School Days

We've been hard at work here in Hobbiton. Working on the three L's--Latin, logic and logarithms. We've been studying plants and bugs including this dangerous and disgusting one that has taken up residence in the pond in the back yard. They have been eating our frogs and polliwogs. It squeaks when caught. (use gloves!!)We've been reading our way through Churchill's The Birth of Britain, The Brendan Voyage, and The Merchant of Venice. (I love the Ambleside site although I don't really follow it...)

I really like Traditional Logic
from Memoria Press. I bought the DVD's and we are moving along quite nicely. Although one of the hobbits will keep writing "sillygism".

Our days are also full of chopping wood, archery, nephew/grandbaby adoring, and of course lots of reading!

Not Back to School Day

Until recently a friend hosted a Not Back to School picnic on the first day of public school. Alas, she moved to Texas and I am not so good at organizing things. We are celebrating not going back to school in a quiter way. The twin hobbits are small game hunting with their dad who happens to have today off. Little Hobbit (well, not so little Hobbit as he turned 12 a couple of weeks ago!) and I will spend the morning puttering about the yard looking for interesting bugs. I hope eveyone has enjoyed not going back to school this September!

Poetry Monday

Summer Drought
by J.P. Irvine

Yet, ere the moon, as brass the heaven turns,
The cruel sun smites with unerring aim,
The sight and touch of all things blinds and burns,
And bare, hot hills seem shimmering into flame!

On outspread wings a hawk, far poised on high,
Quick swooping screams, and then is heard no more:
The strident shrilling of a locust nigh
Breaks forth, and dies in silence as before.


Note: I found this gem in the Hawk section of Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study.

Faire Day!

We spent the day at the Great Lakes Medeaval Faire. Joe bartered his chain mail for a really awesome sword! Everyone had a great time!(I don't know why the antique car was there!?!

Budget Hobbits

I'm joining the Hobbit party!

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/07/27/wsj-tea-party-hobbits-need-to-go-back-to-middle-earth-or-something/comment-page-1/#comments

Extreme Hand Crafts

The hobbits learned how to replace a roof this summer. A great life skill and a much needed home repair. And nobody fell off!

Poetic Knowlege Chapter 7 ( Fini)

This is the second half of the last chapter of Poetic Knowledge. It's been a very interesting journey. I like this book, struggle to understand some of it, and think that James Taylor is on the right track. He suggests starting small schools with a couple of like minded teachers. They would carefully read a book, somehow creating a whole curriculum from it and pass on a liberal education to their few students. Well....maybe for a literature class. I agree with Charlotte Mason that a curriculum should be varied and not go off on (too many!) rabbit trails. What Taylor describes sounds very much like A Thomas Jefferson Education. This also sounds good in theory, but unless we hope all our kids get jobs as liberal arts professors this is not enough. The facts are that our children and especially our sons will have to get jobs that hopefully will support a family. This means math and science, and not just what can be picked up by reading Carry on Mr. Bowditch. We are not independently wealthy here and my kids have relied on scholarships to get through college and to get the good scholarships you have to score well on the SAT and to do that you have to study algebra, geometry, and Latin! Those subjects are hard and require work to master. But learning to work hard is a great skill for college and life!

That said, I think this is a wonderful method for a literature or history class! To read a book carefully, discuss its fine points, place it in time and geography, analyse its characters and plot, this is the best part of homeschooling! Especially with teenagers who definitely have opinions and want to share them! We didn't do this with many books. With my daughters it was Pride and Prejudice and with my oldest son it was With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz. This one was especially interesting as we knew next to nothing about Polish history but we learned alot reading this very rich trilogy: politics, religion, military strategy, even farming, but not much math!

I once had a teacher like this in Junior High. Our regular English teacher suffered a heart attack and was replaced by a young woman right out of teacher's college. She led our class through The Odyssey and then Great Expectations. It is one of the few classes I remember. She made all the characters come alive. Sometimes she read out loud and sometimes we took turns reading. I can still picture Odysseus tied to the mast to hear the sirens or Pip walking down a foggy street to Miss Haversham's house. Just once though in 12 years. The rest of my teachers were a pretty bland bunch. I think homeschooling is one of the very few options for our kids to have this kind of discussion. Even in college it is rare.

To quote Taylor,"The end of education is the cultivation of the senses, the imagination and the will." I whole heartedly agree with that. But, I think it can and should be done in a family and a community. For an education to be "something very much like perfection" it has to be like a banquet, and a banquet is carefully prepared. It definitely is not a rush of activities and media diversions. I hope we have time enough to have both lively literary conversations and still get a handle on algebra and Latin translations.

More on this discussion at A Healer's Geste.