Pinesap Flower

Found on today's hike above the falls at South Mountain. I thought it was a dark Indian Pipe, but it was just different. I looked it up when I got home, sure enough, although in the Indian Pipe family, it's a Pinesap. How have I passed so many autumns here and never noticed it? How is it that no matter how many trails I take or how many times I hike them, I see new things every week? It's infinite, creation is just infinite. I'm so utterly grateful. What a marvelous world the Creator has made.

Among all this hiking and being and coming more and more into my own, I have been doing other things. Like teaching my children, despite in all honesty just feeling tired after seventeen years of teaching. I love my children, I love the philosophy I have chosen to submerse our family in but I have been tired. I guess this week, actually this day, after four weeks of school, is the first day I actually enjoyed. I'm certainly not required to enjoy the things that I have chosen and believe to be right and good. But it sure does help. So, again, I'm grateful that as I've moved through the motions the feelings are returning.

I've also been doing fun things with friends, and this year started a Natural History Club with my dear friend, Sara. You can read about that if you like. It's a lot of fun and we are slowly learning. It's very wonderful to live in community with kindred spirits.

I'll leave you with a two year old cutie.

Science!

We are trying something new this year for science. When Kaley was in HS we did a typical package curriculum that she did not get much out of, did not enjoy and I had no hands on or experience with whats so ever. I really wanted to do it differently for the other children coming up.

While they are elementary age, we enjoy reading natural history books, nature journaling, playing in and experiencing nature, recording the changes in our world in a book of firsts and much more, but with a focus on the natural world. We use good literature to learn, just like we do any other subject. So why did I give that up for high school? I could never figure that out. I guess I just thought I had to, for the older student to acquire the knowledge they would need for life or upper level education.

Two things changed my mind. The first was this post at sageparnassus by Nancy. We started using narration journals for science! Instead of narrating our science books out loud, we began drawing our narrations. Oh what a difference in what we learned!

The next was hearing Jennifer Gagnon speak at the Living Education Retreat on science. She said a great many wonderful things that I don't have time to narrate here, but really she made me realize, I DO like science and I AM scientific. When did I lose my love for science? And think of myself as a person who is not good at it? Hmmm, probably about the same age my daughter stopped enjoying it. Say, middle school?

A couple things that were impressed upon me there were:

*You can't know everything.
*Why would we stop using living books for science just because our children are older??
*We are a scientific family.
*I need to build deep roots in the love of subjects for my students to hang knowledge on.

I know there were more. But here was another that happened in chatting after the conference. It was pointed out that at Charlotte Masons schools, they did not focus on one science topic per year, ie: biology one year, chemistry the next etc. The studied multiple branches of science at one time. That really got me thinking. And I decided I was going to try that!

So this year we are reading multiple science books: 

The Way We Work  for the study of the human body.
The New Way Things Work for physical science
An Edwin Teale book for natural history
The Wonder Book of Chemistry , my 14yo loves this book
Along Came Galileo for astronomy and a biography

Some color on the blueridge

These are our first term selections and I have some more I'm investigating for second and third terms. I'm really excited about a book I found on the periodic table. I can't believe that I am! I am learning SO much with my students.

The starlings are beginning to murmerate

The first chestnut tree I've seen in the mountains

Humility

–Humility does not think much or little of itself; it does not think of itself at all. C.M.

My Charlotte Mason book club just came to the close of 'Parents and Children'. We certainly ended with a bang, or rather Charlotte did. I think the above statement is a new rather big idea that she has given me. This is the third book I have been blessed to study through in the two years I have been a part of this book club. It is such a joy to read through Ms. Mason's series on education with others. I have found her books to be so much more than instruction on how to teach my children. It is a devotional, a guide to life, a character training for me and a philosophy of life.

It seems like once or twice a year, I trip across a BIG IDEA somewhere in her writing. Last year it was this:

We become aware of an altogether unnatural and irreligious classification into things sacred and things secular. We are not in all things at one with God. There are beautiful lives in which there is no trace of this separation, whose aims are confined to the things we call sacred. But many thoughtful, earnest persons feel sorely the need of a conception of the divine relation which shall embrace the whole of human life which shall make art, science, politics, all those cares and thoughts of men which are not rebellious, sacred also as being all engaged in the great evolution, the evolution of the Kingdom of God.  vol 2 pg 130

I believe for the next little while, I will be meditating on humility. On what it should be in myself and how I should guard it in my children. I'll leave you with some more thoughts from Charlotte....

  It is a negative rather than a positive quality, being an absence of self-consciousness rather than the presence of any distinctive virtue. The person who is unaware of himself is capable of all lowly service, of all suffering for others, of bright cheerfulness under all the small crosses and worries of everyday life. This is the quality that makes heroes, and this is the quality that makes saints. We are able to pray, but we are hardly able to worship or to praise, to say, 'My soul doth magnify the Lord' so long as in the innermost chamber of our hearts we are self-occupied. vol 2 pg 285

The note of childhood is, before all things, humility.  This, if we think of it, is the state natural to children. Every person and thing commands their interest; but the person or thing in action is deeply interesting.

I have really wanted to do a post about nature study for a long time. And this is really not one. It is one of my favorite aspects of this CM lifestyle. I think when it really became wonderful for us is when I stopped sending my children outside to do it and started taking them outside with me as I did it. I began keeping a nature journal. I don't record as often as I should, my hands after all are often full, but it is a treasure to me now.

I had a friend recently ask me how I knew the names of so many plants and things.(I really don't)  I explained that if you just learned one new species on each nature walk you took, think of what you would learn and know over a lifetime. That is my goal, for myself and my children, each walk to learn to identify something new. And when I really know it is when I have recorded it in my journal because the mind only can know what it tells itself. That's how we process. So that brush drawing or sketch is really my narration of what I've learned and then I never forget it.

On the Blueridge Parkway

One of my favorite nature study lessons. We were possum sitting for friends.

Narration after all is what we all do when we are excited about something, have had something big happen in our lives or we are upset. We "vent", "share" and "process" with others.

Sliding Rock. It is amazing how the river bed becomes just this rock. Only my brave children slid down!

Curtiss loved it.

I wish this wasn't blurry. Ladies Tresses. Isn't it neat?!

Here is a cicada Ben found right as he was ready to shed his skin.

Climbing out

Wings plumping as the blood gets flowing. It was truly amazing to sit and watch it all unfold.

Our goal is to be out in nature one half day and one long day each week. It's been a total fail lately. Or if we do get out, we don't journal. Ok, well a fail in the last couple weeks. We do have a 9 week old. I am learning instead of beating myself up for these "failures" to just keep plodding along or I just tend to want to give up. It's just too rich to give up on! So I will keep fighting the chaos that can ensue when you are trying to get nine people packed and out the door, I will keep guarding and carving out the time. Because the fruits of what we have succeeded in are just too rich to not continue to pursue.

Why?

 

Music and Art in Schools

by L. Winifred Nicholls
Volume 14, no. 7, July 1903, pgs. 535-537

In dealing with the question of art, it is the same idea which I should like to keep prominently in the foreground,the aesthetic value of the subject. A school of 300 girls cannot turn out 300 gifted artists, or 300 brilliant players, I am not sure that it would be an unmixed advantage if it could! but it can turn out 300 girls ready to take an appreciate interest in the best music, and the highest art, and this is what it ought to aim at. Every good school ought to feel it a serious reproach to its system if a large proportion of the girls leave it with a greater appreciation of a comic-song than of a sonata of Beethoven, or a keener interest in Comic Cuts than in a gallery of Old Master.

At the start of each school year I diligently sit down and choose three artists and three composers for our study. One of each per term. We start out great, and really enjoy our bi weekly picture study. We usually start each day listening to selections by our chosen musician. We may read a biography about either of them or I’ll just give a little biographical information each week as we go. It works just fine. So why is it, when the going get tough in this real life family of ten, that this is what gets dropped?

Why do I even bother? Why is it even a part of our home school? You can’t be tested on it. Young adults don’t need it to be accepted at college. It isn’t one of the three R’s.

When children have begun regular lessons (that is, as soon as they are six), this sort of study of pictures should not be left to chance, but they should take one artist after another, term by term, and study quietly some half-dozen reproductions of his work in the course of the term…We cannot measure the influence that one or another artist has upon the child's sense of beauty, upon his power of seeing, as in a picture, the common sights of life; he is enriched more than we know in having really looked at even a single picture.                                 vol 1 pg 309

But the people themselves begin to understand and to clamour for an education which shall qualify their children for life rather than for earning a living. As a matter of fact, it is the man who has read and thought on many subjects who is, with the necessary training, the most capable whether in handling tools, drawing plans, or keeping books. The more of a person we succeed in making a child, the better will he both fulfil his own life and serve society.   Vol 6 pg 3

These are the things I need to hear from Charlotte when the going gets tough. I need to be reminded why I am doing more than the three R’s, why I care, why I work so hard at this when public schooling is free and effortless. No, art study or composer study can not be measured by a standardized test or even sometimes by a narration. I have had a very scanty narration of a book or picture at one time only to hear or see later how much that very thing affected the formation of who my child is.

I had the absolute joy of visiting an art museum in Minneapolis with my adult daughter a few weeks ago. We went to see an exhibit of Rembrandt. We were both very excited. We spent three hours only looking at that exhibit. We went slowly, savoring each picture, whispering to each other about the nuances of light and color, wondering what the picture would have looked like without age, learning what makes a Rembrandt and how it is different from the works of his students. My heart was swollen with the delight that in adult life that this is who she is! She wasn’t there with me for “school” or to humor me. She was there because she is the kind of person who loves art.

When we walked out of those rooms, into the echoing hush of the rest of the art museum we tried very hard to look at some more art but finally we threw up our hands and admitted our hearts and minds were just too full. We had looked so completely and had studied so long that we were quite satiated. The feeling was very similar to looking at the delicious pecan pie on Thanksgiving day, but knowing you can not fit one more bite into your tummy.

Kaley loves all kinds of music and art. She likes the top 20. I wasn’t perfect ever at doing picture and composer study with her. But she has always appreciated what I did teach her. This spurs me on. I am encouraged this year to have a full year. To do all three of our artists, all six paintings each term, and to learn our composers music each term. Having a child that has graduated is a blessing and a curse for me. I reflect on her education and see so many things I did wrong, that now I would do differently. But a blessing because my work with her has made me a better teacher for my students now. The more I teach, the more this is a life, the more my children are fitted for life, not a career, and the more I see them care.

My point in writing this post is to share that these subjects are important and to keep me accountable to do them all year! I will share here what we do and when and how it goes. Above is our artist for term one, Jan Van Eyck and his self portrait, Man in a Red Turban, is our first picture study next week. I am excited to see what my students think of it. I love his expression!

Flat Rock

We had a day out this week. I needed to go up to Hendersonville way so we took advantage of that to go to the Carl Sandburg House. But we didn't go in the house :) It is a lovely farm with a large pond, nature trails, a goat dairy and adventures awaiting.

The Carl Sandburg House

First we had to be goofy in the parking lot. Cut poor Curtiss' head right off!

We decided this time, our second visit, that we would walk around the pond and enjoy the nature trail. It was a lovely damp shady walk and immediately we realized it was a perfect place for fungus to grow. I have never seen such a variety of mushrooms! I do not have the time right now to look them up, I am sorry to say, for I would love to identify all these. I didn't get to paint any in my nature journal either,  since my arms are full of Silas. Another season perhaps. Grace was able to get quite a few pictures of the varieties. Really all the mushroom pictures are for Kaley :)

This is Grace's hand.

This tree had a thick fungus growing all the way around it.

These little bright orange guys were my favorite.

This is how the kids walk to the goat dairy from the pond.

After our walk and picnic lunch at the pond, we headed to see the goats. Mrs. Sandburg was famous in her own right for her prize milking herd. And her husband fully supported and was proud of that.

Crazy  cartwheels

Grace was in heaven

This guy wasn't so sure about petting goats, but his peanut butter face is awfully cute.

 

After our visit with the goats, it was time to go and we walked back towards the pond. I was very excited to identify this plant. During my visit to Minnesota I discovered Milkweed. I had thought we had it in North Carolina but when I saw it there, I knew I had never seen it before. While walking around at the farm, I spied this similar plant. It is Swamp Milkweed. I didn't see any big seed pods like the Milkweed out west, but it certainly milked up when Curtiss broke off a leaf. It was also covered in tiny yellow bugs! 

It was a good day. We try very hard to make our educational philosophy a way of life. So I didn't want this to be a "field trip", but just something we do. I do wish I had done some nature journaling but was pleased the children sketched the goats in theirs.

This was a new identification for us. Iron Weed. It was growing along the edges of the pond.

This was a skink Grace caught. We watched his rather large friend catch a caterpillar and eat it!

This is Jewel Weed, it likes swampy areas and is blooming at this time of year here. It is important to identify if you run into...

Stinging Nettle. The juice from the Jewel Weed neutralizes it's sting. And it helps with Poison Ivy. 

One of my favorite late summer blooms, Hearts-A-Bursting.

It's been almost a year since I dropped this blog. Life happens and passes so quickly, and I've had to make priorities. Like pregnancy, children, adult children, weddings and births. My goal is to begin again to try to keep it updated with pictures of what we are doing and our life here. Really for my loved ones far away, so you can see and hear what's up with us. You know who you are :) Today I will just add some pictures of our summer activities, many done while we waited for our beautiful baby...

Here we are for Shakespeare on The Green. It was wonderful!

Cool book statue, it was a great park right in the city.

Benny and you can see how big those books are!

Everyone brought blankets and food.

Waiting to start, it was very child friendly, a great introduction to Shakespeare for our 4 and 2 year olds.

Max was excited about the feather he found. And the fact that we were under a flight path!

After the play we walked around the city and found this awesome fountain.

Sillies!

My next post will be some Blueridge pictures. I'll just work through the summer.