Come to the Feast!

We didn't get off to a great start last week. Sunday morning, I woke up with throbbing throat and plugged-up head. I felt bad enough to play hooky from church. I'm sure the choir will thank me later for having spared them from these miserable germs. I was well enough to launch the new term, having slightly adjusted our course after exam week. Lots of people are sick right now. Whether child or teacher is sick, we are soothed by listening to classical music, reading living books with interesting stories, studying art, and sharing poetry. Even sickly mothers like me can nurse a sore throat with a hot cup of tea sweetened with agave nectar and enjoy the feast with our kids.

How did our feast look this week? What captured Pamela's eye? What kind of delights did we sample? What relationships were renewed? What ones began?

We kicked off the week with an impromptu science lesson. We have been studying vapor. Early Monday morning, Pamela was walking on the back porch in temperatures cold enough for her to see her breath. I joined her and we huffed and puffed several times. She smiled and said, "Steam!" I added, "Yes, we're making vapor." Later in the week, we breathed on glass, generated vapor with a tea kettle, and condensed vapor on a plate. Pamela wrote notes in her notebook. While walking through a wet parking lot, Pamela noticed an oil slick and asked, "Is it a rainbow?" Last month, we had read a chapter about rainbows and how sun shining through water drops make them. Seeing a rainbow on pavement caught her attention! Pamela added a cold front to her notebook. She has come a long since she thought clouds were made of cotton!

On the artsy front, Pamela nearly finished her first finger-knitted scarf for her eldest baby Baby Alive. After doing a picture study of her first one by Millet, I asked her which artist Millet reminded her of: Monet, Vermeer, and da Vinci. Without hesitation, Pamela replied, "Monet!" Although she might not be able to fully explain it, Pamela sees the link between impressionist artists. We are reading about Mesopotamian mosaics. To make sure she understood how we use tile today, we walked through the house and spotted tile around our fireplaces and in the kitchen and bathrooms. She drew a lovely version of musicians playing for the king in the Standard of Ur in her history notebook. While delivering meals on wheels, we listened to two fugues by Bach and THE toccata everyone knows which I hope a young man from our church will play for us someday!


We started several new songs: Mary Had a Baby, One Small Child, and "El Coqui." After one line of the new Spanish folk song, Pamela exclaimed, "Just like Dora the Explorer!" Somehow, I had inadvertently stumbled upon a beloved song from her Nickelodeon days of yore. Since Pamela seemed so familiar with it, I asked her what cantar and coqui meant. Pamela told me singing and frog--even her tía Janet didn't know this alternative way of saying frog. We also started a new fairy tale, Caperucita Roja, and two more homemade Spanish stories about Pamela's grandmother and how to make pie. Then, when she turned off the audio, Pamela said, "Hasta luego!"

Language arts was neat. Pamela did the standard fare of copywork, studied dictation, and recitation instead of typical spelling and grammar textbook homework. She took notes on what we are learning about wild canines from In the Valley of Wolves for written narration. We started a new poet Carl Sandburg. An unplanned connection made our introduction sweet. The first poem was the closing lines of Windsong,

"There is only one horse on the earth
and his name is All horses . . ."

which we started reading right after beginning a new book about--horses! And, in the book on horses, the author wrote of a character who spoke "in a hoarse whisper" like Pamela's mother who read the passage in a hoarse voice! Pamela stopped me and asked, "What is hoarse?" So, I explained, "A hoarse voice is how I am talking right now--with a sore, scratchy throat." The next day, with another book, she instructed me to be the "narrator," so she could read the "quotated." To spotlight the idea of voice in writing, I introduced the word dialog to her: "Oh, you are going to do the dialog. I'm going to do the narrative." Several books later, Pamela observed "only narrator" and I added, "That's right! This chapter has no dialog." With yet another book, I read part of one character as if I were yelling across the house because he was talking through the window to a character in the back yard. And, what did Pamela do? She read, "YES," and continued to read her part in a very loud voice. Isn't interesting how the idea of homophones and voice arise naturally in living books without me having to crack open an official language arts textbook? We teach what Pamela needs when she needs it.

Pamela drew many things. She finished a book on the C.S.S. Hunley and began another set in Charleston at the beginning of the Civil War, so she drew a diagram of the submarine and a map of Charleston Harbor in her drawing notebook and entered another picture of the Hunley in her history notebook. She drew a picture of an Indian chief Lewis and Clark met on their journey. I revamped my approach to our book on American farm life during this era and scaled it back to one major topic a week: this week, Pamela learned about plowing the fields to prepare for sowing corn and added another picture to her notebook.



I am using carefully selected snippets of filmed material to help visualize the settings we are covering. Like many educators, I ordered The Story of Us for free last fall, and we spent less than five minutes a day watching a very specific topic. Since we read through the Declaration of Independence last term, we watched two DVD segments on that topic and Pamela made an entry in her history notebook. Since we won't find opportunities to observe wolves, coyotes, and foxes in the wild here in the Carolinas, we have been observing their behavior from afar by watching In the Valley of the Wolves for seven minutes a day. We are going to be brave and try full-blown Shakespeare by watching a filmed scene before reading it. Pamela got into the spirit watching the movie, chanting "Caesar! Caesar!" with me. Since she loves the story of Julius Caesar, I picked that tragedy for her first venture.

We began our revamped history program and narrations were much better. We do history very differently than most families. In the early years, we present it like a sketch to show the big picture through stories. Then we focus on different pieces of the painting, adding layer upon layer. Only she is the artist, painting the gaps in her mind as she sees them. Pamela has enough of American history sketched in her mind that we can continue as we did last term. For world history, we are making the second pass of ancient history, which Pamela loves, by reading an old favorite from Ambleside Online A Child's History of the World along with the chapters on ancient art from art history books. We are reading selected chapters from AO favorite Fifty Famous Stories Retold--already recorded at Librivox--to sketch European history.

I have learned not to fret over missing details I deem important. As we read through short stories about slaves last term, I realized Pamela did not have a grasp of an archetypal portrait of a slave. This book is grounding her in that picture, and, in future studies, she will be better equipped to focus on individual lives with their unique variations. Rather than viewing narrations as a way of extracting information, I look at them as a way of seeing what she knows.

There are plenty of topics we covered that I only have time to gloss over . . . the birth of Isaac and the travels of Hagar and Ishmael . . . the first public miracle of Jesus . . . political parties today and in Queen Victoria's day . . . the building of the transcontinental railroad and the transatlantic cable . . . the addition of four more states . . . the disappearance of a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition . . . one character arrested and another freed from jail . . . three lost in space--no, wait, FOUR are missing . . .

Even after the banquet is over, Pamela's mind still digests her meal. Last week we began a book about gorillas and a picture of the soles of a gorilla fascinated her, especially the black nails. While I sat here typing, Pamela initiated a short conversation on how dogs and bears have claws and humans and gorillas have nails. Then, she asked, "What about monkeys?" and mentioned an episode of The Simpsons in which Homer cuts his nail.

"Education is a life," the need of intellectual and moral as well as of physical sustenance is implied. The mind feeds on ideas, and therefore children should have a generous curriculum. Charlotte Mason

What about math? You'll be sorry you asked. I'm blogging it next.

Exams and Assessment

When Pamela was six years old, she could only echo back what you said in the last three seconds. When she was twelve years old, she could process a word or two and cue off that, usually misunderstanding what was said, leading to a meltdown. Her auditory processing has made huge strides since then.

Yesterday, Pamela wanted to go on a health food store run. I wasn't in the mood to sit in the car for an hour, so I made an excuse about not having time for I had to put away the Christmas decorations, which were down, but not stored. Pamela eagerly joined my in wrapping and storing the ornaments and even made three trips upstairs to find the paper towels. We finished after only a half hour of effort, so I lost my excuse.

Steve joined us because I was under the weather with a slightly sore throat. We stopped at McDonald's to pick up two small cappuccinos for the road. He told us about the difficulty of the folks at the Mickey D's in Monck's Corner have with making a cappuccino without flavor. He asked, "And what do you think they added?"and paused expectantly. From the backseat, Pamela chimed in, "Flavor!"

After we made it home, Steve asked me if I was going to church. I told him it depends. David asked why. Since Pamela discourages us from talking about illness, I spelled out my dilemma with the military alphabet, "Charlie Oscar Lima Delta." Even though she was in another room, Pamela bolted into the television room to ask, "Who's Charlie Oscar?" Before long, she's going to have us speaking in pig latin . . .

When I assess what helped Pamela make such wonderful progress, I can boil it down to three things: (1) three hours a day of reading books aloud to Pamela sharpened her auditory processing, (2) three years of the association method helped her with the mechanics of language, and (3) Relationship Development Intervention enabled her to think flexibly and engage socially.

What does this have to do with exams, you ask? For me, exam week has verly little to do with blue books, bubble tests, and sharp pencils. It is about discovering what Pamela knows, how much larger her world has become, and what milestones are in the making. It is about deciding how I am doing as her guide and about changing the curricula to make it work for her. Exams include not only assessing her, but also assessing me and the curricula.

I consider her exams a resounding success:

• Pamela narrates better when I talk less (a lesson RDI taught me).
• I need change to our old Ambleside Online standby A Child's History of the World for our history spine. Pamela lacks the background book for the book we were using and her narrations proved that point.
• Pamela needs to build a background for world history before going to a detailed, chronological retelling. I plan to pull out another old Ambleside Online standby Fifty Famous Stories Retold and read one story about a post-Roman Empire person a week.
• Next year, she can focus on history past the fall of the Roman Empire and will have the background stories to make her ready for it.
• Pamela processes absolutely nothing about Greek mythology. I plan to table it until next year and, perhaps, build from a known (Disney's Hercules) by picking stories of gods and goddess from that movie and going from there.
• Pamela needs two years with RightStart Intermediate Math rather than one.
• After all these years, Pamela has a newfound sense of story. In her narrations, I see a beginning, middle, and end starting to emerge. Last year, all she could do was three unrelated sentences.
• When she alternates reading aloud, Pamela needs very little guidance from me. She listens to me read and knows I will stop at the end of a sentence. If her eyes were not tracking, she remembers the last word I said (she repeats it aloud on her own) and finds it. Only occasionally will she ask me, "Where?"
• Pamela definitely lives in a larger world. She learned about new people, new inventions, new plants, more about familiar animals. She learned new songs and new paintings and drawings. She understood more about the seasons and geography. She added more words to her vocabulary, which now has many Spanish words.

The Case for Narration
Over a hundred years ago, Charlotte Mason chose narration as the most efficient way to assess true understanding and to store new knowledge into long-term memory. Pamela didn't study for her exams. All last term, she took turns reading aloud sentences from her books and narrated what she knew. She drew maps for geography, and added drawings to her drawing notebook and drew pictures and wrote narrations for her timeline notebook. She did some nature study and experiments, recording her observations on paper. Education researchers call this "retrieval practice procedures and reconstructing knowledge."

A recent study compared the test preparation techniques of four groups. The first read a science text for five minutes. The second read the material in four consecutive five-minute study sessions (more is better, right?). The third made concept maps by filling in hand-drawn bubbles to connect ideas and concepts, the golden standard of modern study techniques. The fourth read the material, put the text away, spent ten minutes writing what they recalled in a free-form essay (what Mason called written narration), reread it, and wrote some more.

Note: Too many headlines are calling this taking a practice test. We all know that typical tests involve multiple guess and lots of WH questions. These researchers tested through essay, which is another way to say written narration, and, at least, Science Daily got it right!

The scientists found several advantages to retrieval practice procedures for storing new knowledge in long term memory:

• Students show greater gains in meaningful learning.
• Performance generalized across texts identical to those commonly found in science education.
• Essays were effective for comprehension questions and inferences and for creating concept maps.

These surprising results have lead to speculation about why narrating what you read works. Education professor, Marcia Linn said students in the fourth group may "recognize some gaps in their knowledge and they might revisit the ideas in the back of their mind or the front of their mind." They can "retrieve it and organize the knowledge that they have in a way that makes sense to them." Psychologist Nate Kornell stated, "Even though in the short term it may seem like a waste of time, [retrieval practice appears to] make things stick in a way that may not be used in the classroom." More importantly, "It’s going to last for the rest of their schooling, and potentially for the rest of their lives."

My favorite education psychologist Daniel Willingham concluded with the howler of the day, "It's not totally obvious that this is shovel-read--put it in the classroom and it's good to go--for educators this ought to be a big deal."

Has he not been reading my blog? Written narration has been shovel-ready for over a hundred years! I can forgive him for he wrote an important article about why stories are so effective in the classroom.

I have a very simple lesson plan for almost everything. "Tell me what we read yesterday." If she has a blank, I might give her an anchor like "Yesterday, we read about poor King Alfred. What happened to him?" If it is a completely new topic, I might tie it into something she already knows. "Do you remember the book we read about Francis Marion? Well, today, we are going to start a new one about another patriot named Thomas Sumter. Sometimes, we consult a map before a reading or copy a picture.

Then, we read. Pamela and I alternate reading sentences aloud because it improves her oral expression. When we get a reasonable chunk of reading done, she stops and narrates. Then we read more and she stops and narrates. When finished, I look for connections to my life or other books. In one book, a ship was setting sail from Port-aux-Basque, Newfoundland. I told her that I had taken a ferry from that same city to Nova Scotia when we moved back to the United States. Sometimes, Pamela will tell me her connections: John the Baptist dressed like a caveman, the Swamp Fox reminded her of the movie The Patriot, and Lot's wife turned into a sculpture.

During exam week, I tried very hard to limit questions to generic things. "What happened next?" If she is having trouble with that, I tell her the name of the chapter and usually that is enough to job her memory. Sometimes, Pamela forgets to include the name of the person, the time, or the place. If I'm not sure she knows, I might say, "I wonder where he is from" or "I don't know who you are talking about." If I am absolutely sure she knows, I ask her a more direct question.

Julius Caesar Transcript and Video

He [Julius Caesar] was a little boy. He wasn’t strong. He was growing up so fast. He has a sword. They went to France, Spain, and England. No London bell. They want to fight the soldiers. He was strong. He was strong enough. He was fight with the enemies. They fought. They won. Caesar had an election. They had parties [she means parties Caesar held to win supporters, not political parties]. [He grew up] in Rome. [He] lived in one B.C. century.

Drawings
The new thing this year was a drawing notebook. Some of our books have diagrams and illustrations. The process of copying them into her notebook is one more way to learn. During our exam, we talked about things she had learned about the weather. I was curious to see if she understood a new vocabularly word that we had only read about, discussed incidentally, and drawn in her notebook. We never drilled it. When asked "What is precipitation?" Pamela replied, "Rain, snow, flakes, and hail."

Pamela drew two maps to illustrate two topics. She is one-third of the way through the book on the Lewis and Clark expedition. She started the journey in Pittsburgh because that is where the keelboat was built and mapped their progress so far. She also drew the plans for laying the first transatlantic cable. She hasn't finished the book yet, so the exact locations will become clearer and clearer. Pamela drew the phases of the moon too. For sculpture, she drew the Sphinx. When asked to draw a column for architecture, she pointed out the window to the column on the front porch and said, "Over there." She added the flowery flourishes at the top to be like the Egyptians.

Treasurin' and Ponderin'

For the past five years, I have connected with kindred spirits at the Charlotte Mason Conference headed by ChildLightUSA. Last year David joined me and had a blast making friends at the Teen Conference. Pamela must have felt left out because she asked to make it a trio this year. As she isn't autonomous and can't keep the hectic pace of the teens, she hung out with me.

We arrived Tuesday night for dinner with the Smiths, caught up with old friends, made new ones, and listened to music. I spent most of Wednesday in meetings, so Pamela and David hung out at the apartment until dinner, when the conference actually began. Because of Pamela's greater need for downtime, I embraced the idea that "slow is the new fast" and carefully selected what we attended together. I made every plenary session that I really wanted to attend. When I wasn't presenting, we picked Pamela-friendly workshops on crafting and sci-fi movies.

Pamela even had opportunities to practice our current RDI objective (appraising whether someone is available to speak and waiting if they are not). Leading up to the conference, I explained that I would be doing presentations and how I wouldn't be available to talk then. I even brought my laptop and let her play on it to keep her happy. I know, not very Charlotte-Mason-like to encourage your kid to have two straight hours of screen time. That's the real world.

For my first presentation on mathematics, I got turned around trying to find the stairs to the third floor of a building in which I had never been, only to find that (a) the name and password I needed to log-in to the computer didn't work, (b) the room was eighty degrees, and (c) it would only get hotter as the morning progressed. Then, I learned that someone from the math department at Gardner-Webb was at my talk (gulp) while I hoped and prayed Pamela would kindly let me finish without asking if Julius Caesar drove a car or a chariot.

God answered that prayer! Pamela was a doll. I made it through the three issues I wanted to address on Charlotte Mason's thinking about mathematics. I think the mathphobes sensed the awe and wonder of the Fibonacci series, which pops up in the most surprising places. A couple of people had "aha!" moments, and we even had time for questions.

Friday night was the highlight. After a full day, I dropped Pamela off at the apartment with David for some downtime. I facilitated the special needs processing session with a headache and, after we finished, I made it back to the apartment with a blistering headache. I laid on the couch to rest, only the hear Pamela pester me with her request to stay put for a long, dull evening rather than explore Broad River Greenway. All head-pounding aside, I truly wanted to relax with friends in a beautiful setting, but my head hurt too much to argue. I resigned myself to my fate and told Pamela I was disappointed, but that I understood she was tired.

After a good nap, I sat up and munched on some pretzels. Pamela asked, "Where are we going?" I didn't know. Then she announced, "The park!" I smiled and grabbed her hands and kissed them in gratitude. Then, I did the Snoopy dance around the apartment while Pamela smiled in amazement at how easily she could amuse her mother.

We arrived at the park to see two displays by an astronomer with cool-looking models and pictures of the stars and a collector of bugs who had all kinds of creepy crawlers on display. Pamela was not at all afraid of the tarantula crawling up his arm. We started walking down the path and Pamela loved being in the woods. "It's a forest," she said.

We stopped at the cabin where musicians, including our very own Janet Pressley blew us away with her gift for the blues. Pamela said the cabin reminded her of Little House in the Big Woods and asked if it had electricity. She went inside to explore while I chatted with friends for a little while. Pamela got bored, so we continued down the trail.

She said, "Just like The Children of the New Forest."

"I loved that book!"

Pamela added, "Father died. Jacob died."

I added, "The kids were all alone."

We arrived at an overlook with a splendid view of the river. I wanted to take a picture of Pamela. She refused, saying, "No electricity." I realized that using a camera might spoil her imaginative mood, so I suggested that I was a time traveler from the future and wished to take a picture of the river to show my friends. Pamela was cool with that, so I snapped these shots.




Pamela wanted to head back so she said, "Let's go to the man village!" a la The Jungle Book. I suggested animals we might see on the way, like panthers, bears, and pythons, and she laughed. We spent a few more minutes hanging out with friends near the cabin and then Pamela spotted the wooden playground and explored that too.




We drove back to the apartment and, along the way, I treasured and pondered that lovely night. If I had forced her to come, would her mood have been as sweet and magical?

NOT a Laconic Post

For those of you who are suffering with trudging through the drudgery of memorizing vocabulary words and their definitions through a canned curriculum, stick with this very un-laconic post . . .

Yesterday, Pamela and I finished reading The Story of the Warrior Queen, a chapter from the book Our Island Story. After the previous reading, Pamela had written,

The Romans want to steal some money and stuffs. They were fighting and went to Britain. The husband of Boadicea was a king and died. The Romans stole some stuffs.

Before reading, I asked Pamela to tell me what she remembered about the story and she did. Recalling what she learned from the previous lessons helps her brain tie any new knowledge to the old. Then, we read--I say we because Pamela said she would be the quotated and I would be the narrator,

After Boadicea had been so cruelly and unjustly treated, she burned with anger against the Romans. Her heart was full only of thoughts of revenge. She called her people together, and, standing on a mound of earth so that they could see and hear her, she made a speech to them. She told them first how shamefully the Romans had behaved to her, their Queen. Then, like Caractacus, she reminded them how their forefathers had fought against Julius Cæsar, and had driven the Romans away for a time at least. "Is it not better to be poor and free than to have great wealth and be slaves?" she asked. "And the Romans take not only our freedom but our wealth. They want to make us both slaves and beggars. Let us rise. O brothers and sisters, let us rise, and drive these robbers out of our land! Let us kill them every one! Let us teach them that they are no better than hares and foxes, and no match for greyhounds! We will fight, and if we cannot conquer, then let us die—yes, every one of us—die rather than submit."

Pamela orally narrated and then wrote,

The Queen felt angry. The Roman fought the queen. They hit her. She called her to people. The peoples had some swords and shelds.

Then, we read the next passage with the same reading roles,

Queen Boadicea looked so beautiful and fierce as she stood there, with her blue eyes flashing, and her golden hair blowing round her in the wind, that the hearts of her people were filled with love for her, and anger against the Romans. As she spoke, fierce desires for revenge grew in them. They had hated their Roman conquerors before, now the hatred became a madness.

So, when Boadicea had finished speaking, a cry of rage rose from the Britons. They beat upon their shields with their swords, and swore to avenge their Queen, to fight and die for her and for their country.

Then Boadicea, leaning with one hand upon her spear, and lifting the other to heaven—prayed. She prayed to the goddess of war, and her prayer was as fierce as her speech, for she had never heard of a God who taught men to forgive their enemies.

As she stood there praying, Boadicea looked more beautiful than ever. Her proud head was thrown back and the sun shone upon her lovely hair and upon the golden band which bound her forehead. Her dark cloak, slipping from her shoulders, showed the splendid robe she wore beneath, and the thick and heavy chain of gold round her neck. At her feet knelt her daughters, sobbing with hope and fear.

Pamela orally narrated and wrote, "She looked pretty and saw the sun. She was praying." Then we read together the next section,

It was a grand and awful moment, and deep silence fell upon the warriors as they listened to the solemn words. Then, with wild cries, they marched forward to battle, forgetful of everything but revenge.

The battles which followed were terrible indeed. The words of Queen Boadicea had stirred the Britons until they were mad with thoughts of revenge, and hopes of freedom. They gave no mercy, and they asked none. They utterly destroyed the towns of London and of St. Albans, or Verulamium as it was then called, killing every one, man, woman and child.

Again and again the Romans were defeated, till it almost seemed as if the Britons really would succeed in driving them out of the country. Boadicea herself led the soldiers, encouraging them with her brave words. "It is better to die with honour than to live in slavery," she said. "I am a woman, but I would rather die than yield. Will you follow me, men?" and of course the men followed her gladly.

At last the Roman leader was so downcast with his many defeats that he went himself to the British camp, bearing in his hand a green branch as a sign of peace. When Boadicea was told that an ambassador from the Romans wished to speak to her, she replied proudly, "My sword alone shall speak to the Romans." And when the Roman leader asked for peace, she answered, "You shall have peace, peace, but no submission. A British heart will choose death rather than lose liberty. There can be peace only if you promise to leave the country."

Of course the Romans would not promise to go away from Britain, so the war continued, and for a time the Britons triumphed.

Pamela narrated and wrote, "They had the bridge and battles. They had some swords. Britain was winning." Then, we read together the surprising and dramatic conclusion.

But their triumph did not last long. The Roman soldiers were better armed and better drilled than the British. There came a dark day when the Britons were utterly defeated and many thousands were slain.

When Boadicea saw that all hope was gone, she called her daughters to her. "My children," she said sadly, as she took them by the hand and drew them towards her, "my children, it has not pleased the gods of battle to deliver us from the power of the Romans. But there is yet one way of escape." Tears were in her blue eyes as she kissed her daughters. She was no longer a queen of fury but a loving mother.

Then taking a golden cup in her hands, "Drink," she said gently.

The eldest daughter obeyed proudly and gladly, but the younger one was afraid. "Must I, mother?" she asked timidly.

"Yes, dear one," said Boadicea gently. "I too will drink, and we shall meet again."

When the Roman soldiers burst in upon them, they found the great queen dead, with her daughters in her arms.

She had poisoned both herself and them, rather than that they should fall again into the hands of the Romans.

Pamela orally narrated and wrote, "The battle was over. Queen was lost. She drank the poison and died." Then came the best moment of the entire narration! I asked Pamela what she thought of Queen Boadicea. Reflecting on the queen's determination to defeat the Romans, she replied in her typical laconic way, "I failed!"

Laconic? You don't know what the meaning of Laconic is? Neither did I until I read the chapter called "Hard as Nails" in the book, A Child's History of the World (for another version of the story, try A Laconic Answer). The kids and I read this story seven years ago and, because I learned it in the context of a well-written tale, I have remembered it ever since! Keeping this experience in mind, I have never forced my kids to slog their way through memorizing vocabulary words because words are learned best in the context of literature, especially when children apply those new words in their narrations. The key to remembering vocabulary is to teach them what they need to know when they need to know it.

How does this look in real life you ask?

Yesterday, we were reading two pages in the chapter "Fear in the Dark" from the book Watership Down. I gave the section four breaks, and, because she finds this book difficult, Pamela asked me to be the narrator and we shared the dialog. Right before we hit the last section, I noticed an unfamiliar word, kestrel. Since the paragraph gave sufficient context clues, I decided to let Pamela infer the meaning.

Me: "Do you see the word kestrel?"

Pamela: "Kestrel. Yes."

Me: "Do you know what kestrel means?"

Pamela: "Means? No."

Me: "That's okay. I think you will be able to figure out what a kestrel is."

Then I read, "The hanger might have little or no undergrowth but at least the branches gave cover from the sky: and kestrels, they soon realized, were common in this solitude. Although kestrels seldom prey on anything bigger than a rat, they will sometimes attack young rabbits."

I stopped and asked, "What do you think kestrels eat?"

She studied the passage and said, "Rats. Rabbits."

I followed up with, "What do you think a kestrel is?"

She guessed, "A wolf?"

I just smiled and said, "Let's look for more clues. 'No doubt this is why most grown rabbits will not remain under a hovering kestrel. Before long, Acorn spotted one as it flew up from the south.'"

Then, I asked, "What was the kestrel doing?"

Pamela said, "Flying."

I followed up with, "What do you think a kestrel is?"

She smiled and said, "A bird!"

"Right! Do you know what kind of bird?"

At that point, she guessed wildly, "Seagull?" forgetting the context of the woods. I clarified, "Remember the bird is in the woods. It is hovering high in the sky and it swoops down to eat the rabbits." I demonstrated with my hand as I talked. No bells rang for Pamela, and she said, "I don't know."

I went ahead and told her that it was a hawk. In her narration, she wrote under the title Kestrel, "The hawk will catch the rabbits. It will fly."

Later in the day, I wanted to give Pamela another chance to recall the word. So, I said, "David, Pamela learned a new word today. Do you know what a kestrel is?"

"No, what is it?" he asked.

I said, "Pamela, David doesn't know what a kestrel is. Do you remember?"

She said, "Hawk. It's a hawk."

Today, before we read Watership Down, I plan to find a picture of a kestrel and let her talk about it to let her link the new reading to the old one.

I Break for Birds!

Pamela can be pretty pathetic when she has a cold. Today, she took two naps, and Pamela never naps! She also spit up some mucus on her shirt in the afternoon. I canceled school for her and spend a good deal of the day reading David's books (to prepare for his narrations). The weather was gorgeous, so I perched myself on the back porch rocker with camera in hand to catch my feathered friends and others on film. I saw a gecko (green anole), house finch, blue jay, female northern cardinal, ruby-throated hummingbird, neighborhood cat, and eastern gray squirrel. In between animals, I squeezed in two chapters of The Birth of Britain

I sat in awe of all the beauty before me, recalling what I learned in the movie Expelled and a passage from Unshakable Faith (a biography about Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver). How can you not see God in the miracle of nature?

In 1907, a group of Carver's agriculture students who enjoyed his class commentaries on the Creator, asked him to organize a Sunday evening Bible study to be held between the end of supper and the beginning of evening chapel. Carver gladly agreed and held the first session in a room at the Carnegie Library on campus. Though the thirty-five minutes after Sunday supper was one of the few unstructured times in the students' entire week, fifty or so boys came the first night to hear Carver's presentation on the creation story, complete with maps, rock and plant samples, and other illustrations.

In spite of his experience and education, Carver took the same back-to-basics approach to Bible study as he did in explaining cowpeas to a farmer who had grown cotton all his life. He preached messages that were as easy to grasp as the lessons in his old McGuffey speller, the precious blue-backed book his mother had somehow gotten for him. He could almost life the essence of his religious belief from selections in the speller such as "The Cool Shade":

The grass is soft to our feat, and the clear brook washes the roots of the trees. The sheep and cows can lie down to sleep in the cool shade, but we can do better, we can praise the great God who made us. He made the warm sun, and the cool shade; the trees that grow upward, and the brooks that run along . . . All that live get life from God. He made the poor man as well as the rich man. He made the dark man as well as the fair man . . . All that move on the land are his; and so are all that fly in the air, and all that swim in the sea. . .

After three months, attendance at the professor's Bible class topped a hundred; eager participants wolfed down their supper so they could get to the library early and get a good seat. Carver's optimistic, beneficent view of the world presented religion in a way some students had never seen. One later remembered his first night in the class: "For the first time in my life I was witnessing no gloom surrounding the Bible. I began to feel as I had back home when we went to a candy-pulling party--happy that I had come." (pages 249-250)

Adventures with Ambleside Online

I have not blogged much about David lately. He is reading books from Ambleside Online (to say the year would be a give-away to my guessing game). I love this way of learning because *I*, *the teacher*, get so much out of it, too. I guess I forgot way too much history since high school. In some cases, my textbooks never covered this material!

Guessing Game Number One
For example, do you know when, where, and who was involved with the first European experiment with communism on North American soil? I will let you guess and reveal the source and answer later in the comments! Here are the conclusions from the Governor about his constituents' brush with communal living:

The failure of this experiment of communal service, which was tried for several years, and by good and honest men proves the emptiness of the theory of Plato and other ancients, applauded by some of later times,--That the taking away of private property, and the possession of it in community, by a commonwealth, would make a state happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For in this instance, community of property (so far as it went) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment which would have been to the general benefit and comfort.

• For the young men who were most able and fit for service objected to being forced to spend their time and strength in working for other men's wives and children, without any recompense.
• The strongman or the resourceful man had no more share of food, clothes, etc., than the weak man who was not able to do a quarter the other could. This was thought injustice.
• The aged and graver men, who were ranked and equalized in labour, food, clothes, etc., with the humbler and younger ones, thought it some indignity and disrespect to them.
• As for men's wives who were obliged to do service for other men, such as cooking, washing their clothes, etc., they considered it a kind of slavery, and many husbands would not brook it. This feature of it would have been worth still, if they had been men of an inferior class.

If (it was thought) all were to share alike, and all were to do alike, then all were on an equality throughout, and one was as good as another; and so, if it did not actually abolish those very relations which God himself has set among men, it did at least greatly diminish the mutual respect that is so important should be preserved amongst them. let none argue that this is due to human failing, rather than to this communistic plan of life in itself. I answer, seeing that all men have this failing in them, that God in His wisdom saw that another plan of life was fitter for them.

Guessing Game Number Two
David and I came across an interesting quote in a biography of a great American yesterday. It sounds so much like Charlotte Mason's view nature, but these are not her words. You can cheat and google it, or have fun and guess!

1. The awakening of a greater interest in practical nature lessons in the public schools of our section.

The thoughtful educator realizes that a very large part of the child's education must be gotten outside of the four walls designated as class room. He also understands that the most effective and lasting education is the one that makes the pupil handle, discuss and familiarize himself with the real things about him, of which the majority are surprisingly ignorant.

2. To bring before our young people in an attractive way a few of the cardinal principles of agriculture, with which nature study is synonymous.

If properly taught the practical Nature study method cannot fail to both entertain and instruct.

It is the only true method that leads up to a clear understanding of the fundamental principles which surround every branch of business in which we may engage. It also stimulates thought, investigation, and encourages originality.

Who has not watched with delight the wee tots with their toy set of garden tools and faces all aglow with happiness and the yearning expectations of the coming harvest as they dug up the earth and dropped in a few seed or illy set an equal number of plants--with what joy and satisfaction they called it their garden or with what enthusiasm they hailed the first warm days of spring with their refreshing showers which bespoke emphatically the opening of the mud pie and doughnut season, and how, even though they were water-soaked and mud-bespattered from top to toe, how very happy they were at the close of such a day's work. So on through the whole list of childish amusements. Instinctively, they prefer to deal with natural objects and real things.

Mystery Science Theater Shakespeare
The last thing we did yesterday, before David headed off to a beach retreat for the weekend, was reading aloud the last act of A Midsummer's Night Dream. David, a tenth grader, has already read five of Shakespeare's plays; I had only read one my entire year of high school. I could hardly understand the plot line, much less get the jokes.

In Scene I of Act V, the four happily-united couples watch a play to celebrate the nuptials of King Theseus and his Amazon Queen Hippolyta. Shakespeare loved sneaking a play within a play, or, at the very least, having one or more character in disguise. Unfortunately, the men acting the tragical moments of the classic story of Pyramus and Thisbe were craftsmen, but their trade was NOT the theater. In a nutshell, the hero Pyramus and his secret love Thisbe are to meet at a wall and talk through a chink in the wall to one another. When Thisbe does not arrive, Pyramus searches for her and finds her bloody cloak. He hears a lion roar and, assuming the lion took his love for a midnight snack, stabs himself. Thisbe finds her love dying, and she stabs herself.

Tragedy turns into comedy because the play within a play is so poorly performed. The first hint of this is when Philostrate warns the king how the scene affected him, "And tragical, my noble lord, it is; for Pyramus therein doth kill himself: which when I saw rehears'd, I must confess, made mine eyes water; but more merry tears the passion of loud laughter never shed." After the king demands to see the play anyway, Philostrate warns him again, "No, my noble lord, it is not for you: I have heard it over, and it is nothing, nothing in the world; unless you can find sport in their intents, extremely stretch'd and conn'd with cruel pain, to do you service."

Thanks to a Charlotte Mason philosophy of education and Ambleside Online, David not only gets Shakespeare, but he gives me better stage direction than I can think of myself! When I read the prologue, he told me I was not reading it right because I sounded good. One character's comment told me how to read--fast with no breaks, except in the wrong places, "He hath rid his prologue like a rough colt; he knows not the stop." I read the lion too loud and scary, David stopped me and suggested a wimpy lion a la Oz's cowardly lion. And, later on, the royal barbs confirm his instinct, "A very gentle beast, and of a good conscience" and "a goose for his discretion." He did approve of my Ethel Merman voice for Thisbe.

The king and his queen found sport indeed! The couples found sport! We found sport at the badly done scene. As we read through the scene, David and I half-expected the robots from Mystery Science Theater 3000 to pop in and add their own barbs to the ones being tossed out by the couples watching the play:
"Indeed he hath played on this prologue like a child on a recorder!"
"His speech was like a tangled chain; nothing impaired, but all disordered."
"This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard."
Right before Thisbe's death, "I hope she will be brief."
"No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no excuse!"

Philostrate was right! The poor wall forms his fingers to be the chink (tells the audience what it is) and spends so much time on exposition he spoils the whole scene. Some keep butchering "Ninus' tomb" to "Ninny's tomb." At times, the actors answered the hecklers back in all seriousness a la Ferris Bueller. At one point, the couples spend more lines criticizing the poor moon than the moon has dialog! Who knew the bard could be so much fun?

P.S. I am not passing out prizes for my guessing games because the pursuit of knowledge is inherently delightful and rewarding in and of itself!

P.S.S. No rotten tomatoes please!

Ketchup Post after Taking a Breather

Last weekend was quite busy. On Saturday, Pamela expected me to shop at the health food store, which is a four-hour event since the drive takes three hours, round trip. Driving home, I noticed white clouds ahead of us and ugly black clouds in the rear view mirror. Soon after arriving home, the storms that spawned tornadoes in Atlanta slammed into us: the hail was flying an hour north of us and tornadoes knocked down power lines, trees, and a church steeple just twenty minutes to the south.



The next day, I spent two hours at Sunday School and church. During my short break, I accepted petsitting custody of a parakeet named Lily (isn't she adorable?) and two beta fish before heading off to a choir festival. I drove an hour (round trip), rehearsed an hour, and sat through the two-hour concert. Then, we took the youth to a pizza dinner, which lasted about two hours followed by an hour long conversation I had with the pastor.




Monday, I filled in for our Bible study leader, which ate up three hours between the preparation, lesson, and cleanup. Not that I mind getting together with other ladies to discuss lesson 8 of Beth Moore's Daniel, a fascinating and exciting Bible study, which covered two prominent figures in history: Alexander the Great and Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Even better, I shared with them other stories I knew about Alexander the Great based on The Story of the Greeks, a living book recommended by Ambleside Online. Since I had not read very much about Antiochus IV, I located The Hammer, a living book about this period of Jewish history. I spent the rest of Monday doing narrations with David, catching up the laundry, and helping Steve pack for his ten-day trip to China.

After Steve left at four Tuesday morning, I could not get back to sleep. Pamela and I had an appointment to do some paperwork for autism stuff, which required another hour in the car, round trip. We made it home by noon. And, who could forget about pollen season! I am obviously allergic to something blooming that leaves a trail of yellow pollen everywhere. That nasty stuff piles up on our brick pathway and coats the car, too. Fortunately, I stumbled upon two tricks that keeps me off of medication during allergy season: bee pollen made in Carolina and homeopathic eye drops. Whenever my throat itches, about ten granules will stop the reaction in its tracks. If I ignore the itch without taking bee pollen, the sneezing attack starts about a half hour later. Whenever my eyes burn and itch, the eye drops will prevent any further reaction. Again, if I ignore the first symptoms, my eyes will become inflamed and turn red within a half hour.




I spent the rest of Tuesday, taking a nap and trying to get over a dull headache. Except to read and dump email, I didn't answer any emails nor blog. My eyes crossed every time I looked at the computer screen.

Pamela invented some car games with all of that drive time! (1) If we see a license plate from out of state, we decide if it is going the wrong way or right way to get home. It is a great way to work on sense of direction. (2) Pamela usually holds the atlas and studies the states. Then, she asks me questions to test my knowledge of the states!

Good Feelings

Chapter 1
Pamela watches ETV (PBS) and stims verbally about Nancy who sews, Priscilla who does yoga, and Julia who cooks. Last night, Pamela took it a step further. After we finished reading our last book for the day, she turned to me and said, "Meatballs." The passage described five men sailing in a storm near the Hebrides in a leather boat; meatballs were not on the menu. So, I repeated with a surprised tone, "Meatballs?"

She explained, "Meatballs for dinner, just like Julia!"

I asked, "Did Julia make some meatballs?"

"Yes!"

Mimicking the voice of Julia Child I told her that I would have to find a gluten-free/casein-free recipe on the Internet. Pamela thought I was quite silly and laughed.

Pamela's sensory issues with cooking have improved. Last week, she actually rolled balls out of cookie dough. She let me mix the meat with other ingredients by hand, but she rolled meatballs with her hands. She does make faces but tolerates it because Julia does it.

The meatballs were delicious. With face-to-face engagement, I told Pamela how much I enjoyed the yummy meatballs. No, Queen Mum, I did not take pictures nor keep track of the ingredients.

I wonder what is for dinner tomorrow night? Meatloaf? Stuffed peppers? More meatballs?

Chapter 2
Today, we baked bread from a mix in the bread machine and survived a culinary crisis. After an hour, Pamela and I checked on the bread, and the machine had not mixed the dough! DOH! The RDI techniques of face-to-face interactions and spotlighting flew out of my head, but I did redeem myself by thinking out loud. Pamela watched me frantically unplug the machine, push the pan into the machine securely, mix the wet and dry ingredients together, and restart the machine. We stood there and watched the machine in action to make sure it mixed.

The bread turned out delicious and, after I sliced off two pieces and put them on a plate, I spotlighted the moment by sniffing the bread and enjoying the scent. She imitated me and said, "Good!"

Then, Pamela smiled and looked at me, "Butter!" (Some butter-like spreads are casein-free.)

I smiled back and said warmly, "Butter? That sounds delicious! What a great idea!"

Then, she added, "Just like Laura!"

So, I spotlighted her recall of Little House in the Big Woods, "I remember when Laura and Ma made butter and baked bread! That is one of my favorite books!" Pamela adores all of the Little House books as do I.

Chapter 3
Pamela started a new book today: Miracles on Maple Hill. I try to ease her into books by spotlighting connections to her life. The heroine of the book is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (about an hour north of where we lived a few moves ago).

Pamela loves guessing games, so I smiled mysteriously and showed her the cover of the book, "Guess where the girl lives! I'll give you a clue: you lived in this state." Because of the snow on the cover illustration, she guessed it on the third try.

To her delight, the first page held another connection. Marly, the little girl, is basically asking her mother to repeat her favorite stim phrase. No, she's not autistic, but the girl's request sounded eerily familiar. Anyone living in autism land will find the author's explanation familiar: "She could tell that Mother was afraid Daddy would object to hearing the same thing over and over."

A few months ago, Pamela stimmed by asking, "What is nagging?" with the answer "saying the same thing over and over." So, after I reread the passage aloud, a big smile crept over her face. She smiled when the author talked about the Pittsburgh symphony, hills, snow, and farmhouses, which are all familiar to her. I love it when Pamela takes to a book in the first chapter.

Page four had a wonderful passage that I think describes how emotions play a role in how children encode memory.

The truth was that when Mother said those certain words all the good feelings came back. Grandma's whole house and yard and her whole Maple Hill were in those words, just the way Mother had described them ever since Marly could remember. Grandma was in them, too, with the way Mother said her voice was, like a bird's voice if it pretended to be cross but really wasn't. Mother was in them, too, but in a special way. Not the way she was now, but the way she had been when she was Marly's age. Every summer she had come to visit her Grandma at Maple Hill, right here in Pennsylvania's corner.

How so many things could be in a few words was something else Marly didn't know. But it was the same way the whole feel of school can be in the sound of a bill ringing. Or the way the whole feeling of spring can be in one robin on a fence post.

Literary Addendum to Warm, Authoritative Parenting

Last week, I stumbled upon a thought-provoking quote from Great Expectations which I believe dovetails nicely with the posts on warmth and authoritative parenting. Pip, an orphan being "brung up by hand" by his sister, sees the effects of her arbitrary, cold parenting style upon his personality:

My sister's bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. Within myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand, gave her no right to bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments, disgraces, fasts and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had nursed this assurance; and to my communing so much with it, in a solitary and unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact that I was morally timid and very sensitive (Chapter 8).

One reason why I love Charlotte Mason's recommendation to read living books is the effect they have on me. Both teacher and child grow as soul-satisfying books speak to their hearts and minds.

P.S. Two days later, I found another great quote about being seen and not heard from E. Nesbit's book, The House of Arden. Edred, a boy transported back in time and place to being locked in the Tower of London for knowing too much about the Guy Fawkes plot, notices the blessings of being able to speak his mind:

Every one was very kind to him, but he had to be very much quieter than he was used to being, and to say Sir and Madam, and not to speak till he was spoken to. You have no idea how tiresome it is not to speak till you are spoken to, with the world full, as it is, of a thousand interesting things that you want to ask questions about. One day–for they were there quite a number of days–Edred met some one who seemed to like answering questions, and this made more difference than perhaps you would think.

And, wait until you learn the identity of the answerer of questions . . . But, I shan't give away any spoilers . . .

Culinary Halloween Horror Stories

Yesterday, I found a great example of how we are blending Charlotte Mason and Relationship Development Intervention. The most challenging book Pamela is reading right now is The Brendan Voyage. Helen Keller's story inspires me to include books that are at the outermost limits of comprehension but worth trying. John Wright, one of her teachers at the Wright-Humason School, once wrote,

Often I found her, when she had a little leisure, sitting in her favourite corner, in a chair whose arms supported the big volume prepared for the blind, and passing her finger slowly over the lines of Moliere's Le Medecin Malgré Lui, chuckling to herself at the comical situations and humorous lines. At that time her actual working vocabulary in French was very small, but by using her judgment, as we laughingly called the mental process, she could guess at the meanings of the words and put the sense together much as a child puzzles out a sliced object. The result was that in a few weeks she and I spent a most hilarious hour one evening while she poured out to me the whole story, dwelling with great gusto on its humour and sparkling wit. It was not a lesson, but only one of her recreations.

What I hope for Pamela is to strike a balance between books in which she feels competent and confident and books in which she spends time guessing at the meaning of words, putting the sense together, and mentally processing. With The Brendan Voyage, she first reads two or three pages and orally narrates each paragraph, one by one. Then, I film her narrating what she finds worth retelling from the entire passage. After that, we take turns talking about what the passage reminds us of and this is where she forms personal connections to what she is reading, shares experiences with me, and fortifies episodic memory. We have wandered down many exciting rabbit trails because of this important step in the process. I want to share with you an actual example of this process:

The Original Passage:

I cooked the breakfast. Then George, who freely admitted to being the worlds' worst cook but is amoung its champion dishwashers, offered to do the dishes on my turn if I did his cooking for him. So I cooked lunch. . . Rolfe persevered until the box of matches ran out, and tha as everyon else was getting hungry, I cooked supper.

What She Narrated Orally:
George was the worst cook. Rolf was sad because the bad food was the worst.

What She Narrated in Writing:
They cooked some bad foods. They ate some bad foods. They felt bad.

How She Connected:


What I love most about this clip is how much Pamela enjoys this conversation in which we both add novel ideas. Pamela reminded me of the day I burned the French fries, while I told her two new stories from my childhood. We are equal partners in sharing new information. I can tell she is thinking about what I said because she guessed that it was a story from Sand Point, she asked what year something happened, and she anticipated that my cake burned, etc. I also love the way Pamela clearly enjoys our conversation through her reactions and facial expressions. She also feels comfortable being blunt about my awful cooking skills (and she is being completely truthful).

And Now, for Something Completely Different!

I love the Jane Austen novels, which I did NOT read until six years ago, well into my marriage. Don't you think Steve and I are well-matched? Although, I do take issue with the calm life! Can life be calm with a teen with autism and another teen with a concrete-random kinesthetic learning style? I think not!

Take the Quiz here!

You scored as Edward Ferrars, Your husband is like Edward Ferrars of Sense & Sensibility. He is quietly impulsive, with an understated hint of romance. But once you get to know him, he's very affectionate, caring, and faithful. The two of you enjoy a calm, joyful life. Who is Your Jane Austen Husband? created with QuizFarm.com

Follow-Up on Videos

I have been more careful to focus mainly on one objective and set up situations to film it. The issue is to be more clear about my signals that I am finished talking so that Pamela does not bolt too soon. I brainstormed this with the help of friends and realized that, when we are seated, Pamela usually does not bolt. If it is almost time for something scheduled or the activity is over, she will suddenly bold.

The plan is to spotlight the end of conversation. For example, I could make a big done gesture and give a breathy sigh. If that is not obvious, I could give a verbal hint paired with the gesture and/or sign. I can learn to watch for her signals of getting ready to bolt and be ready to block her by gently holding her hands. This reminds me of being in musicals in college: I need to practice in front of a mirror and block my part!

On Thursday, David filmed five different segments of Pamela and I talking what a chapter from a book reminds us of. She did extremely well: she referenced me beautifully, made comments, and repeated some of my words as if to help them register better. Sometimes, she reacted with emotion or changed the topic to something related. She tried to bolt a few times, but I let her know I was not finished with me and she stayed with me. I was not as clear as I could have been, so I have objectives for myself, too. I found that asking her a question about the next event worked well, but I need to be less obvious as she improves.


Here is the review I wrote about how these five segments went.

Segment One:
Activity: Talking about The Brendan Voyage Objective: Attention, S1A

Pluses: Pamela makes a reasonable connection between sewing leather and her candlewicking animals. She stayed in control when she was upset.

Issues: Pamela thought I was pressuring her for more communication when I was only telling her more about my memory. She regulated by saying, “Cut it out!”

Tips: I need to introduce the topic with different phrasing when we talk about books. I need to wait a little longer to let her process.

Segment Two:
Activity: Talking about The Winged Watchman Objective: Attention, S1A

Pluses: Pamela makes a reasonable connection between the flood in the story and boats in Sand Point. She smiled, responded with emotion, and showed a strong interest in my narration of the May 1995 flood in Destrehan.

Issues: Pamela stayed focused in spite of the barking dogs and my distracting response to them.

Tips: I need to introduce the topic with different phrasing when we talk about books. I need to wait a little longer to let her process.

Segment Three:
Activity: Talking about The Cones Objectives: Attention, S1A

Pluses: Pamela has an excellent memory. She remembers a Hawaiian ice shaver my sister gave to us when we lived in West Newton. We did make snow cones a couple of times and I am surprised at how much she remembered. She stayed focused on my face even while rocking in the rocking chair. Then we talked about stores that carried gf/cf diet sorbet and soy ice cream. She was ready to end the conversation and stayed with me when I transitioned to another story in her primer book.

Segment Four:
Activity: Talking about The Endless Steppe Objectives: Attention, S1A

Pluses: Pamela makes a reasonable connection between Esther’s days in school and her school and co-op days. Then she went from the bug class in Minnesota to a dead butterfly we found in a parking lot. She was ready to stop, but I continued talking to her about movies because the story mentioned a movie. I told her my favorite movie Chronicles of Narnia and, after much processing time, she told me hers, Amazing Grace. That bowled me over because I thought that movie was stunning and fantastic, but over her head.

Issues: She tried to stim on “Airhawks” but was able to get back on track.

Segment Five:
Activity: Talking about a chapter on Alexander Objective: Attention, S1A

Pluses: Pamela maintains her focus in spite of the hyper-active dog. She makes a reasonable connection between Alexander’s horse Bucephalus and her horse in hippotherapy back in 1995. Then we both thought of Peter Pan after talking about the horse being afraid of its shadow. Pamela remembers reading Peter Pan in Sand Point. Then we transitioned to Wendy and a girl named Wendy, who was a guest at Pamela’s fourteenth birthday party. We talked about her birthday party, too, and the “no puffin” sticker at the Harbor Café.

Issues: The cameraman was bored and rotated the camera at an awkward angle.

The Experts

One reason why I love a Charlotte Mason philsophy is that I enjoy reading books with my teens. Right now, David and I are reading What Ever Happened to Justice? published by Bluestocking Press. I have fallen in love with the common sense approach of this book after only two chapters. Today, I read a passage on page 20 that sums up what I have learned about autism:

In other words, always beware of anyone who tells you a topic is above you or better left to experts. This person may, for some reason, be trying to shut you out. You can understand almost anything. If you know you are giving it your best effort and you are still finding an explanation difficult to grasp, it may be because the expert has poor communication skills. It could also be that the expert doesn't want you to grasp it. Many people are twice as smart as they think they are, but they've been intimidated into believing some topics are above them.

I think every person sitting around the table at an IEP meeting ought to be required to read that statement!