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Anyone care to help me plan my Narnia study?


ByGrace3
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I made the decision a few weeks ago to ditch most of our LA plans for this school year and go rogue...For my 8 and 10 yo's I am planning to have our writing and grammar revolve around the Narnia books. We will read a chapter a day, my 8 yo will mostly do copywork, narration, dictation with a few writing projects, and my dd will write reports and do projects from the books. I have tons of ideas...but the thing is I haven't read the books in YEARS and I don't have time to read them all before we start school. I know I don't have to have everything planned out ahead of time, but I would like a jump start at least. I am planning the first 13 weeks to start so covering The Magicians Nephew, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Horse and His Boy, and Prince Caspian.

 

A few things I need help with.

 

I would like to do a couple of "picture narrations" from images/scenes from the books.What are your favorite scenes from the books? There are a ton of images out there, but I would like to pic images from the best/most memorable scenes. I think my kids would really enjoy this and would like to find several "scenes."

 

Any scenes you can think of right off that lead to a "change the ending" type assignment? How about any good places for "missing scenes"?

 

I'm sure I have a ton more questions...but anyone willing to help would be incredibly appreciated!

 

 

 

 

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Scenes: anything involving Reepicheep! I loved his battles, his courage. Once some of the mice had to carry him on a gurney after a major battle. The picture of him riding the little boat into Aslan's country at the end of voyage of the dawn treader. I also liked the scene between rust ace and Reepicheep where Eustace tried to spin him by the tail.

 

Google Mrs. Beaver's marmalade roll. Oh my goodness. My boys loved when I made that. I actually made the whole meal she prepared for the kids. It was fun and a good memory.

 

Change of ending: Ginger the cat could play a bigger role in The Last Battle. Susan could have chosen Narnia over nylons, lipstick and invitations. I need to think about those more.

 

We are 4 chapters from finishing The Last Battle. I'm going to be sad when it is over. I'm also kind of surprised sometimes at how prophetic Lewis was.

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Please begin at the beginning, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe!!! Enter through the wardrobe, as Lucy did, with wonder and delight!

 

The original and best order to read the books:

LWW

PC

VDT

SC

HHB

MN

LB

 

We are doing a Narnia unit this year too. :)

FUFI and ROAR are both on my shelf. The first provides a basic structure and fun projects and the second lots of intersting discussion ideas. SilverMoon's old posts about her study were helpful for me.

 

Get a refrigerator box from an appliance store for a wardobe.

 

Pictures: use the Pauline Baynes images. Some of my favorite include Mr. Tumnus and Lucy walking in the snowy wood,Peter fighting Miraz, Lucy looking at the mer-people, Jadis on the cab, and the great crowd straming in though the door (LB)

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More scenes:

Reepicheep going up the wall of water.

Aslan breathing on the stone statues, bringing them back to life.

Alsan and the girls on the morning of his resurrection.

Shasta, Bree, Hwin and Aravis fleeing across the desert.

The Dawn Treader in the picture and Lucy, Edmund and Eustace being drawn into it.

Eustace the dragon with Reepicheep beside him

Eustace the dragon with Aslan.

Lucy coming out of the wardrobe into Narnia for the first time.

Dinner at the Beavers' home. 

The coronation at Cair Paravel

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Please begin at the beginning, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe!!! Enter through the wardrobe, as Lucy did, with wonder and delight!

 

The original and best order to read the books:

LWW

PC

VDT

SC

HHB

MN

LB

 

We are doing a Narnia unit this year too. :)

FUFI and ROAR are both on my shelf. The first provides a basic structure and fun projects and the second lots of intersting discussion ideas. SilverMoon's old posts about her study were helpful for me.

 

Get a refrigerator box from an appliance store for a wardobe.

 

Pictures: use the Pauline Baynes images. Some of my favorite include Mr. Tumnus and Lucy walking in the snowy wood,Peter fighting Miraz, Lucy looking at the mer-people, Jadis on the cab, and the great crowd straming in though the door (LB)

Ack! That is not the order everywhere online said to read! 😠everywhere I read said to start with the Magicians Nephew and then read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.... Eek. That would be a ton of work to undo....

 

Anyone else care to weigh in on the order?

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LWW must be first. Starting with Magician's Nephew is like pulling the tape up to look at your Christmas present early, and it simply *won't* be as magical as it will be if your DC are already firmly attached to the land of Narnia.

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Sorry LWW first. Every time. You always (always) enter Narina through the wardrobe first. If you read MN first, it does not have the same impact. Not at all.

 

Keep your MN stuff on hand and do it later.

 

Also, we are using Further Up and Further In this year. Not everything, but the pieces we want to use. It's already done all the leg work for you. We haven't started it yet.

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As I said above, we haven't started FUFI, except for some activities. It recommends a few activities for some books. It recommends going rowboating, doing some archery, and riding horses.

 

So, we've gone canoeing, I've set a date for a friend to teach us some archery, and when the weather cools down, I will call a place that does horse trail riding.

 

This is what I like about FUFI. They've already thought up all sorts of goodies like that. Now, they designed the curric to be used as your science and maybe some history as well, but we only use it to study the literature side of things. They have some writing assignments, too, that we're going to work on.

 

I don't want to praise it too much since I haven't used it yet, but it looks promising and could be exactly what you need. No reason to reinvent the wheel if it's already been done for you.

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Ok we will read LWW first...what's the appropriate order for the rest?

 

I looked at FUFI extensively. Online samples and at convention, since we are only using it for LA I felt it didn't have enough of what I needed and I would still have to do most of the legwork myself. My ds will be doing copywork each week, both doing grammar from that copywork. .. And then writing assignments. The writing/LA work in FUFI wasn't what I was looking for. Goodness I wish it were, this is a lot of work! I I have absolutely no desire to reinvent the wheel....but I never could find anything close to what I was looking for. And I know me--I need it laid out ahead of time or I will abandon the plan and go back to what is laid out!

 

Thanks for the help...lots of great ideas!

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I've always preferred them in publication order:

Lion Witch Wardrobe

Prince Caspian

Voyage...

The Silver Chair

Horse...

Magician's Nephew

Last Battle

 

But!! ;) The Horse & His Boy can easily be shifted to after LWW, since it is somewhat of a stand-alone that takes place within the time period of LWW.

 

My girls and I read LWW, PC, VotDT, and The Silver Chair this year. I definitely would start with LWW -- there is such a sense of wonder in it.

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From "The Chronicles of Narnia" wikipedia page, should you be interested ....
 

 

Paul Ford cites several scholars who have weighed in against this view,[23] and continues, "most scholars disagree with this decision and find it the least faithful to Lewis's deepest intentions".[4] Scholars and readers who appreciate the original order believe that Lewis was simply being gracious to his youthful correspondent and that he could have changed the books' order in his lifetime had he so desired.[24] They maintain that much of the magic of Narnia comes from the way the world is gradually presented in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe â€“ that the mysterious wardrobe, as a narrative device, is a much better introduction to Narnia than The Magician's Nephew, where the word "Narnia" appears in the first paragraph as something already familiar to the reader. Moreover, they say, it is clear from the texts themselves that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was intended to be read first. When Aslan is first mentioned in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, for example, the narrator says that "None of the children knew who Aslan was, any more than you do" â€” which is nonsensical if one has already read The Magician's Nephew.[25] Other similar textual examples are also cited.[26]

Doris Meyer, author of C. S. Lewis in Context and Bareface: A guide to C. S. Lewis, writes that rearranging the stories chronologically "lessens the impact of the individual stories" and "obscures the literary structures as a whole".[4] Peter Schakel devotes an entire chapter to this topic in his book Imagination and the Arts in C. S. Lewis: Journeying to Narnia and Other Worlds, and in Reading with the Heart: The Way into Narnia he writes:

 

The only reason to read 
The Magician's Nephew
 first [...] is for the chronological order of events, and that, as every story teller knows, is quite unimportant as a reason. Often the early events in a sequence have a greater impact or effect as a flashback, told after later events which provide background and establish perspective. So it is [...] with the
Chronicles
. The artistry, the archetypes, and the pattern of Christian thought all make it preferable to read the books in the order of their publication.

 

 

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Following Narnia ($49) -- I have not used this resource yet, but I have heard really good things about it from people who have  I got to browse through it, too.  It covers the first three books.

Here is a literature lapbook ($5).  We are using this as a part of our "Reading/Literature." for the school year, for our school year reading books. We have used it once for a book dd8 read for the Library Book Club over the summer.  She learned a lot!

 

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ok I have been drowning in Narnia this week! I redid the order. Deleting all that work was a bit painful, but yes I am glad I did it. I have the first 13 weeks done-- LWW, PC, VDT, and TSC-- Reading and discussion schedule, copywork and french dictation for my ds and writing exercises for dd, vocabulary and grammar exercises for both. I found a wonderful resource -- A Christian Teachers Guide: The Chronicles of Narnia that was amazingly helpful. I referenced a lot of writing assignments and discussions from there. They are great! 

 

I would care less about this if we were just going at it solo as I know I can and will tweak as we go, but my sister and a friend have asked to use it as well this year and will be using it concurrently which leaves less room for major error...

 

I seriously wish I were one of those people that could just pick up a book and wing it...truly. But I know how fast I would run back to laid out curriculum if I did! 

 

So.... might any of you Narnia experts be willing to look over what I have completed? Tell me what I am missing or how to improve? I am good at taking constructive criticism, promise! :lol:

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Ack! That is not the order everywhere online said to read! 😠everywhere I read said to start with the Magicians Nephew and then read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.... Eek. That would be a ton of work to undo....

 

Anyone else care to weigh in on the order?

 

NONONO!!!

 

Always read them in the published order. Because you should always enter Narnia for the first time through the Wardrobe.

 

You should have asked us first. :D

 

Do you dc know what a "wardrobe" is? Have they ever actually touched a fur coat? Do they know what mothballs smell like? If not, y'all need to go to an antique store (you'll have to sleuth around ahead of time to find one that has wardrobes and fur coats. You can still buy mothballs, I'm sure.).

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Adding my voice to those who think Narnia is best introduced with LWW.

 

My daughter's third grade teacher, at a small private school decorated her door like a wardrobe door and hung coats inside so you had to enter through the "wardrobe" to get into the classroom. She was a wonderfully creative teacher and my daughter loved her.

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Guest Michelle_A

I also suggest going in the order published. A couple of years ago I wanted my daughter to read the series. We started with Magician's Nephew and then she refused to read the rest. It's just not the same feel as LWW.

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