Family Fun and Culture

by Wendi Capehart

A few years ago I participated in an online discussion with a woman who said that she wanted to work outside the home because her family wanted to provide extra cultural experiences for the children, and that could not be done on most single incomes. I'm not really sure what she meant - she was rather vague about it all. It's possible that the kinds of things she had in mind could not be done on one income. For my family, if it can't be done on one income, then we won't be doing it. But it's surprising what can be done on a limited single income.

Here are some ideas for including culture on a modest income.

Instead of eating out, fix a fancy dinner at home. Set the table with the best dishes and candles. Have everybody dress up and pretend to be eating out, practicing table and restaurant manners.

Invite people over often. Make sure to include interesting, fun people; eccentric, odd people; tourists and immigrants, and unusual people. Include old people with stories to tell and young people with dreams to share. Include missionaries, former and current. Include your minister and the elders of your church. Ask for stories of faith, stories of when God blessed them, and stories of dark days.

Art museums often have free days. Check out the one nearest you. We've often taken advantage of this, even when the museum was an hour or two away. We packed a nice picnic lunch and ate at a park when the weather was nice, in the car on the way home if it wasn't. Always keep your eyes open for free or inexpensive attractions.

We buy a year's family pass to a different attraction each year. It may be the zoo, the children's museum, the children's theater, or the symphony. We can't afford to do them all at once, and with a family our size the cost of a yearly pass is seldom more than it would cost us to get in once, so we choose one each year and immerse ourselves in that one, attending at least a dozen times a year.

Study another country/culture in our homeschool once a year, learning the customs, meals, holidays, and so on, and incorporating something of your studies into your daily lives.

We study art and artists using old art calendars. We hang works by a particular artist each month, discussing the paintings and the artists.

Take advantage of NPR and other radio stations. Listen to classical music all the time, studying the lives of composers at the same time.

Call local colleges and ask if there are any international students who would like a home-cooked meal with an American family.

Volunteer at the nursing home. We have met natives of several different European countries in a small Midwestern nursing home (I won't embarrass myself by trying to spell them).

Read, read, read. Spend lots of time at the local library. Once we lived in a home that was not was not very near to any library. Paying the extra fee for a library card was my birthday present from husband and I loved it.

Every once in a while the older children and I get out the Shakespeare and read it aloud together, each taking a few parts.

My husband chooses a different classic to read aloud to the kidlets at bedtime. He's done Pilgrim's Progress, Farmer Boy, Bread and Butter Indian, some of the Childhood of Famous American books, and many, many more.

Vacations? As a military family every time we moved we tried to make part of the move include visiting an interesting spot. We did stay in two locations for five years each so we took lots of short jaunts to places of historical or environmental interest. We prefer camping to staying in motels (family size, again. With a family this large most hotels want us to pay for two rooms.

Have poetry recitations at home.

Plant a garden, perhaps an historical herb garden.

Collect sea shells, stones, or pressed flowers - label them with their Latin names.

Many libraries in larger cities like Chicago and Boston hold passes to museums and other educational attractions, and sign them out to local residents.

If you live near a college, look into their music and drama productions. Sometimes tickets are very inexpensive. Sometimes you can attend rehearsals for free.

Host a hymn singing.

And, as I said, read, read, read. Discuss what you read together. And then read some more.

Secrets of the Woods, Which Animals?

 Secrets of the Woods, by William J. Long  is used in year 3, terms 2 and 3.  


I started this post to help out somebody who asked how she could categorize it for school purposes (some states insist on this), and also what animals were covered.  
Secrets of the Woods is a little similar to the Burgess Animal book, but more detailed about the habitat described.  It also addresses more 'nature red of tooth and claw' issues.  

Secrets of the woods does usually cover one animal in a chapter, but sometimes a chapter is more about the woodlands habitat or ecosystem, particularly that part of the woods that meets the rivershore.


For those who need the refresher, Habitats are the specific areas different creatures need to live, basically, where all their needs are found. The children learned about a different habitat in term 1, when they read Pagoo.

  But you don't need to be that technical with them. The Charlotte Mason method places the emphasis on letting the children read about a topic, explore it in person if at all possible,  and learn to observe firsthand.  Technical terms can be added later.  

Now to the book itself.  Chapter titles are in all caps.  They are presented here in the order you will find them in the book.

TOOKHEES THE 'FRAID ONE: The Woodmouse

A WILDERNESS BYWAY: Some mention is made of several animals of woods and stream, but mainly, this is a description of the habitat where woods meet riverbank and what you might observe there.

 KEEONEKH THE FISHERMAN: River Otter

KOSKOMENOS THE OUTCAST: Kingfisher- a small but fierce wetlands bird.  This picture is a little dull.  In the right time of year and with the sun cast just right, kingfishers sparkle and are irridescent, hence the poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins that begins:
"AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme..."

   MEEKO THE MISCHIEF-MAKER: The American Red Squirrel, one of three members of the pine squirrel family.

  THE OL' BEECH PA'TRIDGE : The Ruffed Grouse. 

There are many species of grouse, but they are elusive and secretive and hard to observe, and at the time Long wrote this chapter, he believed there was really just one kind.   The best value in Long's, to my mind, is his observations.  I love the little things he notices and brings to the reader's attention, and it is our hope that reading Long will inspire our young scholars to go forth and do likewise- stop, look, observe, search the landscape with their eyes.  His conclusions are less important, although there is value in seeing this example of pulling together one's observations and drawing a conclusion- and making a mistake that will be corrected later by more time and experience.

 FOLLOWING THE DEER: This is straightforward enough.  Given that Long is in the eastern woods, I think it's safe to say he's talking bout white tails.


 STILL HUNTING-  Seasonal changes in the woodland habitat- specifically, the forest in October 


 WINTER TRAILS - a little more about grouse, a lot more about deer (he's hunting them), and mainly the woodlands in winter.

 SNOW BOUND- Several animals are mentioned, but the broader scope of the chapter is summed up in the first sentence: "March is a weary month for the wood folk."

All the above pictures except the red squirrel and the ruffed grouse are from Pixabay.


On finding the book: I think I'll take a moment to explain something about our website that sometimes people miss.  Anytime a book title in our curriculum list is hyperlinked, that is to a free title- usually Gutenberg.   But we also offer other options.  To save time and space on the pages, we use the same key as a shortcut to other hyperlinks.  You can find Secrets of the Woods at these links as well: 

 β- manybooks.net, which is another source for free books. Δ - archive.org's free text version($)- A place to buy it- usually Amazon, and these are affiliate links. It's how we pay AO's bills and some of our bills. Κ-  Free Kindle version at Amazon (if it's a pay for it version, the K will be in parenthesis)

Don't worry- you don't have to memorize that.  Our wonderful Leslie Laurio put a key on each of the main curriculum pages.  But we have so much information that sometimes people miss it.

It's been many years since I read this aloud to my youngest children (the baby is now in year 11).  I really enjoyed skimming through it again for this post. It brought back many cozy memories, and I suspect this may have sparked my son's interest in hunting (don't worry, not every reader will take that from the book).  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

On the scarier kinds of toads (Parents' Review)

For your amusement, on the things we take for granted, including harmless little toads and whether gathering pickle material can be dangerous: a Parents' Review article by mathematician Mary Everest Boole.

http://amblesideonline.org/PR/PR07p699TakingGranted.shtml

From the Parents' Review: on children's collections

(posted by Anne White)

"As for the educational value of juvenile collecting, there are many sorts of collections which are instructive and quite harmless, which depend on contributions gathered by the children themselves, not bought in shops: shells, pebbles, twigs, seeds, mosses, and best of all, paintings of flowers. It is as easy to make a child look out in the map the country whence comes a plant, the flower of which he has painted, as it is to make him look for the town where a stamp was issued. The secretary of the Bayswater Branch of the P.N.E.U., in inviting children to send Natural History collections for the annual exhibition, expressed a wish that shells, seeds, etc., should be sent in boxes not bought, but made by the children."

("The Stamp Traffic As a Factor in Education." Letter to the Parents' Review by Mary Everest Boole, Volume 10, 1899, pg. 214.)

Another early reading lesson (Parents' Reviews)

(posted by Anne White)

From The Parents' Review, Volume 15, Number 4 (1904)

Subject: Reading.

Group: English. Class: 1a.  Time: 15 minutes.

By D. Brownell

OBJECTS.

I. To improve E--'s reading.

II. To enlarge his vocabulary.

III. To make him think.

IV. To develop the habit of attention

.

LESSON.

Step I.--Tell E- a little about the piece of poetry- "A Friend in the Garden," by Mrs. Ewing--that he is going to read, so as to arouse his interest.

Step II.--Take the first line, "He is not John the gardener," and let E-- read the word "gardener," using the powers of the letters, and not their names. Write it up on the blackboard, in order to impress it appearance on his mind. Then take [teach] the word "John," and then [teach the word] "not," and from this last [i.e. only from not] make a column of words on the blackboard, by simply changing the initial letter, letting E-- furnish the words. Then let the line be read straight through.

Step III.-- Take the next line-- "And yet the whole day long," beginning again with the most difficult words, "whole" and "long," and from "and" and "long" write columns of words on the board.

Step IV.--Take the third line--"Employs himself most usefully," in the same way, beginning with "employs" and "usefully."

Step V.--Take the fourth line-- "The flower-beds among," in the same way.

Step VI.--Let E-- read the verse straight through.

Step VII.-- Read the other verses of the poems to him, and show him a picture of a "friendly toad."

From the Parents' Review: An early reading lesson

(posted by Anne White)

From "Notes of Lessons," in The Parents' Review, Volume 17, Number 6.

II.

Subject: Reading.

Group: English. Class Ia.  Time: 10 minutes.

By N. Dixon.

OBJECTS.

I.--To help the children to gain power in visualising words.

II.--To interest them in reading.

III.--To cultivate the habits of attention and accuracy.

IV.--To give practice in clear and distinct enunciation.

LESSON.

Step I.--Interest the boys in the picture belonging to the lesson to arouse the wish to read about it.

Step II.--Print on the blackboard the words from the lesson which present any new difficulty : cabin, lives, turrets, hammock, instead. Children to sound and read them, and then write them in the air with their eyes shut.

Step III.--Let them find them in the reading book, then make the words with their letters from dictation.

Step IV.--Children to read the first three lines of the lesson, from the book.

Step V.--Print on the board any words they still find difficulty in recognising, and let them make them with letters and find them in the book.

A CABIN BOY.

Ben is a cabin boy. He lives on a big ship with turrets and guns on the deck. Ben has a hammock in the ship, instead of a bed.

Note: the book is unnamed, but it might be The Happy Reader, by E.L. Young.

Synthetic Thinking and Math

by Karen Glass

Education is the science of relations. That’s the principle that underlies what I call synthetic thinking (explained more fully in Consider This). The principle applies even to arithmetic, which is, although we don’t usually fathom the reason, one of the liberal arts. An art is not made up merely of information to master--it is meant to used. Arts are “practiced.” We want to foster a relationship between students and the world of mathematics, and that is most readily accomplished when we treat mathematics as an art to be practiced.

There is going to come a time, in math, when a child is going to have to sit down and work through some complicated equations. That is either going to be a challenge met with confidence and a lift of the chin-- “I can do this!”--or with boredom and despair. We often speak of wanting children to love reading, love literature, love books, maybe even love history or science. We rarely speak of wanting to them to love numbers, and this is probably a reflection of the reality that few of us formed that relationship in our early years of education. Whether or not that relationship is formed will determine the response a child--and even an adult--brings to those complicated problems.

The chief value of arithmetic, like that of the higher mathematics, lies in the training it affords the reasoning powers, and in the habits of insight, readiness, accuracy, intellectual truthfulness it engenders. There is no one subject in which good teaching effects more, as there is none in which slovenly teaching has more mischievous results. Multiplication does not produce the 'right answer,' so the boy tries division; that again fails, but subtraction may get him out of the bog. There is no must be to him; he does not see that one process, and one process only, can give the required result. Now, a child who does not know what rule to apply to a simple problem within his grasp, has been ill taught from the first, although he may produce slatefuls of quite right sums in multiplication or long division. (Home Education, p. 254)

We often speak of a "Charlotte Mason education" being a paradigm shift, and nowhere is that shift greater than in the area of math. Charlotte Mason knew that math was about much more than getting the “right answer.” There is a relationship between math and the natural life of men, and it was this relationship that she wanted to foster first.

How is this insight, this exercise of the reasoning powers, to be secured? Engage the child upon little problems within his comprehension from the first, rather than upon set sums. (Home Education, p. 254)

In practice, this means that children should begin with what we call “word problems,” and those problems should be based upon real-life experiences that the child might expect to occur. For the smallest children, these math problems occur easily in course of living.

Home life is full of easy little arithmetic problems that bring the importance of numbers, as well as concepts such as quantity, equality, and one-to-one correspondence within the grasp of even quite young children. A family of four is joining us for dinner. How many chairs to do we need to add to the table? I can only find three clean spoons--how many will we need to wash so that we have enough? There are six cookies left in the box. How many can each child have?

Older children can figure how much five cans of corn will cost, or whether there is enough money for everyone to get double-scoop ice-cream cones, or if singles will have to do this time.

Older children may be given more complex, multi-step problems, such as “Joe gathered 87 walnuts and Tim gathered 28. They plan to share the nuts with three friends. How many will each of the five boys receive?” Charlotte Mason says that a child will perceive exactly what must be done in order to solve the problem, although “Care must be taken to give the child such problems as he can work, but yet which are difficult enough to cause him some little mental effort.” (Home Education, p. 255)

The more occasions a child has to use math in real life--and that might include playing games in which counting, adding (or subtracting) points, or other arithmetic plays a part--the more likely he is to develop an interest in and a relationship with math.

Math is needed for cooking, for science, for travel, for planning and purchasing, and the more integrated a child’s exposure to math is, the greater will be his appreciation for it. Once that appreciation is established, the extra effort needed to memorize math facts or unravel complex equations will be entered into more willingly. The child has no need to whine, “why do I have to learn this?” If he has developed a synthetic understanding of math, he already knows the answer to that question, and will likely also work out the answer to the arithmetic problem at hand.