I don’t regret reading any of the classic literature; they forced me to read in High School. But sadly, I was forced to read to some truly horrible politically correct stuff; that I could have done without reading. I would not call “A Tale of Two Cities” a favorite of mine, but I am glad I read it at least once. And I do love the Internet History Sourcebooks; I have been reading them off and on for years.
I have already put up a number of links for free software on this thread, so I thought I would put a free OS links page. Unix in all it’s forms is getting better, so dumping windows and not giving any more money to that marxist Bill Gates is a good idea. Here is a good site I found. The sell CD of Free software for $0.99, they have also the links to down load it for free, but the that takes forever(and don’t try if you have dial up). They also have a CD of free windows software. The Live CD’s can be run without modifying the files on your hard drive or OS on your computer. I just order some OS CDs to test. Note there are a number of other companies that sell CD of Freeware, this site is nice, because it has links to the OS sites with more info and free downloads.
Laurel,
My wife relayed your request for some specific passages. If I were asked the main ingredient for a successful homeschooling program, I would answer, “Sir Walter Scott.” The Southern states before and after the War were certainly passionate devotees of Sir Walter. One of the greatest joys of my life has been reading Walter Scott to my children. I suppose the cynic might reply, “Yes, but was it a joy to your children?” Yes, it was, which enhanced my joy.
If you feel you haven’t the time or inclination to read the works aloud maybe you could try to whet your children’s interest by using the following passages for copy work. Depending on the child and their ability, a child can start copywork of any of these at age 8.
From *The Talisman* by Scott, the entire first Chapter 1 (beginning with “The burning sun of Syria....” and ending with “to the little cluster of palm trees.") about an encounter between a Crusader and a Seracen.
From *Ivanhoe* by Scott, Chapters 12 - beginning with “Morning arose in unclouded splendor...” and ending with “and inflicted a wound in his side.” about a tournament at Ashby in which Ivanoe is wounded.
From “Lord of the Isles” (an epic poem, still available in print in *The Works of Sir Walter Scott*, Wordsworth Poetry Library; all the poems I mention here are available in this book), beginning with Canto V, Verse 19, “The barrier of that iron shore...” to the end of Canto V “The Northern Eagle claps his wing.” (about Robert the Bruce)
From “Harold the Dauntless” by Scott, Canto VI, Verse 8, “‘Thou art a wild enthusiast,’ to the end of Canto XIX, “..he was christened and wed.” (I can’t recommend this poem in its entirety too highly—it chronicles a man’s conversion from Danish paganism to Christianity.)
From *Quentin Durward*, Chapter 21 called “The Sack”—the whole chapter (about the taking of Liege, France)
From “The Lady in the Lake” (another epic poem by Scott), Canto V, Verses 3 (At length they came) to the end of Canto XIX (They won the castle’s postern gate.) The possibilities in Scott are limitless. His works contain the essence of Christian kinism; he has no equal.
In the English-speaking world, the Bible, Shakespeare, Scott, Dickens, and the Brothers Grimm were the core of the liberal arts curriculum. There is no reason to change that. And Scott is an excellent start.
SO good to hear from you, and those kind of specific passage recommendations are precisely what I’ve been praying for (in addition to healing for my dad and Winston and a few dozen other requests, but hey...).
As soon as the pressure at work drops down to a dull roar in a few weeks, I am going to read them. I’ve read Ivanhoe (it was my favorite book when I was ten or eleven), but the others are an unplowed field for me.
You and your unique input are a precious resource to us all.
When CWNY and I were first married (almost 25 years now) and I was pregnant with our first child, I read almost all of Charles Dickens’ works and loved them. I’m aware he’s not pristine in his personal life nor in his philosophy, but he was a poet who had great insight into the human soul. I had wanted to suggest the following passage as possible copywork from *A Tale of Two Cities* (which I also loved, Laurel), which never fails to move me.
CWNY’s wife
Chapter III
The Night Shadows
A Wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life’s end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?
MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.
What is MIT OpenCourseWare?
MIT OpenCourseWare is a free publication of MIT course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT.
* OCW is not an MIT education.
* OCW does not grant degrees or certificates.
* OCW does not provide access to MIT faculty.
* Materials may not reflect entire content of the course.
How do I register to use MIT OpenCourseWare?
There is no registration or enrollment process because OCW is not a credit-bearing or degree-granting initiative.
The author says copywork should switch to dictation after second grade. What do you experienced homeschool parents think of that? It would seem that the longer passages in Scott would need to be read, then copied, rather than read aloud, then copied.
I want a copy of the book...probably would have to find it on eBay…
Perhaps you have often wondered how long a thousand years is. England is about a thousand years old as a nation; a few very great trees are a thousand years old. But it is hard to think of a thousand years and measure it in our minds as we measure a week, and perhaps this story and these pictures may help us.
1. A thousand years ago, in the year 917, a little boy named Egbert was playing with a trumpet. His father was in the camp of King Alfred, and sounded the signal which called together the English people to drive back the Danish invaders. The boy grew up, and in his old age he took on his knee a little girl named Edith.
2. Edith lived through the great times when William the Conqueror brought his Norman men to rule in England. She died very old, and the playmate of her closing years was a boy named Harold.
The chronology goes on, older person befriending younger, and no apologies for Western history, just sweet innocence and honor for those who have lived through the events. Then…
Hand in hand through the world they go, and granny tells her boy of the things that she has seen, and the things far back in the thousand years that England has been a nation.
“And how long is a thousand years, granny?” asks the little boy.
“Why,” says granny, “let me see. When I was as young as you I knew David, and David knew Jane, and Jane knew Philip, and Philip knew Katherine, and Katherine knew Geoffrey, and Geoffrey knew Joan, and Joan knew Hubert, and Hubert knew Maud, and Maud knew Harold, and Harold knew Edith, and Edith knew Egbert—and that is a thousand years.”
“And that is only a day with God!” said the boy.
Then they became silent until—
“Why, bless me,” said granny, “the sun is down! How time does fly!”
(From Arthur Mee’s Gift Book, 1917)
Oh my goodness, to have things like this being written for children today…
Academics have been compromised, and family values are under attack in California’s public schools. As a loving parent, it’s time to rescue your child
from sexual indoctrination and other perils of government schools.
This quote from http://rescueyourchild.org/ leads the reader into reading the recommendations of The Campaign for Children and Families for either homeschooling ones children or opening a low-cost church school or church co-op.
Most recommendations are California-centric, but ideas can apply anywhere.
OK, this is in Scotland, but after what I’ve seen passing for fact in Wikipedia, I can understand why folks who use this as their primary research source don’t do well on standardized tests.
I’ve also seen incredible vandalism over at Wikipedia. Whole articles copy/pasted into other articles.
Freebase is an open database of the world’s information. It is built by the community and for the community—free for anyone to query, contribute to, build applications on top of, or integrate into their websites.
Already, Freebase covers millions of topics in hundreds of categories. Drawing from large open data sets like Wikipedia, MusicBrainz, and the SEC, it contains structured information on many popular topics, like movies, music, people and locations—all reconciled and freely available via an open API. This information is supplemented by the efforts of a passionate global community of users, who are working together to add structured information on everything from philosophy to European railway stations to the chemical properties of common food ingredients.
In fact, part of what makes Freebase unique is that it spans domains—but requires that a particular topic exist only once in Freebase, even if it might normally be found in multiple databases. For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger would appear in a movie database as an actor, a political database as a governor and a bodybuilder database as a Mr. Universe. In Freebase, there is only one topic for Arnold Schwarzenegger, with all three facets of his public persona brought together. The unified topic acts as an information hub, making it easy to find and contribute information about him.
In addition to reconciling many facets of one topic, the underlying structure of Freebase lets you run complex queries—that is, ask questions of the data—that are difficult or impossible to run in conventional databases. For example, if you ask Freebase for Jennifer Connelly films with actors who have appeared in a Steven Spielberg movie, you’ll get a tidy list of eight movies. The extra-cool part is that if you’re a developer, or just mildly technical, Freebase offers tools that make it easy to query and integrate the data into web apps, blogs, wikis, user pages or anything else that would benefit from an injection of structured information.
Finally, while information in Freebase appears to be structured much like a conventional database, it’s actually built on a system that allows any user to contribute to the schemas—or frameworks—that hold the data. This wiki-like approach to structuring information lets many people organize the database without formal, centralized planning. And it lets subject experts who don’t have database expertise find one another, and then build and maintain the data in their domain of interest.
In addition to the paid subscription, there are some interesting mp3 files on their web site. Very thoughtful approach, don’t always agree with them, but very thoughtful.
MARS HILL AUDIO is committed to assisting Christians who desire to move from thoughtless consumption of contemporary culture to a vantage point of thoughtful engagement.
We believe that fulfilling the commands to love God and neighbor requires that we pay careful attention to the neighborhood: that is, every sphere of human life where God is either glorified or despised, where neighbors are either edified or undermined. Therefore, living as disciples of Christ pertains not just to prayer, evangelism, and Bible study, but also our enjoyment of literature and music, our use of tools and machines, our eating and drinking, our views on government and economics, and so on.
We endeavor to encourage sensibilities and habits of thoughtful cultural engagement through creative audio resources, produced at our studio in rural central Virginia. Our primary resource is a bimonthly series of audio programs called the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal. Each program is ninety minutes long, consisting of ten- to fifteen-minute interviews with a variety of guests on a broad array of topics. The MARS HILL AUDIO Journal is currently available in MP3 format for $30 per year, on cassette tape for $42 per year, and on CD for $48 per year.
