Archive for the ‘History’ Category

All Roads Lead to Rome (Even for Bunnies)

May 27, 2006 @ 9:07 am | Filed under: , , , ,

David_sabine
The Sabine Women, Jacques-Louis David, 1796-99

Over at Bonny Glen I’ve been talking about the connections my kids are making during our read-aloud of Famous Men of Rome. This is for me one of the best things about homeschooling: watching the light bulbs go off, seeing pieces of the big puzzle of Life, the Universe, and Everything fit together in the kids’ minds.

We just started reading this book last week. Today Romulus finished building his city and then had to do a little creative marketing to find inhabitants. On the lam? Facing criminal charges? Australia doesn’t exist yet, so give Rome a try! It’s got a wall and everything! River views available. The world has never had a shortage of scruffy, disenfranchised males, it seems, for a paragraph later Romulus’s town is bustling with happy outlaws. Oops, not so happy after all: it seems no women answered the cattle call.

I get this far in the reading and Rose gasps. "It’s like the rabbits!" she shouts. For some reason, connections must always be shouted around here. "It’s like Watership Down!"

Scott is reading them Watership Down at bedtime. Last night they reached the part where Hazel & Co. have just gotten nicely settled into their digs on the down, and they suddenly realize their new warren has no future if they don’t find some nice lady rabbits to join them. Rose is right: it’s the founding of Rome all over again.

The bunnies, however, are a little more gentlemenly with the ladies, as my girls will discover a few nights hence. When I continue the early Romans’ tale, the kids are outraged by the abduction of the Sabine women. Then Beanie says, "Hey, this remembers me of a movie," and Jane shouts, "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers!" That charts our course for the rest of the morning: we hunt for the DVD and eventually remember where we left it. A short bike ride to the neighbors’ house later, Jane is brandishing the movie in triumph and we eat lunch to the tune of "And the women were sobbin’, sobbin’, sobbin’…"

The last week of May might seem like a strange time to start a history read-aloud. We don’t keep a traditional school-year schedule; we tend to follow a seasonal rhythm with our studies. For the new readers who are just getting to know me here at ClubMom, I thought it might be helpful if I gave a bit of background on our homeschooling style. Here’s how I have explained it before:

People often ask me what kind of homeschoolers we are: Classical? Charlotte Mason? Eclectic? Delight-Directed? Unschoolers? How, they want to know, does learning happen in our home? Am I in charge, or do I let the kids lead the way? And what about math?

Over the years I have written with enthusiasm about the Charlotte Mason method (which is highly structured) and unschooling (which is not). These educational philosophies seem to have intertwined themselves in my home, so that the what we do—read great books, study nature, dive deeply into history, immerse ourselves in picture study and composer study—is highly influenced by Charlotte’s writings and their modern counterparts; and the how we do it—through strewing and conversation and leisurely, child-led exploration—is influenced by the writings of John Holt, Sandra Dodd, and other advocates of unschooling. But I couldn’t say we’re "real CMers" because I don’t carry out Miss Mason’s recommendations in anything like the structured manner she prescribed; and I probably do too much behind-the-scenes nudging for us to be considered "real unschoolers."

The truth is, I couldn’t find any label that completely fit my family, so I made up my own. I call us "Tidal Learners" because the ways in which we approach education here change with the tide. Now, this doesn’t mean that we’re flighty or inconsistent, changing direction haphazardly. We aren’t Fiddler Crab Homeschoolers. What I mean is that there is a rhythm to the way learning happens here; there are upbeats and downbeats; there is an ebb and flow.

Lately I have been reading a lot about Latin-centered classical education, and I am increasingly convinced of the merits of steady and intensive Latin studies. Because we have such a relaxed approach to the rest of our learning, it is no burden to make Latin lessons a regular part of our day. When planning our family routine—whether it’s the summer routine revolving around the neighborhood swimming pool or the winter routine which must allow for abrupt changes of plan in the event of good sledding weather—I keep a loose "rule of six" in the back of my mind. There are six things I try to make a part of every day:

• meaningful work (this includes household chores, which are "meaningful" because they make our own and others’ lives more pleasant; it also includes pursuits requiring daily practice, such as piano and, yes, Latin; and of course for Scott and me, writing is meaningful work)
• good books 
• beauty (art, music, nature)
• big ideas (discussions about what we’re reading or encountering in the world)
• play (including time spent with friends)
• prayer

Honesty compels me to admit that for myself I privately add a seventh component to my daily Rule of Six:

• a footrub from my incredibly sweet husband

Oh, and also:

• chocolate.

But for the family as a whole, the top six items are what shape our days. So this summer, Romans and Sabines and Latin and bunnies will be waiting for us whenever we come home from the pool.

Rose’s American History Reading List

May 13, 2006 @ 7:20 am | Filed under: ,

Jane just hunted up all the historical-fiction-set-in-America she could find on our shelves. The girls’ bedroom, my bedroom, Wonderboy’s bedroom, the sewing room…it’s amazing how books migrate around the house. We shoved and shifted and managed to clear out one big shelf in the living room where all these great stories about American history could squeeze in together. Now Honest Abe can rub shoulders with Mr. I Forget His First Name Ferris, the “Really Big Wheel You Sit in and Get Kind of Queasy at the Top” guy.

Rose hasn’t read many of these books, so she was enchanted by the sight of a nice neat row of new stuff to read. Rose is a big fan of nice neat rows of anything, except cauliflower. I’ve put Jane to work arranging the books chronologically, because Rose insists upon reading them “in order.”

Since I proved a miserable failure at keeping up with the kids’ reading logs (you may have noticed their disappearance from the sidebar—I gave up the ghost a month ago), I thought I’d try a more focused kind of list. So I’m adding “Rose’s American history reading list” to the sidebar. We’ll see how it goes…

Comments are off

Exploring Boston with Charlotte Tucker

April 13, 2006 @ 3:33 am | Filed under: , , ,

CharlottetallI am still adding to the list of Martha/Scotland-related resources, but I thought I’d get started on the Charlotte resource page as well. Expect this one to get off to a slow start and grow gradually…

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s maternal grandmother, Charlotte Tucker Quiner Holbrook, was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1809. We have birth and death records for all of Charlotte’s siblings, including the several small brothers and sisters who died in infancy. All we know as fact about Martha comes from a letter written by Laura’s youngest sister, Grace Ingalls Dow, who wrote that her great-grandmother, Martha Morse, was the daughter of a Scottish laird and married a man, Lewis Tucker, who was considered to be beneath her station. All the rest of Martha’s story as I have told it is fiction (though the details of her family’s lifestyle are historically accurate).

Charlotte left more of a paper trail, including a newspaper advertisement for seamstress services, listing a location at the intersection of Union and Warren Streets in Roxbury. Readers of Puddingstone Dam may recall that this is the location of the house the Tucker family moves to after the dam construction renders their Tide Mill Lane house a less favorable site to live.

The history of Roxbury, Massachusetts, is a fascinating example of the advantages and casualties of American urban progress. Originally, the geographical area that became the city of Boston was a bulbous peninsula connected to the mainland by only a narrow strip of land known as “The Neck.” Roxbury, founded in 1630, was the village at the other end of the neck, and so the only land route into Boston was through Roxbury, as seen in this map of:


ROXBURY AND BOSTON IN 1775

Roxbury1775

(Compare with a map of the Boston area today.)

Gradually, the wetlands surrounding Boston to the west and south—an area known as the Back Bay—were filled in and built over. I tell a part of this story in Puddingstone Dam. Nowadays, the landscape of Boston is so drastically different from its original shape that it is hard to imagine it was ever a lonely spur of land jutting into the Atlantic. Roxbury, along with many other neighboring villages, was eventually swallowed up by Boston and is now simply a neighborhood in the great urban center.

I have loads of links relating to Roxbury, and I’ll get those entered as quickly as I can. (Although, as you know, the great event we are anxiously awaiting means that isn’t likely to be too quickly.) Here are a few to get us started:

The historic Shirley-Eustis House, former home of Royal Governor William Shirley.
Discover Roxbury.
Boston Family History‘s Roxbury section.

Still to come—resources about:

• Embroidery samplers
• Weaving
• School in Charlotte’s day
• Toys and games
• War of 1812
• Early 1800s cookery

Such as: The Old Sturbridge Village Cookbook: Authentic Early American Recipes for the Modern Kitchen—if your library has this book, you’re in for a treat. The “string-roasted chicken” recipe appears in Little House by Boston Bay

• Lydia Marie Child, author of The American Frugal Housewife and other books
• Living history museums and villages relating to Charlotte’s time period
• What made the news in Charlotte’s day (I have many period newspaper articles to scan in)
• Clothing and fashion
• Blacksmithing
• Poetry and literature
• Music
• Holidays and celebrations
• And more!


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Exploring Scotland with Martha Morse

April 4, 2006 @ 3:41 am | Filed under: , ,

MarthatallAngela writes:

My daughter is currently in love with all things Scottish, and we have just ordered your Martha Books. (and LOVES that a homeschooling mom wrote them!!!) Can you recommend any websites/ book lists for upper elementary, so I could put together a little unit for her?

Happy to!

(Consider this a work in progress, and I’ll update as I am able. I’ll also put together a resource list for the Charlotte books, as soon as I get a chance. Suggestions from other Bonny Glen readers are welcome!)

Spinning and Weaving
In Martha’s day (late 1700s Scotland), every woman in the household, from the laird’s wife to the lowliest kitchenmaid, was expected to spend every spare minute spinning wool or flax into thread. The spun wool and linen thread was taken to a nearby weaver (weaving was a man’s trade, at this time), who would weave the fabric to order. As a housewife in early-nineteenth-century Massachusetts, however, Martha would have done her own weaving.

Here are some picture books about spinning, weaving, wool, and such.

Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall, illustrated by Barbara Cooney.
A New Coat for Anna by Harriet Zeifert.
The Rag Coat by Lauren A. Mills.
Warm as Wool by Scott Russell Sanders.
Pelle’s New Suit by Elsa Beskow.

If, like Martha, your child has a hankering to try his or her hand at spinning with a drop spindle, Halcyon Yarn has a very nice beginner’s kit. (Unlike Martha, I never did get the hang of it, though!)

UPDATE: Jane begs to differ about Halcyon’s kit being “very nice.” She agrees that the Harrisville drop spindle and the colored, combed wool are quite satisfactory, “But Mom, the instruction booklet was terrible, don’t you remember? Impossible to follow!” I stand corrected. Fortunately, a kind reader has just emailed me a link to this informative site: The Joy of Handspinning. Many thanks to Christine for the suggestion, and to my ever-vigilant junior editor, Jane.

Music
Gi’me Elbow Room: Folk Songs of a Scottish Childhood and other albums by Bonnie Rideout. (Gi’Me Elbow Room is a favorite with my children. Several of the songs are Robert Louis Stevenson poems set to music with a Celtic flair. Others are traditional Scottish tunes. Lots of fun.)

Folk Songs Index—click on Scotland and listen to dozens of songs, all for free! (This is how I selected many of the songs I quote in the Martha books.)

Poetry and Literature
Robert Burns, whose work was just becoming popular in Martha’s day.

Sir Walter Scott. Rob Roy takes place not far from the fictional valley where Martha’s family lives.

Fairy tales by Sorche nic Leodhas. Wonderful collections of traditional Scottish stories, including versions of some of the tales I adapted for retelling in the Martha books. (Other stories, like the Water Fairy’s tale and the tale of the Fairy’s Spindle, I made up from scratch.)

Dorothy Wordsworth’s Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland—her journal of a trip she took with her brother William and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A fascinating account of her travels. I found this book invaluable during the writing of Highlands.

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. The classic Scottish adventure book.

The King’s Swift Rider: A Novel on Robert the Bruce by Mollie Hunter. This is on my shelf for a future read-aloud—I haven’t reviewed it yet.

(More Scotland-themed middle-grade and YA novels to come.)

UPDATE: How did I forget? The Scottish author George MacDonald is one of my lifelong favorite writers, ever since I read The Wise Woman at the age of nine. Also delicious: The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, and The Light Princess. Many thanks to the Deputy Headmistress for the reminder.

The DHM also suggests The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter.

Useful Websites
EdinPhoto Archive—printouts of old engravings from this site are taped up all over my office wall.

Costumer’s Manifesto—all about period clothing. (Check the “ethnic costumes” section.)

All about tartans. (Specific clan tartans, as we know them today, did not come into fashion until the Victorian era, when Walter Scott’s books brought all things Scots into vogue. In Martha’s day, a hundred years earlier, families would wear whatever tartan plaid pleased them—or the weaver.)

Scottish scenery.

Scottish history.

here’s another!

More to come!


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The Unicorn Tapestries

March 6, 2006 @ 3:00 am | Filed under: , ,

37802xfpxobjiip10wid404hei400rgn02153465For this month’s picture study, we’re doing something a bit different. I thought it might be fun to take a close look at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s famous Unicorn Tapestries. These spectacular late-fifteenth-century tapestries are on view at The Cloisters, the Met’s uptown collection of medieval European artwork. Designed in Paris and woven in Brussels and the Netherlands, the seven large wall hangings vividly depict the hunting of a white unicorn in a richly flowered wood. The gorgeous weavings are rich in symbolism and drama—there are at least three layers of meaning to explore here. In addition to the excitement of the hunt, complete with lanky greyhounds, odd-looking lions, and a smiling stag, there are the symbolic interpretations of the story:

“They can also be explained as a tale of courtly love, presenting the search and eventual capture of the lover-bridegroom by his adored lady. And there is the Christian interpretation as well, the symbolic retelling of Christ’s suffering, Crucifixion, and Resurrection.”

Cloisters_galleryThe Met’s Unicorn Tapestries website is loaded with information and pictures. If, like my family, you can’t venture to NYC to view these incredible weavings in person, a long exploration of the website will be the next best thing.

Related links:

New Yorker article, “Capturing the Unicorn: How Two Mathematicians Came to the Aid of the Met.”

• Another set of tapestries known as The Lady and the Unicorn, on display at the Musée National du Moyen Âge in Paris.

• Wikipedia entry on unicorns

Children’s books about weaving

Cloisters2• The Cloisters—field trip info (Go ahead, make us jealous!)

Unicorns in children’s literature:

The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis

A Swiftly Tilting Planet and Many Waters by Madeleine L’Engle

The Unicorn Treasury : Stories, Poems, and Unicorn Lore by Bruce Coville

Read-Aloud Spotlight: A Lion to Guard Us

March 3, 2006 @ 6:01 am | Filed under: ,

006440333501_aa_scmzzzzzzz_ A Lion to Guard Us by Clyde Robert Bulla. This short middle-grade nove has scored high on the “Please, Mommy, just one more chapter” meter for Rose (7 1/2) and Beanie (5). (Jane read it herself a couple of years ago.) It’s the story of three very young English children whose father is far away in Jamestown, making a home for the family in the New World. Their mother dies, leaving them penniless, stranded, and desperately anxious to make their way across the sea to join their father. The suspenseful account of their adventures, told in Bulla’s typically spare and straightforward prose, has kept my younguns trembling on the edge of their seats. (Okay, “on the arm of the couch” or “the precarious edge of the windowsill” would be more accurate, especially for Beanie.) Excellent living book for early American history studies, or (as is the case with us) just for fun.

What the Tide Brought In (and Carried Out, and Brought Back In, etc.)

In my recent post on “tidal homeschooling,” I mentioned Rose’s determination to learn ancient Greek. This has been a driving interest for her for about a year and a half now. (She was seven last August.) Like all good drives, this one has involved frequent rest stops. She sets her own pace, and she’s the one to decide when to get behind the wheel again. As a passenger on this trip, I have to say it has been (and continues to be) a most delightful journey so far.

Her fascination with ancient Greece began with the fabulous Jim Weiss. His story tapes, “Greek Myths” and “She and He: Adventures in Mythology,” have been favorites with all my girls. Rose especially was captivated by the stories of Atalanta, Hercules, and Perseus. Observing her eager interest, I pulled our trusty D’aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths off the shelves, and Rose read it until it literally fell to pieces in her hands. Like the children in Linnets and Valerians, her imagination was stirred by the bright islands in the wine-dark sea, the “mountains crowned with ruined palaces, statues and temples and shrines…”

A burning interest in mythology seems quite common among children of Jane’s age; I’ve known many a six- or seven-year-old who couldn’t get enough of these tales of high adventure and meddlesome deities. It is certainly an easy appetite to feed. We scoured the library for picture books; we explored a website chronicling the lives of a fictional Spartan family and their counterparts in Athens. We read long passages from Padraic Colum’s The Odyssey, and Rose begged several re-readings of selected chapters from Hillyer’s A Child’s History of the World.

Thus far, the path we traveled was much the same as the one I’d followed with Jane a few years earlier—and, I daresay, quite similar to the roads followed by many a parent of a child this age. Then Rose veered off onto a side route.

“I want to learn ancient Greek,” she announced. “I need you to find me a book. The kind with lots of blanks to write in.”

She meant a workbook. I don’t like workbooks. They make me shudder and look for the exits. Jane has always felt the same way. But for Rose, my orderly, methodical Rose, an empty workbook is a treasure, a blank coin waiting to be engraved. Obligingly, I searched. A few minutes at Anne Zeise’s invaluable website led me to a promising resource: a series called Hey Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek! With Rose panting at my side, I ordered the first level.

As I said, this was well over a year ago. She was very young—is still very young—and I certainly had no plans to commence the study of a classic language—one with a different alphabet, no less—with a six-year-old child. But it’s what Rose wanted. Emphatically, urgently, relentlessly. And that’s what we do. We follow our children’s interests, all of us learning as we go. My job is to outfit her for the journey—or to return to my tidal homeschooling metaphor, to provide the ship for the fishing expedition.

Right now she is about halfway through the second level of the Hey Andrew books. Here’s how she likes it to work. Every day in our home, there is a two-hour period of quiet time. The girls go to separate rooms: Beanie to their bedroom (they all still share a room); Jane to the sewing room; and Rose to my bedroom. I put Wonderboy down for his nap and take a half-hour lunch-and-email break, a welcome hush after our busy mornings. Then I read a story to Beanie, and then I spend 30 to 45 minutes of one-on-one time with first Jane, then Rose. Quite often, Rose chooses to spend her mommy solo time working on her Greek.

What she likes is for me to sit beside her on my bedroom floor, knitting while she does a lesson in the book. Often the entire half hour will pass in silence while she doggedly fills in her beloved blanks. Other times, she’ll lay down her pencil and chatter away to me, or ask me to practice her flash cards with her (flash cards are another thing that make me shudder and fill Rose with delight). She likes me to look over each page as it is finished; she jots little notes at the bottom to record the time and day.

Sometimes she’ll want to do Greek during quiet time every day for a week. Just as often, she wants me to read to her—we’re halfway through Old Yeller right now—while she nibbles a piece of candy. Sometimes she’ll lay aside the Greek books for weeks at a stretch. This is why I call it tidal homeschooling. The tide carries this interest in and out. I’m not imposing these studies upon her; there is no pressure to complete the book in a certain amount of time, or even to complete it at all.

And that’s why I think she remains as interested in the subject as ever. If I were to sit her down and the table every day and say, “Now it’s time for your Greek lesson,” I know without a doubt that sooner or later her eagerness would have given way to reluctance. “Now listen, honey,” I could say. “You wanted to learn this and Mommy is going to help you fulfill that goal.” But what if a child’s goal changes? What if she didn’t have any goal in mind to begin with? I doubt Rose said to herself, at the age of six, “I want to attain proficiency in ancient Greek.” I think she said, “Ooh, this stuff is interesting, I want to know more.”

I know some parents might worry that allowing a child to start a project (or workbook) and cast it aside when interest fades will encourage habits of laziness or irresponsibility. You don’t want to give a kid the idea it’s ok to abandon ship as soon as you find out how much work is required of a sailor, right? But these fears don’t trouble me. I find that there are plenty of other areas of life for the establishment of good habits of discipline and follow-through: household chores, thank-you notes, pet care. I don’t need to harness a child’s interest in ancient Greece to a plow so that she can get practice making nice, neat furrows. My own interests wax and wane; why shouldn’t hers?

And suppose the interest dies a sudden death—then what? What if the Greek workbook gets shoved under my bed and Rose never mentions it again? Well, then that’s what happens. And that’s fine. The tide will bring in something else.

It always, always does.

Click here for the master list of all my tidal homeschooling posts.