Where I Host the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival

I am thrilled that our gracious hostess Amy Tuttle has invited me to write the Charlotte Mason blog carnival on my very favorite topic: mathematics. Of all people, our missionary friend, who lives in a valley between mountain ranges in Peru, understands why Mason called mathematics "a mountainous land which pays the climber, makes its appeal to mind." I encourage you to read Mason's actual words because what she wrote about this invigorating topic may not be what you expect: pages 230 to 232 in her sixth volume (the modern paraphrase of this section is here).

Once you have Mason's words firmly in mind, check out Nebby's consideration of Mason's warning about proportion and mathematics, which rings true in our STEM-obsessed society: Why Study Math? Barb McCoy, a veteran homeschooler who has graduated her children, describes in great detail what I mean by STEM-obsessed society in her post, Our Children Have Not Changed, Math Standards Have. The culture, wrapped in its Enlightenment thinking, has forgotten the point of education: "We homeschool to create a better person in our children. We all are not brilliant in math or science or art or whatever subject you can fill in the blank with. We can let our children be the best that they can be without looking at a standardized test score."

Children are born persons, not percentiles!

You may be scratching your head and wondering how math could offer joy and beauty. Read what Amy Marigold, who is starting to see math with her Maker's eyes, shared about her journey with math: "The natural world is filled with numerical and spatial relationships, that man has been discovering for generations. And God put it all there—to create it, to order it, to keep it running."

How does it look teach math in a way that invites children to appreciate its beauty and truth? Mason stated that "Mathematics depend upon the teacher rather than upon the textbook and few subjects are worse taught; chiefly because teachers have seldom time to give the inspiring ideas, what Coleridge calls, the 'Captain' ideas, which should quicken imagination." As Sarah points out in Math Lesson, good teachers like her husband use the textbook as a springboard and supplement with manipulatives when necessary. In Third Grade Math, Laura also offers real-life activities with concrete objects to go with a computer program and a free arithmetic textbook from Mason's time.

Good teachers present living ideas that inspire and engage and consult textbooks for problems.

Some of us in the Charlotte Mason community are exploring what Richele Baburina calls living teaching in her book on mathematics. I encourage you to read it since she had access to a short, but insightful publication that Mason quoted extensively: The Teaching of Mathematics to Young Children by Irene Stephens. Because the pamphlet is copyrighted by none other than His Royal Majesty, King of England, you cannot simply find it on a search engine nor can you find it on eBay. Thus, one cannot digitize it and post it as a free PDF. Richele drove to Harvard Library in researching Stephens' writing for her book. Richele filled in many gaps for me.

I met Richele at the Living Education Retreat where her talks on math inspired some of us to apply and blog inspiring ways to reveal the truth and beauty of math. In her blog carnival post, she explains how to teach children about multiplication. Bobbie-Jo also attended the retreat and posted her reflections on how to teach mathematics in a living way. I have also written about applying living teaching methods to a child in the autism spectrum who likes math as much as Sam liked green eggs and ham. Two blasts from the past at the Common Room offer ideas for teaching math through play and laundry. At LER, Bobbie-Jo introduced us all to paper sloyd, a wonderful way to blend mind, hands, and heart with math (a student made the envelope in a paper sloyd class) and Nancy Kelly, one of LER's founders, shares what loving eyes and patient hands in her home have done. And, if you still have not had your fill of math, check out another blast from the past: math week at Afterthoughts.

Because "education should be a science of proportion, and any one subject that assumes undue importance does so at the expense of other subjects which a child's mind should deal with," I am happy to share posts on other topics dear to this mathematician's heart. Why? As much as I love math, I love other beautiful things in God's creation. No life should be shut out of the living page, poetry, nature, and art!

Notebooking - Notebooking is integral to how Pamela lives and learns. Every time we visit a museum she draws at least one picture of her favorite item. Today, we joined our school away from homeschool, Harvest Community School, on a field trip to the South Carolina State Museum for the Tutankamun: Return of the King exhibit. Because our school follows Mason's principles, the students brought notebooks and sketched their favorite item (or two or three). If you want to learn more about notebooking from a Charlotte Mason perspective, The Living Page by Laurie Bestvater, is a must-have, even if it is the only book you buy for the rest of the year! She is the person who inspired my excitement about notebooking and now we have a whole school of children filling up living pages. For a lengthier review, check out what Dewey's Treehouse has to say about this new and worthy contribution to CM literature.



Poetry - One of the delights of this week was being able to hear every student in the elementary class recite. One young lady blew me away with nearly perfect recall of Joshua 1:6-9, which she memorized during the first two weeks of school! Several children chose "Autumn" by Emily Dickinson, the poem from last week, while one picked "Hope" and another, "If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking". For an example of students reciting poetry, read Bonnie Buckingham's thousand thoughts blog post. Ann at Harvest Moon by Hand also offers how her daughters react to the intriguing words of Walter de la Mare. You cannot help but long for beautiful words after reading these posts!

Nature Study - What would a Charlotte Mason blog carnival be without nature study? You are never too young or too old to become enchanted by God's marvelous handwork. Here, one of the scribes (recorders of oral exams) meets our classroom pets: Ben, the worm snake, and his friends, a frog and a slimy salamander. Our school has weekly nature outings to a nearby wildlife refuge as does Celeste, who documents her family's experience with pictures of their visit, collections, and notebooking (glorious living pages for you to see). If you are up for an Outdoor Hour Challenge, Barb McCoy offers some ideas for studying woodpeckers. I know it's cold out there, but get out and enjoy creation! And, if you decide to blog time spent watching nature, feel free to post a link at Fisher Academy International.

Picture Study - Our school just wrapped up a study of an artist whom they affectionately call "Rainbow Man" because of the colorful way he paints his hair and beard in self-portraits. During the term finale, I marveled at the wide and varied things our students remember about van Gogh. Of course, the salacious story about why his ear was bandaged is at the top of the list. One student thought his art was very messy, but another was fascinated how awful it looks when you are close to the painting and how it transforms into something beautiful as you back up. One child observed how sad he must have been when he painted the peasants because they were so dark. The three most talked about paintings were Starry Night, Sunflowers, and Self-Portrait in Front of an Easel. We concluded our study with a two-sided puzzle and an alternative way to recall the painting of van Gogh's bedroom. For more impressions of what children have to say about art, read a post by Ann at Harvest Moon by Hand about a study of the work of Carl Larsson.



A hearty thanks to all contributors which made this carnival blog possible!

Kicking-Off Our Study of World War I

Pamela is delighted that we are on the verge of studying the 20th century, focusing on the Great War, based on Ambleside Online's recommendations for this timeframe. In addition to our overall history narrative (the final volume of The Story of the World), we are going to read Rilla of Ingleside to see how war affects the homefront. We will also read the exciting book Falcons of France to understand a new type of warfare (this book is pricey because it was once be out-of-print). Over the Christmas holiday, Steve suggested we visit the National (yes, National) World War I Museum, which just happens to be in Kansas City, Missouri. The museum exceeded our expectations and you can bet we will come back after Pamela has grown more familiar with the landscape of the war. Even though it is pricier than our beloved Nelson-Atkins museum, we visited on Wednesdays when tickets are half-price (seven bucks per person, instead of fourteen). Tickets are good for two consecutive days.

I really like the thought put into organizing the collection. We began by watching a short movie that explained what factors led to war. We walked to the right side of the building, which focuses on the first half of the war. That side offered another movie about the war itself. The opening of that clip had haunting music and written descriptions that brought to mind Tolkien's description of the dead marshes. A veteran of trench warfare, he poured the images of dead bodies lying in mud and muck into the hobbit's nasty trek to Mordor. Underneath the screen was a static display of soldiers in the field with a German Focker hovering above in the dark of night. During the film, light and sound effects in the field below heightened the feeling of doom for those poor men.



The artifacts are organized into categories like any other museum. What I appreciated most were the scenes in which you could peek into a peephole and imagine soldiers in action. The very first display was the trench itself.


Contrast the dirt and grime of the trenches with a peek into a clean, peaceful hospital room.



We walked inside the crater of a bombed-out home. This reminded me of my mother who was born in Berlin in 1940. Her family lived in an apartment complex with a bomb shelter underneath. They heard the bomb sirens sound and ran to the shelter, which was full. After being turned away, they found room in the one across the street. After the dust cleared, they were horrified to learn that their apartment building had collapsed, killing everyone in the shelter.



Because we will focus on the first examples of aerial combat, I took a few pictures in the aviation section. Someone clever showed footage taken during a flight onto the floor, which inspired Pamela to flap and pretend to be a bird.




We also enjoyed the soundproof booths for listening to audio from that era: speeches, musics, poetry, and prose.


I chuckled at the Navy uniforms women wore in that era and tagged my sister, an electronics technician in the Navy Reserves, in the picture I posted on Facebook. I snapped pictures of Pamela standing near a mine and a torpedo.



Of course, even this Naval Academy graduate cannot neglect the army, so I took pictures of life in the trenches for soldiers: gas masks, an ambulance, and a tank.





We could not leave without making an entry in Pamela's book of centuries. She chose a machine gun, which was rather fitting since it was invented during the Great War. A year and a half ago, we had purchased a very durable, beautiful journal especially designed with Charlotte Mason homeschoolers in mind: it is holding up beautifully.

Leaving a museum without touring the bookstore is unfathomable. I looked for the book Dreadnoughts by Robert K. Massie for my personal reading and ended up having to download it on my Nook. However, I did find a postcard that was a blast from the past. Back in the early 1990s, the U.S. Navy decided to go all politically correct and banned this poster from recruiting stations. I, of course, seeing the folly of it, bought one for myself. When I posted a picture of it on Facebook, two friends chimed in: one has a small version of the poster and another friend's wife, who was a classmate of ours at the boat school, bought a coffee cup with the contraband picture. I love my friends!

Plugging the Gettysburg Address into my GPS

By the bivouac's fitful flame,
A procession winding around me,
Solemn and sweet and slow;—but first I note,
The tents of the sleeping army,
The fields' and woods'dim outline,
The darkness, lit spots of kindled fire—the silence;
Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving;
The shrubs and trees,
(As I left my eyes they seem to be stealthily watching me;)
While wind in procession thoughts,
O tender and wond'rous thoughts,
Of life and death—of home and the past and loved,
and of those that are far away;
A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground,
By the bivouac's fitful flame. ~ Walt Whitman

I just counted the number of miles I drove between July 30 and August 30 of 2012 (not including two deliveries of meals on wheels and the times I took a wrong turn): 4,700 miles. That is the equivalent of driving over 150 miles a day! Whenever we travel, we always try to find interesting places to visit. Our recent trip to Pennsylvania, we drove through Gettysburg, so we had to stop there on the way home. As is typical in a Charlotte Mason paradigm, we had just finished reading about Gettysburg and Lincoln's address the week before we headed into "Yankee land" as our parakeet sitter called it. Our stop in Gettysburg ties into a visit to Vicksburg, Mississippi five years ago and Fort Sumter (a place we will revisit when the weather is more humane) four years ago.

Who can resist a headshot with Honest Abe?

But, I digress.

As we walked up to the museum, we were greeted by a chipmunk! Can you see it sitting on the rocks in the picture below?


We are in the middle of several books and things to heighten Pamela's understanding of the Civil War. Our poet Walt Whitman helps set the mood of many battles. Last month, we listened to a slower-tempo version (thank you, Audacity) of the Pa's Fiddle version of When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again, which was published in 1863 (we used lyrics from The Laura Ingalls Wilder Songbook). We have nearly finished a book with six stories about slavery and the Reconstruction era, and you can see Pamela trying on chains in the picture on the left. This visit is perfectly timed with what we have been studying for two years.

We are reading the closing chapters of for South Carolina history, Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter, and we bought its companion at the museum in Gettysburg (Yankee Girl at Gettysburg). Here are two pictures I took to tie into the Civil War and South Carolina. The flag is especially meaningful because the heroine of the book got kicked out of school for refusing to salute the Palmetto flag.



A couple of things struck me about the visit. The cyclorama astounded us. What is a cyclorama, you ask? In the late 19th century, this popular entertainment venue featured ginormous oil paintings, created in the round. Imagine standing inside an empty circular swimming pool with the walls depicting a famous historical scene. Most cycloramas portrayed dramatic religious, historical, and literary events. The advent of motion pictures caused interest to wane, and most cycloramas were lost or destroyed.

The Gettysburg cyclorama survived. French artist Paul Philippoteaux depicted the final Confederte assault on July 3, 1863. He came to the city in 1882 and spent the next year exploring the area, sketching, hiring a panoramic photographer, and interviewing veterans of the battle. The painting debuted in Chicago in 1883, made even more realistic with a three-dimensional foreground of dirt littered with battlefield debris, stone walls, shattered trees, and broken fences. Bringing it into the 21st century, the National Park Service has added sound effects, smoke, flashing lights, and a recorded narrative to the experience. The skyline above the painting allows the lighting to change as the day begins and progresses.

Pamela and I followed fellow visitors from all over the world into a theater that played a twenty-minute film narrated by Morgan Freeman. The guides herded us through winding passages and up ramps and stairs to a platform inside the cyclorama. The lights dimmed, and we watched a gorgeous sunset in the east. Then, confusion erupted. Unlike soldiers and citizens trapped in the battle, we heard a narrative, explaining how the skirmishes unfolded. This experience was so impressive, that I plan to stop in Atlanta's cyclorama on our next trip to Kansas.

The biggest idea I learned during our visit is how the battle was set in the middle of the town of Gettysburg. Battles were fought in the middle of farmland, where there were fences, barns, and homes. Since many roads converge and meet in the city of Gettysburg, the location of this battle makes sense. The town provides cover in its natural ridges and hills. The names of various skirmishes reveal how interwoven the battle was into the town: the peach orchard, wheatfield, cemetery hill (a graveyard), seminary ridge (a Lutheran seminary was located there), etc. The fact struck me when we first drove into the park and noticed homes within the boundaries of the park, which this map illustrates well.

After the two armies moved on, two thousand citizens crawled out of cellars and hurried back from nearby towns. Their community was wrecked: damaged property, looted homes, destroyed crops, and stolen food. Even worse, they found tens of thousands suffering in homes, barns, and public building. Dead bodies littered the ground. Animals feasted on some dug up from shallow graves. The stench sickened everyone.







The people of Gettysburg quickly realized they were standing on holy ground, consecrated with soldier's blood. A month after the battle, attorney David McConaughy's purchased the heights of Cemetery Hill for reinterring the battlefield casualties. They dedicated Soldiers' National Cemetery in November 1863, which is when Lincoln delivered his famous lines, "Four score and seven years ago...."



At the museum bookstore, Pamela picked up two books and I paid for a truly living book on the Civil War recommended to me by one of my study group friends: The Civil War: A Narrative by Shelby Foote. I have already found myself delaying housework, laundry, and blogging reading the opening chapter narrating the life of Jefferson Davis and that of Abraham Lincoln. The author's take on literature and history are spot on to what Mason educators believe,

The point I would make is that the novelist and the historian are seeking the same thing: the truth — not a different truth: the same truth — only they reach it, or try to reach it, by different routes. Whether the event took place in a world now gone to dust, preserved by documents and evaluated by scholarship, or in the imagination, preserved by memory and distilled by the creative process, they both want to tell us how it was: to re-create it, by their separate methods, and make it live again in the world around them.

Pamela made her Book of Centuries entry and I love how she shows a ball flying out of the cannon.



Pamela made her Book of Centuries entry, and I love how she shows a ball flying out of the cannon.

Even though some of my Facebook friends believe Pamela was consoling Lincoln, I think she was exploring how bronze hair feels.

Nelson-Atkins, *Our* "British Museum"

A friend who studying Charlotte Mason's sixth book with us in our little homeschooling group is married to an airline pilot who occasionally spends time in London. Sometimes, he visits the British Museum. Yes, THE British Museum--swoon! My friend of the Raptor in My Prius fame was so sweet: she asked him to pick up a gift for our family. They gave us a History by the Meter measuring stick. Truly, a perfect item for us. Now, before we pick a book on the schedule (the paper with orange highlights), Pamela says, "I'd like a book from Modern Times."

"So, what's the big deal about the British Museum" you ask? You shouldn't have!

Charlotte Mason's journal, The Parents' Review, published a series of articles about the contents of the British Museum, the eventually became a book, now available online. Students in her schools and homeschools read this book to inspire them: "Whether the children have or have not the opportunity of visiting the Museum itself, they have the hope of doing so, and, besides, their minds are awakened to the treasures of local museums" (Page 176).

In a letter to Mason about a trip to London one mother commented on the kind of inspiration she witnessed in her eleven-year-old child: "She also expressed her anxiety to make acquaintance with the British Museum and see the things there that they had been 'having' in their term's work. So the next morning we went there and studied the Parthenon Room in great detail. She was a most interesting companion and taught me ever so much!" (Page 77)

We are enjoying spring break in Kansas, so Pamela and I headed to *our* British Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Our first visit reminded me that "less is more." The second one taught me the joy of focusing on a few things and studying them carefully and of having a book of centuries on hand. Our third visit showed me how relationships play a part in this.

My junior high class took a field trip to the Art Institute of Chicago. Two memories have stuck with me a few decades later. George Seurat's ability to transform dots into beauty amazed me in his painting, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. He was so far ahead of his time in prefiguring the concept of pixels, which are so vital in computer graphics! My enthusiasm for Impressionists began that day. The other memory is staring at one of Jackson Pollard's dribbles and wondering why people considered it art. Just trying to be honest here! Whatever else we saw and heard that day evaporated from my mind. Although we were happy to escape the classroom for a day, what Mason wrote of field trips as "the act of pouring information down the throats of the unhappy children who are taken to visit our national treasure houses" rang true for us.

Mason focused on self-education and reflecting upon what is already known: "It will be noticed that the child is educating herself; her friends merely take her to see the things she knows about and she tells what she has read." For that to happen, children must read wide and varied books. The relationships Pamela and I have formed with what we read in her books have guided our focus at the museum. On our first visit, we focused on artists that we already knew (Monet and Millet) and we previewed one we were on the verge of getting to know (van Gogh). Our second visit concentrated on readings we had been doing on ancient art (architecture, sculpture, and painting) plus our ancient history book.

Our first stop was to our dear friend Monet. His spectacular panel of water lilies was not available during our last visits. Before entering the room, I told Pamela I had a surprise for her: a painting by Monet that she had never seen. Her expression is priceless, and one of my friends on Facebook noted, "To see this art through Pamela's eyes is pure joy!" You can see the blaze of admiration in her posture in the picture below.



In one of the hallways of the museum, we found this display in which you could actually feel what the brushstrokes in a painting of water lilies might feel like. The left end is canvas with a foundational color. As you move toward the right, the canvas slowly transitions to water lilies and their bold lines of color.

Between a children's biography and picture study, we have spent an entire term studying van Gogh and his style of color and brushwork. We learned about how different his early work on the right (Portrait of Gijsbertus de Groot) and his later work on the left (The Olive Orchard). Van Gogh lived in the coal mining region of Holland and painted a series of somber pictures and sketches in thick black charcoal to reflect the mood there. The painting of Gijsbertus has van Gogh's characteristic bold strokes but lacks the color and frenetic energy of his later paintings. Apparently, as van Gogh got closer to the time of his death, he impatiently painted as if he knew the end was near. He didn't bother to mix the colors and his brushstrokes jump at you. When I examined the trunks of the olive trees in the French orchard carefully: I noticed how the bark is made primarily of blue and green streaks with blocks of orange and black for highlighting and shading. The cream-colored and sage green chunks in the pathway looked good enough to eat. Van Gogh's haste makes the trees quiver and the path shiver with life.



No tour guide, placard, or audio blip told me what to seek in van Gogh's work. At the museum, I found things I already knew and I am sharing them here with you.

We left the world of Impressionism and traveled back in time to the ancient world. Because Pamela had already made several entries about Egypt, she chose to draw the bronze and wood sculpture of the ibis (one of the animals the god Thoth liked to inhabit). Only last week we read about how Thoth was the god of wisdom and taught the Egyptians their arithmetic, writing, etc. However, I think Pamela was more interested in learning that ibises have claws, not webbed feet.



We took a brief rabbit trail into literature on our way to our next stop (Greek sculpture). We found a bust of the Emperor Hadrian, who built the wall that plays a major role in a chapter we started two weeks ago. We also spotted the centaurs done in relief on the base of a Roman sculpture of a boy. Just last week, Pamela had commented when we read about Hercules killing some centaurs in The Wonder Book, "Just like Phidias." Yes! Phidias just rolled off her tongue and nearly knocked me to the ground in surprise and delight. Last week, we wrapped up our study of Phidias and the relief sculptures of centaurs in battle on the walls of the Parthenon. Once she saw a centaur up close and personal, she told me it reminded her of Narnia.



The museum's collection of Greek pottery (studied on a previous visit) is more extensive than the object of our interest in this trip: Greek sculpture. Pamela settled on this grave stele of a father and his two children. Pamela enjoys drawing animals and geometric solids far more interesting than people, which is why I think she gave up on the daughter.



We finally made it to the second floor on this visit, which houses collections of Asian and North American items. One cannot cover an entire museum in a day without losing one's mind. We chose to visit the Japanese room because we started a book about 19th century Japan a month ago. I loved the look of the warm wood and a sparse collection of objects, which communicated elegance and tranquility to me. We wandered around exploring everything in the room and finding things that reminded us of the book we are reading.



Pamela finally settled on copying a few samurai warriors into her book of centuries. When we left the Japanese room, we saw something that nearly took our breath away: a spectacular suit of armor for a samurai. The most curious aspect of this armor were the shoes, which reminded us of fuzzy, black bedroom slippers. The helmet captured our attention between the golden crest on top and the black lacquer face mask with strip of fur that made it look more fierce. The armor was made in the 17th century during the great peace in which Japanese art flourished.





I had no plan in mind when we stumbled into the Native American room, but Pamela did. She started looking for any artifact from Wisconsin, the setting of a book we are reading about a family from the Ojibwa tribe. While we didn't find anything from the state she was seeking, we did find this coat made out of buffalo from Ontario. Pamela smiled, rocked, rubbed her face, and clasped her hands—all signs of extreme joy. I love how she turned this impromptu visit into a treasure hunt!



We didn't escape the bookstore without purchasing a supersized, overpriced book that captured Pamela's heart. I consoled my grief at being hoodwinked into this impulse purchase by deep cleansing thoughts. The book is "avishly illustrated and encyclopedic in scope" according to the Amazon review. It supports a good cause (our favorite museum). I would have paid an extra $15 in shipping and handling anyway. I only bought a postcard of water lilies for 75 cents, so everything balances out. I didn't have to pay for Starbucks because I remembered the gift card...