We Were Homeschool Latin Dropouts

It’s inevitable. 

At some point as a homeschool parent, you have to figure out what you want to do about a foreign language. Mr. Garner and I began to tackle this question when we first decided to homeschool our then rising fourth-grade daughter.   Initially, we were giddy with the freedom to start our daughter on foreign language study earlier.  However, as we investigated the options, read innumerable reviews, discovered the many perspectives on the best way to teach language, we discovered that the lovely freedom has a price…tag!  

Too, there is a certain amount of pressure that comes with the freedom of choice.

More than one source warns that only those students who begin language study in elementary school ever become true masters of the language.

“Oh no!” I gasped.  We’ve wasted so much time – She’s already nine years old!“

Other sources emphasize that immersion is the only way to go if the student ever expects to be conversant.

Immersion? Right. 

Mr. Garner has enough of his high school German to have a brief conversation with a singularly indulgent German.  As for the retention rate of my high school French,  je n’est pas parle Francais.   So immersion was not going to be an option in our homeschool, and just for the record, neither is it an option at a public high school.  But it begs the question: what is the real goal of foreign language instruction?  Why, exactly, am I considering a foreign language program when family history indicates that it is an unprofitable expenditure of time, and money,  in our case since it will be financed on our dime and not Uncle Sam’s?  In answer to that question, I tossed out the usual suspects – French, German, Spanish.   But Latin lingered in the back of my mind as I pondered all of the other choices we needed to make.

That June we attended our first homeschool convention!

Amidst the onslaught of colorfully confusing curricular eye candy, the Classical Latin curriculum display was an oasis of Corinthian column calm.  Quiet, articulate, logical people echoed much of what I had been reading -

• Latin is the ideal language to  study because of its value in terms of logical thinking, history, organized grammar and English vocabulary development.
• Latin helps establish study skills and personal diligence,
• and any future Romance language study will be easier having mastered Latin grammar and vocabulary.

The remaining objection was my complete lack of experience with the language, which was overcome with the calm reassurance that with their program, the parent did not need to know Latin – the video did the teaching!

I bought it.

The Latin curriculum had LOTS of fun accessories:  A fun and engaging video set,  fun games on their website, really expensive but fun flash cards,  (I didn’t buy those)  a fun work book (really? bought it),  a pronunciation CD (for the car!), a fun and colorful card game  (I didn’t buy that either) and a Latin “reader” with fun stories of interest to children.  (Bought that!)  It was all so FUN! It was also quite expensive, and it was only the first year of a three year course.

So it was that in September, when we started homeschooling, we also started Latin.   We scheduled Latin for the morning.  I was still wrapping up a few freelance project commitments, so I would listen in and do some work while GraceNotes popped in the FUN video, worked in the FUN workbook, chanted the FUN chants, and logged into the FUN website.

It was inevitable.

We got to a point where she wasn’t getting something. She had, God help me, a question.  This began happening more and more often, and combing through the not-complete-enough-for-me Teacher Answer Guide, and scanning weeks of video in search of the missing concept was beyond frustrating.  By week 20 or so, it was clear that she had a gap in understanding somewhere, but since I wasn’t the teacher, (Remember? The teacher is the fun guy on the video), and since I didn’t know Latin, (because parents don’t need to know Latin!) I couldn’t help her.  Two emails to the organization asking for suggestions or guidance went completely unanswered.  Call me a plebeian but being ignored like that really ticked me off, so we put Latin for Children away.

Later I discovered that the more highbrow Classical communities have a name for people like us: Homeschool Latin Dropouts.

This is part one of a three-part post.
The second installment is here:  Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day, and the final installment is From Latin Dropouts to Latin Lovers!

C is for Cheeseburger Bird

Summer is coming, summer is coming.
I know it, I know it, I know it.
Light again, leaf again, life again, love again,
Yes my wild little poet.

Sing the new year under the blue.
Last year you sang it as gladly.
New, new, new, new ! Is it then so new
That you should carol so madly ?

Love again, song again, nest again, young again,
Never a prophet so crazy!
And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend,
See, there is hardly a daisy.

Here again, here, here, here, happy year!
O warble unchidden, unbidden!
Summer is coming, is coming, my dear,
And all the winters are hidden.
The Throstle,  by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Garners are birders.

One of the many gifts of homeschooling is time;
time to watch, time to track,
time to listen, time to enjoy.
Over the last few years we’ve had time to learn the rhythms of the bird life in our yard.

Every year, late winter we are treated to a visit from an immense flock of American Robins who descend with great chattering and formidable appetites to devour each and every shiny red berry on our American Holly tree.   Watching closely, we glimpse a few Cedar Waxwings amongst the group!  Once they’ve gleaned every trace of crimson from the branches, our feathered friends politely clean up any remaining morsel that might have fallen on the ground under the tree.

And yes, I’ve finally learned to move the cars, and relocate the patio chairs for the less polite, but inevitable outcome.

In mid-March to early April, our mornings in the school room are accompanied by a chorus of song birds.   This year, a wonderful counter-tenor  sings outside our window, and so beautifully that GraceNotes and I have to stop, look at each other and smile.  Unfortunately, we can’t see our serenading songbird, so we began to wonder who (and what) he is.

We decided to dust off Mr. Garner’s Stokes Bird Call CD’s and attempt to identify the birds we hear singing every morning, starting with our counter tenor. First, we reviewed our Backyard Bird Count list to look for likely suspects.  (I have a Pinterest Board with images of the birds that we see regularly.) Then we pulled the CD’s and listened to obvious, and then less obvious candidates on our Stokes Bird Call CDs to see if we could Put a Name with that Tune.  Taking a tip from (Handbook of Nature Study Blog) Barb’s post on birdsong, we put words to the song to help us remember the rhythm.  We both decided (and not at lunchtime) that it sounded like “Cheese-bur-ger, cheese-bur-ger, cheese-bur-ger.” We went to the piano and decided the notes were a D,C and A above middle C.   We listened to the Stokes CD again, and Cornell’s All About Birds website, but nothing sounded quite right.

We searched further online, and found that there were a lot of people out there looking for the “Cheeseburger bird!“   While all of the “official” bird song sites were devoid of this particular song, a slightly frustrated search of “morning cheeseburger eastern bird song” brought up a You Tube site with exactly the song we hear! Here it is:

The beautiful song of a Carolina Wren!  

The poem at the beginning of the post is by Alfred, Lord Tennyson and if you read it out loud you’ll catch the rhythms of Spring bird call.  April is National Poetry month.  You should read some!

This post is being submitted to Blogging through the Alphabet over a Ben and Me.

Digging into Rocks

I have to confess that my lackluster grade in the lab portion of my Geology 101 class has a lot to do with my attitude toward the Outdoor Hour Nature topic this month.   See, I already know how very wrong I can be when attempting to identify rocks and minerals!  I even considered skipping this month, because we are still doing a lot with trees.  But as the saying goes, “the only difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is the way you use them.”

Fortunately, just before the holidays I happened upon a hardback version of Handbook of Nature Study, from Abe Books at a price just short of the current paper back version.  Eager to put this wonderful new resource to good use, we dug into January Rock Study!  We read through the section on Rocks, and used a few portions for dictation this month.  We use dictation for spelling, so this was a relatively painless way to reiterate the vocabulary of our nature study!  It was interesting to note the minerals that make rocks, think about objects we use today with those elements, and to learn of the relationship of clay to slate, limestone to marble, sandstone to quartz, and coal to diamonds!

From the library we particularly enjoyed Rocks in His Head by Carol Otis Hurst, a picture book that I highly recommend, about a man (the author’s father) who was a life-long rock collector!  The Rock Factory, by Jacquie Bailey, follows the life cycle of a diamond from fiery beginnings (evolutionary material here) to an eventual resting place in a stream where it is picked up by a lucky boy.  Earthshake: Poems from the Ground Up by Lisa Peters with colorful illustrations (that we really liked) by Cathie Felstead, offers twenty-two poems of a geological nature.  We enjoyed Instructions for the Earth’s  Dishwasher, and chuckled at Earth Charged in Meteor’s Fiery Death.   The author’s Endnotes briefly explain the geologic process or concept behind each poem.

Since the Garners are not in possession of a good Rock and Mineral Guide  at the moment, I chose to focus on the rock cycle.  Our world is cyclical – with water cycles, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen cycles, life cycles, planetary cycles, the same is true for rocks.  We see this in a mild way at Middle Ridge when a field we cleared of stone one year, is full of stones the next.  GraceNotes worked with the interactive Rock Cycle at Learner.org and then sketched the Rock Cycle to include in her Nature Journal.

Rock Sketches

GraceNotes has always picked up rocks, and still does!  But when we went looking for rocks on our nature walk, none were compelling, so she pulled a few of her favorites from our bookshelf nature display.  From among the rocks that she and #1 Son picked up at the various spots on our North Carolina Blue Ridge vacation, she chose to sketch three that she remembered finding at Looking Glass Falls.  Then we speculated on what type they might be, and where they fit in the rock cycle:  igneous, metamorphic or sedimentary.  But we will humbly await a firm identification until I have a good resource.

As I was wrapping up our month with rocks I was just a little bit dismayed at all of the questions that we still have unanswered, until I realized that like the enthusiastic father in the book Rocks in His Head, we have years to increase our understanding of rocks and minerals!

Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.

The Tables Turned, by William Wordsworth

This post was prepared for the Outdoor Hour Challenge blog carnival, hosted by Handbook of Nature Study blog.  Please click over and see how other families get outside and learn about God’s wonderful creation!

Our Christmas Term

At first I was too driven to consider a “Christmas Term.”  When I was a new homeschool parent, I was striving to check off the boxes on the schedule, get everyone to piano lessons, physical therapy, PE class and co-op, and not fall too far behind.  The idea of taking three weeks and focusing on Christmas seemed utterly impractical, and somewhat unnecessary, given the hectic schedule of Lessons and Carols rehearsals, Christmas play rehearsals and performances, Women’s group meetings and myriad other seasonal obligations.

That was then.

This year my thinking shifted.  First, I received this inspiring post from Brandi at Afterthoughts describing her Christmas Term.  Then, a lovely e-newsletter from Homeschool Enrichment arrived offering great resources.  Finally, I could acknowledge with relief that, for now anyway, our schedule  is free of overwhelming-and-pressure-inflicting-external-Christmas-commitments.  So a Christmas Term seemed very do-able.  In fact,  the idea of focusing on  Christmas literature and music for three weeks greatly appealed to me (and to GraceNotes too)!

Our first Jesse Tree ornament on the branch

Last year we faltered on my planned Advent Jesse Tree Devotional (A Post Advent Evaluation).  So this Advent, the devotion will take the place of Bible Study.  (You can download the free devotional materials here:  Ann Voskamp – AHolyExperience) We will continue to persevere per the usual schedule  in Latin, Science and Math.  However, we will wait on Famous Men of Rome and Augustus Caesar’s World until January, and in the meantime, read classic Christmas stories, with preference given to those written before Santa idolatry had completely taken hold of American publishing.  (Before you think I’m extreme, go to any Barnes and Noble and check the Children’s Christmas Books for sale.)

We started with a fun book, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson.  I was delighted to find it at the Book Exchange and could use my credit. It is an excellent read-aloud.   The narrator’s frank characterizations and amusing descriptions of the events that contribute to a surprisingly “successful” pageant, kept both GraceNotes and Mr. Garner in stitches for all 7 chapters.  Having participated in so many Christmas pageant productions over the years, we recognized ourselves and others in this story!  (No, not you!) We spread this small book out over three evenings, and I hope to track down the video.

We are now reading the Five Staves of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  I purchased our first Lapbook ever,  this one from Hands of a Child, which provides study of the literary elements and history behind A Christmas Carol.   We are putting the elements together and placing them on cardstock in a notebook, and so far, so good! GraceNotes has always been a bit spooked by A Christmas Carol,  largely because of the video portrayal of the scary ghost scenes that center around Jacob Marley’s visit.  Now, reading aloud, as I concluded Dickens’ First Stave (chapter), it was quite illuminating for her to hear this bit,

“He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step.  The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever. “

It casts the chapter, the entire story, in a brighter light.  Sometimes stage and video productions seem to convey that Ebenezer was “scared” into acts of faith by moaning ghosts and long bony disembodied fingers.  Already, we’ve discovered that Dickens compelling text is really telling us about a genuine transformation towards true and joyous selflessness.  (Reminds me of the T-Shirt slogan “Don’t judge a book by its movie”) After we finish reading, we will watch the 1970 production, “Scrooge,” with the delightful music, Albert Finney and Alec Guiness, my personal favorite.  Then we will compare and contrast the video production to Dickens text.

Winter Term Books and CD’s

Next on the schedule are The Mansion, and The Other Wiseman both by Henry Van Dyke.  Van Dyke’s classics are available on Kindle for free or very little.  However this year for the 100th anniversary, The Mansion has been published as a picture book, with abridged text accompanying the illustrations, and the full text in the back.  The Other Wiseman is also available abridged in picture book form.  Van Dyke’s Christmas stories were new to me, and now having read through them, and the other selections in Van Dyke’s Christmas Collection I find these relatively short but beautifully written stories reflect the deeper meaning of the season of Advent, Christ’s birth, and the Epiphany in just the way I hoped; and will certainly be part of our family traditions from now on.  I’ve selected a few passages for dictation, and we’ll discuss vocabulary as needed.   (There is also a video production entitled The  Fourth Wiseman, based on Van Dyke’s The Other Wiseman,  which we will watch after we read the story. )

Three lovely picture books (one is never too old for a beautifully illustrated picture book!) with equally rewarding texts that I’ve included are Christmas Day in the Morningby Pearl Buck,  A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote (also found at the Book Exchange!), and The Third Gift, by a favorite contemporary author, Linda Sue Park. We will read through these and enjoy them and then add them to the collection of Christmas picture books that we still pull out every year and read through.

Our work in our Commonplace Books continues.  During December we will focus on poetry about Christmas and there are several wonderful poems in my current nightstand favorite, A Treasury of Christian Poetry: 700 Inspiring and Beloved Poems. 

December brings us to the last chapter in our wonderful Apologia Exploring Creation with Astronomy text.  Although, since we have fallen in love with gazing up at the star-studded heavens, and the planets feel like old friends now, I don’t think we will ever stop studying Astronomy.  I have my eye on Jay Ryan’s Signs and Seasons Curriculum, and I’ve scheduled The Star of Bethlehem as our celebratory activity!

Music is an enormous part of Christmas for us, so we will be listening to Veni, Veni Emmanuel, in the Latin, which will be our hymn for the term.  My absolute favorite seasonal hymn, it perfectly depicts the yearning that is Advent.  YouTube has many gorgeous recordings.  Go look!

A quick check through our copious collection of Christmas CD’s yielded some wonderful classics.  We will also hear selections from Handel’s Messiah, Camille Saint Saen’s Christmas Oratorio, Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols, and my favorite Amahl and the Night Visitors by Gian Carlo Menotti.  We always have a few other things playing in the background during the holidays:  On Yoolis Night Medieval Carols and Motets (Anonymous 4), A Medieval Christmas, A Renaissance Christmas, The Carol Album, and last but not least,  Apples in Winter, by our favorite historically correct musicians, The Itinerant Band.***

We are really enjoying the Christmas Term!

***In the interest of full disclosure we also listen to Charlie Brown Christmas,  Anuna, Celtic Christmas 1, 1.5, and 2,  David Benoit,  Glen Miller, John Doan, Al Dimeola (this one is great), Mannheim Steamroller (several), Sting, GRP Christmas, Bing Crosby…GraceNotes and Mr. Garner listen to Muppets, and Chipmunks.  Mr. Garner listens to Gene Autry.

(Mr. Garner was concerned you would think that we are nose-in-the-air classical music snobs…)