Time to make sure we've got our act in order - usually my biggest problem is planning too much. This is an overview, I'm still fine-tuning the "additional living books" reading lists.
Ria: (age 13)
Science: Biology the Easy Way + experiments, lab reports at co-op + living books
Religion: The Map of Life by Frank Sheed, Catechism of the Catholic Church Part I, Compendium Catechism of the Catholic Church Part I + living books
Math: "Key To" Algebra Series (already in progress)
Latin: Henle I (continued), Cambridge Latin Unit 2 + supplements at co-op (prep. for National Latin Exam Level 2)
History: Christ and the Americas (selections - already in progress) + living books
Language Arts: Some combination of Correct Writing - Loyola Press and The Institute for Excellence in Writing (in co-op) , finish up the Phonetic Zoo
Literature: Flowers from Heaven: Thousand Years of Christian Verse edited by Joseph Pearce,
reading list not yet finished
Gus: (age 11)
Lyrical Life Science (continued) with Janice Van Cleave's Plants
Math U See
American History - Our American Catholic Heritage (selections) + living books
Spelling: The Phonetic Zoo
Cursive Connections
Latina Christiana II
CHC Grammar
Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization
Faith & Life Book 5, Friendly Defenders, etc.
Terri: (age 8)
Faith and Life Book 3
Lyrical Life Science
CHC Spelling & Grammar
Math U See
MCP Phonics
Prima Latina
Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization
Bernie: (age 6)
Math U See
MCP Phonics
Lyrical Life Science
CHC Spelling
Faith and Life Book 1 & 2
Catholic National Readers Book 1
Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization
Friday, August 04, 2006
Thursday, August 03, 2006
In Case You've Always Wondered...
...what's on our fridge, Ria posted our current Magnetic Poetry offerings on her blog. We had them put away for a long time and just remembered to take them back out a week ago or so. Various people will create sentences which grow and change (sometimes mysteriously) over time. It's a lot of fun. Usually Ria and I will get caught playing with it when we had intended to just get a drink of water before bedtime.
Wouldn't It Be Neat... (a significantly rambling post)
if someone had a database of famous people in which you could easily discover, compare and contrast what their educational backgrounds were? Maybe even their favorite books too.
I was thinking about this last night (actually VERY early this morning) when I was thinking about C.S. Lewis' classical background and how that might have impacted his writings. My train of thought brought me somehow to the idea of great men (in the general sense of mankind, not restricted to masculine of course) and how they might think of themselves. Truly great men certainly don't describe themselves as great and probably don't even think of themselves as great. C.S. Lewis wouldn't have said - "I have a classical background and look at how great I am - that's what you should give your children." Maybe he would have spoken in a reflective way about how he thought he benefited from that. It's a substantially different thing.
Which brings me back to Chesterton again. I'm continually in awe, not just of his wisdom but of that combination with his incredible humility. The humility, it seems to me, shows up especially in his attitude toward other people. You never get the sense that he feels himself superior to others for this or that reason or that he's "putting them down" even when he has some fun with some of their ideas. There is an amazing amount of respect and appreciation for what is good in that person and for their dignity as a human being.
Another reason I was thinking about this was that Ria was talking about blogging about a sign outside a local "church" proclaiming the topic for the next service as "Beware of Dogma". The conversation was interesting, though, as we explored the distinctions between a) making fun of people or acting superior with b) criticizing or even finding humor in their ideas. I don't know exactly how to explain or define that difference but I've seen it and I know that it exists. I guess it's mostly about our attitude towards other people. (On a side note: When a church advertises a sermon that is clearly meant to criticize the beliefs of others, they do leave themselves particularly open to criticism.)
It reminds me of a conversation about a conversation I had with a friend of mine in college. He had been talking with another student about courtesies we use in our speech with others. This other student thought that if someone owed you something, it wasn't appropriate to say thank you when they gave it to you (I don't remember the precise argument made). My friend and I disagreed, though (as does society in general, from what I've seen), and we decided that it had something to do with the dignity of the other person. I'd like to think about this concept more.
It seems to me that some of Chesterton's respect for other people came from his deep appreciation of the wonders of the world and God's creation that we so often take for granted. He (Chesterton) seems to be arguing in the Everlasting Man that it is partly this sense of wonder that makes books like The Iliad (and I think The Phantom Tollbooth too) worthwhile. Personifications of nature and concepts can give us a better understanding and appreciation of what they mean (in the Phantom Tollbooth, you have characters like the "Threadbare Excuse" while Homer gives us personifications of Anger and Hate - of course not all of the personifications are evil - I'm still in awe of the river in the Iliad that rises in protest to attack Achilleus for an evil deed). Here's Chesterton's actual quote:
Wouldn't the world be a better place if people like this were able to look at the world in a different way - a way in which they could look with awe and wonder at a sunset or a starry sky or the face of child? I think that really is a childlike way of looking at the world - in the same way that Jesus talks about us becoming "like little children".
As a side-note to the above linked article (about a woman who freely admits to being bored by her children): I don't know any adults who find their children a total joy 24/7 and I hate it when people argue from some imaginary extreme (a.k.a. a "straw man argument"). We're fallen and jaded and we have to remind ourselves to look at the world in the right way. Like love and joy, it's not something that just comes to us and remains; it's something that we choose for ourselves.
By the way, in case you missed it last time, I really like this quote from Chesterton on great men.
I was thinking about this last night (actually VERY early this morning) when I was thinking about C.S. Lewis' classical background and how that might have impacted his writings. My train of thought brought me somehow to the idea of great men (in the general sense of mankind, not restricted to masculine of course) and how they might think of themselves. Truly great men certainly don't describe themselves as great and probably don't even think of themselves as great. C.S. Lewis wouldn't have said - "I have a classical background and look at how great I am - that's what you should give your children." Maybe he would have spoken in a reflective way about how he thought he benefited from that. It's a substantially different thing.
Which brings me back to Chesterton again. I'm continually in awe, not just of his wisdom but of that combination with his incredible humility. The humility, it seems to me, shows up especially in his attitude toward other people. You never get the sense that he feels himself superior to others for this or that reason or that he's "putting them down" even when he has some fun with some of their ideas. There is an amazing amount of respect and appreciation for what is good in that person and for their dignity as a human being.
Another reason I was thinking about this was that Ria was talking about blogging about a sign outside a local "church" proclaiming the topic for the next service as "Beware of Dogma". The conversation was interesting, though, as we explored the distinctions between a) making fun of people or acting superior with b) criticizing or even finding humor in their ideas. I don't know exactly how to explain or define that difference but I've seen it and I know that it exists. I guess it's mostly about our attitude towards other people. (On a side note: When a church advertises a sermon that is clearly meant to criticize the beliefs of others, they do leave themselves particularly open to criticism.)
It reminds me of a conversation about a conversation I had with a friend of mine in college. He had been talking with another student about courtesies we use in our speech with others. This other student thought that if someone owed you something, it wasn't appropriate to say thank you when they gave it to you (I don't remember the precise argument made). My friend and I disagreed, though (as does society in general, from what I've seen), and we decided that it had something to do with the dignity of the other person. I'd like to think about this concept more.
It seems to me that some of Chesterton's respect for other people came from his deep appreciation of the wonders of the world and God's creation that we so often take for granted. He (Chesterton) seems to be arguing in the Everlasting Man that it is partly this sense of wonder that makes books like The Iliad (and I think The Phantom Tollbooth too) worthwhile. Personifications of nature and concepts can give us a better understanding and appreciation of what they mean (in the Phantom Tollbooth, you have characters like the "Threadbare Excuse" while Homer gives us personifications of Anger and Hate - of course not all of the personifications are evil - I'm still in awe of the river in the Iliad that rises in protest to attack Achilleus for an evil deed). Here's Chesterton's actual quote:
"The point is that the personality perfects the water with significance. Father Christmas is not an allegory of snow and holly; he is not merely the stuff called snow afterwards artificially given a human form, like a snow man. He is something that gives a new meaning to the white world and the evergreens; so that snow itelf seems to be warm rather than cold."
Wouldn't the world be a better place if people like this were able to look at the world in a different way - a way in which they could look with awe and wonder at a sunset or a starry sky or the face of child? I think that really is a childlike way of looking at the world - in the same way that Jesus talks about us becoming "like little children".
As a side-note to the above linked article (about a woman who freely admits to being bored by her children): I don't know any adults who find their children a total joy 24/7 and I hate it when people argue from some imaginary extreme (a.k.a. a "straw man argument"). We're fallen and jaded and we have to remind ourselves to look at the world in the right way. Like love and joy, it's not something that just comes to us and remains; it's something that we choose for ourselves.
By the way, in case you missed it last time, I really like this quote from Chesterton on great men.
Speaking of C.S. Lewis and the Ancients...
(in the comments under "More Homer"), I need to re-read Lewis' Introduction to St. Athanasius' On the Incarnation.
You can read it here.
Good stuff!
You can read it here.
Good stuff!
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Found: Missing Comments
I just discovered that there was a cache of comments "to be moderated" that never showed up in my e-mail, which have now been published. Sorry 'bout that!
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
More Chesterton on Homer (et al)
I really liked this quote from the chapter "Man and Mythologies" from The Everlasting Man (still plugging my way through this book - I'm glad it took me this long since it's been so exciting to read it alongside the Iliad - which I finished yesterday, by the way)...
The crux and crisis is that man found it natural to worship; even natural to worship unnatural things. The posture of the idol might be stiff and strange; but the gesture of the worshipper was generous and beautiful. He not only felt freer when he bent; he actually felt taller when he bowed. Henceforth anything that took away the gesture of worship would stunt and even maim him for ever. Henceforth being merely secular would be servitude and an inhibition. If man cannot pray he is gagged; if he cannot kneel he is in irons. We therefore feel throughout the whole of paganism a curious double feeling of trust and distrust. When the man makes the gesture of salutation and of sacrifice, when he pours out the libation or lifts up the sword, he knows he is doing a worthy and a virile thing. He knows he is doing one of the things for which a man was made. His imaginative experiment is therefore justified. But precisely because it began with imagination, there is to the end something of mockery in it, and especially in the object of it. This mockery, in the more intense moments of the intellect, becomes the almost intolerable irony of Greek tragedy. There seems a disproportion between the priest and the altar or between the altar and the god. The priest seems more solemn and almost more sacred than the god. All the order of the temple is solid and sane and satisfactory to certain parts of our nature; except the very centre of it, which seems strangely mutable and dubious, like a dancing flame. It is the first thought round which the whole has been built; and the first thought is still a fancy and almost a frivolity. In that strange place of meeting, the man seems more statuesque than the statue.
What Your 18 Year Old Needs to Know
I love ideas like this (and have started some lists of my own at various points) - really every homeschool parents should make one (and each one, rightly, will be at least a little bit different). Read DarwinCatholic's list here.
#6 Discovers A Favorite Game
It happened something like this last night (I shouldn't have been surprised because each of the other kids bumped into this sort of game in the same way - but it's still delightful each time it happens). Bernie had been playing with our art memory game that we've had since Ria was a preschooler. The box is battered and not all the cards have their pairs anymore. She forgot it on the couch (grrr) and I didn't notice until long after she was in bed (Frank had taken a nap and so was up quite late). I started to put it away and Frank immediately complained and reached out for it. I told him that if he sat down at the coffee table he could play with it right there, but that he had to be really nice and not scatter the cards all over (this is a necessary reminder with our little bruiser).
He proceeded to lay the cards out very carefully, face up, one-by one and was delighting at finding two different dogs, which he put together as a pair. Well, this started a full-on game of match-the-pair going. (It took a little scrambling to set up a pile with one of a set and keep the other on the table since he was inclined to start his own piles in the middle). He proceeded to play three full games of picture-matching with the sort of delight and enthusiasm that only a 2 1/2 year old can display.
When my kids have been introduced to this sort of game at this very young age, they've always hungered for more. It's great for their brains and forces some fully-present Mommy (or older sibling) time; which is an excellent thing.
Thanks for the memories, Maria Montessori. :)
He proceeded to lay the cards out very carefully, face up, one-by one and was delighting at finding two different dogs, which he put together as a pair. Well, this started a full-on game of match-the-pair going. (It took a little scrambling to set up a pile with one of a set and keep the other on the table since he was inclined to start his own piles in the middle). He proceeded to play three full games of picture-matching with the sort of delight and enthusiasm that only a 2 1/2 year old can display.
When my kids have been introduced to this sort of game at this very young age, they've always hungered for more. It's great for their brains and forces some fully-present Mommy (or older sibling) time; which is an excellent thing.
Thanks for the memories, Maria Montessori. :)
More on Homer
It seems that my statement about the Iliad being warmly embraced by Catholic tradition might not be as accurate as I thought. I've been reading up on the Iliad in the writings of the Early Church Fathers and they have some pretty negative things to say about it. The ones I've read so far (primarily St. Augustine and St. Justin Martyr) are arguing against the Theology of it to those who might still be swayed to the Roman religion, so the context is substantially different from that in which it would be studied today. Still it does make you think further about it.
I also came across a reference in a Sermon by Monsignor Ronald Knox on St. Ignatius Loyola regarding the dangers of Greek influences on the Jews at the time of the Maccabees. Here's the quote: "Gentile influences began to creep in - the Greek tolerance of false worship and of superstition, the Greek cult of beauty, the Greek contempt for morals."
So I'm still working to further understand the context in which we study the Iliad and the reasons for studying it.
I also came across a reference in a Sermon by Monsignor Ronald Knox on St. Ignatius Loyola regarding the dangers of Greek influences on the Jews at the time of the Maccabees. Here's the quote: "Gentile influences began to creep in - the Greek tolerance of false worship and of superstition, the Greek cult of beauty, the Greek contempt for morals."
So I'm still working to further understand the context in which we study the Iliad and the reasons for studying it.
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