No Mirrors in My Nana's House: Book/Music Review

We try to go to the library about twice a month to replenish our stash of books. These days we really like to check out a few books with accompanying CDs. These are great for my 3yo, because he likes to settle in with some books on CD and flip through while listening to the story. I can occupy him for some time with this so I can do some work with the 7yo on math or spelling or something else. Last week I was flipping through the CD books when I discovered this book: No Mirrors in My Nana's House by Ysaye M. Barnwell with illustrations by Synthia Saint James.

The illustrations looked lovely, but I really picked it up because the front cover of the book said that the CD included a song version of the book sung by Sweet Honey in the Rock, a women's a cappella group which I've loved for years. I knew if they had done a song, it would be worth checking out.


Well, it certainly did not disappoint. The story is lovely, the illustrations perfect in their bright simplicity and the music with lyrics to match the book text is just right. This is wonderful story about a girl who says there are no mirrors in her nana's house. Instead "the beauty in everything was in her [nana's] eyes." The little girl never noticed that her clothes didn't fit, that the hallway was dirty, that her skin was too dark, or anything, because there were no mirrors and instead she found beauty looking into her nana's eyes. You can find the full text/lyrics here. Wonderful!


The kids loved the music which my 3yo would tell you is "jukin'." It's good dancing music which is a must around here. We did some great dancing this morning and then put it on after dinner so Daddy could hear it and we all could get in a little more dancing.


And the text of the book was great for conversation. I had 7yo think about what it meant and then we had a good discussion about finding beauty in others instead of just looking in the mirror and thinking "me, me, me." We also talked about how this book relates to the book From I-ville to You-ville which we read last year. Certainly it's about leaving our ego behind and focusing on the other. Then this evening, we talked about it again and how we find true beauty in being loved by another (and in loving others).


So, a bunch of thumbs up for this book - and for the music by Sweet Honey in the Rock. We just might have to add it to our permanent collection around here.

Veteran's Day

7yo and I have a regular Tuesday morning date to our favorite coffee shop. Each Tuesday, we have a schoolwork marathon over coffee and muffins while 3yo plays at Mother's Day Out. This morning CNN was playing on mute in the coffee shop. There was some coverage of Veteran's Day events at Arlington Cemetery. 7yo looked up, read the captions and said,

"Mom, what is Veteran's Day? Is it when we honor animal doctors?"

Discovering Rachel Field

Since we've been loving our poetry tea time each week, I'm now always on the lookout for great poetry to share with my kids. Today during our Language Arts lesson, 7yo and I discovered this wonderful poem by Rachel Field. It was in our 2nd grade poetry anthology from K12. We both loved the poem. So, I've decided to add Rachel Field to our list of poets for tea time (after we finish up Robert Louis Stevenson and A.A. Milne). I think we'll start with Rachel Field's Prayer for a Child, though I haven't been able to read through it myself yet. Here's the beloved poem from today.

Something Told the Wild Geese
by Rachel Field

Something told the wild geese
It was time to go.
Though the fields lay golden
Something whispered - "Snow."
Leaves were green and stirring,
Berries, luster-glossed,
But beneath warm feathers
Something cautioned - "Frost."
All the sagging orchards
Steamed with amber spice,
But each wild breast stiffened
At remembered ice.
Something told the wild geese
It was time to fly -
Summer sun was on their wings,
Winter in their cry.

As I read this poem the first time, I had my son close his eyes and listen. Afterwards it was beautiful how he retold the scene, complete with the colors and images of summer/fall that he had heard. He talked of the golden fields and the bright berries, and then talked about how the geese knew that they had to leave so they wouldn't stay too long.

Thank God for poets who so beautifully depict His creation!

Election Day Fun!

It's election day in America! Though the presidential campaign this year has completely exhausted and disturbed me, I'm still happy that we have the chance to vote for our leaders. We've been having fun with the election today. I took my 7yo to vote with me this morning while th 3yo was as Mother's Day Out. What a delightful experience to vote in a small town! I didn't wait in line at all and the church had homemade cookies and pastries out to offer free to all voters and kids! So different from what I remember in my childhood: waiting in long, long lines in a dingy old school with my mom. I may never live in a big city again . . .

This afternoon, my kids have been playing election. Around here we vote on paper "scantron" type ballots. They just give you a paper and you bubble in your choices with a pen and then you insert it in the machine to be read - just like taking the SAT. While I prefer computerized voting, this method has actually been nice for the kids today. We were able to go to our county election commission website and print off sample ballots for our precinct. They look just like the ballots at the voting location. So we printed them off, and the kids are "voting" and then inserting their ballots into a box they created to "read" the ballot. Wonder how the results will turn out at our house?

One thing is for sure, around here the voters have chosen some non-traditional candidates. In several of our county races the incumbent is running unopposed. So, my 7yo chose to do some write-ins. He wrote in himself for County Commissioner, his dad for County Treasurer, his best friend for Sheriff and the Libertarian Presidential candidate (Barr) for District Attorney. Interesting . . .

The 3yo voted for the Reform candidate (Baldwin) for President. . . . He also wrote in Obama District Attorney. I think we're going to be hardpressed to get majority votes in this house.

Today's Poetry

Tigers

Among the tall grass a hunting tiger creeps.
Its fur stays soft like sheets,
Although if I go out there alone
I am sure to forever be alone.
For if the tiger creeps too close.
I will be to him like toast.

-AM, age 7, 3rd November 2008

Autumn Colors

God's Promise

One day back in September, after two days of storms we got to see this in our neighborhood.

Photos don't begin to do it justice, but we had to try anyway. Let's just say this: it was a humongous double rainbow (maybe triple?) so bright you could count distinctly see each band of color. We could see the whole half-circle arc from end to end. We all commented on how Noah and his family must have been in such awe to see such a beautiful sight. Only God could make something so magnificent.

"Signs of fall" bike ride

I love that homeschooling gives us a few extra hours for things like this. (And, I love that the three-year-old can almost keep up now and I only have the carry his bike at the end of the ride!)

The Halloween dilemma

Around this time of year a big conversation always ensues at coffee hours, on email lists, everywhere. What do you do about Halloween? Well, here's our solution. For the most part we don't celebrate Halloween. I know people do it just in good fun, and celebrations of the harvest and beautiful autumn are fun, but the truth is, Halloween is pretty ghoulish in our culture. Why do we feel the need to celebrate ghosts and goblins and blood and death? It's just asking for trouble in my book. After all, the demons love it when we ask for their involvement in our lives. Now, I have a house full of guys. We like battles, and we love to read about the martyrs (trust me, my boys LOVE a gory, bloody, heroic martyr story), but there is no need to force the issue of embracing deadly images. So, around here, every year in October we always go to a pumpkin patch, and we like to roast pumpkin seeds, make pumpkin pie, pumpkin biscuits, etc. I don't want my kids to feel too weird for not "doing" Halloween. They are weird in our culture in plenty of ways, and I do ask them to keep the fast and feasts despite what the world does around them. But I also worry about passing too much judgement on others by forcefully refusing fairly innocent celebrations. (Honestly, as a child my family did not participate in Halloween, and while I understood the decision and supported it, I always felt like the strange kid who didn't have a costume or anything.) So, if we are invited to costume parties through school or other activities during Halloween week, we'll quietly dress up and participate. But we don't do trick-or-treating events, nor do we do haunted houses, etc. On Halloween night, we go to Vespers, and then go out to eat as a family. (There is always lots of space in restaurants on Halloween night.) Afterwards, we all head to Target and everyone gets to choose a big bag of candy to take home. (Really, there is no need to deprive the kids of the candy! And that's easy to take care of.)

However, my kids (and I) absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to dress up. So - we have an Orthodox tradition of dressing up which we keep in December. For more info on our tradition see my blog entry from last year on St. Barbara's Day Festivities. And find information on the food for the festivities here.

Primary Analogies - Curriculum Review

Since we began homeschooling, we've really been enjoying the Primary Analogies series from EPS Publishing. It's an optional part of the K12 Language Arts curriculum, but it is not optional in our house! My 7yo really loves it and wouldn't have school without it. Last year we used Book One in 1st grade and this year we're using Book Two for second grade. This is a really fun way for kids to learn analogical thinking. The first book focuses primarily on picture analogies in which two pictures are connected and the student has to identify their relationship and then find two more pictures which are related in the same way. Book Two uses both picture-word analogies and some word-word analogies. My 7yo really thinks this is like a fun puzzle. Book One was quite easy, but he still really enjoyed it and it helped him develop the thought process for thinking analogically. I believe that most children (and adults) naturally think in this way, but it's good to capture that kind of thinking and help them develop it. (Trust me, I really wish some of my university students had some practice in analogical thinking, because sometimes it doesn't seem to be there.) Book Two has gotten a little more challenging and sometimes it requires him to think creatively to determine the relationships, but that's just more fun for him. This is one book I never have to encourage him to use.

We spread the book out and do just a little bit at a time so that it lasts the whole year. Usually, we just do it as suggested by K12, which ends up being a page about every other week. BUT - often 7yo will beg to do another page (or two more) after he has completed the page for that day, so we often get ahead of ourselves. A page only takes him about 2-5 minutes, so the time committment is very low. But I think it's well worth it. EPS provides a teacher's manual, but I haven't ever had it, and I'm not sure it's necessary. They indicate that it does include suggestions for teaching your child to think analogically, so that might be one advantage. The student book itself doesn't include much explanation for parents/teachers. K12 includes these kind of suggestions in their online materials, to only the main book has ever been necessary for us.

This year we're also using Wordly Wise and Early Reading Comprehension in Varied Subject Matter from EPS. We haven't used the latter enough yet for me to comment much. I know that Wordly Wise comes with high praise from many sources and is a time-proven resource. So far, we're pretty happy with it. It's not really exciting, but it sorted into reasonable chunks and seems to be a good tool for adding vocabulary. After we've used it for a year, maybe I can comment more.

St. Constantine learns to spell

We've been studying St. Constantine lately in history, along with his vision and the legalization of Christianity in the Roman Empire.

Today while drawing a picture of an icon of St. Constantine, 7yo commented,

"There are three N's in 'Constantine.' I bet Constantine learned to write his N's really well."

Some recent fun

Some recent school fun at our house. Science: learning about friction and gravity with a parachute experiment using quarters and homemade plastic parachutes. Which size parachute will make the quarter fall the slowest? Small, medium or large? Our hypothesis ended up being correct!

History: Vesuvius erupting over Pompeii (well, a small Lego version of Pompeii). After this day, 7yo said, "Thanks mom, that was such a good idea for an activity!" Score one for me.

For moments like this . . .

On the hardest, most exhausting homeschooling days, I try to remember moments like this. I'm glad my sons are slowly learning to be best friends. Of course, most days they fight over the swing. But one day last week, for 10 minutes they worked it out. And it was magical.

Booklist - A fun "test" for homeschoooling parents (and anyone else)

One of my favorite things about homeschooling is the chance to add to my own knowledge and education everyday as I learn alongside my kids. (Of course, adding to my education is also my outside-the-home job at the university, but that still seems different from what we get to do at home.) Anyway, I got this list from Anne Marie's blog and thought it was fun. Plus it's a great way to note some gaps in my own education and reading background to work on filling in the coming years. Feel free to repost on your blog (or just comment) if you'd like. This is a sort of "coming clean" for me about what I haven't read! On the other hand, if they would include a little more world literature (especially Russia, Croatian and Serbian) my list would look more impressive!

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.

The Rules:
1) Look at the list and put one * by those you have read.
2) Put a % by those you intend to read.
3) Put two ** by the books you LOVE.
4) Put # by the books you HATE.
5) Post.

#1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
*2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
**3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
*4 Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling (haven't made time to read them in English, but I'm working on reading one of them in Russian, Croatian and Polish for my dissertation, not sure that counts)
**5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
**6 The Bible
#7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
*8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
**10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (Ms. Havisham remains my favorite literary character of all time)
**11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
*12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
*13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
*14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (lots, but not all)
**15 Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
*16 The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
*18 Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
*21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
*22 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
**24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (I both love it and hate it, but mostly love)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh -
*27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
*28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
*29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
*30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
*31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
**33 Chronicles of Narnia- C.S. Lewis (more than once)
34 Emma - Jane Austen (Austen and I are not friends - Pride and Prejudice was enough Austen for a lifetime for me)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
**36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis (many times)
%37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (started it this summer, but got distracted)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis de Bernières
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
**40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne (Quoted regularly at our dinner table)
**41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
*46 Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery (loved this years ago - I wonder if I still would?)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
**49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (have to confess I like it, despite the disturbing content)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
*57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
*58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
%60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
*61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
*62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (not cover-to-cover, but I've read sections)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
%65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (yeah, I slipped through and managed never to conquer this one)
*71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
**73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (still one of my favorites, since I was about 9)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Émile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - A.S. Byatt
*81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
*85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
**87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
**89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
*91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
**92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (Love, love, love it! Watch for a blog about it soon.)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
*94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
%97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (this is making me realize, why have I not read any Dumas? Big gap.)
*98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
*99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
%100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (I'd like to get to this someday . . . )

OK, so I beat the 6 by a long shot, but I've found some significant gaps I'd like to fill.


Here are my favorites that are not on the list:

Novels:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Live and Remember - Valentin Rasputin
Bridge on the Drina - Ivo Andrić
A Hero of our Time - Mikhail Lermontov
Sofia Petrovna - Lydia Chukovskaya
Fathers and Sons - Ivan Turgenev
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin
The Chosen - Chaim Potok
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane

Short stories:
"The Death of Ivan Ilych" - Leo Tolstoy
"Matryona's House" - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"Megalos Mastoras and His Work" - Borislav Pekić
"The Gift of the Magi" - O. Henry
Scenes from the Bathhouse - Mikhail Zoshchenko
"To Build a Fire" - Jack London

Plays:
Antigone - Sophocles
Julius Caesar - William Shakespeare
Macbeth - Williams Shakespeare
Twelfth Night - William Shakespeare
Boris Godunov - Alexander Pushkin
The Cherry Orchard - Anton Chekhov
Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
The Glass Menagerie - Tennessee Williams

Poetry collections by:
Anna Akhmatova
Aleksandr Blok
Emily Dickinson
Christina Rosetti
Carl Sandburg
Robert Louis Stevenson
Daniil Kharms

Other:
A Grief Observed - C.S. Lewis
The Prologue - Nikolai Velimirović
The Ascetic of Love - Mother Gavrilia
D'aulaire's Book of Greek Myths
D'aulaire's Book of Norse Myths
The Mountain of Silence - Kyriacos Markides
Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia - Lubov Millar
The Great Collection of Lives of the Saints - Dimitri of Rostov
Father Arseny: A Cloud of Witnesses - Vera Bouteneff
My Life with Father Alexander - Julianna Schmemann
The Journals of Fr. Alexander Schmemann
The Spiritual Meadow - John Moschos

Profound . . . or not?

This morning during breakfast the boys and I were doing our regular readings from the Prologue and the Children's Bible Reader. After 7yo finished reading, 3yo turned to both of us and said very decisively,

"Jesus is in my tummy."

7yo and I both looked at each other and giggled.

Then 7yo said, "You mean He's in your heart."

3yo thought for a minute and said,

"Oh, OK."

But in moments like this I can't help but stop and think about the theological context and also why my child would have said such a thing. I suppose he most likely confused his tummy with his heart. Maybe. Or was he thinking about taking Communion on Tuesday night? We certainly talk about how Communion is Jesus' body and blood. And we certainly talk about how God is everywhere. So I thought for a minute or so about where to take the conversation. Should I attempt to conquer that subject? I opted for no, and left it there, with a kind explanation for the 3-year-old from his older brother. That will probably suffice (along with some smirks between me and the older brother). But all day I've been thinking about Jesus being in our tummies. Perhaps He is.