Mt. Hope Academy @ The Live & Learn Studio ~ May 2012

“We think to determine three things: whether something is true, whether something should be done, and whether something commands our appreciation. In other words, we think to know truth, goodness, and beauty.”

~ Andrew Kern, Why we think and how we can do it better (HT: Scholehouse)

 

::  The Unteachables: A Generation that Cannot Learn @ PJ Media

‎"The bored 'graduates' of elementary and high schools seem, in progressive language, to be 'incompletely socialized.' Ignorant even of things that they might be expected to know, they do not care to learn. They lack an object in life, they are unaware of the joy of achievement. They have been allowed to assume that happiness is a goal, rather than a by-product."

::  How To Talk To Little Boys @ Huffington Post

"Kids with parents who read for pleasure are six times more likely to do so themselves -- and their grades shoot up. Which is why I talk about the books I love, and ask kids about their favorites, every chance I get. I'm intentionally role modeling for them that books and ideas are something adults value."

::   A Dangerous Trend for Boys @ Beautiful Feet Books (related to previous article)

And a few thoughts on college…

::  The Coming Meltdown in College Education, and Why the Economy Won’t Get Better Any Time Soon @ Blog Maverik

:: The Coming Badge Revolution @ The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy

"In a recent post, Andrew Coulson, director of Center for Educational Freedom at Cato Institute, wrote, 'Thanks to the Web, the material covered in virtually every undergraduate program is readily available at little cost…And, having learned it spend a few hundred dollars to create a website or a YouTube channel on which you demonstrate your new skills/understanding. Conduct research. Write it up. Build something…. Then, when you’re ready to apply for work, submit your resume with a link to this portfolio of relevant work.'"

::  Ivy League school janitor graduates with honors by Verena Dobnik, Associated Press

"During an interview with The Associated Press in a Lerner Hall conference room, Filipaj didn't show the slightest regret or bitterness about his tough life. Instead, he cheerfully described encounters with surprised younger students who wonder why their classmate is cleaning up after them...His ambition is to get a master's degree, maybe even a Ph.D., in Roman and Greek classics. Someday, he hopes to become a teacher, while translating his favorite classics into Albanian."

::  Give a Girl a ‘Hook,’ Get Her Into College @ The New York Times. Some interesting thoughts here. Some I agree with, some I don’t. I think most, if not all, kids benefit from having passions and hobbies, especially by the time they hit adolescence, but it needs to be a personal choice for each child, not a ‘hook’ just to get them into college. I think ‘anchor’ is a much preferable term to ‘hook.’ What do you think?

"An anchor is an activity or pastime that they do deeply and consistently over a long period. Anchors help them define them and their evolving identities. Anchors teach them valuable lessons that they can apply to other aspects of their lives — especially school. Most important, anchors help them to be different."

::  Why Learning Leads to Happiness by By Philip Moeller for U.S. News @ Huffington Post

“In terms of happiness, a close companion of learning is the degree of engagement people have with tasks that provide them knowledge and fulfillment. People who are intensely absorbed in a task can lose track of time and place. Hours pass like minutes. They may be tired by the task but emerge energized and happy. This condition is known as "flow," a name coined 30 years ago by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.”

(You know, like when you are diagramming sentences! {grin})

:: This next video about the Common Core standards for reading made me a little sad. Why do we have to choose between fiction and non-fiction? We need to be choosing QUALITY fiction AND non-fiction rather than insipid movie-inspired leveled readers or reading textbooks with pointless excerpts. Reminds me of this quote from The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame:

“What the Boy chiefly dabbled in was natural history and fairy tales, and he just took them as they came, in a sandwichy sort of way, without making any distinctions; and really his course of reading strikes one as rather sensible.”

 

::  And adding to the book stack:

Beauty in the World, Rethinking the Foundations of Education by Stratford Caldecott @ The Imaginative Conservative

“The sequel to Beauty for Truth's Sake has been published by Angelico Press. Called Beauty in the Word, it completes the retrieval of the seven liberal arts begun in the earlier book by examining the first three, the "Trivium", which Dorothy L. Sayers made the basis of Classical Education in her famous essay, "The Lost Tools of Learning." But this book tries to go further than Sayers.”

:: Climbing a Different Mountain by Tucker Teague @ Classical Conversations (I know I’ve posted this one before, but I thought I’d keep it handy here with all my other links.)

“One thing I have learned from climbing mountains is that the route is critical. The summit is a long way off when one is at the bottom of a mountain, and the journey will, no doubt, be difficult and tiring. It is best to have a clear idea of how one is to proceed, what path one will follow, and to be prepared for the dangers that will inevitably appear. What I want to propose is that Christian, classical homeschooling is not merely a different path up the same mountain that everyone else is climbing. It is, in fact, the climbing of a different mountain altogether.”

(And don’t forget, the Albany, Oregon, Classical Conversations FREE parent practicum is June 25-27th. Let me know if you are interested in more information!)

Faith:
The Children’s Illustrated Bible (reading together)
Telling God's Story
Buck Denver Asks… What’s in the Bible? Wanderin’ in the Desert, Battle for the Promised Land, Israel Gets a King, A Nation Divided, Exile and Return, and Why Do We Call It Christmas (DVDs)

Math:
Teaching Textbooks (Levi finished level 4 and started 5, Luke skipped to level 5)
Life of Fred (elementary series, free reading) 
IXL (online math)
Sir Cumference and the Viking’s Map: A Math Adventure by Cindy Neuschwander

Science:
Christian Kids Explore Chemistry (Read lessons 23-24 with oral review)  
Crazy Concoctions: A Mad Scientist’s Guide to Messy Mixtures by Jordan D. Brown
Bill Nye: Probability (DVD)
Bill Nye: Time (DVD)
Bill Nye: Sound (DVD)
Bill Nye: Phases of Matter (DVD)
Bill Nye: Fluids (DVD)

P.E.:
Swim Team practices (Levi and Luke!)
Bike Riding

Fine Arts:
Action Jackson by Jean Greenberg and Sandra Jordan (Jackson Pollock)
Magritte’s Marvelous Hat by D.B. Johnson (very clever way to introduce kids to Rene Magritte!)
Poetry for Young People: Edna St. Vincent Millay
Poetry Speaks to Children
Bizet’s Dream (The Composers’ Specials, Paris-1875, DVD)
Strauss: The King of Three-Quarter Time (The Composers’ Specials, Vienna-1868, DVD)
Tchaikovsky Discovers America by Esther Kalman (New York City-1891)
The Royal Ballet School in Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf (DVD)

 

Language Arts:
MCT Practice Town (4 level grammar analysis) + sentence diagramming
MCT Building Poems (poetry)
MCT Caesar’s English (vocabulary)
Writing With Ease (Levi and Luke)
All About Spelling Level 3 (steps 9-) (Leif: Level 1, steps 12)
(Levi spent a bunch of time writing a ‘book’—a first attempt at creative writing for him!)

Latin:
Latina Christiana I (lessons 4-5/review)

Spanish:
La Clase Divertida (DVD lessons 2-4)
Fried Plantains (Yum!)

History/Literature/Historical Fiction: 
The Story of the World: The Modern Age (chapters 7-16)
The Usborne Encyclopedia of World History (select pages, Luke)
The Call of the Wild by Jack London (Arctic, turn of the century, 114 pp, Levi-IR)
Sing Down the Moon by Scott O’Dell (Navahos, 1860s, 124 pp, Levi-IR)
The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz (Pennsylvania, 1784, 124 pp, Levi-IR)
A Picture Book of Thomas Alva Edison by David A. Adler
Thomas Edison: The Great Inventor by Caryn Jenner
Edison: The Wizard of Light (The Inventors’ Specials, DVD)
Who Was Thomas Alva Edison? by Margaret Frith
Seven Miles to Freedom: The Robert Smalls Story by Janet Halfmann
Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl by Tonya Bolden (fabulous non-fiction picture book!)
A Picture Book of George Washington Carver by David A. Adler
Born in the Breezes: The Seafaring Life of Joshua Slocum by Kathryn Lasky (biography, 1895)
Kids Discover: Pioneers
Wagons West: Off to Oregon by Catherine E. Chambers
The Pioneers by Marie and Douglas Gorsline
A Pioneer Thanksgiving: A Story of Harvest Celebrations in 1841 by Barbara Greenwood
If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon by Ellen Levine
Daily Life in a Covered Wagon by Paul Erickson
How Many People Traveled the Oregon Trail? by Miriam Aronin
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (335 pp, Levi-IR)
The Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Pioneer Girl by Megan Stine (100 pp, Levi-IR)
Prairie School by Avi
Clara and the Bookwagon by Nancy Smiler Levinson
Wagon Wheels by Barbara Brenner
The Diane Goode Book of American Folk Tales & Songs
Cracked Corn and Snow Ice Cream: A Family Almanac by Nancy Willard, illustrated by Jane Dyer
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (fiction, Canada, Levi-IR)
The Robber and Me by Josef Holub (translated from German) (historical fiction, 19th century Germany, 207 pp, Levi-IR)
The Industrial Revolution: From Muscles to Machines! 1750-1900 by Carole Marsh
The Great Railroad Race: The Diary of Libby West—Utah Territory, 1868 (historical fiction, 199 pp, Levi-IR)
Ten Mile Day and the Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Mary Ann Fraser
Dragon’s Gate by Laurence Yep (historical fiction, Chinese railroad workers in California-1865, 272 pp, Levi-IR)
Across America on an Emigrant Train by Jim Murphy
Listen Up! Alexander Graham Bell’s Talking Machine by Monica Kulling
Alexander Graham Bell: Giving Voice to the World by Mary Kay Carson (119 pp, Levi-IR)
The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois (fiction, Krakatoa-1883, 180 pp, Levi and Luke-IR)
Captive at Kangaroo Springs by Robert Elmer (fiction, Australia, 174 pp, Levi-IR)
Nory Ryan’s Song by Patricia Reilly Giff (historical fiction, 1845 potato famine in Ireland, 148 pp, Levi-IR)
Maggie’s Door by Patricial Reilly Giff (historical fiction, immigration from Ireland to America, 156 pp, Levi-IR)
The St. Patrick’s Day Shillelagh by Janet Nolan (historical fiction picture book, immigration from Ireland to America)
Journey of Hope: The Story of Irish Immigration to America by K. Miller and P.M. Miller
Laundry Day by Maurie J. Manning (shoeshine boy in New York City)
Shutting Out the Sky: Life in the Tenements of New York, 1880-1924 by Deborah Hopkinson
How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York  by Jacob A. Riis (photographs, turn of the century)
Mama’s Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes (historical fiction, Norwegian immigrants in SF in early 1900s, 147 pp, Levi-IR)
The Good Lion by Beryl Markham (autobiography, Africa, 1906)
Fire on the Mountain by Jane Kurtz (picture book, historical fiction, Ethiopia)
The Lion’s Whiskers and Other Ethiopian Tales by B. Ashabranner and R. Davis
The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot, July 25, 1909 by A. & M. Provensen
Under the Royal Palms: A Childhood in Cuba by Alma Flor Ada
Theodore by Frank Keating
Teedie: The STory of Young Teddy Roosevelt
You’re on Your Way, Teddy Roosevelt by Judith St. George
The Battle of the Little Bighorn by Michael Uschan
Little Bighorn by Philip Steele
Roosevelt’s Rough Riders by Andrew Santella
Bully for You, Teddy Roosevelt! by Jean Fritz (117 pp, Levi-IR)
You Want Women to Vote, Lizzie Stanton? by Jean Fritz (77 pp, Levi-IR)
A Time for Courage: The Suffragette Diary of Kathleen Bowen-1917 by Kathryn Lasky (historical fiction, 209 pp, Levi-IR)
Who Was Amelia Earhart? by Kate Boehm Jerome
Voyage on the Great Titanic: The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady-1912 (historical fiction, 192 pp, Levi-IR)
Titanic (Eyewitness Books)
Titanic Sinks! by Barry Denenberg
The Road From Home: The Story of an Armenian Girl by David Kherdian (historical fiction, Armenia-1915, 238 pp, Levi-IR)

Literature Study:
Saint George and the Dragon retold by Margaret Hodges, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman
The Questing Knights of the Faerie Queen by Geraldine McCaughrean
Book Detectives: The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (read-aloud, half-way through)
Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Czechoslovakia retold by Virginia Haviland

Levi’s Free Reading:
The Quest for Seven Castles (The Terrestria Chronicles) by Ed Dunlop
The Search for Everyman (The Terrestria Chronicles) by Ed Dunlop
The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Hidden Gallery by Maryrose Wood
Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm
A bunch of short chapter books

Luke’s Free Reading:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl
Socks by Beverly Cleary
Emily’s Runaway Imagination by Beverly Cleary
Sir Balin the Ill-Fated (The Knights Tales) by Gerald Morris
The Great Cake Mystery by Alexander McCall Smith (Africa)
Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm
The Pirates’ Mixed-Up Voyage by Margaret Mahy
A bunch of Dragon Slayer’s Academy and Magic Tree House books
The Ink Drinker by Eric Sanvoisin
Henry Reed, Inc. by Keith Robertson
Henry Reed’s Babysitting Service by Keith Robertson

Leif’s Free Reading:
Lots of Magic Tree House and Life of Fred

Delightful Picture Books We’ve Enjoyed:
Non-Fiction:
In Flight with David McPhail: A Creative Autobiography by Daid McPhail (children’s author/illustrator)
Mrs. Harkness and the Panda by Alicia Potter, illustrated by Melissa Sweet (one of my fav. illustrators) (China, 1934)
A Colonial Town: Williamsburg by Bobbie Kalman
Despite All Obstacles: La Salle and the Conquest of the Mississippi by Joan Elizabeth Goodman
Into the Unknown: How Great Explorers Found Their Way by Land, Sea, and Air by Stewart Ross (ill. by Stephen Biesty)
The Secret World of Spies (series) by Susan K. Mitchell
I Grew Up to Be President by Laurie Calkhoven
Jean Laffite: The Pirate Who Saved America by Susan Goldman Rubin
Brothers At Bat: The True Story of an Amazing All-Brother Baseball Team by Audrey Vernick
America is Under Attack: The Day the Towers Fell by Don Brown
Worst of Friends: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the True Story of an American Feud by Susanne Tripp Jurmain
Looking at Lincoln by Maira Kalman
Fiction:
The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup by Rosemary Sutcliff

Family Movie Nights:
We Bought a Zoo
Mr. Popper’s Penguins
Hugo