For What it's Worth

I have made many a parenting mistake and expect to make many more.  I have read up on discipline, spoken and read about discipline and disciplined in any number of ways.  Most of them were wrong, because it was more about ME.  I so often reacted as if their behavior were a personal attack.  And sometimes, when I am tired or ill or fed up, I still do.

Reaching the heart of our children requires a certain maturity level and confidence I didn't have for many years.  Heck, sometimes I stuggle to find it still.

When my children rebelled,  to my shame, I even sometimes had an attitude of "how dare you behave that way?" and punished accordingly and arbitrarily.

It takes time and effort and patience to see behind the behavior to the root of the problem.

I'm getting better at it over time, hopefully they won't need counseling when they are grown. :)

In any case, I came across a post today that deeply touched me and I am sharing it because I think it's honesty and beauty are worth sharing.   I really hope you get as much out of it as I did and that it is relevant to your life as well as mine.

Here it is:

It Takes Joy

Blessings

Lizzie

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A Topic Near and Dear to my Heart and One I am Mulling Over

Do Great Homeschools Really Need Socratic Dialog?

March 2010
by Lee Binz
The HomeScholar

The great homeschools have Socratic dialog.  After reading, they enjoy deep and rich conversations about the nuances of great works of literature.  They have meaningful discussions about historical perspective and relevant insights within classical and modern literature.  

Meanwhile, I got comments like “Great book, mom…. What’s next?”  

True confession: I really admire people who do literary analysis, but I simply wasn’t capable.  I used a literature-based curriculum, so it seems strange to say it, but I hate literary analysis.  We read books all the time.  I used Sonlight Curriculum which requires a lot of reading, and I fed my book-hungry children even more literature from The Well Trained Mind, and other reading lists for the college bound.  Much to my chagrin, we didn’t do any “literature analysis” we just enjoyed the books.

 

Feeling Guilty

The truth is I always felt guilty about not doing literary analysis.  Every homeschool mom has her “thing” that keeps her awake at night, and literature analysis was my nemesis.  On tests and worksheets my children seemed to do terrible in reading comprehension, and yet they were reading all the time.  They read all day long and late into the night.  The laughed and cried and gasped when they read silently to themselves.  They begged me to continue when I was reading aloud to them.  How could they do so poorly in reading comprehension questions when they seemed to understand what they were reading?  

How do you know when you have succeeded in teaching your child English? When I was homeschooling, I was SO stressed out about literature analysis. It seemed like we always failed at reading comprehension and the review questions that were provided. I knew that I wanted my kids to LOVE reading, but I was still stressed about literature analysis.

 

Every year, I spent so much time looking at Progeny Press, Learning Language Arts Through Literature, and other curriculum choices. Why was I failing? Why couldn’t I teach literature analysis?  Every time I asked my kids “how did you like the book?” I never got any insightful dialog about the deeper meanings of the literature.

 

Analyze This

I finally decided that my goal for literature would be the same as my goal for Bible study.  I decided that my goal in teaching the Bible was for the kids to LOVE their Bible, not analyze the Bible.  Therefore I would teach them to LOVE literature instead of analyze it. I didn’t want to “beat the love of books out of them” with analyzing everything.

In retrospect, it all ended up great. Ironically, they both ended up in a “Great Books” honors program, analyzing literature at a college level by their own choice!  They are able to do college literary analysis in their honors class without a problem, getting great grades.  Their only frustration with the class is reading the occasional book synopsis.  “I would rather read the whole thing – they miss the best parts!”

Winning the War

I failed at teaching literary analysis.  I may have lost that battle, but I won the war.  My children LOVE reading.   When the kids came home from college, I felt like I could finally say I had succeeded in my goal. “For fun” they went to the library to get some reading material. My son Alex read the entire Shakespeare collection, my son Kevin read CS Lewis and some Dostoevsky. I may have been stressed out when they were in high school, but I can honestly say that I achieved my goal: they LOVE reading.

 With my wonderful  20/20 hindsight, I look at my college children and feel successful, but at the time I stressed over “reading comprehension” more than almost anything else.  

Keeping the focus on “love of learning” is so hard, though, when you are faced with a kid who may only answer “fine” when you ask them about their reading.  It is the love of reading that matters.  

 

Copyright Lee Binz, 2010
You have permission to reprint this article as long as you don't make any changes and include the bio below.

Lee Binz, The HomeScholar, specializes in helping parents homeschool high school. Get Lee's 5 part mini-course, "The 5 Biggest Mistakes Parents Make Homeschooling High School." You can find her at http://www.TheHomeScholar.com.

 

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Advent Resource

I am sorry that we are in the 2nd week of Advent and I just remembered this site.

The Teaching Mom's Advent Calendar is one of the resources I have returned to year after year to help focus on keeping Christ in Christmas and educating while I do it.

It doesn't seem to have been updated for awhile but that doesn't take away from it in the slightest.

Check it out at TeachingMom.

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A Wonderful Find

I stumbled across this the other day and had some more time to spend on it this afternoon.
What a treasure trove!  The Happy Hearts Homeschooling Library is a unique blog.
Within it, Alexandra share her find among public domain books that are of exceptional value to homeschoolers.

With the advent of affordable ereaders, finds like these become ever more available and usable.  I used to print these books out and put in a 3 ring binder and that used to cost me a small fortune. 
Now, I can use our readers to make shelves for all our reading and better utilize the treasures among public domain books.  If you want to find out more about ereaders and see if one would work for your family, my favorite resource is the blog at Good E-Reader.

My own review of the Barnes and Noble Nook has it's own page now.  You can find it here.

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Some Wonderfully Compiled Helps for Literary Analysis

Complied by my friend Lori D on the Well Trained Mind forums and given permission to use here with thanks.

For our first few years of analyzing literature (grades 7-10), we reviewed literary terms and would go a little deeper into some literature together using a good lit. guide or a literature program. Now we tend to "fly solo", using the questions/techniques described in the first few chapters of The Well Educated Mind, and individual lit. guides for background info/springboard into discussion/analysis. We also enjoy practicing analysis by analyzing films -- looking for themes and symbolism; repeated imagery; etc. -- which overlaps a lot with literary analysis and is often an easier place to start "seeing" how to find themes.

BEST of luck in finding what works best for your family! Warmly, Lori D

First, understanding what "tools" you are looking for in a text, and then how those "tools" of literary elements are working to support a theme is very helpful. Some resources, all available at www.rainbowresource.com (and you can see sample pages there):

- Story Elements series (by grade level)
- Figuratively Speaking: Using Classic Literature to Teach 40 Literary Elements (gr. 5+)
- Walch Toolbox: Prose and Poetry (gr. 6+)

Free online Literary Element definitions:

Jay Braiman: Definitions of Literary Devices:
http://mrbraiman.home.att.net/lit.htm

Wikipedia: Literary Technique: List of Terms with Definitions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_technique

All American: Glossary of Literary Terms
http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work...l/glossary.htm

Yorba Middle School: Literary Elements list:
http://www.orangeusd.k12.ca.us/yorba...y_elements.htm

Cyber English: Literary Terms:
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/lit_terms/

Jay Braiman: Definitions of Literary Devices:
http://mrbraiman.home.att.net/lit.htm


And a past thread that may be helpful:
Teaching Literary Elements??
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forum...light=literary

Second, using a resource that teaches you what to look for, how to look for it, and what the deeper meanings in the literature -- consider going through one (or more) of these *together* with your students, so you can learn together, and then can discuss the literature together. Most of these can be seen online at either www.christianbook.com or www.rainbowresource.com:

Deconstructing Penguins
Check this out of your local library to help you see what literary discussion is about; while it is at an elementary student level, each chapter is a GREAT example of what guided discussion/analysis of a book can look like.

Teaching The Classics
http://www.centerforlit.com/
Overview program for teaching you how to draw students into meaningful literary discussions by enabling you to identify and discuss the important themes of any work of literature.

Reading Strands
Teaches you how to discuss literature. No worksheets or student book, but the information can be applied to all literature. The Well Educated Mind
The first few chapters cover how to read the Great Books, annotating as you read, and what kinds of questions to be asking as you read. The bulk of the book is introduction/background to many classics, and ideas of what to be looking for in each.

How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines (Foster)
Gives you a lot of information about common symbols and their meanings in classic literature.

How To Read a Book (Adler)

Finally, a literature curriculum can guide you through what are some of the literary elements and how they are used in the works.

Christian Light Education (CLE) Reading -- (gr. 4-8)
Starting in grade 4, CLE's literature component, teaches literary elements, with teacher info and worksheets. While it does not include complete literary works, the program can be completed in a semester, which then allows you lots of time to *apply* what was learned in complete classic literary works.
www.clp.org

VERY gentle introductory programs:
- Lightning Lit. & Comp. 7 or 8 (for grades 7 and 8) = http://www.hewitthomeschooling.com/book/blight.asp
- Literary Lessons from the Lord of the Rings (for grades 7-10) = http://www.homescholar.org/LOTR%20Curr.htm

More In-Depth Programs:

Windows to the World (from IEW) (gr. 8-12)
One semester course which teaches how to annotate, and then how to use your annotations as specific examples in writing a literary analysis essay. GREAT program!

Omnibus (gr. 7-12)
Full year Literature/History/Bible programs to lead you through the study of the great works, teaching with the emphasis on ideas, not simply information. Teacher and student texts; with daily lesson plans. Includes composition, logic and aesthetics. Six levels, for grades 7-12. http://www.veritaspress.com/products.asp?dept=1071

Tapestry of Grace
A complete curriculum, for all grades, written at 4 levels. The top 2 levels are very helpful for guided high school Literature discussion.


And individual literature guides can be very useful:

- Garlic Press publisher = http://www.garlicpress.com/home/gar/...iterature.html (see samples at www.rainbowresource.com)
- Progeny Press = http://www.progenypress.com/
- The Great Books = www.thegreatbooks.com
- Portals to Literature = www.rainbowresource.com
- Wikipedia articles on authors/works = www.wikipedia.com
- Shmoop free online = http://www.shmoop.com/
- Glencoe free online = http://www.glencoe.com/sec/literature/litlibrary/
- Sparknotes free online = http://www.sparknotes.com/sparknotes/
- Cliff's Notes free online = www.cliffsnotes.com


Also, the book "Invitation to the Classics" is not only a great list of traditional literature to consider covering in high school, but gives very helpful background on each author, his/her times, and on the specific work as a springboard into better understanding the work.

Past WTM forum threads with more ideas on Literature:

Literary Analysis?
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forum...light=literary

If Not Deconstructing Penguins, Then What?
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forum...light=literary


A question about using WEM for high school literature study
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forum...d.php?t=141258

How do you approach literature?
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forum...ad.php?t=42332

Literature study -- desperate plea for pros and cons
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forum...ad.php?t=16825

The Well Educated Mind
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forum...ad.php?t=21336

Doing Literature with my 9th grader
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forum...ad.php?t=94502


What are the benefits of doing a Great Books study as opposed to traditional route?
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forum...d.php?t=115693

Where do you start with a high school boy who has never read classic lit?
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forum...d.php?t=133932

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Park Day!

Join us at the beautiful Crosby Park Playground, Main Street, Centerville on Thursdays from 1:00ish to 3:00ish!!

Relax and fellowship with other Moms while the kids enjoy this lovely area.  

Kids of all ages are encouraged to come out, not just the little ones!

Bring change for the 1856 General Store across the street or enjoy the library and the thrift store near-by.

Get Directions here!
The Park is just across the street from this address.

                                          

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Good Article in the Wall Street Journal

How to Raise Boys That Read

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