Archive | July 2005

Born July 30th

Jul30

Emily Bronte, b. 1818. Some critics insisted that Emily’s novel, Wuthering Heights, must have been written by a man because no woman could have written such a passionate story. Emily Bronte died of tuberculosis one year after the publication of her only novel. She was 30 years old.

For children who are not quite ready for the sturm und drang of Wuthering Heights, I recommend The Return of the Twelves by Pauline Clarke. It’s the story of a boy and his sisters who find in the attic of their new house twelve toy soldiers that magically come alive. The soldiers turn out to have belonged to another boy, Branwell, and his sisters, and keeping them a secret becomes a challenge.

Born July 27th

Jul27

Today is the birthday of author Christina Bjork (b. 1938), author of the beautiful book, Linnea in Monet’s Garden. In the book, Linnea, a young girl,, and her neighbor, Mr. Blom get to visit Paris and Giverny and see the places where Monet created his paintings. The book is a wonderful introduction to impressionist art and to the work and life of Claude Monet.

This entry was posted on 7/27/2005, in Birthdays.

Picture Book Preschool:Week 31

Jul25

Picture Book Preschool is a preschool/kindergarten curriculum which consists of a list of picture books to read aloud for each week of the year and a character trait, a memory verse, and activities, all tied to the theme for the week. You can purchase a downloadable version (pdf file) of Picture Book Preschool by Sherry Early at Biblioguides.

WEEK 31 (July) MATHEMATICS
Character Trait: Honesty
Bible Verse: Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. Luke 12:7

1. Anno, Mitsumasa. Anno’s Counting Book. Harper Collins, 1977.
2. Hoban, Tana. Count and See. Macmillan, 1972.
3. Giganti, Paul Jr. Each Orange Had 8 Slices. Greenwillow, 1992.
4. Macmillan, Bruce. Eating Fractions. Scholastic, 1991.
5. Giganti, Paul Jr. How Many Snails? Greenwillow, 1988.
6. Cook, Bernadine. The Little Fish That Got Away. Addison-Wesley, 1956. OP
7. Slobodkina, Esphyr. The Wonderful Feast. Greenwillow, 1993.

Activities: Make a habit of counting with your child. Things to count could include blocks, toy cars, raisins, pennies, etc.

All for One, and One for All!

Jul24

dumas

On the first Monday of the month of April 1625, the town of Meung looked as if it were in as complete a state of revolution as if the Huguenots had just made a second La Rochelle of it.

Alexandre Dumas , pere, was born near Paris on July 24, 1802. His grandfather was a marquis, and his grandmother was a black slave. Dumas’ father was soldier in Napoleon’s army. Dumas himself was a prolific writer; he wrote hundreds of plays and novels. However, his critics were numerous also. They said he plagiarized mnay of his works, and he made no secret of the fact that he employed several anonymous collaborators who wrote much of what Dumas published in his own name. Often Dumas provided the plot summaries, and his stable of writers fleshed out the stories and plays. His son, Alexandre Dumas, fils, became a famous playwright who wrote the story upon which the opera La Traviata is based.

The Three Musketeers is Dumas’ best-known novel. It is the first in a trilogy which consists of three novels:
Les Trois Mousquetaires,
Vingt Ans Après (Twenty Years After), and
Le Vicomte de Bragelonne ou Dix Ans Plus Tard (Ten Years Later).
This third novel is often split up into three pieces when published in English:
The Vicomte of Bragelonne,
Louise de la Vallire, and
The Man in the Iron Mask.
Dumas also wrote The Count of Monte Cristo.

If you’ ve never read these, you should. If you’ve only seen movie versions, you should read the book(s). You might get the impression from the movies that have been made that the musketeers were quite amoral or even immoral; however, in the books they are only chilvalrous and rather foolish knights who, in the romantic tradition, have lady loves, mostly worshipped from afar or at least chastely. There are all sorts of intrigues and plots, but the musketeers are loyal to their king and to one another. And the books are great fun.

First lines anyone?

Jul23

Michael Berube teaches literature and cultural studies at Penn State. On his blog, he’s started a l-o-n-g discussion (187 comments and counting) of Great First Lines in Novels.

Here are some of my favorites, not necessarily my favorite novels, but favorite first lines:

1. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

2. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only

3. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

4. There once was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb and he almost deserved it.

5. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

6. Now, Bix Rivers has disappeared, and who do you think is going to tell his story but me? Maybe his stepfather? Man, that dude does not know Bix deep and now he never will, will he?

7. “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
“It’s so dreadful to be poor!”

8. Dr. Strauss says I shud rite down what I think and evrey thing that happins to me from now on.

9. It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.

10. All children, except one, grow up.

Not too hard. Who will be the first to guess all ten?

Dooner’s Spay, I Mean . . .

Jul22

Spooner’s Day, is named for Rev. William Archibald Spooner, b. 1844, Dean and later Warden of New College in Oxford. This article from Reader’s Digest describes Spooner :

Spooner was an albino, small, with a pink face, poor eyesight, and a head too large for his body. His reputation was that of a genial, kindly, hospitable man. He seems also to have been something of an absent-minded professor. He once invited a faculty member to tea “to welcome our new archaeology Fellow.”
“But, sir,” the man replied, “I am our new archaeology Fellow.”
“Never mind,” Spooner said, “Come all the same.”

He was most famous, however, for getting his tang tungled. Spoonerisms are words or phrases in which sounds or syllables get swapped. Some of Spooner’s spoonerisms:
fighting a liar–lighting a fire
you hissed my mystery lecture–you missed my history lecture
cattle ships and bruisers–battle ships and cruisers
nosey little cook–cosy little nook
a blushing crow–a crushing blow
tons of soil–sons of toil
our queer old Dean–our dear old Queen
we’ll have the hags flung out–we’ll have the flags hung out

GWB’s most famous spoonerism:
“If the terriers and bariffs (barriers and tariffs) are torn down, this economy will grow.” (January 7, 2001 in Rochester, New York)

And here, for your further enjoyment, is the spoonerized fairy tale, Prinderella and the Cince. We used to have an old recording of Andy Griffith telling a spoonerized version of this story, not this same one, though, as I remember it. On the other side of the record was Griffith’s monologue called “What It Was Was Football” about a country boy who gets trapped into watching a football game. He can’t figure out why all those boys on the field are fighting over that little pumpkin and in all the excitement the narrator “dropped his Big Orange drink.”

Anyway, anybody else have any examples of spoonerisms?

Born July 21st

Jul21

Ernest Hemingway, b. 1899. OK, Hemingway fans, why? What is it about Mr. Hemingway’s spare prose that inspires, resonates, causes you to say, “Wow, that’s a good book!”? Which of Hemingway’s novels do you like the most? Why? I’ve read four of Hemingway’s novels, a long time ago, and I must say that I mostly remember a lot of very drunk characters and something rather poignant about The Sun Also Rises.

Robin Williams, b. 1952. Great comedian. The movie Dead Poets Society makes my list of 105 Best Movies Ever.

Homeschooling Tip of the Week #2

Jul21

READ. Out loud. Daily. Read picture books. Read science books. Read history. Read chapters from your favorite children’s fiction. Read nonfiction. Reading is better than lecturing. Reading is more fun and stimulating to the imagination than television.

We try to read picture books to the younger set every day. We are usually reading through a longer fiction book with whoever is old enough to sit still and listen. Right now we’re reading Little House on the Prairie. We also use many of the books from the Sonlight curriculum catalogue. Reading aloud is a way of life in our homeschool, and it should be in yours. too.

Homeschooling Tip of the Week #1

The Thinking Toolbox by Nathaniel and Hans Bluedorn

Jul20

Wow! What a great resource! This self-published book written by two young men who were homeschooled and “live in the middle of a cornfield” doesn’t look or read like an amateur job at all. These guys give learners a professional, but reader-friendly, introduction to logic and debate in thirty-five lessons. Of course, the school teacher in me immediately sees thirty-five chapters as one lesson for each week of the school year, and that’s probably exactly how we’ll be using this book this next year.

“This book is like a toolbox. This book is full of different kinds of tools you can use for different thinking tasks. Just as you take a wrench out of a regular toolbox and use it to fix the sink, so you can use the tools we give you in this book to solve thinking problems.

This book would be a good introduction to logic or to science since it covers rules of debate and argument, evaluating evidence, and using the scientific method to test observations and come to a conclusion. In the final section of the book, the authors encourage learners to do a project using the information learned in the first part of the book. The purpose of the project is to use the thinking tools that students have been reading about so that the information will become more than just isolated facts about circumstantial evidence and brainstorming and the analysis of data. Thinking tools that are used to do a project that interests the student become useful thinking tools that can be pulled out and applied to other tasks and projects.

Not only do I plan to use this book in my homeschool this year with my third grader and my fifth grader, I also will suggest that we use the book in our homeschool co-op to teach middle school and/or high school students the reasoning skills that the Bluedorns so skillfully explicate. The outside cover of the book itself says that it is “written for ages 13 through adult;” however, I gave it to my eight year old, and he was fascinated by the information, the cartoon pictures, and especially the exercises at the end of each lesson. I would say that the book could be used with students in the upper elementary grades with the help of a parent or teacher and as a self-teaching tool for any student over the age of twelve.

The Thinking Toolbox is available from any one of a number of suppliers listed at the publisher’s website, Christian Logic, along with the Bluedorns’ other book on logic for students, The Fallacy Detective. I received this book as gift from the publisher via Mind and Media, a clearinghouse for reviews of Christian books and other media.