These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance

To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try

To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.

And glad not to have invented
Some comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges

A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Place in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.

March 21, 2005 @ 2:05 pm | Filed under: Fun Learning Stuff, Poetry

Maybe not, but there is a Snark there. I was reading Lewis Carroll’s poem, “The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits,” to the girls, when suddenly Jane leapt to her feet and dashed out of the room. This is a fairly common occurrence. She is a visual learner, and when she has made a connection, her urge is to SHOW it.

She hurtled back to the breakfast table bearing her (and this is going to sound like a joke, but I’m quite serious) beloved Jacobs Algebra book. I have to explain about Jacobs Algebra. For years I’ve been hearing on the homeschooling lists that Harold Jacobs’s mathematics textbooks are “living books” in the Charlotte Mason sense, books written by a man passionate about his subject matter, whose zest for the subject comes through loud and clear in his writing.

Curious as to how a math textbook could convey passion and zest, I checked one of Jacobs’s books out of the library. I can’t testify as to what exactly makes that book “live” because I never got hold of it long enough. Jane whisked it away from me and pored over it for the entire six weeks the library allowed us to keep it. I kid you not. During those weeks, it became de rigeur for our nice, peaceful bedtime-prayer time to be shattered by Important and Fascinating Math Discoveries Jane Forgot to Mention Earlier.

“Mom! I forgot to show you this logarithm chart I made today! See, there was an example in Mathematics-a-Human-Endeavor….” (Apparently this book is too dignified to suffer truncation of its name. It was always the full title, breathlessly hyphenated or earnestly run together: Mathematicsahumanendeavor.)

Eventually the precious book had to go back to the library. Calamity! Despair! This was shortly before Christmas, and consolation arrived to soothe bereft Jane. Mathematicsahumanendeavor’s sequel: Elementary Algebra, its very title poetic in its simplicity. O joy! O rapture! O bewildered but accomodating parents!

And so Jacobs Algebra became Jane’s distraction-from-chores book of choice. Which explains, I guess, her abrupt departure from the table during my riveting (or so I thought) recitation of “The Hunting of the Snark.” The Snark was in Algebra, and Jane had to show us. What do you know, there it was! It’s because of the Butcher, of course.

From “Fit the Fifth: The Beaver’s Lesson”:

So engrossed was the Butcher, he heeded them not,
As he wrote with a pen in each hand,
And explained all the while in a popular style
Which the Beaver could well understand.

“Taking Three as the subject to reason about—
A convenient number to state—
We add Seven, and Ten, and then multiply out
By One Thousand diminished by Eight.

“The result we proceed to divide, as you see,
By Nine Hundred and Ninety Two:
Then subtract Seventeen, and the answer must be
Exactly and perfectly true.

“The method employed I would gladly explain,
While I have it so clear in my head,
If I had but the time and you had but the brain—
But much yet remains to be said.

It does indeed. But the rest of the poem remained unsaid that morning. Jacobs Algebra had entered the building and taken center stage. Poor Lewis Carroll; how can he compete with a masterwork of living mathematics?

I would gladly explain—had you but the time and I but the brain.

March 21, 2005 @ 5:53 am | Filed under: Books, Fun Learning Stuff, History

In light of our Henry Hikes to Fitchburg discussion, I thought I’d share this happy find from another forum: The Blog of Henry David Thoreau. Hee!

From today’s entry (Thoreau’s Journal: 21-Mar-1856)—

I left home at ten and got back before twelve with two and three quarters pints of sap, in addition to the one and three quarters I found collected.

I put in saleratus and a little milk while boiling, the former to neutralize the acid, and the latter to collect the impurities in a skum. After boiling it till I burned it a little, and my small quantity would not flow when cool, but was as hard as half-done candy, I put it on again, and in a minute it was softened and turned to sugar.

While collecting sap, the little of yesterday’s lodging snow that was left, dropping from the high pines in Trillium Wood and striking the brittle twigs in its descent, makes me think that the squirrels are running there.

I noticed that my fingers were purpled, evidently from the sap on my auger.

Had a dispute with Father about the use of my making this sugar when I knew it could be done and might have bought sugar cheaper at Holden’s. He said it took me from my studies. I said I made it my study; I felt as if I had been to a university.

March 18, 2005 @ 10:26 am | Filed under: Nature Study

Journey North reports today that the monarch butterflies are beginning to leave their wintering ground in Mexico. Here they come!

Read about the migration here.

Our milkweed plants are still in dormancy, here in central Virginia. Milkweed is the only host plant for monarch caterpillars, so if you want to attract the butterflies to your yard, be sure to plant some. ButterflyBushes.com is a good source.

March 17, 2005 @ 10:06 am | Filed under: Family Adventures

Scott wrote this for his own blog today, but I enjoyed it so much I’m hijacking it for mine. Credit where credit is due, of course: if you want to read it in its natural habitat, visit his site.

(Note: Scott and I both use aliases for our children on our blogs. His are slightly different from mine; his “Max” is my “Jane,” our nine-and-a-half-year-old. Max was one of her baby nicknames, because she growled like a little Wild Thing. Jane is the title character of her favorite non-Redwall book, L.M. Montgomery’s Jane of Lantern Hill.)

My Philosopher by The Bean’s father

So it’s Thursday, which means it’s The Bean’s music class. She’s one of only three students and just loves the class—no big surprise there. Being the kind of oh so on top of everything parents that we are, we remembered that she was supposed to make a sculpture to bring into class today. No sweat—we’ve had a week to work on it and the class isn’t for nearly an hour yet. We can whip something fantastic up. Piece o’ cake.

And so with twenty minutes ‘til class, the girls sit down with some Sculpey clay and begin working. The Rose makes a Hershey’s Kiss. Max makes…I don’t even know what, but it’s mighty impressive. The Bean decides on an animal of some sort. I suggest an alligator, figuring there aren’t many animals as recognizable and yet easy to pound together in less than half an hour. But no. She wants an elephant. She doesn’t shoot small.

Being less than worthless in these matters, I retire to the office for my (first) cup o’ morning joe and to read the New York Times editorials and get irate—what better way to start your day? I come upstairs in time to take The Bean to her class, and Top Management’s just popping the sculpture into the toaster oven to fire it.

Their creation is a thing of magnificence: light brown body, dark brown ears and tail, bright orange feet, fiery red eyes and the crowning achievement, lime green tusks, presumably in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. One suspects the Lord above looked down and wondered why He hadn’t thought of this color scheme when making the originals in the first place.

We scurry around getting shoes on and coats ready and I look up to see Top Management with an expression of utter panic and horror on her face. Alarmed, I rush over but she quickly shushes me and turns around. Peering over her shoulder, I see she’s cradling the elephant, which has been burnt by our apparently infernally powerful toaster oven.

It’s not fatal for the poor beast: his ears are pretty toasty, but they were already a dark enough brown that it’s not terribly noticeable. Ah, but those wondrous green tusks aren’t looking so chipper anymore: the tops of each are a decidedly smoky brown. If one were honest, one might even say they were approaching a blackish kind of color. Like, say, black.

Ever resourceful, Top Management sends The Bean to go get a hairbrush for her weekly brushing of hair, and quickly slaps some fresh green clay atop the defiled tusks. Presto! Good as new. Not exactly rock hard, but hey, there’s a rock-hard interior hidden beneath those externally squishy tusks. Don’t mess with ‘em.

All this makes us late for class. We rush in, take off her coat and sneakers, toss her backpack and run over to where the teacher and the other two students are sitting in a circle. The Bean notices that they’ve each got their sculptures so she gasps, “Oh!” and runs back to get hers and add it to the collection. Obviously her fellow scholars have already explained their creations because the teacher asks The Bean to tell them about her sculpture.

This seems to throw The Bean a bit. She just stares down at the thing in her hands for a few seconds and I’m suddenly worried that she’s noticing it’s a tad singed.

But no. She finally says, very simply, “It’s an elephant.”

She pauses, then adds, “It’s got a bwown body, and bwown ears and a bwown tail and a bwown twunk, but the ears and tail are a DIFFEWENT bwown, and wed eyes and look! It’s got owange feet!”

The other children seem to be appropriately appreciative of the orange feet.

“And,” The Bean says meaningfully, “It’s got gween tusks.”

One of the kids nodded at that—clearly a fellow connoisseur—while the other said quietly, “Whoa.”

I stood about fifteen feet away, off to the side. All the other parents had left already—we come back for the last ten minutes of class—so I was only waiting for her to notice me so I could say goodbye. But she never turned. The teacher smiled at me happily—she adores The Bean—and I figured that was my cue to exit.