Well, here it is, St. Patty's Day and I can't even get to Love2learn Blog to share favorite books or anything like that, so I'll have to mix all my family stories, resources, music and links all together in one place. (I had a heck of a time with Studeo this morning as well, luckily I saved most of this as a draft before everything shut down for awhile.)
Sure, I've got quite a bit of ornery Irish blood running through my veins. My maiden name is Lawless, which is Irish as all get-out even if it may have been the English who gave us the name. I don't really know the story at all, at all, but it certainly lends itself to the imagination.
Anyway, my great-great-great-grandfather, John Lawless, was a blacksmith who caught the eye of a young Irish noblewoman named Eleanor O'Sullivan (one more reason to love the O'Sullivans from Hilda Van Stockum's Cottage at Bantry Bay Series). Her parents didn't approve, so they eloped to Paris (no kidding! in 1815) to get married and soon after emigrated to Prince Edward Island, Canada (one more reason to love Anne of Green Gables). They had ten children and that ornery (I mean it in the most affectionate way) Irishwoman Eleanor Lawless lived to be 104 years old and smoked a white clay pipe.
These lovely homeschool Moms have put together some fine resource lists already:
Here in the Bonny Glen
Farm School
and I particularly approve of the movies The Quiet Man and Darby O'Gill and the Little People (we'll certainly be watching one or the other or both of these tonight). I also, though not a big fan of musicals in general, enjoy the old My Wild Irish Rose quite a bit (we have an incomplete recording from TV, I don't think it's available for purchase). It's the music, I guess! :) We also like Riverdance 2: Live from New York City. The sung music is more traditional (quite a bit in Gaelic) than the original Riverdance, we really enjoyed the dance-offs between the Irish and the African-Americans AND you don't have to watch Michael Flatley!!!
As far as music goes, we love the Chieftains, Boys of the Lough and Makem & Clancy the best. (I think I've mentioned before that the Chieftain's Bells of Dublin is my favorite Christmas album).
If you have The Cottage at Bantry Bay series on your shelf and don't have time to dig in too far, you might enjoy reading the chapter from Francie on the Run titled "Teig Mulligan." We're on Pegeen this week, but that chapter from Francie had us laughing like crazy (not the best bedtime book some nights, hehe).
I also discovered this morning that there was an Irish writer named Emily Lawless (Molly take note!). You can read some of her things here (but I haven't had a chance to read them yet - except one of the poems which I liked very much, but as for the others, I have no idea if they're any good at all, at all):
Poetry of Emily Lawless
The Story of Ireland by Emily Lawless
You can read a lot more Irish poetry here.
I had some more things for this post, including some additional books, but blogger decided to eat them this morning. One good thing about the delay is that I can tell you a funny story. Melissa reminded me about coloring the milk green, something we haven't done here in years. Ria and Gus were in on the joke and we even colored the "special milk" (rice milk) in the little girls' carton. We watched them pour it and told them we colored something green and to look for it while they ate their cereal and we laughed and laughed as they looked all around the room for something different, missing the green milk right under their noses. Guess it needs a little more color next time.
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