Stacks Book Challenge

I finished Linnets and Valerians by Elizabeth Goudge. Mama Squirrel thought I might be disappointed with it, and Tim read it one day when I set it aside and said it had voodoo in it, so I decided not to read it aloud to the younger boys as I had planned.

The book was very enjoyable, you're plunged right into the story from the first page. The kids aren't perfect, but they're interesting and likeable. Tim commented that at the beginning, it seems like a Saturdays book by Elizabeth Enright, but it evolves into a Nesbit book along the way. He was right, it seems pretty straightforward at first, but subtly becomes fantastic (as in fanciful and unbelievable). But I still liked it. It reminded me of The Little White Horse in the sense that good overcame evil and all the loose ends were tied up into one blissful happy ending and everyone lives happily ever after forever and ever. I like that.

I also read More All-of-a-Kind Family and Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family. More AOAKF was a lot like the first book, light and enjoyable and ending with a wedding. Ella was disappointing. The writing seemed choppy, as if it was written in short little sentences for second graders (were the first two like that? I don't remember them being like that) but the subject matter - a girl on the verge of womanhood choosing between a glamorous career and a mundane family life with the man she loves - is suited for readers old enough for real sentences. And it lacked the charm of the first two, maybe because it wasn't about little children and their antics, but about an older girl making a big decision.

I've read my five books and then some, but I still plan to read The Iliad for Boys and Girls before my challenge is done. It was one of the books I originally listed (I listed six instead of five).

The Maid upon the Road

He:
Come with me, my pretty, and give me thy love
And I'll promise thee love and the world beside:
I'll tie up thy tresses with ribbons y-wove
And one day thou wilt be my bride.

She:
Swiftly indeed thou wouldst give me thy love,
But I'll not be so swift, and I'll not give thee mine,
For another fair maiden I've seen by the road,
Walking slow near the stream where the willows twine:

She sang: "I gave him my heart and my love,
And he promised me love and the world beside;
But I now walk alone in the willow-grove
And he seeks after another bride."

So I'll not be giving my heart or my love
To just any who ask, or who promise me fine:
For the man who desires my heart must prove
That he's worthy to keep it, ere I give him mine.

The Message of Christmas

Is joy to the world, right?

Another Birthday

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him,
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign.
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.

Christmas

We had a nice Christmas, just us again - our relatives live pretty far away, too far to plan a trip without a long vacation. Mr. B baked his traditional Christmas lasagna, we listened to Christmas music, watched Christmas movies, ate Christmas cookies (except me - although I haven't kept totally to my raw diet, I did manage to stay away from all dairy, wheat and sugar!) and played Scrabble.

Miss M got a Fisher Price doctor's kit and she's been going around all day taking our temp, checking our blood pressure and listening to our hearts with her stethoscope. She also got a hardboard purse/book with all kinds of purse stuff in it, and she's been carrying it around very importantly all day.

Usually we make three different kinds of cookies each year - I make chocolate chip, and Mr B makes a cakey pumpkin breadish cookie, and a butter cookie cut into shapes and decorated with colored sugar. This year we only made one. I adapted a gingerbread cookie recipe when the boys were little and didn't like the strong flavor of gingerbread. Mostly, I just halved the spices. We decided that those taste better than the butter cookies, so we just made those this year. I'll paste the recipe below.

Our favorite Christmas CD's this year:
Handel's Messiah
Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols
The Nutcracker Ballet
Christmas Celtic Sojourn
Comfort and Joy, A Christmas Celtic Sojourn (new to us this year)
Joy to the World - Robert Shaw Chorale
Perry Como - That Christmas Feeling (another new one for us)

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Lightly Spiced Ginger Cookies

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Mix and set aside:
5 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

Take out a half cup of the flour mixture. Add:
1/2 cup sugar. Use this mixture later to flour the board, dough and rolling pin.

Mix:
2 sticks butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar

Add in:
2 eggs
2 Tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Roll out, cut into shapes, sprinkle with colored sugar and bake 375 degrees 5-8 minutes. (These bake fast!)

Update on the War Against Homeschooling in Germany

A homeschool organization within Germany is requesting that letters be sent. More here. I'm keeping an eye on this because there are some here who are using the same logic to try to make homeschooling here difficult.

Thanks to Mama Squirrel for bringing this to my attention.

An Old Favorite and a New Discovery

I was reminded of a book I used to love as a child - Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree by Robert Barry. I found a copy recently and read it to Miss M this evening. A man buys a Christmas tree that's too tall to fit in his house, so he cuts off the top. The top is presented to his maid, but is just a bit too tall for her room, so she cuts off the top. The top is found by the gardener . . . This one tree blesses all kinds of furry creatures, and finally a little mouse who lives in a mouse hole right in Mr. Willowby's house. The book is told in rhyme, and the rhyme works (there's nothing more annoying than rhyme that misses a syllable so that the cadence of a sentence is all out of place and you have to throw in a word to make it right.)

And a discovery - okay, it's not really new new. A few years ago, I was laying in bed with the radio on and they played this piano piece. The guy's fingers kept going and going, it was amazing, and it didn't quit! I strained to hear who the composer was. It was William Sterndale Bennett's Piano Concerto 1 in D. I wrote it down and kept it on a slip of paper on my refrigerator for years. Finally I decided to see about purchasing that piano concerto. It wasn't to be found. I did find a CD of some of his other works, out of print, but available used, so I bought it and played it and loved it. The liner notes say . . .

"I think him the promising young musician I know . . . and I am convinced that if he does not become a very great musician, it is not God's will, but his own." Mendelssohn's curiously prophetic words were written in 1836. A few months later, Schumann declared that if there were many more artists like Bennett, the future of music would be secure. The Grove's Dictionary in 1878 called Bennett the only English composer since Purcell . . . and the New Grove Dictionary of 1980 still characterizes him as "the most distinguished composer of the Romantic school."

Despite these favorable opinions of a century and a half, Bennett's music has virtually disappeared from the repertoire.

I really think something should be done about that. I did find a small music company called Lyrita that still sells two of his CD's, but they're in England (I ordered one anyway!) Other than that, his CD's and sheet music seem non-existent. If you go to Lyrita and click on "William Sterndale Bennett," you can see the two CD's - and if you click on them, you can hear samples. Listen and be amazed! One way or another, I plan to acquire all of the music of his that I can.

Another composer I'd like to see come back from oblivion is Samuel Wesley, 1766-1837. He was related to Methodists John and Charles Wesley (Charles Wesley's son), and was called "The English Mozart" when he was young because he was a child prodigy.

Stacks Challenge: Roller Skates

I finished Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer. It was okay. It's about Lucinda, an awkward, spirited girl who's seen as an unpleasant, unattractive, difficult child to her family. When her parents take a trip, she spends a year with her aunts and befriends all kinds of people - the kind of people her parents probably wouldn't approve of. In that respect, she's like Pollyanna. She sees beauty and worth in people that high society wouldn't value. The book has moments of brilliance, but in between those moments, I was bored and had a hard time keeping all the names of her various friends straight.

Towards the end, the book suddenly takes a realistic turn and becomes less fun, then finally ends sadly because Lucinda has to go back home and she doesn't want to leave the wonderful life she's discovered. In that respect, the book ends in despair - there isn't any indication that life gets any better for her when she goes back home, just that she's leaving and is going to leave a large part of herself behind in this place where she's discovered her true self. In fact, in the last scene, she's staring at her own reflection in the water insisting that she'll never leave, and one wonders if she jumped in so she could stay there forever, always ten years old. The beginning of the book is circular, with an unknown person confronting Lucinda years later, and she's still a ten-year-old in roller skates, as if her life never got beyond that one year. Really sad.

I've started Linnets and Valerians by Elizabeth Goudge and I'm enjoying that one a lot more.

A Happy Birthday

The great composer was born 236 years ago today - and the world was never the same again . . .

"Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years." - William F. Buckley, Jr.

Merry Christmas to my AO/HEO Sisters!

Earth, strike up your music,
Birds that sing and bells that ring;
Heaven hath answering music
For all Angels soon to sing:
Earth, put on your whitest
Bridal robe of spotless snow:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.
~ Christina Rossetti



May your Christmas be filled with traditional trimmings and warm memories!

A Gallery of Old-fashioned Christmas Cards

Three Things

1.) Car Update (from the original posts here, here and here). Latest news is - we no longer have that car. It died yesterday while Mr. B was on his way to work. He hadn't even gotten past our street when the car started acting and sounding strange, so he came back home and took the van to work. He took it to the shop and they said that, when he was hit, the frame was badly bent and is now about to crack and break. He's lucky it didn't happen while he was driving. It's not repairable. If we could find the same kind of chassis, we could put the rebuilt engine into it. But we can't find one. The car is older than our marriage - Mr. B got that car brand new about the time we started seriously dating - 1986.

2.) The Headmistress says that everybody is talking about shoes. I rarely talk about shoes. Generally I have two pairs of shoes - a pair of sneakers that I wear everyday and a pair of black shoes to wear when I dress up. I usually wear jeans and a T-shirt or sweatshirt. On Sundays I dress up, which means black jeans and a nicer T-shirt. At the AO conference a couple years ago, everyone looked so nice--Donna-Jean wore the cutest matching skirt outfit with a jacket and heels. I wore this. Black jeans and the nicest T-shirt I had. When I go shopping, there are infinitely more interesting things to shop for than clothes - like paper, Sharpie markers, purses, music, books. A friend took me out about six years ago and helped me pick out new, updated clothes. I thought I was good for another fifteen years. But I'm finding that, on Sundays, I look in my closet and the only warm tops I have these days are sweatshirts. I don't remember what I wore last winter. What happened to those clothes? Maybe I was so preoccupied with the nursing toddler that I wasn't thinking about what I wore? I just don't remember. So, while I was out with dh Christmas shopping last night, he pointed out some tops at KMart. I took the opportunity to pick out four tops as quickly as I could and he's going to wrap them for me for Christmas. So I should be set for another six years. My dress shoes look close to this.

3.) Some local news - this should interest Miss Roxie, who will remember the day we spent at Barnes and Noble.

On Mister Rogers today

There was a segment about getting a check-up at the doctor's. The little girl, Julie, reminded me so much of Miss M! The same expressions, tone of voice, way of expressing herself, reactions, even Julie's face reminded me of Miss M! She was very cute. I wonder if she kept her mom on her toes, like Miss M does with us?

Hard to believe, that little girl is probably in her thirties by now, the show looks like it was recorded in the 70's.

Stacks Book Challenge

My original post here.

I finished All-of-a-Kind Family. I enjoyed it and even want to know what happens next - will a baby change the family dynamics? Ella is just on the verge of growing up; what will life hold in store for her? I'd like to read the sequels. I know there are two - More All-of-a-Kind Family, and Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family. There might be more than that. This could be very enjoyable light reading. Where was this series when I was growing up? I would have loved it. Funny that I never knew about it. I read and enjoyed other similar series.

I finished Just David, too. But even if there was a sequel, I wouldn't be interested. It was all pretty predictable. He changes everybody's lives for the better, there's a scare where everybody fears for him - very much like Pollyanna, but not as good. I like Pollyanna and even read Pollyanna Grows Up. I was glad when Just David ended.

Both Just David and All-of-a-Kind Family share the same romantic twist.

Two or three books to go (I originally chose six, not five):
Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer
Linnets and Valerians by Elizabeth Goudge
The Iliad for Boys and Girls by Alfred Church

It's a Wonderful . . . Homeschool?

An interesting adaptation of It's a Wonderful Life.

http://www.thsc.org/news_and_resources/Wonderful.asp

Thanks to JessicaTX at the Gentle Christian Mothers forum for posting about this!

Here's something else - a Flash slide/movie about learning styles. I found it here by chance while skimming new blog posts at homeschoolblogger.

J Went to a Christmas Party . . .

J went to a Christmas party this evening. When he came home, he described the setting and the events of the party with us. Later he repeated his description with Tim when he came home from another outing: "They had a million figurines . . ."

L cut in -- "Earlier you said a hundred. Charlotte Mason herself says, 'Don't exaggerate' in Ourselves."

I read that with him last year; I didn't know he still remembered! And I didn't know she carried so much weight with him!

Good King Wenceslas

We taped this years ago from the Family Channel (which I think became PAX). It's our favorite holiday movie; we watch it every year. I wish they'd release it on DVD, but it's not even currently available on VHS.

Wenceslas (played by Jonathan Brandis) is the crown prince, but his father the king is dead and his wicked stepmother (Stefanie Powers) wants her own son to be king. Wenceslas has been raised Christian, and the stepmother is trying to make the uneducated citizens hate him by burning churches, raising taxes, and passing cruel laws forbidding the people from hunting the royal game, chopping the royal trees for firewood, etc. She arranged for Wenceslas to marry a German princess for her money, then she plans to kill both the princess and Wenceslas.

The Queen and her son Boleslav (Oliver Milburn)

The movie is about Wenceslas fighting to free his people from the evil Queen, his stepmother, in the name of Christianity, and winning the love of the German princess in the process.

Wenceslas and the princess Joanna (Charlotte Chatton)

I don't think it's very factual, but it's a great story. Actually, according to this site, it's not too far off the mark. I really wish it would be released for purchase. It's listed at imdb.com, but the cover shows the wrong movie. Amazon.com lists it, but says it's unavailable - however, it looks like it was released at one time. (Even if this release was dubbed into German. Tim's Note: I also have a high opinion of this movie. It has its weaknesses (inauthentic swordplay, for instance, but then what movie doesn't fail there?) but after watching it every year for nearly ten years I still love it.)

Books Finished in November

Some of my favorite Other Bloggers have posted their lists, and this month I actually finished a couple of books, so I have something to post!

I finished The Mouse and His Child for the Stacks Challenge. I'm still working on Just David--I've had other things to do and haven't gotten to it in a week.

And Tim and I finished Mozart by Marcia Davenport. Now we feel like we know Mozart, and we added a couple of CD's to our collection because sometimes the author would talk about a particular thing he wrote, or the circumstances surrounding it, and we'd have to hear the work she was talking about. We really did need to add to our Mozart collection--all we had were some piano pieces he wrote, and I've only just discovered that it's his chamber music I really like.

The book does mention some indiscretions of some characters, so it needs editing if a student is going to be reading it. I read most of it aloud, so I was able to edit on the fly.

We've started The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder. I finally bought a copy last January and determined to read it this year, and I didn't forget on Dec 1.

I'm also reading Parents and Children, volume 2 of Charlotte Mason's series. I'm going through that slowly and don't expect to finish before March.