09 10

30 April 2017

Commonplace Book: April



また​神かみ​は、すべて​の​人ひと​に、イスラエル​の​聖せい者じゃ​に​対たいして​完全かんぜん​な​信しん仰こう​を​抱いだき​ながら、​悔くい改あらためて、神かみ​の​御み​名な​に​よって​​バプテスマ​を​受うけ​なければ​ならない​と​命めいじて​おられる。そう​で​なければ、人ひと​は​神かみ​の​王おう国こく​に​救すくわれない。
-ニーファイ第ニ書 9:24


Eliza Snow, later the [Relief] Society's second general president, fulfilled her stewardship as secretary [during Emma's presidency] when she faithfully recorded the activities and proceedings of the meetings held in Nauvoo. When the Saints abandoned Nauvoo in 1846, she included the priceless records among the few items she brought across the plains to the Salt Lake Valley. In Utah, when Brigham Young called her to reorganize the Relief Society among the units of the Church, she carried  the records with her from ward to ward to help local priesthood leaders organize units of the Relief Society according to the order set forth by the Prophet Joseph.
-Women of Nauvoo, 6



The hardships of gathering also came to bear upon loved ones left behind who suffered because family members ventured afar. There is no measuring the last look of anguish on a mother's or  sister's face as a family member began a long journey, never again to be seen. And there is no reason to doubt that the memory of that look stayed with the convert to the grave.
-Women of Nauvoo, 14



Though it may seem to savor of paradox, it is yet no exaggeration to say, that if we would find the quality in which we most notably excel the brute creation, we should look for it, not so much in our faculty of convincing as being convinced by the exercise of reasoning, as in our capacity for influencing and being influenced by the action of authority.
-Mr. Balfour, quoted Parents' Review 11:423



"Leaving land along doesn't work; the natives are overwhelmed by the invaders." Spot bulldozing is common across the country, even on land that is supposedly protected. "Much of this destruction is done out of expediency and ignorance," she said. She believe that people are unlikely to value what they cannot name. "One of my students told me that every time she learns the name of a plant, she feels she is meeting someone new. Giving a name to something is a way of knowing it."
-Last Child in the Woods, 41



The Muses were the daughters of Jupiter and Mnemosyne (Memory). They presided over song and prompted the memory. They were nine in number, to each of whom was assigned the presidence over some particular department of literature, art, or science. Calliope was the muse of epic poetry, Clio of history, Euterpe of lyric poetry, Melpomene of tragedy, Terpsichore of choral dance and song, Erato of love poetry, Polyhymnia of sacred poetry, Urania of astronomy, Thalia of comedy.
-Bulfinch's Age of Fable, 7










28 April 2017

20 Principles: Authority is an Eternal Principle



Miss Mason started chapter three of Philosophy of Education right out with a pair of ideas that I found really challenging:


It is still true that 'Order is heaven's first law' and order is the outcome of authority.


Without this principle [authority], society would cease to cohere.
-Charlotte Mason 6:69


I don't think of myself as a rebellious person. My parents read my blog, and they're probably laughing right there, and I do admit that I am not someone that can just take your word for it. One of the early memories I have about gospel study, the first time that I remember thinking that scripture was really cool, was the day that Dad explained to me that I don't have to take his word, or the teacher's word, or anybody's word for it: I can go and read the scriptures myself and find out for myself, and I can search the scriptures for the answers to my specific questions, because the important stuff is all in there, and anybody that wants it can have it. So I am an questioning, independent person. But I don't think of myself as rebellious.

However.

Charlotte Mason is a challenging teacher! I regularly feel rebellious about her statements when I first read them. Which is interesting all by itself; I can't think of another author that does that. But the really interesting thing is how often I think about it for a while and come around to her way of thinking. This principle is like that. My first reaction was a rebellious, "No it isn't!" But I kept mulling it over.


It is still true that 'Order is heaven's first law' and order is the outcome of authority.


I had to work backward to get to where she's at with this one. And I re-read 2 Nephi 2, where Lehi teaches about the eternal order, the nature of God, and of law. Miss Mason says that order is the outcome of authority. Here's what Lehi says:


And men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil. And the law is given unto men. ... And if ye say that there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin,. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery.
-2 Nephi 2:5,13


We need order and law; we need our things to continue to be ours, so we can plan, so we can prepare for tomorrow, meet our needs and those of our family. Law is important. But law presupposes that there is someone in charge. It presupposes authority. That is, order and law presuppose that someone has the right to command or to act. Realizing that was a turning point for me in understanding what she's getting at. Some of what she says here is actually familiar ideas; she says that anarchy actually isn't a thing, not really:


Practically there is no such thing as anarchy; what i so-called is a mere transference of authority, even if in the last resort the anarchist find authority in himself alone.
-Charlotte Mason 6:69


This is an idea I've run into before, in the course of studying government:




The video's section on anarchy is actually a really good expansion of what Miss Mason is saying, and it touches on some of the same things that Miss Mason says next:


There is an idea abroad that authority makes for tyranny, and that obedience, voluntary or involuntary, is of the nature of slavishness; but authority is, on the contrary, the condition without which liberty does not exist and, except it be abused, is entirely congenial to those on whom it is exercised...
-Charlotte Mason 6:69, emphasis added


Re-watching the YouTube segment really clarified for me why it is that liberty cannot exist without authority. "Some amount of government is a necessary force in any civilized, orderly society." Lehi addresses this, too, when he say that without law there is neither righteousness nor sin. No law means that there's no crime, and no punishment for unjust actions. And you spend all  your time and energy trying, probably unsuccessfully, to protect your people and your property. Which is why God gave us governments: for the good and safety of society, and for the rights and protection of all people. Like so many principles, when you dig down into the core, authority is about Agency. And, if we try to escape authority, to create an anarchy, Miss Mason is right: society will cease to cohere, and we all suffer greatly. History tells us that revolutions nearly always end up more like the French Revolution than like the American Revolution; the people are usually less free than when they began.

I don't think it's any accident that the video places things on their power scale they way they do: total government on the one hand, no government on the other, with correct action being balanced in the center. You see this kind of tension between opposing principles all the time. I wrote about it with Grace and Works a few months ago, using the Psalms and Romans, but Lehi talks about it too, and ties this concept of opposites to our Agency:


... it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter. Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other. ... And the Messiah cometh in the fullness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever...
-2 Nephi 2:15, 26


All this wanders pretty far from Miss Mason's educational treatise that I'm working on, but before I could really look at what she says about authority and education, I really had to think hard about what she's saying about the nature of authority. In spite of my initial resistance, I think that she hit the nail on the head: authority is an eternal principle that is essential to both order, and also closely related to the exercise of Agency.

26 April 2017

Japanese Grammar Memory Work

In reading from our new Latin books, I found this in the preface to the teacher's manual:

The modern approach to language study is the reading method, in which students are required to read text prior to instruction in the necessary grammar and vocabulary. Although this approach can be successful in certain limited circumstances, it is often very similar to teaching reading without phonics.

This really resonates with me regarding our Japanese study for a couple of reasons. One is that, although my kids have been picking up a fair amount of Japanese from what we're doing, I've been feeling like the grammar that I studied while I was in college laid a really useful foundation for me, and that when I reached a point recently where both the grammar and my vocabulary hit a critical point, and my ability to understand both written and spoken Japanese has been really expanding the past few months -- but I'm also aware that my kids are not getting very little explicit grammar instruction right now, and I think that needs to change. We already have a number of grammar resources I've purchased, but nothing that's really kid-oriented, so I need to break down the information we've got into bite-sized pieces for them. Hopefully, this will be a pretty straight-forward process!

Looking at the way that the Latin course is organized has inspired me to take some of the grammar materials that we've got and try organizing it into something that is somewhat similar, so that my kids can have a better grasp on the grammar of our new language. We're going to use some vocabulary that they're already somewhat familiar with, but expand the ways that they can do conjugations and declensions. The Latin book has the kids doing small, discrete units: a collection of forms for a single verb makes a set. I'm going to follow that example with these present tense verbs and adjectives:


To be - inanimate objects:
ある、 ない、 あります、 ありません、 あって

To be - animate objects:
いる、 いない、 います、 いません、 いて

To eat:
たべる、 たべない、 たべます、 たべません、 たべて

To sleep:
ねる、ねない、 ねます、 ねません、 ねて

To drink:
のむ、 のまない、 のみます、 のみません、 のんで

To read:
よむ、 よまない、 よみます、 よみません、 よんで



Big:
おおきい、 おおきくない、 おおきいです、 おおきないです、おおきくて

Small:
 ちいさい、 ちさくない、 ちさいです、 ちさくないです、 ちさくて

Delicious:
おいしい、 おいしくない、 おいしいです、 おいしくないです、 おいしくて

Cute:
かわいい、 かわいくない、 かわいいです、 かわいくないです、 かわいくて

Scary:
こわい、 こわくない、 こわいです、 こわくないです、 こわくて


I'm really excited about this -- grammar sometimes gets a bad rap, but I think that, particularly for foreign languages, it helps to speed up the process, and knowing the patterns that are used, it's a lot easier to both understand what's being said, and also to be able to start to swap parts out of phrases and begin to be able to express yourself. I'm looking forward to continuing our Japanese journey, and also to this new Latin adventure!

25 April 2017

Daily Bible Jigsaw {Crew Review}

Daily Bible Jigsaw by Planet 316
For this review, we have been playing with puzzles in a cute Daily Bible Jigsaw from Planet 316. It comes on a variety of platforms, but I play on my iPhone. 

One of the things that I like to do in our home is to create multiple points of contact with scripture in our day. This means that, even if we miss one of the regular places where the kids and I typically interact with the Word, it really has to be an off day before we make it all the way through without any scripture at all. While this is a very minor point of contact, it's still contact, and it's fun. My kids think it's great. The puzzles are cute. They only come in one size, which is big enough to be fun, but small enough to do in just a couple of minutes and then be done. There's a free puzzle every day, and you can spend coins in order to do past puzzles. The daily puzzles are organized into a puzzle calendar that you slowly assemble as you complete them, which is kind of fun. It also makes it really easy to see which ones you've done, and which are still waiting.


A review of the Daily Bible Jigsaw puzzle app from Planet 316.

There's a couple of tools that you can use to help you get your puzzle done; most of them do cost a couple of coins. You can earn coins, (very) slowly, in the gameplay, or you can buy coins with real money, or you can earn coins by watching short commercials; the ones I saw were for other game apps. Unfortunately, as you use the coins, there's no warning messages or anything: they're just gone. Which is how my six-year old used up about 350 coins in a half hour or so the first day that I had the app... without him ever even realizing that they exist, much less that he was using them. So if you buy coins, do be aware to teach your children how they get used, and when they can do it: I would have been very frustrated, had that been $30 of coins that I'd bought, rather than just coins that I was given for the review! In addition to the other features, you can also log in through Facebook and play with friends, which could be a fun feature if you enjoy playing that way.

A review of the Daily Bible Jigsaw puzzle app from Planet 316.


The pictures used in the puzzles are uniformly lovely. I'm not sure what version of the Bible they're using, besides that it's not the King James, but the verses they picked for all the puzzles that we did are uplifting and encouraging. However, you don't build a gallery of completed puzzles or anything like that, so you see the verses once and then they're gone, which limits the usefulness of the app as a tool to gently increase your familiarity, or an aid to "ponderizing" your scriptures, or anything like that. It's a nice puzzle app, but I think that the scripture to game balance is too far to the game side of thing for this to be a meaningful addition to study. However, it could be a fun way to get a gentle exposure as you play the puzzles, especially if you're good at puzzles; I'm pretty slow, so it's probably 15-20 minutes to complete one, unless I use some coins. Used mindfully, the app could possibly be a way to find new verses to study or memorize, but it lacks that kind of tools to do it in the app.


A review of the Daily Bible Jigsaw puzzle app from Planet 316.

Hero(10) had this to say about it: "I just think it's great." 


Dragon(6) said: "I love it! It challenges my brain."




To read more reviews on this app, and to see how other families used it in their homeschool, please click the link below:

Click to read Crew Reviews






Crew Disclaimer

24 April 2017

Dala Horses

So we did this art project from ArtAchieve (there's a review coming at the first of May), and it went really well, particularly considering that they were a little reluctant to do it at first! The kids, particularly Dragon, are learning a whole bunch of things with this style of art, and they're making some really nice art. The project has you do a line drawing first:

Top: Dragon, Hero. Bottom: Peanut, Mom


Then you paint it. They give several examples, and tell what's traditional, mention that you don't have to do that if you don't want to, then turn the kids loose to make their own designs.

Top: Dragon, Mom. Bottom: Peanut, Hero.

And they did.



In fact, the next day, they wanted to do more. It was pretty cool. I made them do their regular school work; told them that this time the horses were an "after school activity". Which was fine with them.  They set and did them after their regular work was done.




Peanut did one, then the boys came and joined her and they all started the lesson over, but their impromptu art class got interrupted: Daddy got home and horses weren't very important any more. Right then, at least. So Peanut was the only one with a completed work from that batch.


I was pretty impressed with her. These lessons are intended for kids who are much older than she is, and she had very little help with this one, since I was trying to get some dinner made before we all went to Scouts for the evening. I tried to persuade her to do watercolor, but since we'd used acrylics the first time, she wanted those same paints the second time. A lot of her cute details got obscured when she painted, as a result.

The art lesson has a lot of extras, so we checked some of them out. There's a flyover of Sweden, Norway, and Finland. That was fun; we have ancestors that lived in those places, but especially in Sweden and Norway.




They've got some information about a Smörgåsbord - I had no idea those were Swedish - and while I think that I'm not going to be making anything nearly as fancy as what their article describes, when I searched for Smörgåsbord on Pinterest, I did find this recipe for these cookies. I have no idea how authentic they are, but they were yummy! 




We also looked at a factory, where they make Dala Horses. That was pretty interesting. Hero likes whittling. So far, he's only used his pocket knife on sticks from the yard, and a few bars of soap, but we're in the market for better projects for him, and he was all over the little tips they mentioned, like to pay attention to the grain of the wood. I think it would be pretty awesome if we could arrange for him to make a real wooden one, rather than just a painting, but we haven't made that happen. Yet. It's remarkable to me how much they're doing with such a basic knife. I thought carving required much more specialized tools.








Because we have some Swedish ancestry, I also looked up where our people were, and compared it to where these horses were made, but it looks like it's far enough away that these were probably not a thing that our ancestors were involved in: the 3 hour drive is not a big deal today, but in those days, that was a long distance. Still, it was fun to look it up, and to look at some of the designs. Even if the horses weren't a thing in Uppsala, where our people were, it's probable that they had very similar traditional designs. It's always fun to look up that kind of thing and make even a tenuous personal connection.

21 April 2017

5 Days of Books: Feed the Teacher, Too

Mother Culture is a type of self-care that helps us to be our best for ourselves and our families; it is *not* selfish to care for yourself. Mindful reading habits and a commonplace book can do wonders for our continuing education, very inexpensively.



There is so much that, as moms, we are responsible for - whether we homeschool or not. It's easy to become immersed in the day-to-day ordinary stuff of parenting, and forget that our children's minds are not the only ones that need to be fed! But it is every bit as important to feed our own minds and spirits as it is to feed our bodies. This sort of self-care is not selfish; it helps prevent burn-out and the depression that so often accompanies that used-up feeling. We are children of God; we do not stop needing to grow ourselves, just because we take on the responsibility of mothering!


It's the concept of "breathing" that I refer to. The biggest challenge to the mentor is to breathe, is to inhale, because the mentor, the teacher is always exhaling. And, if they never take the time to inhale, if they never take the time to feed themselves, that's the biggest challenge. Because we're always concerned about giving, about teaching, about leading, guiding, mentoring, doing things: output. And if we neglect the input, that can be harmful. 
-Quiddity #69: Why Mentorship Matters

Happily, it's a relatively simple matter to continue our own education, and thanks to the ready availability of books and technology, there's a number of easy ways to do it, many of them very inexpensive, and a number of them able to be done while we do necessary, but uninteresting, chores that are so much a part of life.

One traditional -and very cost-efficient- method of feeding ourselves is to keep a commonplace book. I've written about commonplacing a couple of times, but basically, what it is is a notebook. I use a regular spiral notebook, one of the tougher kind that has a plastic cover so it will last as I fill it over a period of months or years, including dragging it around in my backpack sometimes. In the notebook I copy out passages from my reading that strike me as being particularly good, true, or beautiful. Sometimes it's passages from scripture, sometimes it's from the fiction that I read either by myself or with the kids' school, and sometimes it's from nonfiction. Occasionally I'll add something from blogs or whatever else I read. The commonplace book has been all but forgotten, but it was once a pillar of self-education in both America (especially among women) and in Europe. Charlotte Mason kept one, which you can see at Afterthoughts. The Library of Congress has images from Thomas Jefferson's various notebooks. I can say that, having kept one for several years now, it's a powerful tool for self-education. All you really need is a notebook and something to read, and you can become more educated than you are right now.

There's lots of places that will help you find worthy things to read. The 1000 Good Books list and a host of other lists of classic works are great places to start. If you want to learn more about the Founders, then this list looks likely. I will be working on works from the Ambleside Online recommendations for a long while, I'm thinking, and I've been fortunate to be a part of a Mother's Education Group for many years now, which has helped me find other good books.

In addition to traditional paper books, there's audiobooks - Librivox has a great selection of classics that my kids and I enjoy. Audiobooks are great for making things like laundry go more quickly and pleasantly. And there's podcasts on every topic, and in a host of languages, so you can use them to support the language you learned in school, or that you're working to learn now. Even if you don't understand everything, listening to native speakers speak is hugely valuable to language study.

The reality is, we won't have energy for something big and meaty and deep every day. And that's ok. We do what we can, with what we have, and that includes our time and energy. I thought that this was some really great practical advice for moms who have to live in the real world, where good intentions meet day-to-day reality:


The wisest woman I ever knew--the best wife, the best mother, the best mistress, the best friend--told me once, when I asked her how, with her weak health and many calls upon her time, she managed to read so much, "I always keep three books going--a stiff book, a moderately easy book, and a novel, and I always take up the one I feel fit for!" That is the secret; always have something "going" to grow by.
-Mother Culture, Parents' Review Archives




All this week, I'm posting about books. Stop by again to read about:

The 5 Days of Books series is part of the Homeschool Review Crew Annual Blog Hop: 5 Days of Homeschooling. Click this graphic or browse the linky below to see what other Crew members are writing about.

5 Days of Homeschool Annual Blog Hop - 2017




20 April 2017

5 Days of Books: A Feast of Ideas




The written word is really pretty miraculous. It allow us to communicate over not only vast distances in space, but also through time: Hero(10) and I are reading Robinson Crusoe as part of his school work right now, and in a very real way we are having a conversation, albeit a bit one-sided, with Daniel Defoe. This is really quite remarkable, since Mr. Defoe died in 1731, just shy of 300 years ago. But, through the miracle of books, we can consider the ideas that he thought were important enough to write down. One of the major themes we've encountered is that of God's love, and we get to see how Crusoe finally turns to the Bible in order to turn to God. It's a beautiful thing.

Mormon theology holds that writing, rather than being an invention of man, is actually a gift from God, originally given by inspiration, and that Adam and his children kept records, including records of God's dealings with and commandments to man. The Biblical account in Genesis gives us the highlights, preserved in those early records and recorded and passed to us by the prophet Moses, of some of the most important events and ideas of human history.

It is this ability to transmit the ideas and events of the past to future generations that makes the written word such an amazing thing: we don't have to start fresh every generation, ignorant of the things that have been learned by those who have gone before us. Books give us access to the "Great Conversation" that has been going on through the ages. And they give us the opportunity to bring that heritage, and its character-shaping power, to our children.


Some ideas can be found by the senses, but many ideas, especially those influencing character and behavior, travel from one mind to another. Of these, some are certainly passed by word of mouth or family traditions. But just as providing three proper meals a day requires planning, Charlotte [Mason] urges us to focus on quality and intentionally put our children in touch with ideas the best minds, which can be found in living books.
-Amy Hines, A Rich Feast of Ideas



Today over lunch, I read aloud from Pinocchio, who learned the folly of being a picky eater. The book has really captivated the kids' attention, and after reading about his antics they're not sure if they like Pinocchio or not. He, through his own bad behavior, goes without supper, and when Geppetto sacrifices his own breakfast for him my kids were appalled that Pinocchio would refuse to eat a part of it, then complain that he was still hungry. It was particularly timely, as my own picky eater left a small pile of green peppers on his plate. He prefers them raw, not cooked, but I could see the wheels turning. After that we got out our poetry for the day. I've been mulling over Hero's first poem from Wordsworth off and on all afternoon; there's a lot in there. Reading over lunch and throughout our day allows us to feed our minds as well as our bodies.


The life of the mind is sustained upon ideas... the best thought in the world is stored in books; we must open books to children, the best books; our own concern is abundant provision and orderly serving. 
-Charlotte Mason 6:25-26

We want the best books because we want the best, most ennobling ideas for our children -- and for ourselves, too. When we plan our education, we need to spread a generous feast.



All this week, I'm posting about books. Stop by again to read about:

The 5 Days of Books series is part of the Homeschool Review Crew Annual Blog Hop: 5 Days of Homeschooling. Click this graphic or browse the linky below to see what other Crew members are writing about.

5 Days of Homeschool Annual Blog Hop - 2017








19 April 2017

5 Days of Books: Second Language Literacy



Foreign language learning is a challenge. Lots of people take classes in one or more new languages; a relatively small number of people actually make the leap into meaningful fluency in their second language. Fortunately, a number of the people who have made that leap have talked about what they do. I've spent a fair amount of time over the past two or three years reading about what adult learners who have successfully become fluent in a second language say, and also lurking in groups of parents who are passing heritage languages to their children, and there are some striking similarities between what the two groups say and recommend, and it has profoundly impacted how I go about working with our family's second language.

The biggest takeaway that I've had from reading what these people say is that you have to make room for your new language in your life. The language that stays in the classroom, and never gets integrated into your daily routine, is probably not going to be a language where you ever become comfortable. Both adult learners and people who pass along heritage language talk about the mass of time that's necessary to attain fluency: they recommend aiming for exposure to the second language (L2) for roughly a third of the day. This includes conversation, obviously, but things like the music you listen to, the talk radio in the background, and yes, the books you read, count as well. The exposure adds up, and when combined with active study, becomes a powerful boost to your L2 skills.

Don't wait to buy books until you've already become fluent. Get the books now. Literacy follows books; it doesn't precede them. It doesn't matter that you can't read them yet. Buy them, and work on them a little at a time, and you will grow into them. 

Literacy follows books in English; it works the same way in your L2. The same things that support literacy in your child's first language will support and facilitate it in the new one. Get picture books. Board books. Bilingual books. It's ok if they're "too young". They won't feel too young, because the work of figuring out the unfamiliar words will make them challenging. Amazon has an amazing variety of books in foreign languages. I've been able to find books in Japanese and Welsh without having to delve into Amazon.jp or anything crazy like that. I've even been able to sometimes get Japanese books at the local Half-Price Books. Buy the books. Flip through them. Look for words that you recognize. Then, get cozy and play around with your dictionary. If you get stuck, you can take a picture of the page and ask what's happening on the HiNative app - they've been very helpful for me when that's happened. Every book will grow your vocabulary. The first one is hard. The second one, too. But it does get better; you will start to find words that you know already.

Preschoolers are famous for latching onto a certain book and demanding that we read it again and again. There are reasons for why they do this crazy thing: they are learning from all that repetition. We can learn from our youngest language learners, and imitate the things they do naturally when they are learning their first language to help us acquire our second.


Research about reading to children has repeatedly demonstrated this phenomenon, although researchers are not sure why some children develop such strong attachments to particular books. What seems clear, though, is that children’s preferences drive learning, and repeated exposure to a story can deliver benefits in several developmental domains, including vocabulary and motor areas.
-Repeat After Me



I have for several years been slowly building a library of picture books in Japanese, and it is remarkable how many times I need to read a book for it to feel reasonably fluent to read it to myself. And reading it to my kids reasonably well requires still more practice. One of the results of this is that investing in a picture book - even very simple board books - gives a great return on the investment: the books last as vehicles of active learning far longer than I expected them to when I started building our L2 library. There is a surprisingly large amount of language used in simple picture books and toddler songs about colors and numbers! These things build our base in the same way that they build our munchkins' base in their native language.
 

Sometimes, you luck out, and you find a classic that has been translated. The Very Hungry Caterpillar has been translated into a host of languages. Not only did we find the book, but we later found that someone had set it to music, which is extra exciting: we then had the correct pronunciation of every word in the book, which was immensely helpful.


Figuring out search terms and specific titles can be challenging, but if you can find them, poems in your L2, something along the lines of Mother Goose, would be a great asset. Each language plays just a little bit differently, and the poetry that they teach their children is an introductory course in that play. They also form a body of common knowledge that most speakers of the language share, so if you can break into that, then you are adding depth to your L2 experience.

One place that I always recommend turning to for L2 text as soon as possible is to scripture. The Church has the Bible and other scripture (as well as other materials) in a host of languages. For some of them, there is audio available in the regular Gospel Library app. You can also get Bible text and audio through Faith Comes By Hearing, which has the Bible in more languages than I had realized existed! There is something special about scripture (obviously), and even if you stumble along a single verse or a single sentence at a time at first, it is well worth the effort of making the attempt: I find that it brings the Holy Spirit into the whole effort, and boosts the whole project in a way that nothing else ever can come close to.



All this week, I'm going to be posting about books. Stop by again to read about:



The 5 Days of Books series is part of the Homeschool Review Crew Annual Blog Hop: 5 Days of Homeschooling. Click this graphic to see what other Crew members are writing about.

5 Days of Homeschool Annual Blog Hop - 2017








18 April 2017

5 Days of Books: Supporting New Readers



In order to learn to read, new readers must internalize a number of skills. They have to recognize that letters represent sounds, and master about 44 sounds which are represented by a mix of individual letters and letter groups. As they learn to recognize which letters make the various sounds, they need to have enough practice to gain fluency with those words - research into how kids learn to read tells us that most kids need between 4 and 14 instances of seeing a new word before recognizing it becomes automatic. Give then number of words that kids need to learn to be able to read well, it is clear that they are going to need a lot of practice. Teaching kids systematic phonics helps them to progress through the various letters and letter combinations in an easier-to-harder order, and it also assists the teacher in knowing what kinds of words they know, so that we can find them books that are suited to their reading level. We want to consistently provide good books that are not too hard, not too easy, but just right.

At first, kids need books that are written with a limited vocabulary. I am a fan of the Bob Books because the first book requires only 4 letters to read successfully: kids are able to read a real book very early in the teaching process.  We use a combination of Happy Phonics and The Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading, and I have adapted the little stories in TOPGTR into little books that I made up for my kids. These homemade books are great because they continue with the limited set of sounds that the kids have already learned, and finding ready-made phonetic readers is difficult. Fortunately, they're not hard to make, and kids are not demanding as far as the pictures go: no amazing art skills are needed. Stick figures will do.


After that, I get out our box of "easy books". These are leveled readers, which I usually pick up at Half-Price Books. Because we're getting them used, they're not expensive, and that means that we can make sure that there are books in our box that are interesting enough to be worth the effort of reading. The jump from phonetic readers into Step 1 books has been a big leap for my kids. I will sit next to my kids and help them read these, but I do not read books from the Easy Box. I will help, and I will read our regular picture books, and we consistently keep a chapter-book read-aloud going, as well as various LibriVox titles that the kids ask for, but I do not read books from the Easy Box. If they want to know those stories, they have to do the work themselves. This incentivizes them to make that jump -- I am careful to make sure that there are books in our box that are worth their effort to read! For Hero, this meant that I located easy books about superheroes: nothing else was worth it. Dragon is much less demanding. 


It's tempting to stop at this point, and consider the child a reader when they can read the leveled readers and start to branch out into the regular picture book collection. However, until they are reading chapter books fluently and voluntarily, they still need support and encouragement, as well as books that have a somewhat limited vocabulary and syntax. 

Early chapter books sometimes get a bad rap as being twaddle, but I think that's overly harsh. I consider them a bridge. They are not literature, exactly, but neither are Bob Books. To me, books like Magic Treehouse , or D.C. Heroes that Hero loved when he was learning, are an extension of the same concept of the Step 1 readers: books written with deliberately limited vocabulary and syntax in order to facilitate early reading. For Hero, we had an additional step between the stepped readers and easy chapter books: graphic novels. Those helped him get used to a book-length work, and they have a larger word count than picture books, too. 

None of them, Bob Books, Step readers, graphic novels, or easy chapter books are fantastic literature. But I won't call them twaddle, either. I looked much less at the style, syntax, or vocabulary used, and more at the type of story. He wanted heroes; I wanted stories that had a clear good vs. evil, where the good guys were square jawed heroes, and the bad guys were bad -- none of this grey, likable villain garbage. I wanted to see the heroes winning; justice being done. I liked to see ordinary people doing heroic things; I really like the older versions of Batman, and the kids' versions: he's a normal guy that works hard, thinks hard (oh, and he's filthy stinking rich), and that work, and his mind, those are what make him special. In the older Batman stories, and the kids' stories, then you see him when it's not so dark and gritty -- they haven't made him almost a bad guy himself, and he's much more relatable than some of the super heroes that are mutants. I think that, in a lot of ways, the superhero tales we have are the modern answer to fairy tale quests, and we have encouraged both superheroes and fairy tales. Superheroes were the only thing that Hero found to be worth the considerable effort of reading, there for a while. Now, Dragon is reading the hero books that I bought for his big brother, and they're helping him bridge into the more difficult literature that I've got in store for him.

An emerging reader needs support. Some take to reading quickly and easily. Others are more reluctant readers and they need works that help them. Building fluency can take time, and it plain old isn't fun to struggle through a book that's too hard. We want reading to be a pleasant activity that they do voluntarily, and giving kids books that are appropriate to their skill level, even as they move into chapter books, is an important support. For some, it's critical. Hero was a very reluctant reader for a long time. If I had not been willing to give him books that had a somewhat limited vocabulary and syntax and that he found interesting, he may have never made it over that hump. This is not to say that we put just any old thing into his hands; I still didn't give him books that are based on rude humor or other twaddle. Meanwhile, the feast on real literature continues in our read-alouds, same as always.

For my kids, I aim to get them reading well. Fluently and voluntarily. Without tearing apart the groundwork we lay in hundreds of hours of snugly stories from birth, establishing reading as a pleasant thing, a great leisure activity, I want to make that transition to voluntary reading, which means that my emerging readers chan have limited vocabulary & syntax for a time if they need that kind of support for a little while. 


All this week, I'm going to be posting about books. Stop by again to read about:



The 5 Days of Books series is part of the Homeschool Review Crew Annual Blog Hop: 5 Days of Homeschooling. Click this graphic to see what other Crew members are writing about.

5 Days of Homeschool Annual Blog Hop - 2017






17 April 2017

5 Days of Books: Literature or Twaddle?




 So, having determined that it's important to choose good books, the next task is to figure out how to identify them. There's a lot of names for the good books. Sometimes they're simply called literature. Sometimes these books called living books. Colleen Manning describes living books as "whole books, firsthand sources, classics, books that display imagination, originality, and the 'human touch.'" Charlotte Mason describes this kind of books this way:


For the children? They must grow up upon the best. There must never be a period in their lives when they are allowed to read or listen to twaddle or reading-made-easy. There is never a time when they are unequal to worthy thoughts, well put; inspiring tales, well told. Let Blake's 'Songs of Innocence' represent their standard in poetry; De Foe and Stevenson, in prose; and we shall train a race of readers who will demand literature––that is, the fit and beautiful expression of inspiring ideas and pictures of life.
-Charlotte Mason, 2:263


Whatever we call this sort of reading material (though these standards really apply to all the media we consume), we're looking for material that is ennobling, that develops style and taste, that encourages the reader to aspire to become something more than he is. Character is the true aim of education, and we need to choose books that lead us to be more than we are at present.


As with companions so with books. We may choose those which will make us better, more intelligent, more appreciative of the good and the beautiful in the world, or we may choose the trashy, the vulgar, the obscene, which will make us feel as though we’ve been ‘wallowing in the mire.
-David O. McKay, quoted in Our Refined Heavenly Home


This is not to say that every book needs to be a big, heavy, difficult book. It's important to balance work and wholesome recreation in life, and this is true in our reading as well. It's ok to read simple, easy books, too.


A book may be long or short, old or new, easy or hard, written by a great man or a lesser man, and yet be the living book which finds its way to the mind of a young reader. … The master must have it in him to distinguish between twaddle and simplicity, and between vivacity and life.
-Charlotte Mason, quoted in Myth: Twaddle and light reading are the same thing


But what is "twaddle"? Before I started talking to homeschooling moms who study Charlotte Mason's methods, I'd never heard the word. It quickly became clear that twaddle is a pejorative, and these books are of inferior quality, and ought to be avoided. The word twaddle means "foolish speech or nonsense; talk or write in a trivial or foolish way." But it's used in a somewhat broader sense in Charlotte Mason circles: it also means works that are poorly written, or that talk down to the reader. It's fluff, like cotton candy: it looks inviting, but there's nothing to it. Books that are dumbed down, full of diluted knowledge -- and that includes altogether too many text books, which are frequently poorly written and engaging. Brandy Vincel has a great discussion of what twaddle is on her blog, and she says this: 


Light reading might call for a minimum of mental effort, but it still requires something of the reader. Twaddle leaves the mind stupefied and in need of recovery. To use a dietary analogy, light reading is a bowl of fruit. It has a necessary place within a balanced diet, nourishing the body when used in moderation. Twaddle is more like a box of Junior mints. The effects last beyond immediate gratification, and require time to efficiently work out of your system. They might taste grand, but when the pleasure is past you ache a bit, your moods are not quite under your control and your teeth hurt. Your mind might be capable of withstanding the effects of twaddle, but twaddle is never good for it.
-Brandy Vencel, Myth: Twaddle and light reading are the same thing


I really like the comparison I've seen to moving towards whole foods. As we've done that, we've done much better with adding more whole foods, more vegetables, and less chemicals when I've done it gradually. The times I've tried to make the switch, cold turkey, it falls apart quickly - and we often have a period of lost ground when stress hits and I fall back to the easiest of the familiar. The best, most lasting of our dietary changes begin with browsing Pinterest, looking for ingredient-specific, delicious recipes. And I add those in, one or two at a time, and they start to replace the old recipes.

I deal with my books in much the same way, focusing primarily on what is coming in, and how to select and use high-quality books moving forward. I don't worry so much about what's already here; we'll naturally outgrow the other: I'm finding that even my treat food is gradually getting healthier, and the same thing happens with reading materials as our minds grow.

But where do you find this kind of books? I have a couple of resources that I love to look at first when I'm looking at what to read. One of them is the Ambelside Online curriculum. In addition to the great materials they recommend for the actual school books for each year, each year also has a lengthy list of suggestions for "free reads". The more that I look at these lists (Hero is using the Year 4 list this year), the more that I appreciate the quality of the books they have selected.

The 1000 Good Books list is another fantastic resource for high quality literature. Created by a group of homeschool moms, it's broken down by age level, starting with picture books and going through many of the great classic titles, including The Scarlet Letter, Pride and Prejudice, Up From Slavery, and a host of others.We have been using this list for years, and I have yet to read one of their books that wasn't excellent.

All this week, I'm going to be posting about books. Stop by again to read about:



The 5 Days of Books series is part of the Homeschool Review Crew Annual Blog Hop: 5 Days of Homeschooling. Click this graphic to see what other Crew members are writing about.

5 Days of Homeschool Annual Blog Hop - 2017





16 April 2017

5 Days of Books: Good Books Matter



I have occasionally run into a school of thought that says, "As long as they're reading, it's a good thing, even if the book is not a very desirable book." Sometimes this philosophy puts on very reasonable, academic-sounding clothing and says things like, "Sometimes people use the word literature in a snobby, exclusive way, implying that these books are literature, and those books are not, but in reality, all written works are literature, and we shouldn't be so quick to discount those we don't prefer."

Lies.

Some books are worth reading -- and some are not. And you don't have to dip into the truly filthy genres to find ones that are not. But, for the Christian reader, it's important to realize that there are objective standards from God that govern what books make the cut and which ones do not, and for any reader it's important to be aware that some books are simply higher quality than others. Some stories are literature -- and some are twaddle (trivial or foolish speech or writing; nonsense; also often used to describe poorly written works).  

One more thing is of vital importance; children must have books, living books; the best are not too good for them; anything less than the best is not good enough; and if it is needful to exercise economy, let go everything that belongs to soft and luxurious living before letting go the duty of supplying the books, and the frequent changes of books, which are necessary for the constant stimulation of the child's intellectual life. We need not say one word about the necessity for living thought in the teacher; it is only so far as he is intellectually alive that he can be effective in the wonderful process which we glibly call 'education.'
-Charlotte Mason, 2:279

Miss Mason speaks of children, but surely the same thing is true of us all: the line between teaching and learning is blurry, and I think that most adults spend a great deal of time on both sides. The apostle Paul gave us a clear standard to apply to a host of things we encounter: including our books (and other media):

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
-Philippians 4:8

Paul's not describing Captain Underpants nor Twilight nor Fifty Shades of Grey's sick pornographic depiction of abuse here. He's not really talking about unobjectionably bland formulaic works, either. Paul is urging us to aim for the very best books, to make those books our teachers, to take their heroes as our companions. Books that urge and inspire us to develop the qualities that he mentions. Books that invite the Holy Spirit to be with us, so that we can learn, not only by study, but also by faith. Ones we can revisit, and share with our children and our grandchildren. Books that we can take something valuable from each time we read them.

It is no small part of education to have seen much beauty, to recognize it when we see it, and to keep ourselves humble in its presence.
-Charlotte Mason, 6:56


As we select books for ourselves and our children, it's our responsibility to see that they have the best books to read and to be read to, and in so doing we will bless their lives through cultivating in them (and at the same time in ourselves) a taste for the Good, the Beautiful, and the True.

All this week, I'm going to be posting about books. Stop by again to read about:



The 5 Days of Books series is part of the Homeschool Review Crew Annual Blog Hop: 5 Days of Homeschooling. Click this graphic to see what other Crew members are writing about.
5 Days of Homeschool Annual Blog Hop - 2017




10 April 2017

Psalm 15: God's Holy House


The 15th Psalm describes what the tabernacle (the ancient forerunner of the temple) is, and who we need to be in order to make the House of the Lord our home, too.

In Psalm 11 we read about the importance of fleeing to the temple; this Psalm is about who we need to be in order to be able to shelter at the temple.

Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? 
-Psalm 15:1

Tabernacle is an interesting word. The Hebrew word in Psalms 15:1 that's been translated as "tabernacle" is ohel: a tent. while it's rendered as "tabernacle" 198 times, it's also rendered as "tent" almost as many times: 141 times. Genesis 4:20 talks about Jabal as the "father of such as dwell in tents", and it can even be used to mean housing for animals, as in 2 Chronicles 14:15, where Asa, king of Judah, has appealed to the Lord for assistance in repelling Ethiopian invaders, who are soundly defeated, followed home, and their cities spoiled, and the tents of their cattle destroyed, and the livestock driven off. The Hebrew ohel is used in each case: the tent for the animals, the tent of the people, and the holy tent that is the Tabernacle of the Lord.

It's very interesting to me that there is so much overlap in the language used to describe the people's homes, and the language that's used to describe the holiest places of worship: ohel meant both Tabernacle and also the tents that people lived in, and our bodies are even referred to as tabernacles. Today we live in houses, and when we visit the temple we go to the "House of the Lord".

In reading the Old Testament with my boys, we've had a chance to hear the lengthy descriptions of the Tabernacle that was built in Moses's day several times. I've gradually realized that there's a lot that's interesting in the account of building the tabernacle (It starts in Exodus 25.), and a lot of symbolism in it.



So when we are invited to the tabernacle, or in our day, to the temple, in a way we are visiting not only one of the Earth's most holy places, designed to instruct us and to help us remember Him, but we are also invited to, at least symbolically, visit God's home. The 15th Psalm is instructions for what kind of person we need to be.

Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill? 
He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righetousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.
-Psalm 15:1-2

In English, "upright" means to be strictly honorable and honest. But the Hebrew word this was translated from is even more demanding: tamiym is translated into several different words in the King James version, "without blemish" being the most common.

When one is described as tamiym, there is nothing in his outward activities or internal disposition that is odious to God. This word describes his entire relationship to God. 
-Strong's Concordance, entry for tamiym, Hebrew 8549


The 15th Psalm describes what the tabernacle (the ancient forerunner of the temple) is, and who we need to be in order to make the House of the Lord our home, too.

The Psalmist continues, describing several things we must avoid doing as we seek to make our abode with the Lord:

He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor take up a reproach against his neighbor. 
-Psalm 15:3

Webster's 1828 Dictionary defines backbiting as: To censure, slander, reproach, or speak evil of the absent. And it defines a reproach as: To censure in terms of opprobrium or contempt, to charge with a fault in severe language, to treat with scorn or contempt. This is not an endorsement of today's brand of "tolerance" that pretends that vice is as respectable as virtue; the next verse continues:

In whose eyes a vile person is  contemned; but he honoureth them that fear the Lord. 
-Psalm 15:4

Rather, I think this is commentary on how we ought to treat each other. To contemn means to consider unworthy of regard or respect. So at the same time that we draw a sharp distinction between that which is vile and that which is upright or tamiym, we should be careful to draw a distinction between the sin and the sinner, and to treat all God's children kindly.

The 15th Psalm describes what the tabernacle (the ancient forerunner of the temple) is, and who we need to be in order to make the House of the Lord our home, too.
From The Virtue of Kindness, April Conference 2005

The last verse and a half of the Psalm continues to deal with the standards of integrity and with our treatment of others:

In whose  eyes a vile person is contemned;but he honoureth them that fear the Lord. He that swearth to his own hurt, and changest not. He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. 
-Psalm 15:4-5


I love that this Psalm starts and ends with promises of blessings: the Psalmist begins by asking who will abide in, dwell in, the House of the Lord. And then, after outlining the character requirements, he finishes with this:


He that doeth these things shall never be moved.
-Psalm 15:5


Temple photo courtesy the LDS Image Library.


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