Little Green Leaves
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Posts posted by Little Green Leaves
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2 minutes ago, Dreamergal said:
Congratulations @Lady Florida. and @Junie
Is it the book by Elizabeth Gaskell. There is a wonderful BBC series you may like to watch if you like the book.
Yes! it is Elizabeth Gaskell. Sorry, I should have said that. I'll definitely look for the series once I'm done with the book.
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Congratulations @Junieand @Lady Florida.! This thread is very inspiring and has gotten me to read more than I had in a long time. I'm really enjoying it. Thanks to all of you.
I had a busy start to my week, with a little too much work and not enough time to read. I just came here to say that I started North and South and it's wonderful. Especially after my struggles with Balzac, this novel feels so cozy and warm. So much emotion, so much inner life, and so many likable characters. It's the story of a pastor's daughter whose family is uprooted from their home in the south of England after the father has a crisis of faith; they relocate to the industrial North. So it's a social novel as well as (I think) a romance.
Even the footnotes are fun to read and I find myself learning a lot from them. I really recommend this book.
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9 hours ago, Hunter said:
Living in a desert means having very dirty feet. If you open the windows, a fine gray powder blows in and coats everything, especially the floors. The humidity level is so low that your skin gets dry and cracks including your feet, and that grey powder gets in the cracks.
The Bible includes a lot of stuff about washing feet. I now know a lot more about what those scriptures really mean, now that I have had desert feet. Yup, you need oil to "wash" your feet. And this level of dirty if you wear sandals is amazing and is not something that you want to sit down and relax in without washing it off first. Never mind what it does to a house; it worse than any dirty shoes I have ever worn pre-desert experiences. The dirt is not as bad in the gated communities in the suburbs as it is here in the slums. I am not sure what makes it different.
But pre-desert "nature walk", LOL, It was valuable to read commentaries about foot washing. Urban teachers used what they had. CM wrote to people with more resources and encouraged them to do more. That is no different today. Urban schools and families have fewer and different resources. We need to just use what we have, and if possible find people that have similar resources. Ella Frances Lynch wrote to real urban moms.
Steiner (Waldorf guy) was desperate and got kooky. His students were the children of factory workers and they arrived a mess. So, he got kooky, and instead of trying to compete, changed the rules altogether. And then rich people added rich on top of kooky to expand the kooky, and the applicable parts are hard to uncover and brush off enough to apply to other low-income and cold-urban schools and homeschools.
Real widely, glean the bits that work for YOU, and discard the parts written to other audiences, especially paying audiences.
Urban teachers used flowers bought at a florist or they cut up an apple from the corner market. They asked a child with a pet caged bird to bring the bird to school for a day. And then they read books to the children. And they drew pictures on the blackboard with generic chalk and the children copied them with generic writing materials and generic art supplies if they were lucky.
Start with what you HAVE.
You know, I had always assumed that foot washing in the Bible was a symbolic act. But I guess not. It's amazing when a symbol turns out to be REAL.
Also I had no idea Rudolph Steiner taught the children of factory workers...totally changes my opinion of him. This is all very liberating. I'll be looking into growing garbage. Thank you.
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3 hours ago, Hunter said:
No, many of the teacher manuals were written in the densest urban areas, and the children were supposed to be taken to the park by way of trolley.
I used to take my boys to a living museum to do the animal studies. There is a post somewhere here about the poetry they wrote about rutting goats. CM with tween boys doesn't go to plan sometimes. LOL.
Where I am now is just barren desert, but some neighbors have chickens. In some cultures, the poor have chickens in the most crowded situations imaginable, even today.
I did not bring my HONS with me. I should have. I know how to make it work, now, and I have learned to see that the desert is both more different and more the same than I expected. I could definitely do the cockroach study here. LOL. Used copies of HONS are never on sale cheap. Sigh!
I am replacing books as I find them for the cheapest prices and shipping as possible. That book will be at the end of the list, even though I want it the most. I have PDF copies. I could swear I had a particularly nice copy in my Kindle books, but don't see it now. Sometimes they pull books back and do not inform me. I have had multiple books disappear over the years. I think I have all of the Yesterday's Classics version somewhere on a thumbdrive.
So much of the nature study advice online is people showing off or selling something. Making it look difficult is of benefit to them. I am not the fan of CM and Waldorf that I am of countless other educational leaders of the time that stressed the practical and commonplace, rather than the new and improved versions that these better-known educational leaders used.
Real teachers brought specimens into the classroom and mostly used books. But when they finally did take the big field trip to the park, they had a storehouse of things that the children were already familiar with and that they could apply to what they encountered.
Thank you! I did not know that about teachers in urban areas. It's very inspiring.
Life in a desert sounds romantic although, I'm sure, very hard. I've only seen a desert once and it was one of the most gorgeous experiences of my life.
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14 minutes ago, Hunter said:
I find it very interesting to read the science and nature study sections of teacher's manuals from the late 1800s and early 1900's. And how nature study was integrated into the other subjects, especially composition and geography, and occasionally math.
Teachers that taught nature study from books were shamed. It seems like the shift to science topics that cannot be labeled "nature study" might have partially been a reaction to needing science topics that removed the stigma of staying of indoors for science.
I believe strongly in INCLUDING nature study textbooks and videos as science for all ages. I believe that students interact with the outdoors at a deeper level when they eventually do get out there after being introduced to nature in a book or video.
I don't believe that what goes on inside a nuclear reactor is more important than the life cycles of insects.
I guess more people lived in the countryside in the late 1800s, early 1900s too.
A few years ago I bought the Handbook of Nature Study because Ambleside Online recommended it. It's still on the shelf but I haven't used it much because it suggests things like having kids study the hens in your yard -- they seem to assume that everyone lives on a farm. Even their suggestions about studying dandelions assume that you have your own back yard. I got kind of discouraged by that book!
BUT yes I do agree that even in a big city you can get a lot out of observing nature. We look at ant hills in the park, moss growing on trees on the sidewalk, seagulls by the river, etc etc etc. We just have to look harder for nature than most people did a century ago. I like your point about including books and video as part of the nature study, too.
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Just now, Not_a_Number said:
How old is he again?
He'll be 9 in a few weeks.
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2 hours ago, Violet Crown said:
If we're talking taking written notes specifically on books, I don't worry about that skill until the middle school years; nor do I at any stage expect book reports. At the elementary level, we all (the family) discuss our reading casually, and a child soon discovers that if she can remember what happened, who the characters were (if fiction), and what was interesting--and relate it in an intelligible way--then everyone will listen and talk about her book. There's nothing like being the center of attention to create a personal investment in note-taking.
In the middle years, we shift to the Junior Great Books program (I prefer the series from the 1960s). We use their interpretive question model and have occasional but regular dinner-table conversations about the most recent reading. The Great Books Foundation teaches a particular kind of note-taking which involves the reader creating her own questions, rather than responding to canned comprehension questions. These are always shorter, manageable readings.
I also use the old Scribner School books with their excellent study guides, which prompt note-taking and paying attention to the kind of thing I want the student to attend to (figures of speech, character development, foreshadowing, plot arcs, etc., etc.) both in the margin and in her own notebook.
When possible, I try to set up a group for both the JGB and the Scribner books: adolescents are far less shy about literary hypothesizing with coevals than with the parent-teacher. Covid has put a bit of a crimp in that, but generally the parents of homeschool friends are eager to find someone else to "do literature" with their children, so it's always been easy to get a group together, if you can be sufficiently dragonish to force them to do the reading. As with the elementary child wanting her turn to share her book and have everyone else listen, in a reading group the student quickly learns that the moderator won't let them "contribute" (i.e. waffle on) if she hasn't done the reading, or hasn't taken any notes and so doesn't have anything interesting to say. Very soon they start showing up with annotated margins and crowded notebooks.
You know, part of why my husband and I decided to teach our son note taking is that he desperately wants to join in on our conversations about history and politics. The thing is, he wants to come up with grandiose statements and sweeping theories and make a big splash in the conversation. He's the oldest kid. For his age, he knows plenty about history and politics. He loves reading newspapers and history books. But I got worried that he was gulping down books too quickly and not really digesting them -- that's why I wanted to slow down the process with note taking. He doesn't so much get facts wrong, but he pays attention to the facts that will "tell" well. I think both my husband and I were that way at his age too -- I definitely used to gobble up books too -- but we had school as a natural corrective; we were forced to slow down, take notes, write essays, etc etc.
Anyway, this thread is giving me a lot to think about. I guess conversation can be a corrective to that also.
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4 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:
We took some notes from the virus book we were reading 🙂 . We mostly focused on being able to write things in one's own words, for real -- regurgitating exactly what the book says isn't so helpful!
I would assume that note taking will come MUCH easier when handwriting is faster, so I don't know if taking notes in grade 4 is a very useful way to spend one's time. What skills are you trying to work on here?
Hm, what skills am I trying to develop. Organization and attention to detail, really. And of course, the skill of note taking itself. I'm not pushing it hard. It's been a nice, chatty way to sit together with a history book and talk about what's an important fact and what's not.
I had thought note taking was an upper elementary skill -- I definitely had to do it myself at that age. Maybe that was a public school thing.
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4 hours ago, Moonhawk said:
So for us, our 6th and 4th grader are being introduced to notes this year. I'm doing a variation on Cornell and outlining, where I have them read a chapter (or section, if the chapter is long), then have them outline it on one side of a divided page, not necessarily by paragraph but ask if there is anything "worth noting" from a paragraph and then moving on to the next. They need a lot of help with the indentation to see the flow still, but my outline is even a variation so I'm not being too picky ('m not going much into the I. A. 1. a. etc format, more big topics and bullets. I'll teach them better outlining after they can parse out the important info reliably I think, maybe next year.)
Then after they have their section of notes from the main book, I ask if they have any connections they can make ("Does this remind you of another time in history? How do we use this type of machine today?" etc) and write it on the other side of the page. Then if they have another book on the same topic, I have them read some and write down corresponding facts on the page close to where the "original" was talked about.
This is a slow process, lol. I'm only doing it for history, and the book they are outlining is SOTW4, so it isn't very difficult to parse, but I am having them read it on their own, do an initial version of the outline on their own (now, after the first couple chapters), then help them with the indenting/flow.
Since I'm encouraging outlining I do have them read it first, then go back to outline it as a separate step, not at the same time. They tried to break the rules a couple times but it was obvious they didn't know what was coming up next in their notes, so they're mostly doing it the long way now.
Thank you! This makes sense, especially the idea of reading first and then going back to make an outline. I also like your way of making connections right there on the page!
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1 hour ago, Lori D. said:
Sounds like a great decision! This is a very young age to start note taking, so just me, but I would do so just in small bites and with a very specific purpose, such as learning "how to" or preparing to write about about the book -- just like you did with the Lafayette book. Nice work!
Also, I would suggest doing it with only one specified book at a time, and only do it with 2-3 books total over the course of the school year. Just like with doing too much literary analysis with too many books, there is a real danger of overdoing note taking and killing the love of books, or "turning reading into schoolwork" 😵.
However, it sounds like the way you did it worked great with the Lafayette book, because you laid it out in advance that the note taking and slower pace reading was the scheduled plan. 😉 Keep up the great work!
re: "What do you guys do? In general, how do you approach note taking for this age?"
We did not do formal note taking from lectures until high school. And note taking from books was not a form of study that clicked well with either DS, or helped either of them to retain info (they have different learning styles). DS#1 was a late bloomer writer, and DS#2 was a very delayed struggling writer, so we were not able to do the kind of writing project you're doing with your DS until the middle school years, so note taking for a longer writing project didn't happen until many years later than 4th grade. Just our experience! 😄Thank you! It is always so helpful to hear what others have done. I really appreciate it. Also the reminder not to go overboard with a new skill.
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6 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
Yeah, it's been rather disappointing for the kids!
We'll be in Boston for some of the winter, so maybe that'll be better?
Hopefully! Boston in the winter sounds gorgeous.
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2 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
What's the last time there was a reasonable amount of snow?? The last two years just had slush...
It's so true.
Maybe there was a real snow 3 years ago? 4? I mean, my kids have definitely experienced real snow. But not as much as I did, growing up in the same city. I remember heaps of snow on the sidewalks; it'd stay there for weeks and we'd have to climb over it to cross the streets. Now, that's a real rarity.
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19 hours ago, Hunter said:
This pandemic is affecting different states, communities, ethnicities, subcultures, economic classes, occupations, ages, etc., very very very VERY differently. We are not all going through this together. We are dividing more than ever.
Today, when I went to get water, there was a woman lying on the curb and no one was paying her any mind. I was worried and went to go give her some money, but she did not even stir, never mind wake up, and when I got a better look at her, I realized she was too far gone to be helped by money. I have never seen anything like this in real life or even pictures of modern USA life. In my old city, someone long before me would have called an ambulance for her. Here, I knew that no one would come for her. I do not know if she will live the night, or if she is even still alive. She was as thin as someone in a concentration camp picture, and flies were crawling on her, and she was so very still.
I carried my water back to my roach-infested, bars-on-the-windows shelter and know how very very VERY lucky that I am. My life was not normal pre-pandemic, but this is hugely different. I don't like this! I am too grateful to allow myself to wallow, but I can only take so much. I am human. I feel stuff.
I know there are lucky people in pockets of safety and I am so glad they have that. But ... there are also people dying on sidewalks in THIS country, right now. There are people that have been forcible quarantined in tiny units in high-rise building and nursing home rooms for MONTHS for their "safety". And the most vulnerable are taking the brunt of this for the convenience of the strong.
No one has touched me for over 2 weeks and it was over a month before that one quick hug. I have only been touched once in 6 weeks. This sucks. Humans are not designed to tolerate this level of isolation. We are a social species.
I've been thinking about this too. There's a small group of people who've been camping in our local park since the start of the summer -- they've strung up a few hammocks and have their things in shopping carts nearby. I wonder what's going to happen to them in the winter.
For us, winter is just a matter of getting warm gear -- my kids are hoping for lots of snow -- but yeah, obviously it's much more complicated for people without reliable shelter.
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My fourth grader is learning to take notes this year. Up until this year we took a more Charlotte Mason approach (reading and then narration) so this is new to him and I am introducing this gently. I'd love to know how others teach this!
So far, I've been having him take notes on his history readings -- I read aloud while he takes notes. We're going slowly and stopping regularly to talk about which things are important enough to make note of, how to organize notes, etc etc.
Separately, I'm having him read a biography of Lafayette (he is learning about the French revolution and picked a figure to study further). He's going to write a short essay about Lafayette after reading the biography. He's really enjoying the book and is basically gulping it down whole. I haven't made him take notes while he reads. My plan is that once he's finished the book, we'll talk it over together and decide what he'll write his essay about. Then I'll help him make a simple outline and at that point, he'll probably have to go back through the book to find details for his report.
I hesitated over whether to require him to take notes WHILE reading the book, because I do remember having to do that for my reports in elementary school. But then again, I had to take notes because I was getting my information from the encyclopedias in the school library, not from a book in my own home. What do you guys do? In general, how do you approach note taking for this age?
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34 minutes ago, Lori D. said:
Hmmm... there is no clapping in Miquon, and there are only 4 pages on number lines in the first workbook of Miquon, which has over 100 pages... perhaps that was another program??
You made me doubt my own memory! 🙂
I just double checked in the my book of lab sheet annotations. At the first grade level, they suggest that students clap and tap out patterns -- I agree that it'd not a huge part of the program and you can take it or leave it. There is a fair amount of number line work. I don't see that as a bad thing at all -- it really helped my daughter with her number sense.
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12 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:
I wouldn't agree with the statement that the kids that need manipulatives are highly kinesthetic. Sometimes, manipulatives are just a way to demonstrate the concept and make it somewhat less abstract... most of the kids in my homeschool classes benefited from them.
That being said, DD8 doesn't particularly like manipulatives. She's certainly ABLE to use them -- she just doesn't need them. Which brings me to the question of whether not liking manipulatives would mean one didn't like Miquon? I haven't used the program myself, since I don't use programs, so I can't answer that question.
Yeah, I wonder about this too! My son disliked Miquon when I tried it with him. He found all the clapping, the number lines, etc in the beginning level really annoying and he was much happier with Singapore math. I think maybe because he already had his own way of thinking about numbers?
My daughter responds really well to it. And it's not just the manipulatives, because we haven't used those much in a while. It's the whole structure of the program. (Obviously I agree with everyone that the teaching is the most important part and a program on it's own can't do it all.)
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I use Miquon with my daughter, who's also 7. She's not especially mathy but she really enjoys it. It's beautifully planned out and it almost feels like the math equivalent of a language immersion program, if that makes sense.
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I love this week's topic! Especially interested in the list of authors over 40.
I just got North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell. It's a 19th century novel about factory workers -- and factory owners -- in the north of England. I read and really liked Mary Barton by the same author, so I'm excited about this one.
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I finished Le Pere Goriot today! I had to work hard at it, because of my struggles with French, but I'm so glad that I did. The writing is so strong and confident. Nothing is abstract. Even feelings and ideas and sympathies are described in physical terms. There's no malaise, or anxiety; when the characters are upset, it's always for a concrete reason. The world is dark, but it's not at all not bleak or grim. Some of the characters and scenes will stay with me a long time.
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I haven't posted here this week because I am STILL making my way through Le Pere Goriot. But here I am. @Penguinthank you for the news about Louise Gluck yesterday. Personally, I don't feel very excited about Gluck's poetry (I should read more though) but for some strange reason it got me thinking about Laura Riding, a poet I hadn't read since I was a teenager.
Laura Riding eventually abandoned poetry to devote herself to linguistics. She was often accused of being too abstract, too elitist, and gets written off as a kind of Ivory Tower figure, but I think there's something gorgeously sincere about her. I was very happy to find this piece in the Brooklyn Rail about Laura Riding and the complicated ways we all talk about a poet's role:
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This thread has done me good!
I taught my son division a few years ago, and I made sure that he really knew what he was doing. Fine. But recently, I have been indulgently turning a blind eye while he does division (and multiplication) in his head, rather than on paper. This process can be either weirdly fast or surprisingly slow. It is mostly very accurate, which is why I've allowed it to go on so long. It is also kind of cute and he gets a kick out of it.
Anyway this week, with this thread in mind, and after he made a few mistakes in his mental division, I've made him spend lots of time working long division problems on paper, and checking them on paper. At first there were lots of grumbles. He had half-forgotten how to do things on paper, but it was actually a lot of fun refreshing his memory. He'd been basically doing it in his head the way you'd do it on paper -- so he understands the concept, but he had forgotten the method, if that makes sense.
Editing to add that I haven't timed him at all. Maybe after a little more practice I will, I don't know.
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Lately we are doing "observation" walks. My kids take after me in the sense that they are usually half in a daydream and default to being oblivious of their surrounding... So I have been using our morning walks to strengthen our observational skills.
We walk along, collecting leaves or whatever, and then perodically we stop and each describe in detail 3 things that we see. We live in a big city, so this isnt always nature - it could be a rusty bicycle chained to a post, or it could be a brick wall. The point is, we are looking and describing. It's been cool to see how much more observant they're getting already.
Lots of times this does end up being nature study, which is why I'm mentioning it here. Also I really like the idea of reading more books about nature. Any particular books to recommend for elementary ages?
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10 hours ago, Lori D. said:
Nice to see you again Hunter! I always enjoy hearing about the resources you find, or ones that homeschoolers were using in the 1990s, before we started homeschooling in 2000! 😄
Games -- very fun! For a short while in middle school, DSs really enjoyed the strategy board game of Risk, which was a very loose Geography addition! 😉 Now we enjoy the Ticket to Ride board games, and learning the major city names on those boards has helped me come up with a few crossword puzzle answers! 😄
We have Risk too! And it's definitely good for making geography seem real. One day we were reading about Britain getting Gibralter and my son was really confused about why they wanted it in the first place. The next time we played Risk, he could see why that was a strategic spot.
@HunterI will look at the Global Pursuit game. Thanks a lot.
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4 hours ago, Pen said:
I think your understanding of masks was off base.
But I totally agree with you that there is massive unwarranted vitriol from MSM and tbh living in an area with both conservative and progressive-liberal persons, IME is that it is much more from the latter. As well, there is substantial vitriol and condescension attitude from the urban liberals toward the rural farmers and loggers and resentment back again that it is the rural farmers and fishers and packers and others who help to provide the essential basics and truckers who get the basics upon which life depends to the urban areas, and don’t have the luxury of calling it in via Zoom — and for whom the large numbers of hours needed may render masks largely ineffective and at a flip side of it being extremely hard to work effectively for long hours at physically strenuous jobs while masked.
Farmers can be very intelligent.
Even if they are not wearing a mask. And to them a “message” from non masked leadership may be solidarity with their plight.
There are kids from our local school who were they urbanites would no doubt be heading to college, but instead will be taking over their family small farm or joining the family trade business.
[ETA: Here’s a classical history professor/farmer talking about some of these issues —
Warning - It is “political” but it also shows some intelligence and nuanced thinking possible which may not tend to be there in MSM soundbites. If too political I will remove it. ]
This is interesting and I'm looking forward to watching this video.
There is a similar split even within urban areas, of course. Some of us have jobs that can be done remotely; many others work in retail, or in services, and obviously can't telecommute. So you have half the population staying home, ordering in their groceries and supplies, etc etc, and meanwhile everyone else still has to ride the subways and buses, send their kids to daycare, etc.
I'm very much in favor of masking and precautions. But I do sometimes notice a slight hectoring tone in the media (where the journalists are reporting from their home studios) and almost no mention of people in different circumstances.
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Book a Week 2020 - BW41: 41 Things
in The Chat Board
Posted
I just went to Amazon to look for the series. Turns out the BBC also made a North and South series in the 70s, starring a young Patrick Stewart!