Friends, Wee Girl will be performing a short, informal "porch concert" this weekend, in lieu of the Suzuki book graduation she'd have in normal times. Her teacher, Mrs. S., had suggested pre-Covid that WG was ready to graduate to a paid accompanist, and suggested hiring Mrs. S.'s neighbor, a professional musician. The neighbor, B., happens to be a friend of ours and kindly but firmly refused payment. So I need a gift. Is there a Standard Thing one gives accompanists? Any ideas welcome.

When our congregation was able again to meet in person, we discovered that our numbers had nearly doubled. People who had been interested in attending but had been uncertain about it, had felt free to "attend" internet services in our Rite, and made the jump to showing up in person when the churches in town reopened. Haven't yet finished any proper books this week, but I finished another one of the 60-page history booklets I'm reading with Middle Girl: A. Hunter Dupree, "Science and the Emergence of Modern America, 1865-1916." It's just as exciting as it sounds. I'm not counting it toward my book-a-week total, but I wanted to put it on the record.

I've heard that this was the reason for Americans, post-Independence, deliberately recovering a more French pronunciation of recent loan words than was standard in English at the time: filet, ballet, beret, valet, herb, etc.

It's called the Great Vowel Shift.

Fairy tales, folk tales, fables. Don't forget that poetry was the first literature! The various Oxford and Kingfisher books of children's poetry have lovely, attractive illustrations and well-chosen poems. Used book stores (if you can find any that are open right now...) frequently have old sets of children's literature for cheap, especially if they're well-loved or a volume or two is missing. "Young Folks' Library," "My Book House," "Journeys Through Bookland," others. We did most of our first couple years of homeschooling with a $20 set of Childcraft volumes from Half Price Books.

[Re-posting since I managed to post right before last week's thread closed.] If you like the Victorian "crisis of faith" novels, you should* add to your reading list Mrs Humphry Ward's Robert Elsmere (Anglicanism to Unitarianism), John Henry Newman's Loss and Gain (Anglicanism to Catholicism), J. A. Froude's The Nemesis of Faith (Anglicanism to atheism), and Charlotte Yonge's The Daisy Chain (Anglicanism to better Anglicanism). I haven't read the last two but will when I can find them. As novels qua novels, the Gaskell and the Ward are probably the best of the lot (though Ward and Froude wrote in reaction to Newman, one doesn't have to read Newman first). *In, of course, your copious free time. 😉

If you like the Victorian "crisis of faith" novels, you should add to your reading list Mrs Humphry Ward's Robert Elsmere (Anglicanism to Unitarianism), John Henry Newman's Loss and Gain (Anglicanism to Catholicism), J. A. Froude's The Nemesis of Faith (Anglicanism to atheism), and Charlotte Yonge's The Daisy Chain (Anglicanism to better Anglicanism). I haven't read the last two but will when I can find them. As novels qua novels, the Gaskell and the Ward are probably the best of the lot (though Ward and Froude wrote in reaction to Newman, one doesn't have to read Newman first). In, of course, your copious free time. 😉

Confession: I'm on week 12 of my 2020 Bible reading schedule. But Exodus and Galatians were good. Better some than none, right?

My 2 cents, YMMV: Avoid saying anything at all about "what is doing the action," "what the sentence is about," or the subject or object of the verb. Let not those words pass your lips. Talk about what is first in the sentence; and what is before the verb, and what is after the verb. 1. "The man bit the dog." Transform the sentence to passive by reversing the positions of "the man" and "the dog," without changing the meaning. --> "The dog was bitten by the man." Do these transformations with a zillion sentences. Let the student notice* that "the man" (or whatever was first in the sentence) has to have the extra words "by" or "with" in the passive voice (but don't confuse things by talking about prepositional phrases**). Let the student notice* that passive voice sentences can get by without "by the man" or "with a pencil" or whatever used to be at the beginning of the sentence and is now at the end of the sentence. 2. When the student can do transformations from {noun phrase 1} {active verb} {noun 2} to {noun 2} {passive verb} {prep. + noun 1} easily, make her do transformations the other direction. 3. When transformations in both direction are easy, give her some passive sentences with no {prep. + noun 1} to transform into active sentences, supplying her own subject. *with perhaps some Socratic guidance **or, God forbid, the ablative case. Though this is how our Latin curriculum teaches passive voice and ablative: transformations until you can do them in your sleep. "Elephantus non capit murem." "Mus elephanto non capitur." "Quis non capit murem?" "A quo mus non capitur?" &c. &c.

Isaac Asimov, How Did We Find Out About Genes? Isaac Asimov, How Did We Find Out About DNA? A little dated, but fine for middle school. I love Asimov's science books for middle schoolers because they are just about at my science capacity. He explains things so well and so engagingly that one feels that the subjects are really quite easy. Also they're not full of sidebars, "Did you know?," "Fun facts!," and glossy pictures and confusing diagrams that clutter up the text and can make it hard to focus on the explanation of the science.

Congratulations @Junie!!!! You are a reading machine! And you're making steady progress on your Bible reading, too, in two languages. May some of your self-discipline and determination rub off on me.

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.

@Lady Florida. Congratulations on 52 books!

Yes! I'm looking forward to pulling my jeans out of storage and choosing which coat I'll wear on whatever day is coat weather. Death to mosquitoes! Too bad about cedar fever season.

Good enough! Heaven knows we do far weirder subjects for that reason. 😄 Glad you got in San Antonio!

Wee Girl and I had fun with Texas history last year, but before I offer suggestions, what age are we talking about? And actually, why do you need to do Texas history? It isn't a requirement for Texas homeschoolers, nor to attend a Texas public university. Well here's some book suggestions anyway since I can't suppress myself: Texas Tomboy by Lois Lenski, about the 1950s Drought; Up the Trail From Texas, a Landmark history by folklorist J. Frank Dobie; Walk the World's Rim by Betty Baker, about the disastrous Narvaez expedition; and The Boy in the Alamo by Margaret Cousins. These all have positive reviews from my girls. Another suggestion: everything being shut down of course makes the obvious field trips less doable, so maybe this is a good time for very local field trips, and a focus on the history of your particular town. I took an informal class once on my own city's history through the present day, and honestly it's the only Texas history I've really retained well.

Well not technically for another 400 pages. I'm surprised that, as an academic, Amerio didn't sub-title it "A Brief Introduction to ... etc."

Here we go: Bad Catholic 1. Philip Lawler, The Smoke of Satan: How Corrupt and Cowardly Bishops Betrayed Christ, His Church, and the Faithful ... and What can Be Done About It 2. Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters 3. *St. John of the Cross, Poems 4. *St Francis & St Clare, The Complete Works 5. Andre Gide, The Vatican Cellars 6. Bruce Marshall, The World, the Flesh, and Father Smith 7. Leon Bloy, Disagreeable Tales 8. Thomas Day, Why Catholics Can't Sing: The Culture of Catholicism and the Triumph of Bad Taste 9. Anthony Cekada, Work of Human Hands: A Theological Critique of the Mass of Paul VI 10. Romano Amerio, Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the Twentieth Century *Not actually 'Bad Catholic' but sometimes you have to take a break

Anthony Trollope's forty-first novel, Phineas Redux, is good. This week Middle Girl and I read The Great Gatsby. Again. And to complete our current chapter of US History, we watched Scarface (the 1932 version, not the Al Pacino version). So much in common: organized crime, fast cars, fast women, bootleg liquor, telephones everywhere, and nihilistic displays of destruction performed on the ash heaps of the pre-War civilization's code, as the cold dead eyes of T. J. Eckleburg -- or Will Hays -- look on in amoral judgment. Hey, I'm ready to write my paper! Continuing this week with The Penguin Book of Satirical Verse. It's been a while since I last read any poetry, most of this collection is unfamiliar to me, and I get to discuss it with Middle Girl as we go along, so a pleasant read all around. Also Romano Amerio's Iota Unum, for the final book of my "Bad Catholic" 10x10 category from 1919.

@Tap, I was shocked at the prescience of your thread title: Yes, thanks to Covid, I literally have hiccups less often. Supply chain interruptions have deprived me of the hot sauce I really, really like, but which alas gives me hiccups (so worth it). Yes I know life is hard, but soothing the pain is the continued availability of my favorite salsa. On a sadder note, I had to sit in the parking lot of a nearby animal hospital and beg them over the phone to take in Wee Girl's badly injured guinea pig for examination and (as it turned out) euthanasia, because the only vets in town who treated guinea pigs were closed. Fortunately the vet overheard the tech refusing the appointment and interrupted to say she'd see the poor creature. On the bright side, I guess, of cuddly rodent mortality, is that the other guinea pig, who had always been shy and non-affectionate, blossomed in her late sister's absence and has become outgoing and friendly. Which has helped. Our refrigerator did in fact die right at the beginning of lockdown: still early enough that we were able to get one of the last ones in inventory. The guys who brought it said they'd been delivering fridges and freezers non-stop.

12th grader Hits: Most of the math, Greek, & Latin courses audited at Big State U.; the classics reading group at BSU. (Sub-text of her application essay for BSU: "I'm already taking your classes for free; wouldn't it be a win-win if I started paying for them?") Post-Civil War American History (literature & film approach) with Mom. Misses: One of the Latin courses at BSU. Too much Petrarch, too little time. English Satiric Poetry with Mom. We both really wanted to make this work, but neither of us is getting in the reading. 7th grader Hits: Everything, now that she has a homeschool buddy. She actually likes science with a lab partner. Confirmation class: Covid requirements mean the parish had to just send the (wretched) textbook home with us and ask me to teach her myself. Eheu! It is possible I'm using my own materials instead as supplements. Misses: Greek. Can't do it with homeschool buddy, and too tired in the evenings to do it separately.

Not if he's a CELEBRITY!!11!!!

My Illinois grandmother was an Episcopalian and wore gloves to drive. She would have died first.

My Illinois-bred grandmother made these (she called the second one "chipped beef on toast"), and she was all-English descent, so I vote Midwest thing.