From My Commonplace: On Loving Words

"We gather these gifts of language as we go along – lines from poems, verses from Scripture, quips, turns of phrase, or simply words that delight us.  We use them in moments of need.  We share them with friend, and we reach for them in our own dark nights.  They bring us into loving relationship with the large, loose 'communion of saints' who have written and spoken truths that go to the heart and the gut and linger in memory.  So our task as stewards of the word begins and ends in love.  Loving language means cherishing it for its beauty, precision, power to enhance understanding, power to name, power to heal.  And it means using words as instruments of love."  p.23

 

~Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies

 

The thing that immediately came to mind when I read this quote was commonplacing – the act of gathering the 'gifts of language' – recording the words, thoughts, and ideas that strike us as we read.   This was a habit that Charlotte Mason encouraged on her older students and trainee teachers, and is one that I have appropriated to myself.  I have been keeping a commonplace for over two years now, and just began my fourth journal.  It is simple really – take those quotes and passages that really strike me in my reading and jot them down in a book.  The overflow of that collection is what appears in this space.

 

James KA Smith asserts in his book You Are What You Love  that we are all lovers – we will love something – it's part of our nature as human beings.  Our habits shape our loves for good or for ill.  The habit of commonplacing forces us to slow down – to consider – to savor words.  It teaches us to love words and to use them well.

 

Sometimes, the simplest things are the most powerful.

 

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On My Nightstand This Week:

Devotional: Luke with the Luke for Everyone Commentary (NT Wright)

The Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven (Maurice)

The Daily Office Lectionary Readings and Prayers from The Trinity Mission

 Theological: Mere Christianity (Lewis)

On Education: Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators (Woodward)

                                                          Personal Choice Fiction: The Game (King)

Personal Choice Nonfiction: Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies (McEntyre)

With my Hubby: Emma (Austen)

Family Read-Aloud Literature: At the Back of the North Wind (MacDonald)

 

 

Click Here for more Words

 

Morning Basket Journals

So, back at the beginning of the school year, I posted our Morning Basket Plans.  Since it's been a little while since I posted that, I thought I'd give a bit of an update on how that's going before continuing that series on our school plans. J

 

For the most part, not much has changed.   We are still loving our morning walk (and, now that things are cooler, enjoying a cup of hot cocoa or tea over our morning basket when we return on days when time allows), and our rotation of readings, songs, and drill is going well.   The one thing that I noticed when we had Term 2 exams (6 weeks in to our new school year – our AO Years and our School Years are kind of a mess – we roll with it) was that retention of material that we covered as a group during our Morning Basket was much less than the subjects they do individually with me.   I don't know if that's because it's the first thing we do each morning, so it gets crowded out by their individual subjects by the end of the day, or if it's because they are more likely to tune out or rely on others to narrate for them, or some of both.  So, in an effort to remedy that I introduced the Morning Basket Journal:

 

 

The idea behind these is quite simple, really.  At the end of our Morning Basket time each morning we take about 5 minutes to record something we read, sang, or talked about that particularly struck us – something we want to remember.  The form this can take is up to each individual.  It can be a sketch, or a brief written narration, or a commonplace-type entry of a quote from a reading or song.

 

 

For whatever it's worth, this isn't a type of notebook that Charlotte Mason herself specifically advocated.  (Of course, Morning Time didn't originate with her either J.)  That said, I do believe that it is keeping with her principles – it is a form of narration, really.   It begins with a blank page, and it is up to each individual to decide what they want to record – what they took from that morning's 'feast'.   The idea was partly inspired by some of the principles of Charlotte Mason style notebooking from Laurie Bestvater's The Living Page and partly from Jenny Rallens' video on The Liturgical Classroom.

 

 

The six year old sometimes has a little trouble getting started, but overall, this has been quite a successful venture so far.  They enjoy taking those few minutes to record and share something that struck them.  It remains to be seen if their exam results will be different at the end of Term 3 in comparison with Term 2…but for now, I am satisfied that there is Truth, Goodness, and Beauty seeping down into their souls, which is the ultimately the goal, exam results aside.  I've been keeping a journal with them, and have been struck by how much *I* have gained from taking these few minutes to reflect.  Morning Time is good for Mama's soul too, y'all.

 

 

The Garden Project, or We Actually Grew Some Totmatoes!

Since moving to Africa a little over two years ago, we've mostly just focused in on trying to get acquainted with our surroundings in our nature study time…and we still do a lot of that.   But given that we are now pretty familiar with the things we are likely to see in our neighborhood, the fact that I have come to realize that nature study really IS science – textbook not needed, and that the kids are all getting a little bit older I felt like it was time to bring a little more 'focus' into our nature study time.  We started with plants, and decided to do a little gardening project, using the Handbook of Nature Study as our inspiration.  The section on "How to Begin Plant Study" (p. 453-459 in the edition I have) has some wonderful ideas.  One thing that I particularly noted was this: "The object of planting any seed should be to rear a plant which shall fulfill its whole duty and produce other seed."   I decided that rather than germinating bean seeds in baggies, as many elementary science texts suggest, we should actually try our hand at gardening and see if we couldn't watch a plant go through its entire life cycle.  I'm no gardener, so it was with a bit of fear and trepidation that we began…but I figured even if we failed, it was worth a shot.  (There's something to be learned from failure too, right?!)

 

Observing the seeds before planting.

 

Planting seedlings in various types of soil.

 

Seedlings ready for observation

We began with some squash and tomato seeds that we harvested from some local market produce (there are heaps of instructions online about how to do this).   We planted them in small cups to begin with so we could observe the seedling growth more carefully in the early stages.   We took advantage of this seedling time as well to conduct a few of the 'experiments' in the Handbook – planting in various materials (garden soil, sand, sawdust), watering too much or too little, watching how the leaves turned towards the sunny window, planting the seeds near the sides of a clear cup so we could observe the roots growing down into the soil.   All of these things helped us draw conclusions for ourselves about the needs of plants.

 

The seed case was still stuck on to the first little leaves that pushed out.  I don't think I'd ever observed that before.

 

Seedling in wood shavings

Close up of the roots

  

The pumpkin seeds never sprouted, sadly, but we got several good strong tomato seedlings which we later transplanted into a sunny spot in our yard.  It was great fun to watch them grow bigger and bigger, eventually flower, and the first tiny green tomatoes appear.

 

Our little tomato patch

 

First tomato flowers

 

First couple tomatoes!

 

I was a little bit worried that bugs or tomato blight might strike…but they never did.  We harvested our first ripe red tomato last week.  (Sweet Elizabeth made the point of picking and bringing it to me when it had just BARELY turned the first little bit of pink…but it ripened up nicely in the window.)  What fun to observe and eat our very own homegrown tomato, and see the full life cycle of a plant come to pass! 
 

 

Our first ripe tomato alongside a green one that got knocked down before ripening.

 

 

Ready to eat!

 

We recorded all of our observations along the way in a special 'garden journal', separate from our regular nature journals.
 

James' (6.5) entry.  I ask him to write what he saw, where he saw it, and the date on his nature journal entries.  Love how very literally he takes me sometimes....

Mama's Garden Journal

Michelle's (9) Garden Journal

 

 This was a really simple project…even for a black-thumb like me!...and well worth the effort in terms of the value of what we learned and observed *for ourselves*, which of course is one of the most valuable parts of nature study-as-science.  I was also encouraged to have success in gardening…perhaps if we are ever settled enough in the States where we don't have access to cheap local produce, we will give a real garden a go.

 

Sharing this peek into our garden journals with this month's Keeping Company link-up.  Click Here for more Keeping Inspiration

Our Timeline Books

We've gone through a variety of timeline formats in the history of our homeschool.  We started with a wall timeline chart with pictorial images, but it was unwieldy and awkward and was always falling off the wall.  So that turned out to be a fail.   Then we tried a binder timeline with pictorial images, which was better.  However, by the end of that school year, it had pretty well fizzled too – in part because the binder was clunky and so I often *forgot* (ahem) to pull it out.  The printing of images was also too dependent on me and wasn't allowing Michelle to form enough of her own connections, which is a big part of the value of keeping some kind of a timeline.  So we dropped that idea too.   Last summer, we started a Stream of History Chart as described in The Living Page, and that is still working well for us.  In the post in which I described that chart, I mentioned that I was toying with different ideas to replace the binder timeline.  Today, I wanted to share what we ended up with because I have been quite pleased with how it has worked out for us.   It was inspired by an idea shared by another lady over on the Ambleside Online forum.  This is our take on that idea.

 

I started with one of these Moleskine notebooks.  The pages pull out accordion fold style but close back up into a slim little book that is easy to store and easy to grab when we want to add something.   Because I now have two official students and therefore two identical timeline books floating around my house, I printed their initials in a fancy font onto sticker paper to stick onto the front covers to easily tell them apart.

 

 

Stretched out on the table

 

The idea is along the same lines as Miss Mason describes herself here in Volume 1, just in a little book that can be folded away rather than a large sheet of paper or wall chart. Each page is one century. I started with the present century in the front of the book and worked backwards through the centuries AD.  The flip side of the pages work back through the centuries BC.   When we come across something we want to enter, we very simply add that name or event into its correct century.  With my Year 1 student, we do this together directly after reading – I'll ask him at the end of a historical reading if there is anything he wants to add, and then I help him find the correct century and add it.   On Fridays, I ask my Year 3 student to think of 2-3 people or events that she has read about that week that she would like to add. I am starting to teach her how to look up the dates online when they aren't mentioned in the book we are reading so she can add them for herself.

 

This term's history (Year 3, Term 1)  has focused in heavily on the 1500's.  You can see the list of names she has collected here.

 

Here's a 2-page spread from James' book (Year 1, Term 1)

 

 

For the centuries BC, I only went back to 2000BC, and then added one more page titled 'dates before 2000BC'.  This left about three blank pages left at the end of the book.  James, my Year 1 student, hasn't used these pages yet.  Michelle (Year 3)  is keeping a running list of all the Kings and Queens of England that we have read about in Our Island Story on one of the pages, and chose to copy the family tree chart we made to help us understand the Wars of the Roses onto another page.  We'll see what else we come up with to do with these pages as time goes on.

 

 

 

My plan is to continue keeping these books through our first history rotation – which in AO goes through the first term of Year 6.  When they start back at the ancients again in the second term of Year 6, I will have them start keeping a 'real' Book of Centuries (like Jeanne describes here).  I hope to purchase a Book Of Centuries while we are in the States this coming year so I can start keeping one for myself.  I find the best way to train my children in 'keeping' habits is to 'keep' right along with them.  

 

Click Here for More Keeping Inspiration

 

My Commonplace Book

In my 2014 reading round-up post, I mentioned that last year I started keeping a Commonplace Book.  Today, I thought I'd give you a little glimpse of it.

 

First of all, though, perhaps a bit of explanation might be in order.  What is a Commonplace Book?  Laurie Bestvater describes it this way in her excellent book The Living Page:

 

"The Commonplace collects student-selected passages but from any and all reading on any and all subjects.  Mason also refers to it as a Reading Diary.  Though a Commonplace may contain student writing in the form of the odd character sketch or plot summary, it generally consists of other people's writing. Like a graduated form of the copybook, it is begun in earnest by the student at middle or high school age when his learning is becoming more and more under his own direction and, ideally, used throughout life….the syllabus instructs Form IV [high school aged students] to 'keep a Commonplace Book for passages that strike you particularly.' And likely students would have known exactly what was meant: a personalized notebook that crossed subjects and was meant to go with them everywhere as a dear companion and a record of their reading/learning."

~Laurie Bestvater, The Living Page, p.32-33

 

So really, it's just a book in which to jot down interesting quotes from your reading.  Charlotte Mason encouraged her older students to develop the habit during their school days with a goal of continuing as a lifelong practice.   I started mine last year in part because I hated to mark up my lovely, old, rare (expensive!) copy of Essex Cholmondely's The Story of Charlotte Mason, and in part because I do much of my reading on the Kindle.  While I do use the 'marks' feature frequently to highlight passages as I read, it doesn't have the same impact as highlighting and scribbling marginal notes in a real book.  Jotting those quotes and notes down in a separate notebook seemed a good solution to that little issue.

 

So here it is.  It's actually just a hardback composition book that I purchased during back-to-school season at one of the supermarkets in our city here in Africa.  I'd love to be able to have a really lovely, classy notebook for this purpose (someday…), but for now kinda-cutesy composition books will have to do. (I actually loved seeing some photos of one of Charlotte Mason's own Commonplace Books over at Afterthoughts last week…and was very gratified to see that she just used an ordinary composition book too.)  I do use a nice pen to write in it though:

 

 

Here's a peek inside:

 

 

And a closer up quote, a selection from Charlotte Mason's Ourselves (which is highly quotable by the way…lots of entries from the past couple months have come from this book.  I wonder if Charlotte ever dreamed that people would be Commonplacing her words?) :

 

 

And that's it.  It's pretty simple.  I don't tend to put much other than direct quotes, other than occasionally a sentence or two to explain the context if that seems necessary.  I've found this to be a wonderfully helpful practice.  Taking the time to stop and write out by hand the interesting or beautiful or thought-provoking passage from a book has caused me to reflect and retain more than just reading and marking in the book.   Looking back over previous entries jogs those memories too.   It also forces me to slow down and read more carefully rather than just rush right through, something that is right in line with my reading goals for this coming year.

 

I'm sharing this post over at Celeste's new Keeping Company link-up at Joyous Lessons.  Click on over and check it out for more 'Keeping' inspiration!