘mother play.’ Miss Mason did not speak approvingly of these practices.

In volume 1, on page 82, MIss Mason does speak with approval of old-fashioned, traditional singing games, but of the kindergarten version she says, “The promoters of the kindergarten system have done much to introduce games of this, or rather of a more educational kind; but is it not a fact that the singing games of the kindergarten are apt to be somewhat inane? Also, it is doubtful how far the prettiest plays, learnt at school and from a teacher, will take hold of the children as do the games which have been passed on from hand to hand through an endless chain of children, and are not be found in the print-books at all.”

I know this kind of historical digging and philosophical pondering isn't everybody's cup of tea. But for myself, I find it interesting to read through both Charlotte Mason and other writers roughly her contemporaries and pull out the tangled threads of connections, agreements, and disagreements in order to come to a deeper understanding of what Miss Mason’s ideas were.

As for where Froebel and Mason were more in agreement or not, In one Parents and Children article Mason briefly explained some educational philosophies, including Froebel’s, and then said, ‘Perhaps, indeed, this [idea] of the Kindergarten is the one vital conception of education that we have,” and her very next word was ‘but.’ In that section following her ‘but,’ she asks (rhetorically) “How much is there in this pleasing and easy doctrine that the drawing forth and strengthening and directing of the several “faculties” is education?”

She answers that by saying that it is a ‘misconception that the development and the exercise of the “faculties” is the object of education,’ and that ‘the development of the faculties (are there any “faculties”?) are only indirectly our care.’

If you’d like to read more (and for a better explanation) about how Miss Mason disagreed with Froebel’s kindergarten theory and other educational theories in vogue in her day, you might read her own words. I should start in volume 3, page 56,and volume 1, page 198 (give or take a couple of pages), where Miss Mason quotes with approval:

Dr Stanley Hall on the Kindergarten.–“The most decadent intellectual new departure of the American Froebelists is the emphasis now laid upon the mother-plays as the acme of Kindergarten wisdom. These are represented by very crude poems, indifferent music and pictures, illustrating certain incidents of child life believed to be of fundamental and typical significance. I have read these in German and in English, have strummed the music, and have given a brief course of lectures from the sympathetic standpoint, trying to put all the new wine of meaning I could think of into them. But I am driven to the conclusion that, if they are not positively unwholesome and harmful for the child, and productive of anti-scientific and unphilosphical intellectual habits in the teacher, they should nevertheless be superseded by the far better things now available.”

I hope this has been helpful rather than obfuscationary. =)

Postscript- I heard recently, much to my surprise, the claim that Mason was a Progressive Educator.  If you look up progressive education on Wikipedia you will find some names you recognize, if you have read Mason.  Names like Froebel, Pestalozzi, Herbart, Rousseau.  Those who have read Mason will recognize them as names of educationalists whose work Mason specifically singled out as philosophers of education whose work she appreciated, had merit, but who had failed, or had ideas that had turned out to be false, and Mason was correcting them.     Mason shared a couple of ideas or practices with the Progressive Educators, but largely, she was refuting them.  Note:

Most Progressive Educators share these traits:

• Emphasis on learning by doing – hands-on projects, expeditionary learning, experiential learning-  Mason believed this was the way children learn for the first six years, but after that, most of their education is through reading.
• Integrated curriculum focused on thematic units- otherwise known as 'correlation of lessons,' which Mason directly rejected except for direct, unstrained historical connections.
• Integration of entrepreneurship into education- not really a feature of Mason's approach.
• Strong emphasis on problem solving and critical thinking- Mason's approach is more natural and integral to reading and thinking about real, living books. 
• Group work and development of social skills- 
• Understanding and action as the goals of learning as opposed to rote knowledge- here they have more in common.
• Collaborative and cooperative learning projects - not much.
• Education for social responsibility and democracy - More in agreement here.
• Highly personalized learning accounting for each individual's personal goals- Mason actually believed in a core curriculum shared by all classes of children.
• Integration of community service and service learning projects into the daily curriculum- 
• Selection of subject content by looking forward to ask what skills will be needed in future society- Mason opposed this utilitarian approach. She was interested primarily in the development of conduct and character.
• De-emphasis on textbooks in favor of varied learning resources- de-emphasis on textbooks, but Mason believed we were educated most by living books.
• Emphasis on lifelong learning and social skills- definitely share an emphasis on lifelong learning. 
• Assessment by evaluation of child's projects and productions. Assessment by evaluation of the term's exam work submitted to Mason and her committee of evaluates. Some evaluation of projects such as nature notebooks, singing, and foreign language skills.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------- $5.00- Education for All, a new CM journal, Buy Now!   Feed Your Mind!  This issue contains several articles on handicrafts, outdoor play, nature study and science.

New! 
(see sidebar for purchasing options if you are in the Philippines)

 $3.00 Five Little Peppers and How They Grew Copywork (grades 2/3, carefully selected with an eye toward finely crafted sentences, lovely bits of writing pleasant to picture in the mind's eye, and practice in copying some of the mechanics of grammar and punctuation typically covered in these years.


  $3.00 Aesop's Fables Copywork for Year One!  Carefully selected with an eye toward well written sentences, memorable scenes, and some practice copying sentences that model the basics of capitalization and punctuation.   Suitable for use with children who have already mastered the strokes and letters for basic penmanship.

Common Assumptions

C.S. Lewis on old books

Let's chat!

Every era has common assumptions we all take for granted, beliefs so commonly accepted that we don't even think of them as 'beliefs,' and to pick them out of our heads and examine them is as impossible as deciphering the individual molecules of the air we breathe.

An excellent illustration of the sort of thing I mean can be found any time you read older books. Take Charlotte Mason as an example. She was an educator in the Victorian era, popular today with certain bookish, liberal arts inclined homeschoolers like myself. She wrote six lovely volumes ( the sixth is my personal favourite) about her philosophy of education. In order to explain what she believes about education and where she differs from other theories she often goes into great detail, first explaining what those other ideas are, and then, very gently, where she disagrees with them.

When reading Mason it’s easy to see similarities between her approach and some other contemporary-to-her (or older) philosophy of education. Miss Mason was a well-read woman, and there are few writings on education available in her day which she did not read. CM and Montessori had some ideas and practices in common, just as Miss Mason did with Froebel, Pestalozzi, Plato, and even Rousseau, who preceded her by many decades, but was still very popular when she wrote. She sort of cherry picked, or gleaned, for good ideas everywhere.

So one reason for some similarities is because Miss Mason deliberately borrowed the ideas she thought best from each educator and fit them into her own philosophy. But there’s another reason. She and Montessori were contemporaries, so they also shared certain underlying assumptions in common with their time. As C. S. Lewis put it (in an article worth reading in its entirety for its own sake):

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions.

It is a very humbling thought, is it not, that a hundred years from now, people will look back up on us and what we wrote and thought and see more agreement between, say, an easy believism evangelicial, an atheist, and a full five point Calvinist, or a staunch pro-life advocate and equally staunch pro-abortion proponent.  Possibly a hundred years from now people will look back on some current topic of great debate and won't even be able to tell what we thought we were arguing about.

From time to time I find myself pondering what our own particular ‘great mass of common assumptions’ might be. And how would we know ? Because the thing about common assumptions is that they are assumed, taken for granted, believed as thoughtlessly as we take in the air we breathe.

-----------------------------------
 $5.00- Education for All, a new CM journal, Buy Now!   Feed Your Mind!  This issue contains several articles on handicrafts, outdoor play, nature study and science. See sidebar for purchasing options if you are in the Philippines.

New! 
 $3.00 Five Little Peppers and How They Grew Copywork (grades 2/3, carefully selected with an eye toward finely crafted sentences, lovely bits of writing pleasant to picture in the mind's eye, and practice in copying some of the mechanics of grammar and punctuation typically covered in these years.
  $3.00 Aesop's Fables Copywork for Year One!  Carefully selected with an eye toward well written sentences, memorable scenes, and some practice copying sentences that model the basics of capitalization and punctuation.   Suitable for use with children who have already mastered the strokes and letters for basic penmanship.