:: Death, Be Not Proud by Cindy Rollins @ CiRCE
“A world without death is a world without redemption. I am no longer afraid of Halloween or funerals. They are a part of the liturgy of life. They are the dark days that make the light ever so much brighter.”
“The reason you study math, science and art is so that your imagination will be filled with wonder and awe at the Creator of the most mind blowing project ever: the world. And whether you are learning to read music or playing an instrument, whether your hand is holding a pencil or gesturing in the theater, you are training yourself for the warfare of worship. You are teaching your body gratitude; you are teaching your soul thanksgiving. There is hardly an adequate evaluation of your progress, but the best grade you can receive is the outworking of a thankful heart. If you have truly learned Algebra, if you have mastered the story of Western Civilization, if you can tell me the names of the constellations that whirl about our heads, then you will do it with laughter in your voice, you will do it with joy in your heart and gratitude in your bones. Worship is the point of learning because worship is the point of life.” Toby Sumpter, in response to the questions ‘Why are you in school? Why are you reading this page? Why are you reading Mein Kampf?’ This is an excerpt from Veritas Press’ Omnibus III Textbook. Read the whole link; it’s excellent.
:: Lectio divina: paying attention by Katherine Pershey @ Simple Mom
“One of my favorite definitions of prayer is that it is the practice of paying attention. Not merely that you must pay attention while you’re praying, but that prayer itself is the act of attending: to God, but also to the beauty - and ugliness - before us.”
:: Stratford Caldecott, Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education (from the passage titled ‘Attention’):
"[T]he important thing, the real goal of study, is the 'development of attention.' Why? Because prayer consists of attention, and all worldly study is really a stretching of the soul towards prayer. 'Never in any case whatever is a genuine effort of the attention wasted. It always has its effect on the spiritual plane and in consequence on the lower one of the intelligence...'"
"Attention is desire; it is the desire for light, for truth, for understanding, for possession. It follows, according to Weil, that the intelligence 'grows and bears fruit in joy,' and that the promise or anticipation of joy is what arouses the effort of attention: it is what makes students of us."
:: Anthony Esolen, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child:
“The sky suggests the vastness of creation and the smallness of man’s ambition. It startles us out of our dreams of vanity, it silences our pride, it stills the lust to get and spend. It is more dangerous for a human soul to fall into than for a human body to fall out of…
A child that has been blared at and distracted all his life will never be able to do the brave nothing of beholding the sky. He will not be able to ask, with the Psalmist,
‘When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him?’”
:: From the Educational Plan of St. Jerome Classical School in Washington DC, as quoted in Beauty in the Word, page 98:
“Religion is not just one subject within the curriculum, but the key to its unity and integration. The cosmos is an ordered, unified whole because it is created in Christ—‘in whom all things hold together’ (Col. 1:17). Belief in God as our Father and the world as His beautiful and rational creation binds faith and reason, nature and culture, art and science, morality and reality in to a coherent and integrated unity. This unified view reaches its summit in worship, which is the highest form of knowledge and thus the end and goal of true education.”
:: Stratford Caldecott, Beauty for Truth's Sake: On the Re-enchantment of Education (pages 129-130):
“Liturgy therefore starts with remembrance. We do not make ourselves from nothing. To be here at all is a gift, and a gift (even if we are at times only obscurely aware of the Giver) evokes a natural desire to give something back to someone. We have only what we have received, but included in that gift is the capacity to transform what we now possess into something that is truly our own. Furthermore, the more grateful we are, and the more conscious of the greatness of the One, the source who gave us existence, the more beautiful we will try to make the gift. That is partly why liturgy has always inspired art. As I once heard an art historian say, “The fine arts were born on the altar.”
:: Nine Throw-Away Ideas With Which to Think by Andrew Kern @ CiRCE Institute (Go read the whole post! I love the idea that questions are really gaps in form that students strive to fill.):
“Because truth is musical, we encounter a sixth wonder: form enables us to discover truth better than analysis or induction. In no way is this meant to dismiss analysis or induction. Rather, it is to restore them to their exalted place: to test our hypotheses, which are always deduced from formal leaps.
But truth is formal. And when we learn to think musically, we learn to anticipate gaps in the form and what might fill them. Some examples:
The asteroid belt was believed to be where it was long before it was discovered because a mathematical formula had predicted a planet at that distance from the sun. There was a dissonance in the music, a gap in the calculations, and the asteroid belt filled it.
When we listen to a song or composition, the composer creates a tension by creating a gap in the form that our very soul strives to fill. When he brings about the resolution, we feel joy. The same thing happens on a math equation.
A poet will adopt a form and find that he needs more content to fill in a verse. This will generate ideas that would not otherwise have been discovered…
…But formality, (that is) love of harmony, enables anticipations that analysis misses.”
After the input of information and experience (grammar) and the processing (dialectic—asking how and why questions, finding relationships, comparing and contrasting, and using analytical subjects such as algebra and formal logic), we arrive at the stage of original output (rhetoric—speaking, writing, creating, integrating, performing, teaching).
“Rhetoric is the art of expression. During the rhetoric stage the student learns to express himself or herself with fluency, grace, elegance, and persuasiveness.” ~Susan Wise Bauer
“Wisdom is the ability to make judgments.” ~Andrew Kern
We talked about poetry as cosmos on day 2, and participants were encouraged on day 3 to share the Fibonacci poems they had written as an expression of rhetoric. As the poems were being shared, truth became manifest—that gaps in form move a person to fill the space with beauty or creativity that had not previously existed.
I was given permission to share a few from practicum.
From Mindy Pickens:
God
Me
Journey
Heart in hand
The time that is trod
Brings my soul to humbly applaud
The Creator, King, Artist, Source who had it all planned.
Sperm
Egg
Baby
A person
Uniquely ablaze
Under the constant gaze of God
Whose Love chose to die, to save each of them, you and I.
Pop
Star
Bieber
Annoying
Your pants are too low
Baby, baby, baby oooooooh, like baby, baby
You thought she'd always be around, but you are a girl.
And from Sarah Owens:
Clothes
There
Always
Piled high
Will it ever end
Evidence of little blessings
On those days we all have had let us remember this.
If you would like to share a Fibonacci poem, please feel free to add it in the comments!
[Another example of using form to create beauty that didn’t previously exist: The Simplest Periodic Table We’ve Ever Seen @ Popsci (lovely!!)]
“Math teaches you to see what other people see. It teaches you to see what another author has written down. When we read, we don’t see the words ‘a’ or ‘the.’ Math makes you stop and say, I have to see the decimal, I have to see the exponent. Math is just good practice for being a human being who sees the world. Just think how an artist can see color difference, shapes, colors. Our kids should see a math formula better. If someone would just show them. It is the same as artistic endeavors. If you can see the numbers, if you can see the operations, if you can see the laws, it will all change your ability to see complex ideas.” ~Leigh Bortins
“But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched with the same madness and genius.” ~Harold Marston Morse
“The principles of number and space are imbedded in created reality, the way the universe works and the way we think. It is the beauty and power of this reality that should be the primary motivation for studying and understanding mathematics, but in most cases it is not. Since utilitarianism governs most of math instruction (K-12), there is a tendency to focus on dictating rules without the requisite understanding, but it is in understanding why a principle works that a student is (1) introduced to the beauty of mathematics and (2) learns to master its unique symbolic language. And, in understanding the laws of mathematics, one becomes comfortable in the world of God’s making and how man has developed it. We don’t trump utility with beauty because both go together. They are two sides of the same coin. Mathematics is a unique tool of wonder.” James D. Nickel, author of Mathematics: Is God Silent?
“By concentration on what, and leaving out why, mathematics is reduced to an empty shell. The art is not in the “truth” but in the explanation, the argument. It is the argument itself which gives the truth its context, and determines what is really being said and meant. Mathematics is the art of explanation. If you deny students the opportunity to engage in this activity—to pose their own problems, make their own conjectures and discoveries, to be wrong, to be creatively frustrated, to have an inspiration, and to cobble together their own explanations and proofs—you deny them mathematics itself. So no, I’m not complaining about the presence of facts and formulas in our mathematics classes, I’m complaining about the lack of mathematics in our mathematics classes.” (From A Mathematician’s Lament by Paul Lockhart, page 5)
We talked about the four laws that Foundations students memorize: Commutative, Associative, Identity, and Distributive.
(I’ve linked the Khan Academy videos for each law. If you are not familiar with the free online resource of Khan Academy, you need to be. I cannot recommend it highly enough!)
I had an epiphany when attending the Salem practicum where two friends of mine spoke. The afternoon math lesson on day 2 (complex fractions from Saxon 8/7, in the practicum handout) was a complete revelation. I remember being taught that in order to divide fractions, we multiply the dividend by the reciprocal of the divisor. But I had no idea why. Turns out, it’s because of the identity law. (Which corresponded perfectly with the video of Leigh and Lisa for day 2, below.)
Two things:
1. Short cuts, the faster ways to solve problems, are important—but only after students understand why they work. We do students no favors by focusing on speed and ease at the expense of true understanding. Mathematics is not the art of “git ‘er done.”
2. I remember thinking (I’m ashamed to admit), “Why on earth do these students memorize the identity law? It’s so obvious and ridiculously simple.” It turns out that the principle is easy to state, but becomes much more complex in practice. Students need to have the basic idea so deeply internalized that they are able to see it and use it as they progress through to much more advanced mathematics.
Another person asked (on day 2) about why a negative times a negative equals a positive. Turns out, it’s because of the distributive law!
For a visual/kinesthetic explanation for younger kids, I found (at MathForum.org) a great teaching tool. Imagine yourself standing on a number line. If your first factor is negative, face toward the negative numbers on the number line. If your second factor is negative, walk backwards (towards the positive numbers).
And a joke for you:
What did the Zero say to the Eight?
Nice belt!
“In music we glimpse the grammar of creation itself, from the harmony of the planetary and subatomic spheres to the octaves of human experience and the cycles of growth in plants and animals. Modern writers as varied as Schopenhauer and Tolkien have seen the world as a kind of ‘embodied music,’ and of course the notion is ubiquitous among the ancients. Music in turn is a play of mathematics, coherent patterns of number and shape in time and space, expressed in rhythm and timbre, tone and pitch. It is the closes most of us get to seeing and feeling the beauty of mathematics.” (Stratford Caldecott, Beauty in the Word, pages 57-58)
“Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.” ~Gottfried Leibniz
“Music is a secret arithmetical exercise, and the person who indulges in it does not realize that he is manipulating numbers.” ~Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
“Notes that are in whole-number ratios to each other sound good together. These rations can be displayed visually by an instrument called a harmonograph, in which each vibration is conveyed by pendulum to a pen and paper. Harmonic or resonant patterns can also be displayed on a plate covered in sand that is made to vibrate at certain frequencies by being connected to a sound system. Either way, sounds made by notes that harmonize together turn out to be visually, as well as audibly, beautiful: (followed by image).” (Stratford Caldecott, Beauty for Truth’s Sake, page 92)
(Very soon after I read that passage, a friend shared the following video. I love synchronicity!)
(I have one more post coming up with general and various quotes, verses, links, and resources…)
Octoproblem by Kenn Nesbitt (poem at link)
What is the grammar one must know to get the joke? (Grammar students: math facts “pi,” Latin vocab “Octo,” Latin declensions (plural second declension)).
[Because words matter, I discovered that the plural form of octopus is actually octopuses (or occasionally octopodes). Octopus is not a simple Latin word of the second declension, but a Latinized form of the Greek word oktopous, and its 'correct' plural would logically be octopodes. Interesting, no?]
A cosmos is an orderly or harmonious system. The word derives from the Greek term κόσμος (kosmos), literally meaning "order" or "ornament" and metaphorically "world", and is diametrically opposed to the concept of chaos.
Order and Ornament
Truth and Grace
Mathematics and Language
Array: put in order and then deck out!
“Structure—a ‘grammar’ that orders every part in its appropriate place—is important not only for the physical sciences, but for every kind of intellectual endeavor. It allows us to do more than weave a fancy from the bits and pieces of our private experience. We can, by the power of structure, weave a whole artistic universe.” Anthony Esolen, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child
Let’s play with Cosmos!
We are going to try combining language and math today. (I was trying to figure out a way to tie in sentence diagramming (ha!!), but I couldn’t make it work. [After I mentioned this, a parent at the practicum shared a link to her son’s blog wherein he creates a sentence diagram of mathematical notation. It’s fantastic. I’m inspired to try one of my own—on a much, much lower level…] I really wanted to do personality types, but poetry spoke to me.
“After all, science, like poetry, begins with a search for unifying principles, and the unifying factor in creation is its relation to God.” (Stratford Caldecott, Beauty for Truth's Sake, page 29)
“What I want to suggest is that the opposition between the “cultures” of science and the arts can be overcome by teaching science and mathematics themselves at least partly according to the poetic mode. In other words, the best way to teach them is by first awakening the poetic imagination. We need to reestablish—for the sake of science as much as for the arts—a truly humane education that, in Taylor’s words, “begins with the senses, and the discovery and cultivation of harmony and beauty in the soul by way of the sense’s natural affinity for the harmonious, proportionate, and the beautiful in nature and the arts.” If children were from an early age exposed to a “musical” training in the Greek sense, if their poetic sensibility was kindled by training in the observation of nature and the learning of poetry, and if mathematics and science were taught historically, with due attention to the symbolic and beautiful properties of numbers and shapes, then we might even begin to see the birth of that “regenerate science” that Lewis prophesied.” (Beauty for Truth’s Sake, page 45)
“Additionally, because of the nature of poetry, poets are often compelled to stretch our vocabulary, utilizing words and expressions in uniquely sophisticated—but almost always correct—language patterns.” (Andrew Pudewa, 1 Myth, 2 Truths)
“When a carpenter creates, there is a sense in which he destroys the original in order to create something new. When he makes a table, he has to first destroy the tree. The author, on the other hand, does not destroy Hamlet in order to create Falstaff. This is the closest we experience creation out of nothing. Sayers is echoing the teachings of the church fathers who taught that in creating something orderly and beautiful that did not previously exist, the artist is paralleling what God did in the act of creation.” (Imago Dei and the Redemptive Power of Fantasy—Part 1 by Angelina Stanford @ Circe Institute)
For example:
((12 + 144 + 20 + (3 * 4^(1/2))) /7) + (5 * 11) = 9^2 + 0
Some of you, through natural talent and/or practice over time have developed a set of math “eyes” and can immediately see beautiful harmony in this equation. For some of you, this is a fascinating puzzle you are itching to solve. For some of you, this equation strikes your heart with dread.
What you might not see is poetry, but it’s there. Look closely, and take a moment to let it sink in.
“A Dozen, a Gross and a Score,
plus three times the square root of four,
divided by seven,
plus five times eleven,
equals nine squared and not a bit more.”
(From Discover Magazine, attributed to John Saxon)
What grammar do you have to know to understand this poem (get the joke)? Numeracy, notation (^caret * /), operations & order of operations (which we are covering shortly), “dozen, gross, and score,” that any number to the half power = the square root of the number (I didn’t know that), the poetry FORM. Does anyone know what this specific poetry form is called?
Defining/history: A limerick is a short, humorous, often vulgar or nonsense poem. The form can be found in England as of the early years of the 18th century. It was popularized by Edward Lear in the 19th century, although he did not use the term. Even Shakespeare did in fact write limericks which can be found in two of his greatest plays - Othello and King Lear.
FORM :
A Dozen/, a Gross, and/ a Score,1 stanza (like a paragraph) of 5 lines (counting).
AABBA rhyme scheme (pattern).
Lines 1, 2, 5 have three feet (like measures in music) with three syllables (or beats) each. Lines 3, 4 have two feet with 3 beats each (multiplication).
Usually anapest (ta-ta-TUM), but sometimes amphibrachic (ta-TUM-ta) (rhythm).
(This poem has a silent beat at the end of lines 1, 2, and 5—like a rest in music. And “equals” is squished into one beat.)
Considered easy to compose, historically limericks have been used by the “working class.” Not necessarily a sophisticated form of beauty, but at least there is room for creativity and enjoyment. A chance to play with form.
ETA: I thought I’d give a stab at diagramming that one. What do you think? Would you diagram it differently?
I’ll give you one more:
‘Tis a favorite project of mine
A new value of pi to assign.
I would fix it at three
For it’s simpler, you see,
Than three point one four one five nine.
Let’s try something a little different. Let’s add in some Fibonacci.
The Fibonacci sequence is named after Leonardo Fibonacci. His 1202 book Liber Abaci introduced the sequence to Western European mathematics. It is a number pattern found in nature—such as in branching in trees, the arrangement of leaves on a stem, the fruit sprouts of a pineapple, the flowering of artichoke, an uncurling fern and the arrangement of a pine cone. It also has many practical applications—the Fibonacci sequence is also the foundation of how apparel is sized (called "grading") and it’s used in knitting. There is so much more to say about it, but for now I’ll just tell you that the sequence starts with the numbers 0 and 1. Then every subsequent number is the sum of the previous two numbers. (White board!) So you have 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, and so on.
Gregory K. Pincus, a screenwriter and aspiring children's book author in Los Angeles, wrote a post on his GottaBook blog inviting readers to write "Fibs," six-line poems that used a mathematical progression known as the Fibonacci sequence to dictate the number of syllables in each line.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a Fib and share it on the Day 3 (Rhetoric) post coming up!!
(When is 4 half of 9? Draw a horizontal line through the middle of IX.)
Operations
What is the definition of a noun? A noun names a person, place, thing, activity, or idea.
Numbers are the nouns of math. Numerals name the idea of numbers.
Operations are verbs.
We are doing something with numbers. Action.
Equations are like linking verbs. They make an assertion. This thing IS this thing. It is the idea of equality. (Harmony, not discord!)
Let’s talk about the vocabulary of operations. We cannot have a conversation without words that MEAN something. Use the correct vocabulary when you are talking about math with your kids! They will pick it up effortlessly, just as they did “ball” or “apple.” If you need a refresher, Understanding Mathematics: From Counting to Calculus is a great place to start. Often (when there are gaps in our own education) we as adults have to start at the grammar stage. And it will take more than reading the definition for these words to become part of our natural vocabulary. We have to use them in conversation. Over and over and over and over again. Repetition. Duration. (Commit to teaching these concepts to a group of adults and BAM! You’ll have intensity. Ha!)
The PURPOSE of the grammar stage, laying these foundations, is so that students have the tools they need to function in the next stage. This isn’t a parlor trick. Or entertainment when the family gets together at Christmas. We are not trying to torture our children with needless repetition. (Piano students who learn their scales to the point of muscle memory have a huge advantage when learning complex pieces of music. The scales are not the end! Basketball drills are not the end. They are a means to a higher purpose—the dialectic and rhetoric process.) It will be laborious if not impossible for our kids to have conversations about math—more complex math—when they get to Challenge if they have to learn the grammar simultaneously. And parents who become tutors—as we transition to a more rhetorical model of math in the Challenge seminar—you will not be able to facilitate discussion if you do not have the vocabulary!
When kids are having trouble with a problem and ask for help, start by asking them to define their numbers and operations. What is this? What is this asking you to do?
“Every math problem provides a micro-example for practicing the skills of learning. The students demonstrate that they have mastered the math terms used (grammar) and that they understand the rules and strategy of the problem so that they can solve the problem (dialectic). Finally, they explain how they solved the problem rhetorically, demonstrating that they understand the algorithm.” (Leigh Bortins, The Core, page 134)
I’m preaching to myself, because this is NOT something that is natural for me! But if I can learn this grammar to present at the practicum, you can learn it to teach your children. And we get to exercise our brains!! And learn more about the nature of God!
Let’s travel back in time to first grade. + - = x or * (asterisk or dot for multiplication) There are 4! ways to denote division including fractions and ratios such as 6:3. (Symbols are “operators”)
Everyone okay so far?
Addend: a number that is added to another in forming a sum.
Sum: The answer to an addition problem
Minuend: a number from which another is subtracted (the number to be diminished or made smaller; musicians think “diminuendo”)
Subtrahend: a number that is subtracted from another (sub = under like submarine)
Difference: The answer in a subtraction problem
Multiplication: The repeated addition of a certain number.
Factors: Numbers being multiplied
Product: The answer to any multiplication problem.
Dividend: The number that is being divided.
Divisor: The number that is doing the dividing.
Numerator: The number above the division sign (a).
Denominator: The number below the division sign (b).
Quotient: The answer of a division operation.
How are we doing?
How about > and < or >? “Does not equal” symbol.
Subtraction is just like addition, but you move backwards on the timeline.
Division is the opposite of multiplication, right?
Exponents (two ways to write). 4^ (caret) 2 = 4x4
Exponents: Just as multiplication is repeated addition of a number, exponents are a shortcut notation when there is a need to multiply the same number together many times. It is just a specific form of multiplication.
Base: The number in an exponent notation to be multiplied.
Roots (symbol) or radicals. Square root of 16 (What number multiplied by itself equals 16?)
Opposite of exponents. Just a specific form of division.
Order of operations: PE MD AS (Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally) Parentheses, Exponents. Multiplication and Division (from left to right). Addition and Subtraction (from left to right).
Just as we were challenged on day 1 to express a numerical value in different ways (fraction, decimal, percent, scientific notation—even Roman numerals, tally marks, dots on dice, pictures, etc.), now we can express a single numerical value using the form of operations. As the complexity increases, so does the creativity. We have more ways to express the same value!
12/2
2+1+3
1 x 6
(3.0 x 10^0) + (3.0 x 10^0)
127 - 121
The square root of 36 or 36^(1/2)
1 6/6 + 2 12/6
800% - 200%
3^2 - 3^1
Playing Board Slam is an entertaining way to become comfortable with manipulating numbers and operations.
Write the numbers 1-36 (in rows of 6) on a white board or a piece of paper. (You can go up to 100 or higher if you have math dice with numbers up to 12.)
Roll three dice and write the numbers on the board. Players are challenged to use all three numbers once each, in any order, with any operations (or order of operations), to make up a numerical value. They state the value (and how they got it), and that number is crossed off the board. Players come up with as many numerical expressions as possible. The goal of the game is to cross off as many numbers as possible with one roll of the dice, or cross off all numbers with as few rolls of the dice as possible.
This game can be used at any level. Start with addition and subtraction and work your way up. Adults and older students find the game challenging with exponents (must use one of the given numbers as an exponent, or agree to use a “free” zero), square roots, factorials (4! = 4 x 3 x 2 x 1). Try it for family game night!
Ready to move beyond base 10?
Although the concepts are more simplistic (only halving and doubling), I find Ethiopian math takes me more time to solve.
Here’s a method for more speed:
If you are just now checking in or would like quick links to previous posts in my curricula series, this is what we have so far:
This post should wrap it up (though I have one in the works with a few new additions for the coming school year).
I love Memoria Press. I really do. I love their products. I love their articles. I love their magalog. And I love their Latin.
We’ve (slowly) worked through Prima Latina and half of Latina Christiana I. “The plan” is to finish up Latina Christiana I and head into First Form Latin this fall. I’m really hoping Levi can finish it before he heads into Henle the following year in Challenge A with Classical Conversations. I love the prayers and songs. I love the ecclesiastical pronunciation (though CC uses classical pronunciation which drives me crazy!).
Levi and Luke have stayed together in Latin for the most part. I think I’ll be going through Song School Latin with Leif this next year since I have it on the shelf.
The boys also have memorized Latin declensions, conjugations, and some vocabulary, as well as John 1:1-7 in Latin through Classical Conversations.
We didn’t do much this past year, but I like several of the workbooks from The Critical Thinking Co. such as Balance Benders and Red Herring Mysteries. Levi and Luke will be attending a logic academic camp with CC this month, using The Fallacy Detective: Thirty-Eight Lessons on How to Recognize Bad Reasoning. I’ve purchased the book as well as the DVDs, so we’ll be reviewing and using the book throughout the year. I’m really looking forward to some interesting discussions with the boys!
Classical Conversations Foundations classes include four fine arts units. Six weeks of drawing basics, six weeks of music theory and tin whistle, six weeks of famous artists and art projects, and six weeks of composers and instruments of the orchestra.
Music:
:: The Story of the Orchestra : Listen While You Learn About the Instruments, the Music and the Composers Who Wrote the Music! is a fantastic all-in-one book for learning about the instruments and composers (chronologically by period).
The Classical Kids CD series is a family favorite. Titles such as Mr. Bach Comes To Call, Mozart’s Magic Fantasy, Mozart’s Magnificent Voyage, Tchaikovsky Discovers America, Beethoven Lives Upstairs, Hallelujah Handel, Song of the Unicorn, Vivaldi’s Ring of Mystery, and A Classical Kids Christmas have delighted us all for years. The recordings include a dramatized fictional story centered around each composer, including details about the composer’s life and his music.
This year we have also been listening to Opal Wheeler’s composer series on audio book, including Sebastian Bach, The Boy from Thuringia. For an all-in-one title, The Story of Classical Music audio book with music is well-done. For silly educational fun, my boys love the Beethoven's Wig: Sing Along Symphonies audio series.
:: For free online composer education, Classics for Kids cannot be beat. Their radio shows about the composers are excellent.
The beautiful composer picture books by Anna Harwell Celenza are also favorites: The Farewell Symphony, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Bach's Goldberg Variations, and others.
:: The boys have not been in piano lessons this past year, but I really want them to keep up their practicing. Honestly, Lola has been the single biggest deterrent. I don’t want them practicing while she’s napping, and she simply won’t leave them alone if they are playing the piano while she is awake. We are going to work more on that discipline issue this coming year. Sigh.
Both The Artists' Specials and the The Composers' Specials DVDs have been a fun addition to our fine arts studies. The period films are fictionalized stories with historical details. (You can get the DVDs individually or discounted as a set at Rainbow Resource. Our library carries most of them.)
Art:
My boys love the Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists series. We have a collection of them that they pour over—especially Luke. (The author also has a series of composers, presidents, and scientists!)
13 Artists Children Should Know and others in the series by Prestel are beautiful hardback books. They include timelines at the tops of the pages for history integration. Cave Paintings to Picasso: The Inside Scoop on 50 Art Masterpieces is a great all-in-one resource for studying the history of art (chronologically) with children.
And, of course, there is an abundance of beautiful picture biography books about artists, as well as lovely books about art. It would take forever to list them all here! (Check your library.)
Poetry:
A quick mention here of poetry: Three resources I love are A Child's Introduction to Poetry: Listen While You Learn About the Magic Words That Have Moved Mountains, Won Battles, and Made Us Laugh and Cry (a fantastic all-in-one resource that explains different types of poetry and then covers famous poets chronologically—with an audio CD), Poetry Speaks to Children (Book & CD), and the Poetry for Young People series (each book covers a specific poet with a short biography, a selection of poems, and illustrations).
We have La Clase Divertida and Rosetta Stone. Did we ever get to them? Nope.
I really want to have Levi working through a typing program regularly, but it is another thing we just haven’t made time for…
Levi and Luke (and Russ) swim on a local year-round swim team. Leif took swim lessons this spring and did very well. He’s so close to being able to swim for the team.
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I think that sums up the rest of our basic curricula and resources (though I’m certain I’ve forgotten a few things).
I have a couple more posts in the works with plans for this coming school year.
Any questions? Feel free to ask in the comments.
Here is Luke reciting The Destruction of Sennacherib by Lord Byron. (Grandma and Grandpa, I thought you would enjoy this one!)
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.
~ Susan Wise Bauer, What is Classical Education?
This year we are studying ancient history. In addition to many picture books and collections of stories from various cultures, such as The Elephant's Friend and Other Tales from Ancient India and The Master Swordsman & the Magic Doorway: Two Legends from Ancient China, our line-up includes retellings of ancient epics, stories, histories, and myths:
Lugalbanda: The Boy Who Got Caught Up in a War: An Epic Tale From Ancient Iraq (The world’s oldest written story.)
Gilgamesh the King (The Gilgamesh Trilogy)
Gilgamesh the Hero by Geraldine McCaughrean
Tales of Ancient Egypt by Roger Lancelyn Green
Casting the Gods Adrift: A Tale of Ancient Egypt by Geraldine McCaughrean
Herodotus and the Road to History by Jeanne Bendick
Famous Men of Greece by John H. Haaren (includes some myths)
The boys are listening to The Iliad translated by Robert Fagles, read by Sir Derek Jacobi while reading many retellings of Homer’s epics.
The Trojan War by Olivia Coolidge (a beautiful retelling of the Iliad!)The Children's Homer: The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tale of Troy by Padraic Colum
The Trojan Horse by Albert Lorenz
Black Ships Before Troy: The Story of 'The Iliad' by Rosemary Sutcliff
The Wanderings of Odysseus: The Story of the Odyssey by Rosemary Sutcliff
Tales from the Odyssey by Mary Pope Osborne
And on to the Roman poet Virgil:
In Search of a Homeland: The Story of the Aeneid retold by Penelope Lively
Heroes, Gods & Emperors from Roman Mythology by Kerry Usher
Roman Myths by Geraldine McCaughrean
One Thousand and One Arabian Nights by Geraldine McCaughrean
We also have a collection of Jim Weiss story CDs that fit in with ancient literature:
Egyptian Treasures: Mummies and Myths
Heroes in Mythology: Theseus, Prometheus, Odin 
Greek Myths
She and He: Adventures in Mythology
Tales from Cultures Far and Near
A Storyteller's Version of... Arabian Nights
Celtic Treasures
Julius Caesar & the Story of Rome
Galileo and the Stargazers: Including Archimedes and the Golden Crown 
While the stories were not told or written during ancient times, they still contain a great amount of historical context and help the boys imagine what it might have been like to live during those times. They are also excellent stories in their own right.
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace
Levi will be reading the original, but the boys love the radio theatre production and also the animated movie version with the voice of Charlton Heston.
The Silver Chalice by Thomas Costain
The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare
The Eagle of the Ninth (The Roman Britain Trilogy) by Rosemary Sutcliff
The Young Carthaginian by G.A. Henty, abridged and told by Jim Weiss
(This list is only a small selection.)
The many books in the Roman Mysteries series by Caroline Lawrence (which I just discovered has been turned into a British movie series). Levi has already read all the books, but I think Luke might enjoy them this year.
Detectives in Togas and sequel by Henry Winterfeld
And I simply can’t fail to mention…
The Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan (Egyptian mythology)Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan (Greek mythology)
Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan (Roman mythology)
Inspired by this list at Life in Grace,
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley (about the statue of Pharaoh Ramesses II)
The Destruction of Sennacherib by Lord Byron (about an Assyrian king)
The Invocation of the Muse by Homer in Book I of The Odyssey (Robert Fagles translation)
“Sing to me of the man, Muse,
the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course,
once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.”
Antony’s speech from Julius Caesar (Act III, ii, 76-109)
That is the bulk of our history-related literature studies.
At this point we just read and enjoy.
(It’s a good thing my boys love to read!)
