Curriculum Review: Usborne's I Can Draw Series

October 5, 2007

I was reminded again yesterday of how much I love this series by Usborne Books at Home. The series includes I Can Draw Animals, I Can Cut and Stick, I Can Crayon, I Can Fingerpaint, and I Can Draw People. Yesterday Duncan and I spent a good hour with I Can Draw Animals (above). The projects are simple enough that he, age 6, feels a tremendous sense of accomplishment and absolutely no frustration. The drawings go step by simple step, and coloring outside the lines only enhances the final product. Yesterday we did sea creatures; today we are going to draw jungle animals. Being the youngest child, Duncan has not had the benefit of all the hours I poured into his older siblings with art projects. This series if perfect for both of us because of it's simplicity and "around-the-house" usability.

(If you don't have your own Usborne consultant, leave a comment for my friend Donna at her blog and she'll help you out!)

Monday Memory: The Mountains

October 1, 2007

The mountains have always held something inexpressible for me. There are days, like the one above, when I cannot stop looking at them in all their perfect clarity. I can't even believe that there is such magnificent beauty right here in my own world. The photo above is from a hike we took to the Foothills Parkway to watch the sunset last year. I love the way the mountains go on forever beyond Duncan and Patrick.

When we l lived in Iowa for five years, the two things I missed most were our friends/family and the mountains. I can breathe here, great gulps of something wild just at the edge of my view. I wrote this poem during the last of the five years we lived in Iowa. Once or twice a year we would make the long drive from Iowa to Tennessee to visit our family and friends. This stems from those drives.

Seventeen Hours, Give or Take (Driving South)

We count on someday,
coffee on the front porch,
Buffalo Mountain still

in its own black shadow.
We live now
for the next vacation
and the next, driving southeast
and then south and east,
shedding
these strange selves

as the farms turn to forests,
corn to tobacco.
Two hours to go
and we are easy again
as if some lethal spell
has been lifted. We unzip

our stiff suits
at the state line
and toss them out the window.
Our skin beneath is warm

and smells greenly of wood.
We can't stop breathing.

(By Sarah Small. Published in Breathing the Same Air, copyright 2001)

Quiet

September 30, 2007


"Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, Jesus said to his disciples, 'Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest'" (Mark 6:31).


Today was one of those days in church that I just wanted to curl up in a quiet corner. I was overwhelmed with the entity known as corporate worship. The low hum of whispers. The tiny chatter of children. The zipping of bags and rustling of bulletins. The out-of-sync bass and--most jarring of all--the carillon of the organ during communion. 'Most any other Sunday and I would have soaked it all in. But today I needed to be in a quiet place: a corner, the beach, the mountains.

There are times when corporate worship is too much for me. My soul yearns for solitude. In Sunday School we studied Psalm 23, and that the picture I hung onto was of resting on the grass by the river, just breathing in the good, clean air.

Next weekend we are headed to the mountains. I need them. It is in the musty smells of the forest, the feel of wood and soil, the sounds of birds and crickets where I can be truly still. Where I can listen, and hear, and breathe. And worship.

Field Trip: Fort Loudoun

September 8, 2007

Ft. Loudoun State HIstoric Area is at the site one of the earliest British fortifications on the western frontier, built in 1756 during the French and Indian War. Each September, the fort becomes the site of an 18th-Century Trade Faire. We've been wanting to go to this for years but something always seems to interfere. Randy and Jesse went rafting with the Boy Scouts, so Duncan, Laurel and I seized the day.

Here's a view of one part of the fort. During the Trade Faire weekend, hundreds of reenactors, tradesmen, and entertainers gather to recreate a colonial trade faire. Each building in the garrison is open and reenactors explain what would have been there. We especially enjoyed the infirmary--something about that amputation saw was chilling. The battle reenactment was great fun. As our friend and reenactor Chris explained, "We (the Blue guys) lose today, but tomorrow the Red Coats lose."

Notice the plethora of dead Blue guys and the victorious Red Coat. After the battle we headed over to the magic show. Laurel and Duncan both got to help the magician with some of his tricks:

What an awesome afternoon! Those guys had to be boiling up in their outfits on this 95 degree day, but they sure made it look like fun. Chris was a fabulous tour guide. It's good to have friends in high places. Here is Laurel with Bess, in her outfit. How adorable is she in her finery?

(That's Duncan and Janice behind them in the infirmary, learning all the gory details of tooth-pulling.) And below are the tents in which the reenactors sleep during the weekend. Makes me happy for my bed tonight. But still, it looks like fun.

Ft. Loudoun is about 30 minutes south of Knoxville in Vonore on Highway 411. Right across the road from Ft. Loudoun is the equally interesting Sequoyah Birthplace Museum, which is a fabulous museum of the history of the Cherokee in Eastern Tennessee and of the writing system developed by Sequoyah. Both the museums are open every day for a small admission fee. Ft. Loudoun has several upcoming living history and garrison weekends, which are listed on the website.

I found a red leaf today

September 29, 2007


It is early for the maples to be coloring and dropping; still, a red leaf is a good occasion for another autumn poem or two. Here's a very cool thing: DLTK has all kinds of autumn poetry (not fluffy rhymes but actual Keats and such) with graphics on it for coloring. Very nice for those notebooks! This week in my American Lit class we'll be studying Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost, and so:

Nature XXVII, Autumn

by Emily Dickinson
The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.



Nothing Gold Can Stay

by Robert Frost
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold,
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief.
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Underachiever

September 28, 2007

Boy, I gotta confess. Sometimes reading blogs is just downright demoralizing. So I've been running all day and haven't had time to read blogs or even read my emails until 10 p.m. And I don't recommend reading a whole bunch of blogs at once because some people have been just way too productive this week.

Take the mom who does this freakishly intense artist and composer study each Friday. Oh yeah!! That used to be me! I used to call each Friday, "Fine Arts Friday." Now I call it: "Yay! Friday!"

Or the mom who blogged about her day as she and her little ones who sat in the meadow amidst the late-blooming wildflowers quietly sketching in the nature journals. Hmmpf. I watched my little one watching his little friend pee against a tree in the city park. Now that's a nature study!

So I was demoralized for about a second. But I can quickly click off of those blogs and look at my day in retrospect. The sky was blue. The trees are just lightening a shade. My children sat amidst a swarm of friends while watching the play "The Magician's Nephew" at the theatre. I spent a delicious hour in the sunshine with other moms while our kids played in the park. My children laughed, and buried their toes in the sand, and sweat profusely. Later, we enjoyed an afternoon at horseback riding lessons with more friends, the smell of horses, and more blue sky. And in the evening, dinner with lovely friends.

And so. Underachiever is a misnomer, truly. I have not achieved today a mastery of artistry or a history of a musical composition. My children wrote no poetry nor memorized multiplication facts. But tonight these people of ours are content in their beds, the little ones asleep with their smelly feet and sweaty heads, and the oldest yakking away like a teenager (oh--he is a teenager!) on the phone. And there is a cool breeze coming through the open windows and a good book to read. Achieve: to complete successfully. A good day.

Book Review: Helen Keller's Teacher

September 25, 2007

"Teacher, don't talk like that [about your impending death]!" her friend cried out. "You must not leave us. Helen would be nothing without you!"
"Then I would have failed," Annie snapped. For her whole life had been dedicated to making Helen Keller free — free even of Teacher.

I just finished reading this book by Mickie (Margaret) Davidson out loud to Laurel. She could certainly have read it to herself, but I really wanted to share this one with her. I think it was about the 118th time in my life I've read this book about Annie Sullivan, and I still got all choked up. I can think of no other book that I read so often in my childhood. I don't know why this story appealed to me more than the biography of Helen Keller herself, but it was always Annie Sullivan's story that I came back to again and again. The girl with the scratchy eyes and terrible temper, the scenes in the poorhouse, her brother's tubercular hip--all those images were so familiar to me as I read the book to my daughter. And she loved it. I would have been terribly disappointed if she hadn't been enthralled! We have also read Helen Keller's story and watched both the Nest video and The Miracle Worker, but Helen Keller's Teacher is still my favorite.

Curriculum Review: Top Secret Adventure and Which Way USA

September 21, 2007

My friend Tammy, who is a curriculum junkie, introduced me to Highlight's world geography club, Top Secret Adventures. Having joined Book of the Month Club many times in my life with disastrous results, I am always skeptical of mail-order book clubs; however, I was intrigued by Top Secret Adventures. The idea is that your child is a secret agent in the Country-of-the-Month (Japan begins the series), and s/he has to solve the crime/mystery by traveling around the country, finding clues. "Travel" around the country is provided through puzzles of all sorts, map work, and searching the guidebook. The guidebook and puzzle book contain loads of information about the particular country. Laurel was 9 when we began this series, and she was just old enough to enjoy it. She was excited each time one would come in the mail. We didn't get to all of the kits and have moved on from World History for now, so I have stored the unopened countries and canceled our subscription for now.

This year we are studying American History, so I've ordered the Which Way U.S.A instead series instead. Much like the Top Secret program, Which Way USA provides a nice state map and a puzzle book with each state (two come per month). My only gripe so far is that the New York puzzle book spent about 98% of the book on New York City and 2% on the rest of the state, which is disappointingly typical.

The books are colorful (but not too busy) and filled with facts and tidbits of information about people and places. The information is presented in a way that is appealing to my 5th grader--short snippets and not terribly overbearing. (She's my "bells and whistles" girl.) My 1st-grader is not terribly interested, and my 9th-grader would rather just find the capital and a few major cities, as well as famous people from the state, and be done with it. We use these Highlights' clubs in conjunction with Geography Matters' Trail Guides and Mark-it Maps to round out our geography program.

September Applesauce

September 20, 2007


September

by: Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)

HE golden-rod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.

The gentian's bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.

The sedges flaunt their harvest,
In every meadow nook;
And asters by the brook-side
Make asters in the brook.

From dewy lanes at morning
The grapes' sweet odors rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.

By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer's best of weather,
And autumn's best of cheer.

But none of all this beauty
Which floods the earth and air
Is unto me the secret
Which makes September fair.

'T is a thing which I remember;
To name it thrills me yet:
One day of one September
I never can forget.

"September" is reprinted from Poems. Helen Jackson. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1892.

*******************************
Truly Luscious Applesauce

About 8 apples, peeled, cored, and cut into fourths
1/2-1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1/2-1 tsp. cinnamon

Directions: Put the apples in a pot. Add everything else. Cook slowly with lid on for about 20-30 minutes, mashing the apples occasionally and stirring. Take the lid off the last 10 minutes to thicken, but be sure to stir to keep from scorching.

Applesauce is good for you, and it makes your house smell good. Make some. Serve it with biscuits for lunch outside and you'll surely catch a whiff of the approaching autumn.

What We Learned in American History Today

September 18, 2007

Me: So, what do you think was more significant? Columbus landing in the New World or the astronauts landing on the moon? And why?

Her: Well, probably Columbus. Because otherwise we wouldn't all be over here in America and way too many people would be in Egypt.

Me: (after recuperating from us both laughing hysterically...Egypt??) So, can you think of other places in the United States or South American that are named for Columbus?

Her: Columbus, Indiana.... Columbus, Ohio.... Columbus, Virginia---no, Virginia is where all the communists were!

Communists? Go figure. (She meant: colonies.)

All in a day's work....