Dealing directly with books

We've just finished our first term of year one of our curriculum, Ambleside Online. We school year round, and when the Nuthatch turned 6 in June I decided to start grade one with him instead of waiting until September.

It has been a fascinating term. The biggest adjustment to our learning has been the addition of narration to our schedule. Narration is where a student listens to a passage and then tells back what they heard. For example, if you've just read the first part of Little Red Riding Hood to your child, they might narrate by saying: "Little Red Riding Hood was on her way to her Grandma's when she met a wolf".

Narration is a difficult skill to learn. I've tried it myself with the classics I have been reading, and it is not easy. At the beginning of our 12 week term, I would read a passage and ask the Nuthatch to tell me what he remembered. More often than not, the answer would be 'Umm...nothing...'

So, I started reading smaller sections at a time. We spent a few weeks where I would have him narrate a sentence at a time. Narration takes a long time when you do this. Then the Nuthatch went through a phase where he would repeat back to me, verbatim, the last sentence I read. It was frustrating.

Part of the problem was that the reading selections had many new concepts and vocabulary words for him. To help with this, I would select five words from the passage that I was fairly certain he did not know, and we would talk about them. He wanted to draw pictures for the words, which I thought was a great idea, but soon this vocabulary lesson with the picture drawing was taking longer and longer!

Through all of this I held on to the fact that he would eventually develop the skill to narrate. I did not worry too much about all the content that he was missing when the reading selections went over his head and he could not remember anything. In Charlotte Mason's sixth volume, A Philosophy of Education, she says:

It does not matter much whether he understands this word or that, but that it matters a great deal that he should learn to deal directly with books. page 172

We have had a few bright moments this term. After about 8 weeks of working on narration he said to me, out of the blue: "Hey Mom, when I narrate something we've read, I remember it forever!" And a week or two later he said: "When you're reading to me, I see pictures in my head, and then I can tell you about them" (we were reading out of the Blue Fairy Book at the time). That is all the encouragement I need to keep going.

This week I have given him exams (I can post the exam questions if anyone is interested). They are not the sort of test that is graded, rather I wanted to see if he was remembering anything from what we have been reading. While there is lots of room for improvement, he has made such great progress with the skill of narration that I am quite pleased.

I used our camera to take videos of his answers to the exam questions. I think it will be very enjoyable to come back at the end of the year, or in a few years and watch these.

The video is particularly hilarious because it is so typical of what homeschooling with little ones is like. It is shaky at the beginning because the Bluejay is literally climbing on my head. In the background you can hear the Chickadee squawking "I can't see! I can't see!" as she tries to watch the video from the back of the camera. When he answers the question he is referring to a story that we read one time, two weeks earlier, The Frogs Who Wished For A King, from Aesop's Fables.

This second video is for all of you that have wiggly boys. We had read the story of the Rhino from Kipling's 'Just So Stories' over six weeks ago. I was pleased that he had remembered the general outline of the story. Our narration selections are only read once, so he has not heard this story again since late July.

I am eagerly looking forward to term 2. I can't wait to see how his skill of narration develops as he learns to deal directly with books.

Eating locally

I have recently read a few very interesting books about eating locally. 'Animal, Vegetable, Miracle' by Barbara Kingsolver was fantastic. I also tried reading 'The 100-Mile Diet', by Smith and MacKinnon, but I couldn't get into it quite as much. And not too long ago I read 'No Logo' by Naomi Klein, which did not focus on food, but did speak about how most of the products we purchase are manufactured in far off places. (If you only have time to read one, read the Kingsolver book).

All of this has made me think about trying to live more locally. It seems to be the current fad, a problem brought about by our current ability to move products around the globe at lightning fast speeds. While reading my current classic, 'Gulliver's Travels', I was rather shocked to find this statement that suggests that this issue has been around for much longer than I thought.

Whereupon I enumerated as many Sorts (of meat) as came into my Head, with the various Methods of dressing them, which could not be done without sending Vessels by Sea to every Part of the World, as well for Liquors to drink, as for Sauces, and innumerable other Conveniences. I assured him, that this whole Globe of Earth must be at least three Times gone round, before one of our better Female Yahoos (persons) could get her Breakfast, or a Cup to put it in.

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, 1726

Treasure hunting for books

I spend a lot of time hunting for and evaluating resources to use for our homeschooling. The curriculum that I have chosen uses many older books that have been reprinted or the text is available online. You can purchase most of these books on Amazon for ten to fifteen dollars. I started ordering a book here and there for when the Nuthatch starts grade one. Then I read a suggestion that you can often find these books at used bookstores.

I have long had very romantic notions of used bookstores. I didn't shop in them much, mostly because I always used the library or I never knew what I was looking for. When I was young I dreamed that I would meet my future husband in a bookstore as we perused the shelves side by side, looking for the same classic novel. It would be a rainy fall evening and we would go to a little coffeeshop afterwards and talk until they closed.

In reality, I met my future husband in a student house at university, where I kept flooding his basement room with the washing machine. He is a computer guy, and the water would pool underneath his computer workstation where the web of cables, cords and wires connected all of his devices together. It was true love.

Anyways, back to the books. I finally had a good reason to search the used bookstores, so at Christmas time we headed downtown together with my list. My very patient husband waited, bored to tears, while I looked through their entire children's section (it is still true love, 15 years later). I found a few good items, especially a lovely hardcover copy of 'Make Way for Ducklings' by Robert McCloskey. The books were still $10 a book, although now they were hardcovers instead of paperbacks.

My searching was yielding good results, however my greatest discovery came quite by surprise to me. I had been decluttering my house of the toys and outgrown clothes. I boxed and bagged the stuff and drove to Goodwill to drop it off. On a whim, I decided to go inside the store and look around.

I suspect that the store I go to is not like most of the other Goodwill stores. They have all of the stuff in large shallow blue bins that are on wheels. There are bins of clothes, bins of toys, bins of household items and bins of...books! I started rummaging around to see what I could find.

I'm not sure what I picked up that day, but I knew I was on to a good thing. On my next trip to drop off stuff I went in again, and this time found a very nice hardcover copy of 'Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare'. I was so excited, what were the chances that I would find this book here? I snatched it up quickly, certain there were others on the prowl for the jewel I had just found. I took it up to the cashier, not sure what this find would cost me. Fifty cents! I could not believe it. I had found a goldmine.

Now I was addicted. I was also spring cleaning and conveniently finding more items to go to Goodwill so I could look for more books. On my next trip I found the complete set of Winston Churchill's 'A History of the English Speaking Peoples' and a 6 volume set of his memoirs of WWII (for myself, not for the Nuthatch). There was also another copy of 'Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare' which I picked up for a friend. My bill came to five dollars.

I wondered who was dropping off these great books at Goodwill. I would read the names written on the inside covers and picture an older gentleman or lady who had passed away, and their children had taken all of their beloved books to Goodwill, not appreciating what they were worth. Not from a monetary perspective, but from the richness of the language and ideas that were inside, the words of good writers.

They are in good hands now, on the shelves of our small but steadily growing library. I will need more space for these books soon. Perhaps I should clean out my closet and make a trip to Goodwill.

On the writing of books

-and, after all, it isn't very difficult to write books. Especially if you either write a rotten story in good English or a good story in rotten English, which is as far as most people seem to get nowadays. Don't you agree?

as said by Lord Peter Wimsey, in Dorothy L. Sayers' mystery novel,

Unnatural Death, 1927