homeschool daybook: the roar on the other side, canonical controversies, negro spirituals

October 13, 2011

A bullet list today because we're right busy 'round here!

• finished reading out loud chapter 2 of Evidence That Demands A Verdict.  This chapter was a bit tedious -- all the details determining canonicity of the Old & New Testaments -- but still highly valuable learning.  Also, did you know that the word canon comes originally referred to a reed used as a standard of measure?  Not me!
• reading out loud the introduction to The Roar On the Other Side: A Guide for Student Poets by  Suzanne Rhodes.  I'm so excited about this book!  I'm hoping to do all the assignments right alongside Natalie.  

• Natalie read chapters 5-8 of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.  I'm proud of the way she's working through this book.
•  I've been trying to find audio recordings of authentic Negro Spirituals and have had the hardest time.  Today I found a website linking to amazon recordings.  Unfortunately, most of them are no longer available on Amazon.  I found one recording and played samples of the songs for Natalie to listen to as she read Stowe's novel.  I was surprised how many songs on that album were songs I'd been familiar with from other sources: Give Me Jesus, This Little Light of Mine, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me.  I should have known it, I guess.  The website I found included a list of book titles so hopefully I can find something next time we go to the library.
• I guess we're a little bit heavy on the reading side of things this week, because Natalie also finished reading out loud to me Romeo & Juliet (Michael Rosen and Jane Ray).  I can't help myself wishing, even though I know better, that everything would work out OK for these two young lovers.  Natalie enjoyed reading all the poetic language and may or may  not have been heard quoting Shakespeare randomly throughout the day.  

• Natalie continued reading about the origins of theater from the History of English Literature for Boys and Girls by H.E. Marshall -- the Shepherds' Play(s)
• she completed lessons 3 & 4 in her grammar workbook, Our Mother Tongue: A Guide to English Grammar -- adjectives and adverbs
• she completed her final 2 math workbook pages -- inequalities and rational numbers.  It's fun to watch her communicate back and forth with Alex in notes written on her workbook pages.  (he's grading her math projects for her).  Also, today we finally figured out how to access her online textbook via the school district. The website includes hands-on math ideas and practice pages. So helpful!
• for science, Natalie read pages in both the Kingfisher Science Encyclopedia and the Eyewitness Book of Time & Space on the history and science of maps and mapping.  She wrote a one page summary of the Mercator projection map created by Gerhard Mercator in the 1500s and the challenges in creating accurate maps.  I think tomorrow I'll have her watch one of my favorite Allison Janney scenes from the West Wing on this very subject!

If you're thinking Natalie had a lot of work to do today, you'd be right.  This was on her own initiative, however.  She wanted very much to get most of her work done by Thursday so that Friday could be a light day.  We'll be baking cookies for our church retreat and she has one or two small assignments remaining, but I've got to hand it to her -- she got it done!

*linking to  Read Aloud Thursdays*

is God like a greased watermelon? (a re-post)

Continuing to meditate this week on the practice of spiritual study as a way to gain not just knowledge but faith,  wisdom, humility and transformation.  Way back in the early days of this blog, June 2006, I asked a question that I seem to be asking still:  Is God like a greased watermelon?

Here's the re-post and a few links to other posts asking the same question again (it also seems I couldn't find a way to wrestle without using metaphor after metaphor):

Did you ever read Waking the Dead by John Eldredge? In his first chapter he compares our ability to see God and really "get it" spiritually on this earth like a pilot trying to fly in the fog. He talks about the fact that while we are on this earth it is most days that we are unable to get a clear visual -- we are more often flying in the fog than we are in the clear. But -- the moments that we do experience, where we 'get it' (it feels like we can almost literally see God's face and can hear him speaking to us about who we are and what our life holds) keep us energized for all of the rest of the foggy days. It keeps us hungry to follow Him and to be hopeful for eternity with him.

I have personally found that I struggle with making an idol out of those moments. When I experience them, I usually behave like Peter when Jesus took him and James and John up on the Mount and allowed them to see him full of glory and talking with Moses and Elijah. It's hard not to do that, but it is not growth and quickly turns into idolatry. Boy, it is tough, though.

It strikes me that God loves our pursuit of Him so much that He sometimes seems to playfully hide from us (picture peek-a-boo or hide 'n seek with your kids and all of the giggling that goes along with it and the joy of being found by them) in order to keep us moving forward and unable to make ourselves God because we figured him out (picture Eve wanting to eat the fruit in the garden so she could have the same knowledge as God).

It seems that God chooses to be more like a greased watermelon than a bird with clipped wings in a cage. Even those this often leaves me feeling frustrated, I wouldn't want to serve a God who could be caught-- by me or anyone else.

other links:

• On Wrestling Watermelons, April 2007
• Authentic Experiences, December 2008 

*linking with the imperfect prose community today.* 

homeschool daybook: history timeline, Romeo & Juliet, the quippy Abe Lincoln

October 12, 2011 (we've been in Austin exactly two months today!)

Keeping our opening routine consistent with individual reading in the Gospel of Matthew (today chapters 8 &9) and then morning prayers and a few more pages in Evidence That Demands A Verdict. 

Then we move right into history.  Today Natalie created a timeline for the years 1850 - present day.  She also read from Kingfisher Encyclopedia on the Industrial Revolution, wrote a three-level outline and added important dates to the now-prepared wall timeline!

Natalie pretty much chose the rest of her schedule today and covered the following projects:

• math workbook pages; currently Alex is grading her on this subject.  I'm going to ride that free train as long as possible!

• reading through the first  part of Abraham Lincoln's life in Lincoln: A Photobiography by Russell Freedman.  I worked nearby while Natalie read and every once in awhile she'd share a piece of especially information.  Like this anecdote (which I'm pretty sure my grandmother used to rehearse for me):

 When called a two-faced man during a debate, Lincoln replied, "I leave it to the audience.  If I had another face, do you think I'd really wear this one?"  

•  reading out loud Act 1, Scene 5 - Act 4, Scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet from the gorgeously illustrated book by Michael Rosen and Jane Ray

Lots of reading today so that means lots of writing to do tomorrow.  Stay tuned!

from the book pile, 2011: A Timbered Choir by Wendell Berry

I've been working my way through the tower of books teetering off the antique writing desk that serves as my nightstand.  Working my way through reading and working my way through the thoughts and learnings each title provokes.

When I first started this blog in 2006 one of my goals was to nurture a forum that kept me accountable for the cultural goods I consume.  Of course, I didn't really know then to articulate the goal in those terms.  The truth dawns gradually: as in in worship so as in culture -- I did not make it, but it is making me.

Having also gotten quite clear with the truth that I will never be a professional book reviewer, I've let myself off the hook and changed up the way I document my reading.  Hope you enjoy!

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23. A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997

Author:  Wendell Berry

Genre: Poetry

Published: Counterpoint Press, 1998

General Impression:  The word love is overused, but what do we have left trying to describe the deep affection I have for Wendell Berry's poems?  Actually, I feel a bit twitterpated with every single thing I've ever read of Mr. Berry's:  the essays I stumble on across the internet, his poetry, his fiction.  Ironically, I almost never got to know the work of Wendell Berry.  Several years ago, before I'd been properly introduced to his work, a friend who'd actually written her Ph.D. dissertation on the work of Wendell Berry described him to me as a contrarian.  As it turned out that friendship took on a contrarian flavour all the way around and, sadly, that scared me away from Wendell Berry as guilty-by-association.  Thankfully, I overcame all those negative presumptions and started reading.  As grace often does, the more I became acquainted with Berry's writing, the more I forgave and enjoyed the memories of that ill-fated friendship as well.

From what I can understand, this collection of poems were written as a response to his practice of Sunday morning walking meditations over a period of two decades.  In order to truly hear Mr. Berry in his poetry and his prayer, I read --out loud-- each poem as a chapter of a book.  So for one evening, I read, for example, the six poems included from the 1990 collection.  I do not know why the number of poems included from each year vary.  For example, 1979 is made up of twelve poems and 1986 only one.  Was Mr. Berry more prolific or more skilled in one particular year over another?  Also, interesting were the themes that hid out like little secrets from one year to the next: mournful years where it seems many friends and neighbors passed away, angry year when war and technology butt up against the authors personal theology and sociology, pleasant years of farming and family fulfillment.

Ecclesiastes 3 as a framework for this collection of poetry:  

To everything there is a season.

A time to be born... (The ewes crowd to the mangers; their bellies widen, sag.... 1991 II)

and a time to die...(Now you have slipped away...1996, I)

a time to plant...(The seed is in the ground...1991, V)

and a time to pluck up that which is planted (The summer ends...1984, IV)

A time to kill, (What hard travail God does in death...1980, I)

and a time to heal; (Great deathly powers have passed...1980, III)

a time to break down, (Who makes a clearing makes a work of art...1983, IV))

and a time to build up; (The crop must drink...1984, III)

A time to weep, (Now you know the worst...1995, V)

and a time to laugh; ("You see," my mother said, and laughed...1997, IV)

A time to mourn, (Not again in this flesh will I see...1985, I)

and a time to dance; (The year relents, and free...1983, II)

A time to seek, (One day I walked imagining...1989, VIII)

and a time to lose; (No, no there is no going back...1993, I)

A time to keep, (The sky bright after summer-ending reign...1989, VII)

and a time to cast away; (The fume and shock and uproar...1985, IV)
A time to tear apart, (We have walked so many times, my boy...1982, VI)

and a time to sew; (A gracious Sabbath stood here while they stood...1985, II)

A time to keep silence, (I go among trees and sit still... 1979, I)

and a time to speak; (They sit together on the porch...1994, IV)

A time to love, (Our household for the time made right...1982, VIII)

and a time to hate; (Hate has no world...1993, IV)

A time of war, (The year begins with war... 1991, I)

and a time of peace; (Cut off in front of the line...1990, VI)

From the work of one poet to another, the body of work surveys creation, fall, crucifixion, resurrection.  This is work wholly written.

The poem from which the title was drawn:  

Slowly, slowly, they return

To the small woodland let alone:

Great trees, outspreading and upright,

Apostles of the living light.

Patient as stars, they build in air

Tier after tier a timbered choir,

Stout beams upholding weightless grace

Of song, a blessing on this place.

They stand in waiting all around,

Uprisings of their native ground,

Downcomings of the distant light;

They are the advent they await.

Receiving sun and giving shade,

Their life's a benefaction made,

And is a benediction said

Over the living and the dead.

In fall their brightened leaves, released,

Fly down the wind, and we are pleased

To walk on radiance, amazed.

O light come down to earth, be praised!

                                  --1986, I

More Wendell Berry poems that have inspired me:

• On the Subject of a Place: An Essay
• Monday Mixtape: I Shall Not Walk Alone

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"The Bible is the loving heart of God made visible and plain...."

A sign at the conclusion of a prayerwalk during my silent retreat.

"The Bible is the loving heart of God made visible and plain. And receiving this message of exquisite love is the great privilege message of all who long for life with God. Reading, studying, memorizing, and meditating upon Scripture has always been the foundation of the Christian disciplines."

                                                                                --- Richard J. Foster
                                                                   

homeschool daybook: zinnias, pumpkin painting, Ethiopia

October 10 &11, 2011

Naturally we took yesterday off for Columbus Day, but we did travel through Texas Hill Country to a little town called Marble Falls to visit a pumpkin patch.  I'll write about the trip in an another post, but want to include a few "art" and "nature study" projects Natalie enjoyed.  (life is learning, yes?!?)

Today we got back into the swing of things, reading the Gospel of Matthew chapters 7 & 8.  She and I are both going to take on the challenge of memorizing a portion of Matthew, probably from the Sermon on the Mount.  We also read part of chapter 2 in Evidence that Demands A Verdict, adding words like "papyrus" and "vellum" to her word study notebook.  (I did not know that vellum was originally from cow or goat skin, scraped and shaved to make a writing surface...did you???)

She got busy on her next chapter in Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, outlining an overview for each continent we'll be studying in more depth.  She has picked up the three-level outline with no trouble, outlining the major themes for each continent during the period of 1836-1915.  We also put up a beautiful new map.  I'll take a picture and share it sometime.

This week she is helping our small group at Christ Church with a community service project.  We are holding a bake sale/ craft sale during the next weekend's annual parish retreat to raise funds for a Forever Family Home in Ethiopia.  The agency Bring Love In, does this generative, creative work of joining together orphans and widows, setting them up with homes and physical needs to live together in a Forever Family.  Natalie spent a good part of her day combing through the website, gathering information, and making display boards for the retreat.  (also that new map came in handy looking up the location of Ethiopia!)

She also spent some time plugging away at her math assignments for the week.

So, it's been, so far a creatively-fulfilling week for my 8th-grader.  She did, however, look over her list of assignments with concern that there were not enough creative writing opportunities.  We'll have to take care of that!  

Monday Mix Tape: knowledge fruit

Welcome to Monday Mix Tape, in which I pretend I'm Ira Glass.  You know, I choose a theme and share with you several variations on the theme from the worlds of art, faith and culture.  To keep up the fun little facade of making a weekly mix tape, I label each of these finds as "track 1". "track 2" and so on (and just like the stack of mixtapes you've got hidden in a box in your attic, you never know when you might see some love song from Journey or Lionel Richie show up here).


I'm continuing the theme of the spiritual discipline of Study.  This week my reading turns a corner from the practice of study to the focus of study.  In spiritual reading, Scriptural and otherwise, the point is not knowledge alone but faith, wisdom, humility, transformation.  Knowledge alone brings pride, judgement, death.  In all spiritual reading we depend on the Spirit of the Word to instruct, counsel, breathe life into us.  

"We have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding;  so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God."  -- Colossians 1: 9b, 10

track 1: visual art

Knowledge With A Bite V
Nicora N Gangi
CIVA, Images of Faith

track 2: music

The following three songs are some of the best modern hymns I've heard that recognized our need for a posture of humility and receptivity to the Word of God in worship.  

Each of the chart and lead sheet arrangements for these three hymns are available for free download at the following links:


We Are Listening at Sojourn's digital hymnal

Open Thou Mine Eyes on the Bifrost Arts page at Great Comfort Records


O Word of God Incarnate at the Indelible Grace digital hymnal

track 3:  poem

Mrs. Adam

BY KATHLEEN NORRIS

I have lately come to the conclusion that I am Eve,
alias Mrs. Adam. You know, there is no account
of her death in the Bible, and why am I not Eve?
Emily Dickinson in a letter,
12 January, 1846

Wake up,

you’ll need your wits about you.

This is not a dream,

but a woman who loves you, speaking.

She was there

when you cried out;

she brushed the terror away.

She knew

when it was time to sin.

You were wise

to let her handle it,

and leave that place.

We couldn’t speak at first

for the bitter knowledge,

the sweet taste of memory

on our tongues.

Listen, it’s time.

You were chosen too,

to put the world together.

Kathleen Norris, “Mrs. Adam” from Poetry 156 (April 1990). 
Source: Poetry (April 1990).

Linking up:

homeschool daybook: Wilberforce, Shakespeare & monks' theatre

October 7, 2011

Our first Friday and we were busy trying to check off all the projects and to-do's on our assignment list.  One thing I've learned already is that Natalie seems to do better managing her own schedule from a list of assignments rather than have me give assignments out one at a time. I think it energizes her and helps her set goals for her day and week.  As a bonus, it's also easier for me!

Natalie read from the Gospel of Matthew, chapters 6 & 7 and journalled.  We didn't talk too much about the reading together today, but on our way home from the classical guitar concert yesterday we had a great discussion inspired by the Sermon on the Mount.  All initiated by my 13-year-old.  If nothing else goes well for the rest of this year, I think it'll be worth it for these little "teachable moments" that pop up when we have more one-on-one time together.

I read out loud chapter 1 of Josh McDowell's Evidence That Demands A Verdict.   The chapter covers a wide variety of supporting evidence that the Bible is unique in all of its many facets:  work of literature, historical record, didactic treatise and so forth.  I found myself inwardly cringing a bit as I read, imagining all the ways each point could be refuted by skeptics.  Also, remembering all the ways the phrase "inerrant, irrefutable Word of God" was used as hammer over the heads of my fellow Baptist-school classmates.  But McDowell's enthusiasm feels fresh and exuberant, rather than dogmatic.  It was good for me to read these words and ponder these truths again.



To wrap up her week in History, she studied the timeline of the abolitionist movement in The Wall Chart of World History.  Then we watched together the documentary The Better Hour, on the life and work of William Wilberforce.  Again I say, if nothing else goes well this entire school year, it'll be worth the time just to learn about people like this man. 

Natalie needed to write a two-page summary from her history reading this week.  She was inspired by the documentary to write her summary as a historical fiction short-story from the point of view of a West African woman in danger of being shipped to Britain the very morning that Parliament's vote to abolish the slave trade went into affect.  I hope Natalie will never forget  the story she imagined from the history she's learned this week.

After lunch Natalie spent her afternoon starting to work on deductive thinking skills exercises in the Mind Bender workbook, catching up on math workbook pages, sitting in the yard sketching, looking over some of the paintings in chapter 4 of this gorgeous book: The Story of Painting by H.W. Janson.

To round out the week, she read the chapter on the introduction of theater in English Literature for Boys and Girls by H.E. Marshall and we loved learning the origins of theater in the earliest days of monkish plays.

It seemed fitting to end our day by reading Shakespeare out loud together.  We're going to be reading and watching different adaptations of the play all month so we started with the exquisitely illustrated Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet adapted by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Jane Ray.  

And no matter how many times and how many ways we've heard it, doesn't some magical pain stab at our hearts when we read:

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life,

Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows 

Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.

Happy holiday weekend!!

*Linking to Read Aloud Thursday*