Reading Notes - November

What I've been reading recently...

Country Matters: The Pleasures and Tribulations of Moving From a Big City to an Old Country Farmhouse by Michael Korda

Korda was, at the time of the book, a senior editor (possible THE senior editor, I'm not certain) at Simon and Schuster, a major North American publisher.  He also moved from downtown New York City to rural New York State to live in a farmhouse built before George Washington became president, which takes a certain amount of chutzpah.  I picked up the book mostly because it reminded me of the similar narrative of Marsha Boulton, a Canadian high up someone who moved from urban Toronto to a country farm to raise sheep.  And I really enjoyed Boulton's stories, which are also in the same popular one-story-per-chapter format as Korda's.  Country Matters gave me something light and fluffy to read while on a three day work trip with my husband, and it was ideal for that purpose, but there were too many annoying little details for me to really enjoy it.  I feel a little pedantic writing them down, but here they are:

Korda refers to the blacksmith coming to shoe the horses.  Blacksmiths don't shoe horses.  The proper name for someone who shoes horses is a farrier.  This sort of detail bothers me and it should bother a professional senior editor as well.

There is a lot of pussyfooting around the subject of fox hunting.  My opinion on the issue is irrelevant to my book review, but the author mentions having no particular opinions about it at one point, and then mentioning later that he didn't agree that the hunt was environmentally friendly and was very much a snobby and new gentry type thing to do.  This kind of 'say one thing here then say another thing there' writing was all through the book.  It made it very challenging to get absorbed into the story because I kept getting sidetracked.  "wait, he just said all these things about this guy over here and now he's saying he likes him?"

I know this is trivial but honestly so much of the story is about the vast amounts of money Korda and his wife poured into the property.  The bought more land that butted up against their own, they erected new buildings, they did masses of renovation work, they hired a very expensive decorator, they kept buying horses, they hired multiple staff members, even at one point buying and renovating a second house so the handyman and barn hand have somewhere to live...you get the idea.  But instead of being able to focus on the story all this mention of money just kept making me wonder where it was coming from!  Where?  How much do a former model and horse event participant (his wife) and publishing house editor MAKE?  Which I realize is not part of the story, but was such an ever-present question.

Anyway, all this is to say that there were little details that annoyed me enough that I didn't love it.  It wasn't Marsha Boulton.  But it was interesting.

Discipline: The Glad Surrender by Elizabeth Elliot

I only knew of Elizabeth Elliot through the movies about her first husband, Jim, and their work with indigenous people groups in South America.  I knew she had written books, of course, but this was the first one I've read.  I really enjoyed it!  There were a few times I felt as if Elliot and I had differing views on a religious subject but compared to her I haven't lived, so who knows, maybe years from now I will re-read her and those more challenging views will suddenly be in perfect alignment.  The vast majority of her writing was spot on, and I found it very interesting to see how faith based non-fiction has changed in the thirty or so years since Discipline was published.

The struggle I had with the book was in knowing how to suggest it to others.  It's not a particularly deep exploration of the topic of Christian discipline, so I would tend to think it would be more helpful for those without a lot of experience with the topic or who need a peaceful refresher, but then the style is very old fashioned and that makes me hesitant to recommend it to a new Christian nowadays, because I'm not sure they would take the time to get past that to the meat inside.

It's...it's like Oswald Chambers!  My Utmost For His Highest is, in my opinion, probably one of the best devotionals ever written, but the only Christians I know who read it are older, or appreciate the classics in that genre.

Traveling With Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Anne Kidd Taylor

I am puttering through this one slowly.  Kidd and Taylor, a mother/daughter author team, take turns alternating viewpoints of the same time period when Taylor has been rejected from her first choice of graduate school and Kidd is progressing through menopause - two seasons of life that seem very different but are knitted together by the story of Demeter and Persephone.  There was quite a bit of 'divine female' type delving into the topic of womanhood, which can be very heavy handed in some texts but I thought was handled well and sensitively by Kidd and Taylor.

I'm not done yet.  But I will say it has inspired me to look into more Christian feminist writings and see what else people have to say about all that.

Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear

I've heard people say they just love the Maisie Dobbs series for a very long time, but I am a slow embracer of new mystery authors in a way that I am not, necessarily, with other genres.  The last time I really, really enjoyed a new mystery author was when I read the first Flavia De Luce story, A Sweetness at The Bottom of The Pie, by Alan Bradley.  Since I read that while in labour with my first child, who is now 8, I think I can safely say that new authors in this genre do not come to me easily.  But I really enjoyed Winspear's rather endearing Maisie.  There was tension, and also a very unexpected twist, and I was pretty captivated by the novel.  I think I might just have found my once-per-decade addition to the mystery shelf.

What Is Stephen Harper Reading?  by Yann Martel

Not only do I (obviously) love talking about the books I've been reading, but I equally love hearing about what everyone else has been reading, and I think that must have been my thought process behind picking up this book.  Which in hindsight was perhaps a little narrow sighted of me because one very obvious reason why someone would decide to send a book every two weeks to the leader of one's country, along with a letter talking about the book...it's an attempt to 'educate'.  And this seems to be Martel's plan - he apparently has judged Prime Minister Harper as uneducated in the literary arts and has taken it upon himself to show him the light.  Frankly, with the condescending tone of many of the letters I am surprised that Prime Minister Harper's office bothered to respond even the two times they did.

That being said, and if you are able to ignore the heavy handed advice in the book suggestions, it's an odd list that Martel offers the politician.


And there you go.  That's what I have been reading.

The literature we're using in this session

This year I have split up my lesson planning into sessions, or sections, each one lasting a few weeks and outlining what we will focus on weekly.  At the end of the session I can re-evaluate if we need a break, if we need to focus on any particular areas, if we need to revisit any topics, etc.  It's a bit easier for me than trying to lesson plan for an entire year, or even for a semester.  So much can change from week to week or from month to month.

Here is the literature that the 8 year old and I are using for this session, which will last until early December.  I chose reading that focused on nature for this session, not for any particular reason, just to help me pick readings because I have so many books.  Poetry is in quotation marks.  Sections from larger books are underlined.

One Day In the Woods - Jean Craighead George
Grass and Grasshoppers - Rose Wyler
How To Be A Nature Detective - Millicent Selsam
Can You Find The Animal? - Wilda Ross
Who Lives There? - John Hawkinson
Animals In Winter - Henrietta Bancroft
"The Lonely Land" - A.J.M. Smith
"Indian Summer" - Wilfred Campbell
"A Vagabond Song" - Bliss Carmen
Migration of Birds - The Handbook Of Nature Study
The Asters - The Handbook Of Nature Study
First Walk In November - Enid Blyton
The Chipmunk - The Handbook of Nature Study

November

Several years ago I became interested in the idea of starting to organize our family year in a more seasonal fashion, mostly using the liturgical year as a basis but incorporating a lot of the old seasonal rituals and folklore that used to be prevalent when we were all more closely in tune with the cycles of the year.  I don't remember exactly what started me on this but I definitely remember the first book I read about it - Sarah Ban Breachnach's Mrs. Sharp's Traditions.  I have to say, regardless of your faith or how much time you might have to engage in more optional pursuits, I can't recommend this book enough to start building your own family traditions.

I always turn to thinking about this topic in the fall.  There is something about fall that makes me feel like doing things, some primitive urge to put away and tidy and prepare.  In past years I've mostly satisfied that urge by making masses of preserves and cleaning the house out, but in more recent years I've had to change that up as schoolwork has become more intense and I just don't have the time to spend six hours bottling jam.

Today, being the day after Hallowe'en, and also All Saints' Day, is a good day to work outside.  The pastor is visiting the bereaved (a good day for that, as well), and the children are very happily busy creating a fort out of a large box, and so I am putting away the summer toys and bicycles, sweeping the decks, tidying the last of the gardens, picking up the clothespins that have flown from the line these many months, and stacking wood.

The lead up to Remembrance Day on November 11th is always filled with a lot of little tasks as we get ready for a day of several cold, windy, bitter services back to back to back - a day of standing silently in churchyards and at cenotaphs in the surrounding valleys and villages.  It does us good, like a fast before a feast, to start this season off remembering the saints, and stacking the wood. 

A school day in October

It is a slow start to our school day today.

Around 9ish - The 8 year old and I sit down to do a practice run of a multiple choice math test - he's never done one of these before but we printed off some because he is interested in doing a math competition in the spring and this is their preferred format.  He figures it out fairly well and we go on to review millimetres and centimetres - our lesson from last week.  When I'm sure he remembers it all I send him off with a clipboard and a ruler to measure and record ten things around the house.

The little girls are chattering up a storm and colouring pictures for Hallowe'en.  I redirect the six year old onto her math lesson - today we are reviewing subtraction facts and introducing the concept of temperature and how it can be measured in both Celsius and Fahrenheit.  She's having trouble focusing in the kitchen so off she goes into the living room

10 - Redirect, redirect, redirect...the six year old is not focusing.  I send the boy to the church with his father to practice the piano before his lesson.

10:30 - She finishes her subtraction and I get her to go outside and circumnavigate the house running like a crazy person for 15 minutes to get all the wiggles out and then feed peanuts to the chipmunk.  When she comes back in the girls and I sit down and read the chipmunk section from The Handbook Of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock, stopping to discuss camouflage and speculating as to why a chipmunk might want two entrances/exits to its burrow.  I hadn't planned what to read to the girls but generally these things resolve themselves.

11:00 - Snack, and then getting the girls set up with an Uno game.  This is my time to set up our flu shots, handle emails, switch the laundry, etc.

12 - The boy is home from piano lessons and we sit down to leftovers for lunch.

12:30 - The boy peels and chops carrots and works on fractions while he cuts them into quarters for supper and the 6 year old reads me a chapter of a Frog and Toad story.  When she finishes we set the stove timer for 15 minutes and she picks picture books to practice reading on her own - today she reads The Paperbag Princess.

1:00 - The boy finishes helping for supper and I get it in the oven.  He sets the timer for 30 minutes for his own silent reading time - the fourth Encyclopedia Brown is his choice for today.  The only requirement for any self-directed reading is that is has to be text-centric - no comics.  While he reads, the six year old starts her spelling work.  When she finishes her lesson she does a printing page - the children practice printing daily - and a copywork sentence.

1:30 - It's time for afternoon rest.  I put on a dvd for whomever wants to watch it - Mary Poppins - and also put out the tangrams on the coffee table, and lie down with a book of my own.

2:30 - The children are tired of watching tv and are getting louder and more boisterous so I put away my book and get everyone up and outside.  We work on cleaning up the front yard and then they help our neighbour carry in her groceries and get a chocolate in return.

3:30 - the girls play while the boy and I start on language arts.  His scheduled reading for today is the final chapter of One Day In The Woods, by Jean Craighead George and also some of a science book from the series Outdoor Science - this one is called Grass and Grasshoppers by Rose Wyler.  We look at them together as he reads aloud to me, and then I read him Bliss Carmen's 'A Vagabond Song' - the perfect autumn poem.  He does his copywork but it is getting close to supper so we skip spelling.

4:30 - Lessons done for the day.

Storing Away Bulbs for the Winter.

There are three sick children here today and I am just doing my best to keep my head above water.  When my littles are sick, there are three recipes I always make - hot lemon/ginger/honey water, apple and pear sauce, and boiled chicken with egg noodles.  The technique is this:  You take a sick, shivery, unhappy, whining child and you put them in the bath.  My mother was a firm believer in having a bath and clean bedding if you were sick because it made you feel better.  And it does.  Then you get into clean pajamas and get propped up on the sofa with pillow and blankets.  And then you have to have a few bites of something.

Working around the sick children, though, is my plan to store my bulbs today.  After trips to multiple stores I finally found one that was still selling peat moss (apparently the recommended medium.  I'm just following instructions.) and since my bulbs, rhizomes and tubers are all dry but not too dry it's time to carefully layer them away.  I can let you know how it goes next spring since I have never before planted things that require digging up in the fall and special storage plans. 

I also have the excitement of a bag of completely unknown bulbs to contend with.  I'm fairly certain that three of them are hyacinth, and undoubtedly many are random tulips, but some are absolutely a mystery.  How exciting!  I have one that looks like those odd citrus fruits called Buddha's Hands.  All weird fingers and such.  Some inquiry seems to say that it could be jonquil, but I don't believe I've ever planted that!  I'm thrilled, anyway, and next summer I can't wait to see what happens.

Why I can't really tell you what we're doing for school

It's happened multiple times to me, and I imagine it must happen to other homeschooling families as well - the question of "What are you learning at school?" or its twin "So what are you doing/teaching this year?"  I'm a chronic over-thinker and these sorts of questions fill me with dread because I have no idea how to answer them accurately.

This year, sometime in August and well before we 'started school' (another phrase I can't wrap my head around) I wrote out a list of our curriculum choices.  I knew I needed a piece of paper that easily gave me a black and white answer to those kinds of inevitable questions for my own sanity.  And so I can tell you what it is that my children are theoretically using for school; on the other hand, here's why that piece of paper doesn't explain anything.

1.  I will not actually follow all of those curriculum choices as they are written to be followed.  If X science curriculum asks me to do two lessons per week there is a strong chance that I will do three lessons a week, or one lesson a week, or that some weeks I will do three lessons and the next week we'll be out of town and do half a lesson and then skip the next week and the following week we'll decide the scheduled lesson is boring and just do the experiment and then the fourth week we get on a kick about invertebrates and...you get the idea.  Am I using this curriculum?  I suppose so, roughly, approximately, but at the same time not really.

2.  I am going to add/subtract curriculum constantly.  The most carefully curated list of books for the eight year old will suddenly be unacceptable when he jumps ahead a few reading levels or randomly drops a few reading levels for no reason.  Or the six year old reads all of the books I picked for her for a month in three days.  Or we start on the handwriting selections and it is a vale of tears and I need to drastically reconsider everything.  None of my choices are set in stone and the majority of the time there is at least something that gets changed.

3.  I don't do all the teaching so actually I don't know exactly what everyone is doing every day of the week.  All three children have swimming lessons, for example.  I can tell you that.  But I can't tell you what they are learning, necessarily.  The eight year old takes piano lessons.  I get updates from his instructor but have only a rough idea what he's doing on a lesson-by-lesson basis.  He's learning how to play the piano.  That's what I know.

4.  A lot of the learning the children do is in their own time.  Every one of my children has their own set of interests and they tend to develop those without my assistance.  My son likes robotics, Lego, superheroes, learning sign language, origami, following NHL hockey teams, cross stitching, drawing comic strips, tv shows about history and archaeology, math videos, asking people trivia questions, playing the piano and numerous other interests and most of these things I have very little to do with.  So he will arrive at the kitchen table and launch into a lecture about hexaflexagons and I had no idea he knew anything about them.

5.  Finally, but maybe most importantly, there are days when it's hard to define exactly what we did 'for school'.  When a child helped me measure in the kitchen, were we doing math?  When we were all working in the garden and someone mentioned photosynthesis, were we doing science?  When a sick toddler asked for a book and I read to her, was that read aloud time?  A large portion of homeschooling, for me, has been accepting learning opportunities as they arrive, but because of that I have trouble explaining when we start or end our school day, or even necessarily what we're learning about.

October Reading Notes

I am reading...

More Home Cooking - Laurie Colwin

I have heard so much about Colwin's food writing and her Home Cooking and More Home Cooking have both been in my Amazon cart for ages.  This was my first opportunity to sit down and read any of her essays, and my opinions are mixed.  On one hand, hurray for articulate, thoughtful, often humorous food literature!  On the other hand, Colwin goes a bit far into the realm of the food snob to have me fully behind her.  Many of her recipes sound frankly disgusting to me, but I wasn't reading her for cooking suggestions and I believe More Home Cooking was published almost twenty years ago when for all I know tastes were very different.  There was just a lot of rah-rah organics, everything made from scratch, 'knowing about your food', mothers knowing where their children's food came from, etc. etc.  It was tiresome.  All that being said, actually I am enjoying it and have a good ability to skim over annoying prose anyway.

On Rereading - Patricia Meyer Spacks

Spacks is a retired professor of English literature and writes exactly like a retired professor of English literature.  In fact, her entire first chapter carefully outlines what she plans to write about in subsequent chapters.  I just found this odd.  She's articulate and interesting and so far I find that I'm picking this book up and putting it down multiple times.  It hasn't gripped me yet, but that being said I am a die hard rereader myself and really want to hear what she has to say about the subject.

Pilgrim At Tinker Creek - Annie Dillard

I actually saw Dillard's name on a list somewhere recently about books people found helpful in their religious journeys.  I can't say I really understand that but I have absolutely found Pilgrim At Tinker Creek eye-opening for my nature walks.  Her way of looking at the world - observing the huge and the minuscule - is beautiful.

Life Among The Lutherans - Garrison Keillor

The American Stephen Leacock!  This was my first time reading Keillor and he was very, very funny in a dry, cold, Minnesotan way.  We church people are a never ending source of humor, I tell you.

My reading this past month has been pretty sporadic what with the start of homeschooling, a very large event at the church, an overnight trip away that involved air travel and not a little planning on my part.  Hopefully October will see a few more books achieved, especially as I'm hoping to best last year's reading total of 62 books.  So far this year I have read 57.