Project Week

Every year, our "at school" children have two weeks of Christmas vacation followed by Project Week, time spent working at home.  The high schoolers write research papers, 7th graders report on an endangered animal, and 8th graders like Marianna construct a medieval town, castle, or cathedral.  

The students are supposed to spend at least thirty hours on their projects, and our 8th graders always do!  Usually the last few hours are late, late, late the night before returning to school.  Marianna worked hard and Len assisted with management coaching, so the final Sunday was not too painful this year (our family's fifth medieval project).

Here is Marianna's town:

 Some materials decisions:  plaster walls, paint mixed with sawdust for grass, dried grass for thatch, and glycerin soap to fill the well.

After searching the archives, I found Joe's castle from January 2012:

 And Daniel's from January 2009:

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find photos of David and Lauren's castles.  I'm sure they are disappointed!   ;-)

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The entry below was originally posted in March 2010, but I thought it might interest some folks now since Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday will be celebrated January 17th. 

We did read along (silently) with the audio, and it was wonderful.  MLK was a mesmerizing speaker!  I highly recommend studying this speech .  There's so much more depth to it than the few phrases you hear on the radio now and then.

We're studying American history this year, and finished up the Civil War last week. Inspired by a fifth grade teacher, I borrowed all 5 discs of Ken Burns' PBS series from the library. Joseph, Marianna, and I spent weeks (the series is over eleven hours long!) watching, listening, and learning. With pauses for discussion and review, we all absorbed a lot of information.

Anyway, when we finished the dvds, we covered the era of Reconstruction. Then instead of moving on chronologically, we jumped ahead to the Civil Rights era and Martin Luther King, Jr. The Civil War and Reconstruction should have given all races equality in America, but that's not how it turned out. One hundred years later, the fight was active again.

Our library has an audiotape of MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech. It's stirring and poetic and inspiring, and I can't wait to listen to it again.

In preparation, the three of us are reading a biography of MLK. I'm not patient enough to read it aloud (it's too long, and I want to keep moving), so we're sharing the book for our quiet time (the homeschoolers have a minimum of 30 minutes of approved/school topic reading each day).

Together, we're reading another book (Becca, too): I Have a Dream by Scholastic Press. It contains the entire text of the speech, along with paintings by 15 different artists. I highly recommend this book! We covered the first half today, analyzing and explaining

• the meaning (the promissory note and the bank of justice),
• the poetry (Why does he repeat "one hundred years later" four times in one long sentence?),
• the context (explaining his urging of nonviolence with the picture of ketchup being poured on people sitting-in at a lunch counter),
• the Biblical references ("I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."),
• and the symbolism (Why does he begin with "Fivescore years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation."?)

We'll finish up tomorrow and then Friday listen to the speech while reading along (as I remember it, the tape is scratchy). Reading and analyzing is educational, but actually hearing that preacher proclaiming will touch our hearts.

I know lots of folks study MLK in January, around his birthday, but his life and efforts will make more sense to my students right now, when the Civil War and its aftermath are still fresh in their minds.

Context Matters

For me, the story behind a poem or song makes a big difference.  I remember running across Walt Whitman's poem "O Captain!  My Captain" and not thinking much of it.  The narrator is so distraught, but I did not feel the emotion or understand the tragedy of the captain's death.

Then last year we studied the Civil War and I discovered that Whitman wrote this poem about Lincoln's assassination.  He was killed just days after leading our country through that terrible time, and before he could work to heal the divisions we experienced.  Now Whitman's words bring me nearly to tears every time I read them.

O Captain!  My Captain!  by Walt Whitman

O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

Poetry in Motion

"How do you like to go up in a swing,

Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do!"

1st verse of "The Swing" by Robert Louis Stevenson

Memorizing poetry has been part of our homeschooling life from the very beginning. We don't always proceed with vigor, but we've never quit, either.

Poetry adds richness to our days--the cadence of language, beautiful images, history, hidden meanings, and more. And the shared experience of reciter and listeners is valuable in itself. We've heard and learned favorite works over and over again through the years. Anyone in our house can recite the six succinct lines of RLS's "At the Seaside", for example.

We begin memorization even before officially starting kindergarten. Almost all our early poems are from a beautifully illustrated copy of A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. The older children move on to selections from The Harp and Laurel Wreath and Favorite Poems Old and New.

Rebecca just finished learning one of my favorites by RLS, "Foreign Lands."

"Up into the cherry tree

Who should climb but little me?

I held the trunk with both my hands

And looked abroad on foreign lands."

(1st of five verses)

BTW, that's her in our own cherry tree a few days ago. Can you see how high Becca climbed? Probably not--she is a full story up, level with me on the deck! (Can you see the yellow-green fruit?)

This year the 4th and 6th graders have memorized several classic ("The Village Blacksmith") and historical ("Pocahontas", "The Gettysburg Address") works. Right now Joseph is enchanted by the whimsy of Lewis Carroll.

Explaining the context of historic poems can bring those older times to life, as well as making the facts memorable. When we toured the National Portrait Gallery, our guide was impressed that Marianna already knew so much about Pocahontas (her Christian name, her husband, her son, where she died, etc.). Here's a windy video of Marianna reciting "Pocahontas" at Jamestown last fall.

A final note: Last year Lauren made elaborate jewelry from paper for one of her art classes. Her teacher wanted the project to be personally meaningful, and that happened in an unexpected way. Lauren found an old book in the park, liked the paper, and proceeded to use it. As she looked more closely, it turned out to be the works of Robert Louis Stevenson. Leafing through, Lauren discovered words and cadences remembered from her childhood poetry sessions. She still knew the work. How cool is that?

In Context: Martin Luther King, Jr.

We're studying American history this year, and finished up the Civil War last week. Inspired by a fifth grade teacher, I borrowed all 5 discs of Ken Burns' PBS series from the library. Joseph, Marianna, and I spent weeks (the series is over eleven hours long!) watching, listening, and learning. With pauses for discussion and review, we all absorbed a lot of information.

Anyway, when we finished the dvds, we covered the era of Reconstruction. Then instead of moving on chronologically, we jumped ahead to the Civil Rights era and Martin Luther King, Jr. The Civil War and Reconstruction should have given all races equality in America, but that's not how it turned out. One hundred years later, the fight was active again.

Our library has an audiotape of MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech. It's stirring and poetic and inspiring, and I can't wait to listen to it again.

In preparation, the three of us are reading a biography of MLK. I'm not patient enough to read it aloud (it's too long, and I want to keep moving), so we're sharing the book for our quiet time (the homeschoolers have a minimum of 30 minutes of approved/school topic reading each day).

Together, we're reading another book (Becca, too): I Have a Dream by Scholastic Press. It contains the entire text of the speech, along with paintings by 15 different artists. I highly recommend this book! We covered the first half today, analyzing and explaining

• the meaning (the promissory note and the bank of justice),
• the poetry (Why does he repeat "one hundred years later" four times in one long sentence?),
• the context (explaining his urging of nonviolence with the picture of ketchup being poured on people sitting-in at a lunch counter),
• the Biblical references ("I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."),
• and the symbolism (Why does he begin with "Fivescore years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation."?)

We'll finish up tomorrow and then Friday listen to the speech while reading along (as I remember it, the tape is scratchy). Reading and analyzing is educational, but actually hearing that preacher proclaiming will touch our hearts.

I know lots of folks study MLK in January, around his birthday, but his life and efforts will make more sense to my students right now, when the Civil War and its aftermath are still fresh in their minds.