Kingsley...at the Beach!

Charles Kingsley's Madam How and Lady Why has been a hit so far with my two Year 4 students this term.  It's no surprise, as they were already familiar with and quite fond of his humorous asides and conversational tone.  (We read The Water Babies and Heroes aloud last year; in terms of tone, I think this one falls very close to the former, but the content, being non-fiction, is more straightforward.)

My daughter in particular appreciates Kingsley because he always anticipates her follow-up questions before she even has a chance to comment.  She'll open her mouth to object or ask a question, and the next words I read are, "What! you have a question more to ask?" or "I see you are astonished at the notion."  Gianna just eats all that up.  And how could you not?  His voice shines through with such charm, and we're happy to spend twenty minutes or so with him each week as he shares insight into the hows and whys of the natural world.

But we weren't expecting to find him at the beach last week, though I suppose we should have!  After all, Chapter 1 of Madam How and Lady Why--and the whole book, really--is all about "water, water, you stupid man."  (Yes, according to our house rules, you are only allowed to call someone stupid if you are writing in the nineteenth century.  And yes, that is another reason Kingley's writing invokes lots of giggles.)

Back to the beach:

Vincent spent twenty minutes or so digging a long, narrow tunnel connecting a sand castle he was making to the water (see him there on the left working away?).  He noticed that the deep, narrow tunnel gradually began to grow broader and shallower at the end as the water flowed in and back out.  "It's like The Glen!" he happily reported.

He dug another tunnel to show me.  Sure enough!  It started off with high sides...

And as the water moved in and out, that end of the canyon grew shallower and broader.

And then these crests started to form which reminded us of another bit:

"You know what an odd, and indeed of what a pretty form all these glens are: how the flat moor ends suddenly in a steep founded bank, almost like the crest of a wave--ready like a wave-crest to fall over, and, as you know, falling over sometimes, bit by bit, where the soil is bare." (14)

Of course we were using just sand and not combinations of earth layers, but the concept became clear to the children all the same.

Kingsley encourages us to not to take his word for it but to investigate ourselves:

"But I do not want you to merely depend on what I say.  If you want to understand Madam How, you must ask her questions yourself, and make up your mind yourself like a man ... The Bible says, 'Prove all things: hold fast that which is good.'  So do you prove my guess, and if it proves good, hold it fast." (19-20)

And later in the chapter he makes this point which I think is just lovely:

"For the safest way to learn Madam How's methods is to watch her at work in little corners at commonplace business, which will not astonish or frighten us, nor put huge hasty guesses and dreams into our heads ... So do you be humble and patient, and watch Madam How at work on little things.  For that is the way to see her at work upon all space and time." (23)

We were happy to take his advice without even meaning to, and we are waiting with humility and patience for what Kingsley and Madam How have to teach us through the rest of this year.

~~~

For those of you who are also doing Year 4 science, here are a few helpful parent guides that I look over each week during my weekly planning and pre-reading session:

Story-Book of Science Notes and Activities at the AO Forums
Madam How and Lady Why posts by chapter at Journey and Destination
Carol's Pinterest boards on Earth Science (including MHLW) -- thanks for the tip, Dawn!
Katie Barr's Madam How and Lady Why study guide from the AO website

I hope you are enjoying this year's science selections as much as we are!

Third Grade in Our Home :: An Overview

We're now halfway through our first term of the new school year, and things are going so smoothly that I'm ready to share our plans here!

We draw very heavily from Ambleside Online's wonderful booklists--our history, natural history, and literature selections are almost entirely from their Year 3 programme.  (Their site has weekly break-downs for each of those books, so go take a look!  What I have here is posted with permission from Ambleside Online.)  I have marked the portions of our schedule that are directly from AO in blue.  The rest is my own plans.

Bible	New Testament - Schuster's Bible History (focusing on the teaching ministry of Jesus through the Ascension)
Religion	Saints - Lauren Ford's Life of Our Lady Stories -  Marigold Hunt's A Book of Angels and Tan's Guardian Angels: Our Heavenly Companions Mass - The Story of the Mass Catechism - Mother Loyola's First Communion (continued from last year) In our Morning Basket - Benson's An Alphabet of Saints and A Child's Rule of Life *NN Other projects - review First Holy Communion catechism questions, practice using hand missal
History The Renaissance and Reformation	World - Our Island Story and A Child's History of the World National - This Country of Ours  Catholic - The Catholic Faith Comes to the Americas, Vision books for St. Thomas More and St. Edmund Campion, Crossbows and Crucifixes, O'Neill's The World's Story Stories - Diane Stanley's Michaelangelo, Diane Stanley's Bard of Avon, and Daugherty's Landing of the Pilgrims
Natural History	Holling's Pagoo Long's Secrets of the Woods
Geography	Towle's Marco Polo The Kirbys' The World at Home (in our Morning Basket) *NN Weekly mapwork - charting figures from all studies on European and American maps, Marco Polo's voyage on world map, life and travels of Jesus on Holy Land map Map drills - Holy Land, Eastern United states, countries of Europe
Literature	Stoutenberg's American Tall Tales Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare Kingsley's The Heroes Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress Macdonald's The Princess and the Goblin, Merryat's Children of the New Forest, Kipling's The Jungle Books Scheduled Free Reads - Together: Kingsley's The Water Babies, MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind *NN Scheduled Free Reads - Independent: Goudge's The Little White Horse, Pyle's Men of Iron *NN
Poetry	William Blake, Sara Teasdale, Hilda Conkling, Henry Longfellow
Music Study	Bach (Term 1), Chopin (Term 2), Handel (Term 3) Composer biographies - by Opal Wheeler and Anna Harwell Celenza *NN Thomas Tapper's Music Talks for Children (in our Morning Basket) *NN
Art Study	Monet (Term 1), Georgia O'Keefe (Term 2), TBD (Term 3) Art biographies - by Mike Venezia *NN
Art	Weekly drawing lesson using Mona Brooks' Drawing with Children -  Volume Drawing (Term 1), Different Media (Term 2), Back to Still Lifes (Term 3) Daily drawing drill from Donna Young's site Weekly art project using various media
Music	Weekly piano lesson, daily practice
Nature Study	At the Shore (Term 1), At the Pond (Term 2), TBD (Term 3) Weekly nature study outing Weekly nature journal entry Weekly lesson using Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study and Natural Science Through the Seasons: 100 Teaching Units Monthly lesson using Headstrom's Adventures with a Hand Lens
Italian	Daily work and review; one unit each month, including lesson, conversation, songs, games, rhymes
Handicrafts	Sewing with felt, cooking, chores
Copywork	Printing - copying selections of choice in copybook Cursive - continued practice with Startwrite pages
Math	Daily math drill - Wrap-ups or Challenging Word Problem or Timed Sheet Daily lesson from the following: RightStart Level E (finishing up) Singapore 5A/B (finishing up) RightStart Level G Art of Problem Solving: Pre-Algebra Challenge Math
Memory Work	Bible - penitential psalms, parables, final Gospel Poetry - from each term's poet Hymns and Folk Songs - from music books Shakespeare - selections from plays read Prayers - Memorare to St. Joseph, Divine Mercy prayers, Nicene Creed in Latin

Some other notes about our third grade plans:

:: Some selections are noted as *NN, or "Not Narrated."  This is my way of adding books to our schedule without overloading my children.  (All regularly-scheduled books are narrated in some form.)

:: I'm putting a greater emphasis on mapwork this year.  My kids really enjoy geography concepts and stories, and they have very precise knowledge of the United States thanks to the simple map drills we have done over the past two years, but their knowledge of the locations we're reading about in history is fuzzy.  This year, I printed out a few blank maps for us to fill out over the course of the year, just plotting cities and countries that come up in our reading.  Before, I was pointing out locations on a map--but it wasn't sticking.  Their keeping physical track of the places is cementing the knowledge more effectively and encouraging connections across readings.  We're also going to do some map tracing.  They'll be doing this in addition to our regular map drills.

:: My kids gobble up their free reading books, but I'd like for some of them--particularly the more difficult or thematically richer ones--to be savored a bit more slowly.  So just as I did last year, I chose a few of the books from AO's free reading list to schedule out over the course of the year at a slower pace.  Some are for my children to do on their own; some we're reading together.

:: Thanks to reading Laurie Bestvater's The Living Page, I've decided to incorporate some new Keeping habits.  In addition to the binder timeline we have been doing all along, we'll also be doing a personal timeline this year as a special project--I'll share when it's completed!  I'm also having my children do their print copywork in a Poetry and Prose Copybook this year--both of them have been very excited to choose selections to include from the week's reading.  And they're narrating this year's Mass study in the form of copywork and drawings in a blank book dedicated to the project.  The way they choose to lay this out is entirely up to them, though I did have them look at Inos Biffi's work as an example.  It has been wonderful to see what they are choosing to highlight from each week's selection.

:: We're continuing our Italian learning with last year's method, still using the same format and resources.  It's going really well!  I also requested a few extra Italian CDs and books through our charter school--I'll review them when they arrive in a few months and I have a chance to see if they're a good fit for our studies.

:: Our math has been an adventure lately!  I've had some readers ask about our math plans so I'll share a bit: I have loved using RightStart Math for the last three years.  My son and I spent the past few months finishing up the long-ish geometry section of RS Level E alongside the sections from Singapore 5A/B that they don't cover in RS (some extra fractions/ration work, a discussion of volume, practice with order of operations, etc.).  And now we're moving on to something new!  RS also offers Level G, their geometry program, which they recommend using alongside a pre-algebra or algebra program over two or more years.  So once Gianna finishes up Level E, the two of them will be doing that together with me a couple times a week.  Alongside, they'll work at their own pace on Art of Problem Solving, a bit of Challenge Math, a bit of Singapore's New Elementary Mathematics...and I'm not sure what else!  We're going to have to see what ends up being a good fit for my accelerated math students.  Once we've done a thorough try of the program options, I'll let you know what we end up using.

:: In my post regarding this year's weekly schedule sheet, you can see the breakdown of their daily and weekly subjects.  My goal for my third graders this year is for them to take full responsibility for their daily work and their Keeping habits, with me only checking in with them weekly on those assignments.

:: Since we're studying the Renaissance and Reformation this year, I have been editing Our Island Story here and there, and I've added some Catholic reading to our history schedule so that my children get a true sense of the period.  I want to say a particular thank you to Amber, who suggested Crossbows and Crucifixes when I asked about children's books on the English marytrs.  We'll be reading it in Term 2 and I think it's going to be perfect.  We'll also be reading some saint biographies relevant to the time period in lieu of Trial and Triumph, one of the few books in the early years of AO that I strongly dislike and have always substituted for.

Whew!  Okay, so that's third grade here.  Next time: kindergarten!

Making Connections :: Geography Close to Home

We spent a beautiful long morning at the coast last week.  We got in some lovely nature study, which I'll share about in a different post, but another highlight (besides the sunshine, clam chowder, and sea breezes!) was the connections we were able to make to our Year 2 reading.  Amazing how that Science of Relations works, right?  These connections were completely unplanned yet completely enriching.

As we went through a hotel lobby alongside the wharf, we came across this model ship along the wall.  On reading the placard, we found it was a model of a ship from the 1850s that sailed from the Atlantic coast around the horn of South America and on to the gold country, docking in San Francisco.  My kids immediately recognized: Seabird!  

Sure enough, this carefully-constructed model on loan from the local maritime museum is clipper very similar to the one described in Holling's Seabird.  It was such fun to make the connection to this replica (something I honestly would have walked right by any other day)!

And on a related note, guess what we found outside...

Funnily enough, we had just read the chapter on anchors in Seabird the very day before!

We have passed these anchors every time we have come, but I've never taken any notice of them.

Another fun connection to this year's reading: the wharf and harbor at this seaside town are occupied by a fascinating group of sea lions, whose antics and barking are such fun!  The children always spend quite a long time watching them in awe--they're really pretty amazing, as large and loud as they are.  And then off to the side, along the boatline, we spotted another animal "friend," not as common as the sea lions here but still local to the area...

Can you see him there, tiny in the center?  It's Little Joe Otter, as Old Mother Nature and my two oldest call him! Though the children have seen otters at the bay aquarium, they don't often get to see the in their natural habitat.  Just as they read about in the Burgess Animal Book (which they both absolutely adore--definitely a favorite this year), he was floating along on his back, lunching with his belly for his table, while two gulls pursued him and his leftovers.  So fun.

She thought it was absolutely fascinating as well ;)

We have also had some happy connections with a book I added to our curriculum this year: the Kirbys' The World at Home.  It's a geography text mentioned by Miss Mason herself, and when I came across her mention of it in my reading about geography last year, I decided to add it to this year's schedule.  It's composed of over a hundred short chapters about everything from the Northern Lights to monkeys building bridges across the Amazon, all in a charmingly conversational tone, and we all love reading from it.  We read two chapters a week, moving through the book in order, so I don't know what topics are going to be covered when and I never know what's coming up next.  

The funny thing is how very often the chapters we read in The World at Home coincide perfectly with what we're reading about in our Year 2 studies!  

We talked of reindeer and the Eskimos during the chapters about Viking explorers in This Country of Ours.  

We read about buffalo and American Indians through Term 1 of this year, alongside Holling's Tree in the Trail.  

We read about the region of Patagonia the very week Ezra's crew crossed the equator and rounded the horn of South America in Seabird.  

And there have been more besides.  These rich connections are partly due to the breadth of our studies this year, partly due to our heightened awareness, partly due to our broad approach to geography, and partly just one of the joys of this style of liberal arts education.  Thank you, Miss Mason, for living books, the Science of Relations, and "learners awake"!

A New Week, A New Term!

We starting Term 2 here this morning.  I love a fresh start...

new copywork pages - printing and cursive

a few new books - those top two!

a new plan for map drills

new psalm, hymn, poem, folk song - these are rotated often, but we also start *all new* at the beginning of a term

a new composer and a new artist - guess who? :)

I find our term breaks and re-starts keep our year's plans from getting stale, so I love the injection of some changes at the start of each 12-week session.

I'm feeling under the weather and the baby seems to be conspiring against a smooth day, but I'm hoping for a lunchtime tea: gingerbread with cream cheese frosting is ready, and in addition to our usual music selections, we'll be listening to "Christus Vincit" and "To Jesus Christ Our Sovereign King" this week in preparation for next Sunday's traditional feast of Christ the King.  I have a feeling we'll be singing one or the other at Mass that day, and the kids always like to be ready to join in. :)

More soon on our exams and our week at the beach!

Second Grade in Our Home - An Overview

I think it's time for me to share our second grade plans--we're already halfway through our first term here!  We all really enjoyed the summer break, but I'm happy to be back on a schoolish routine with my two older kids, who are now in second grade.  I also have two "preschoolers" (4 and 3) and two "babies" (almost-2 and almost-1) this school year.

Once again, we're relying heavily on Ambleside Online's schedule--we'll be doing their Year 2 this year.  I switched out a couple books, scheduled a few extras, and then added plans for art, music, foreign language, math, religion, and so on.

Here's what our year looks like at a glance.  My own changes/additions in blue; the rest is straight off the AO site!  (And these are posted with permission from AmblesideOnline.)

Bible	Old Testament - Benson's Old Testament Rhymes (25 rhymes - one per week) New Testament - Knecht's Child's Bible History (39 chapters - about one per week) Weekly reading of the Gospel from their own missals
Religion	Saints' Lives - Heroes of God's Church (25 chapters - about one per week with longer tales split in two) Stories - Catholic Tales for Boys and Girls (12 chapters - Term 1), First Communion Tales (12 chapters - Term 2), More Catholic Tales for Boys and Girls (12 chapters - Term 3) *not narrated Mass - Come to Mass by Fr. Francis (31 pages - about one per week) Catechism - Mother Loyola's First Communion (one half chapter a week) and monthly review of the New St. Joseph's FHC Catechism
History	World - Our Island Story and A Child's History of the World National - This Country of Ours Catholic -  Chapter 1 (St. Brendan) and Chapter 2 (The Discovery of the Americas) from The Catholic Faith Comes to the Americas Stories - Yonge's Little Duke (Terms 1 and 2), Stanley's Joan of Arc (Term 3)
Natural History	The Burgess Book of Animals (1-2 stories per week) Holling's Tree in the Trail (Term 1 and 2) and Seabird (Term 2 and 3)
Geography	The Kirbys' The World at Home (2 chapters per week) Highroads of Geography (1 chapter per week) *not narrated Henty's Brighty of the Grand Canyon (scheduled rather than free read, 36 chapters - 1 per week) *not narrated Map drills - Santa Fe trail, US states, countries of Western Europe Weekly mapwork
Literature	Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare (two plays per term) Understood Betsy (Term 1), The Wind in the Willows (Term 2), Robin Hood (Term 3) Pilgrim's Progress (using the 72-week schedule) Tanglewood Tales and The Wonderbook (10 pages per week) *not narrated
Poetry	Walter de la Mare (Term 1), Eugene Field Whitcomb (Term 2), Christina Rossetti (Term 3)
Music Study	The First Book of the Orchestra (one section per week) Haydn (Term 1), Mozart (Term 2), Beethoven (Term 3) - using Classics for Kids, two lessons per month
Art Study	Manet (Term 1), Monet (Term 2), TBD (Term 3)
Art	Weekly drawing lesson using Mona Brooks' Drawing with Children Weekly art project
Music	Weekly piano lesson, daily practice (we actually won't start lessons until spring)
Nature Study	Weekly nature study outing Weekly nature journal entry Natural Science Through the Seasons: 100 Teaching Units (weekly activity with nature study group)
Italian	Daily work, one unit every other week, including lesson, songs, games, rhymes and review
Handicrafts	Gianna - Sewing, beading Vincent - Woodworking, leather stamping
Copywork	Printing and starting cursive (five minutes per day)
Memory Work	Daily memorization of one hymn, one folk song, one poem, one psalm/parable Daily review of prior selections
Math	RightStart Level D/E for Gianna (four lessons per week) RightStart Level E for Vincent (four lessons per week)

A few notes:

:: Scheduling. I'm using my weekly list format from last year--it's still working wonderfully.  My goal is four days of daily work (which means math, memory work, italian, copywork, read aloud) in addition to our weekly assignments.  At this point, my children are reading everything on their own except Our Island Story, This Country of Ours, Shakespeare, Pilgrim's Progress, and Mother Loyola's First Communion.  I may hand over the history readings soon; they definitely could read those independently, but I enjoy working through them together.  I plan to keep the other three as read alouds since we discuss them as we go.

:: Geography.  I wanted to add a little extra to this subject, so I included a few books for us to work through.  The children get a "letter" each week in our family mailbox from Highlands of Geography, and we're reading The World at Home together.  And I thought Brighty of the Grand Canyon would be a good companion to Tree in the Trail as we do mapwork on the US states this year, so I made it a scheduled-but-not-narrated reading (since it's technically a free read, I'm not requiring narrations).  Geography is one of my kids' favorite subjects.  (You can read my thoughts on geography from a CM approach as well as other geography resources here.)

:: Slowing down. Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales and The Wonder Book are on the free reading list for this year, but I thought they would be fun to go through slowly together to get us ready for Kingsley's Heroes Bulfinch's Age of Fable in the years soon to come.  So we'll be reading them over the course of the year, about ten pages (in our versions) per week, read aloud by me (and again, not narrated).  This is one of our very favorite readings so far this year!  My kids beg for more and it is a delight to read aloud.

:: Free reading.  I haven't included it here, but we have tons of free reading on our lists for this year that I have pulled from a variety of sources.  My daughter in particular just sails through all her free reading books--in fact, they have both finished almost all of AO's suggestions already in just a couple weeks.  So I always like to have a nice long list of other options ready to go.  I'll be sharing from that list as we go through the year.

:: Math.  Over the summer, I decided to split up my two for math, and I am so glad I did!  Even though they're the same age and working at pretty much the same level, they are such different learners that it makes more sense for me to work with them one-on-one.

:: Copywork. My kids were clamoring to do cursive--in fact, they were starting to teach themselves just from my old lists and notes!  So I decided we would slowly begin some cursive practice.  I'm not entirely convinced that they're ready (in terms of their fine motor skills), but I'd rather have them learn properly from me than teach themselves improperly.  So we'll see how that goes.  We will continue copywork in printing as well.

:: Pilgrim's Progress.  I went back and forth over using this very-Protestant text in our homeschool.  Ultimately, I decided it was worth going through since it's a cultural touchstone. So we'll be doing this together.  I'm only planning for us to do the first book, though, so we'll be using the 72-week cycle over on Ambleside Online.  It's really just a few minutes of reading each week.

:: Religion.  We read through the Old Testament in Child's Bible History and Knecht's Bible History last year.  This year, we're tackling the New Testament, which the kids are obviously quite familiar with but haven't studied in any systematic way.  We're also going through Msgr. Benson's Old Testament Rhymes, which is a fun way to recap last year's stories.  We also have readings for "fun" (the Tales section), for our ongoing study of the Traditional Latin Mass, and for catechism: Mother Mary Loyola's First Communion.  My two oldest actually made their First Communion last spring, but this book is too much of a treasure for them to miss it.  So we're doing it "late" but all getting a lot out of it anyway!

:: Italian.  I explained our plan for Italian lessons a couple weeks ago.  It's still going wonderfully--I'm really pleased with our progress!

:: Nature Study.  Once again, we'll be doing nature study with friends this year.  Angela and I are planning to pull ideas from Partridge's Natural Science Through the Seasons to give a little structure to our outings.

:: Art.  We're continuing our lessons using Drawing with Children from last year, melding that text with some other resources and the daily drills from Donna Young's site.  Once we get through the first term's assignments, I'll try to remember to post more about how we're using this text.

:: Art and music.  Once again, I'm going on my own instead of following the Ambleside Online rotation for these subjects.  We'll have a chance to listen to Haydn live this year, so I definitely wanted to hit him first.  I pulled the others from those available on the Classics for Kids website--they're subject to change if another live performance opportunity pops up.  Same with artists--I really plan one term at a time.  After two terms on Impressionists, I will probably add something with religious subject matter in Term 3.  Or maybe we'll switch out Monet for someone else?  We'll see.

So that's our second grade plans!  Please let me know if any other details would be helpful to you--I'm happy to share.

The Archives: Family Bickerings

I've been digging through the archived offerings at Ambleside Online recently, and I found a wonderful article from Leader Scott called "Family Bickerings." There is much to be considered here for a Catholic mother, especially in the realm of virtue, goodness, and family harmony, and I thought I'd share my notes and ponderings...maybe you might find something helpful here too?

* "A child's character is very complex. It has in it germs of all the qualities which will influence the man." Oh my. This is so true, isn't it? I can see in my own two littles that they are who they always have been, even in utero:) Some wonderful characteristics are totally evident and we try to grow those, but some challenging tendencies really do need attention or they will become their destiny.

*  "A child of strong will may be rendered either obstinate in the wrong or firm in the right, according to the way in which his will is directed; his generosity may become either a Christian liberality, or a selfish wastefulness; his pride either true pride in good and right, or false pride in empty show and display." A parent's job, and in many ways, more specifically a homeschooling mother's job, is to see her child fully. Perhaps rather than despair over the difficult characteristics, we would be better served by guiding and channeling them in a virtuous direction.

* The only way to make the virtues grow is to train the child's conscience and the love of others. We are in the midst of preparing for my 6 year old's first Holy Communion, along with Celeste and her two oldest. I've been thinking a lot about how to impress upon a small child the necessity to turn from selfishness, turn from what we know is wrong, and grow in virtue. Mr. Scott believes the key to growth in all the virtues is first and foremost the growth of selflessness. Any thoughts on this one? He very well may be right...

* The two chief causes of these (family bickerings) are selfishness and harsh judgment of others. No punishment is of the smallest use to combat these; punishment may awake resentment and arouse greater spite against the person on whose account it is incurred, but it will never lessen the selfishness by a jot. Well, my two certainly bicker, though for the most part they are best buddies. Usually, someone wants what they want, and doesn't care if the other wants it too. Or, they feel slighted and want to tattle to mommy about it. Hum...

* Virtues, like flowers, grow in the sunshine; you can cultivate them or draw them out with love and reason, but you can neither force nor whip them into existence. Oh but how often I try to force lovingkindness on my children:)

* Of course the best way to prevent bickering is never to admit it from infancy; to train the child to find its happiness in giving others pleasure; to show him always how good and kind others are to him; in fact, to let the names of mother, father, sister, and brother stand for love and loving-kindness to him. On good days I think we succeed in this, but it's so easy to lose track of this easy gentleness when there are dozens of things going at once and mommy is harried.


* If you have seen the beginning of the quarrel, try and get the children to talk it over with you when they are cooler, and suggest to Bessie that if she had answered softly when Tom was first angry, all the tears and misery would have been avoided; and put it to Tom that if he would only remember in time that it is the man's privilege to protect the women, and be generous and gentle to Bessie, she would always look up to him and try to please him. This is so sweet. Really. And I can see that if I were more present to the children's interactions, perhaps more available, I might be able to gently step in and mediate. When I do, things almost always settle right down and peace is restored.

* When the boys and girls sit round the fire with mother, a series of stories might be told bearing, evening after evening, on instances of love and self-denial--"would not you like a chance to do such beautiful things for each other?" Lent is really the perfect time for this. We are doing "sacrifice beans," and for each selfless or generous thing they do, the children move a bean to the big jar on the mantle. Sweet rewards come at Easter, and I have noticed a big increase in kind behavior since Ash Wednesday:)

* It is a certain fact that the suggestion of good things is much more likely to lead young minds upwards than the suggestion of evil, even in the form of a warning, is likely to keep them from sinking to it. I agree! Better to uplift than to suggest bad behavior inadvertently.

* Never compel a sacrifice as a right, but merely suggest to the child that here is a way to give up self, and do a kind and lovely action. Very often it will be refused, for virtues are difficult flowers to train; then all one can do is draw the child's attention to any suffering or discomforts which may be occasioned by its selfishness, and make a mental picture of the pleasure he has missed giving. When an unselfish action has been performed, give the child the full benefit of the happiness it brings remark on the other's enjoyment, and show the light of mother's smile and approval. This is so true. I have seen this in my children...merely the suggestion of something nice they could do leads them to do it, and as they grow, the random, unprompted acts of kindness do flourish. Not as often as I'd like, but we all fall short.

* Let it be an axiom in the family that anybody may look for virtues, but nobody is to seek a fault except parents and instructors. Anyone want to think with me about ways this rule might be phrased differently? What would "the rule" be in a family of small ones?

* Mr. Scott then details a family scenario in which a mother sees character problems in each of her children. She gives a "sketch of the giants which beset young folks, and morally devour them, such as Self-love, Vanity, Obstinacy, Falsehood, &c., and excited their interest by telling them that these giants were so curiously leagued together that if one were conquered the others would probably flee." The children know what their chief vice is, and the mother gives them each a short, applicable Bible verse to memorize and repeat when the vice rears its head. They are "giant killers," killing off their vices. This is a pretty interesting idea, maybe most workable with bigger, more self-aware children.

*Where parents work together in sympathy the family will be knit in the same bonds; but if the husband finds fault with his wife, or shows disrespect to her before the children, the brothers will certainly treat their sisters in the same manner; and where the wife complains of "papa's unfortunate temper," or lets the children hide their actions and thoughts from him in fear of a scolding, she divides them with her own hand, and sows the distrust and defiance that make quarrels not only possible, but probable. Mommy and Daddy are the center, are they not? If their union is strong, respectful, dutiful, and loving, the children will mimic those virtues, which makes the training we do with them that much easier.

I really enjoyed this article and Mr. Scott's thoughts on family bickerings. Would love to hear your thoughts on keeping peace and growing virtue at home!