Nugget of CM Wisdom

Never let us reflect upon small annoyances, and we shall be able to bear great ones sweetly.

Never let us think over our small pains, and our great pains will be easily endurable.
Ourselves, Vol.4 p.90


Charlotte Mason

Growing in Our Garden

Blueberry Blossoms

White blossoms, petals dying, berries beginning to swell

Plump, young blueberries

Brita from our local garden advised to harvest ripe blueberries right away or the birds will!

Our first ARTICHOKE

We are loving our little patio garden. It brings such joy to our family as we observe its transformation.

Pink flower buds on our peach tree, living in a whisky barrel

Beautiful peach blossoms adorn the branches

Young peach ~ Thank you God for the bees and hummingbirds!

"The ovary, then, is the part of the plant where the seeds form. At a certain time the flower withers; the petals wilt and fall; the calyx does the same, or remains to play the part of protector a while longer; the dried stamens break off; only the ovary remains, growing larger, ripening, and finally becoming the fruit. "Every fruit -- the pear, apple, apricot, peach, walnut, cherry, melon, strawberry, almond, chestnut -- began by being a little swelling of the pistil; all these excellent things that the plant furnishes us for food were first ovaries."

"Now, in order to outlive the other parts of the flower and remain on its stem when all the rest dries up and falls, the ovary, at the moment when blossoming is at its greatest vigor, receives a supplement of strength, I should almost say a new life. The magnificence of the corolla, its sumptuous colorings, its perfumes, serve to celebrate the solemn moment when this new vitality comes to the ovary. This great act accomplished, the flower has had its day."

"Well, it is the pollen, the yellow dust of the stamens, that gives this increase of energy without which the nascent seeds would perish in the ovary, itself withered. It falls from the stamens on to the stigma, always coated with a stickiness apt to hold it; and from the stigma, it makes its mysterious action felt in the depths of the ovary. Animated with new life, the nascent seeds develop rapidly, while the ovary swells so as to give them necessary room. The final result of this incomprehensible travail is the fruit, with its contents of seeds ready to germinate and produce new plants. Do no question me further about these wonderful things concerning which even the keenest observer ceases to see clearly. God only, the wisest of beings, knows how a grain of pollen can give birth to something that was not before, and can cause the ovary to feel the stirring of the vital principle."

THE STORY BOOK OF SCIENCE

by Jean Henri Fabre

Riding and Skating

My little man learned how to ride his two wheeler last Sunday, January 3rd! He is loving it!!!


Today, my little sweetheart is roller blading on her own for the first time! She is also loving her new wheels!!!

Education is the Science of Relations

A child should be brought up to have relations of force with earth and water, should run and ride, swim and skate, lift and carry; should know texture, and work in material; should know by name, and where and how they live at any rate, the things of the earth about him, its birds and beasts and creeping things, its herbs and trees; should be in touch with the literature, art and thought of the past and the present. I do not mean that he should know all these things; but he should feel, when he reads of it in the newspapers, the thrill which stirred the Cretan peasants when the frescoes in the palace of King Minos were disclosed to the labour of their spades. He should feel the thrill, not from mere contiguity, but because he has with the past the relationship of living pulsing thought; and, if blood be thicker than water, thought is more quickening than blood. He must have a living relationship with the present, its historic movement, its science, literature, art, social needs and aspirations. In fact, he must have a wide outlook, intimate relations all round; and force, virtue, must pass out of him, whether of hand, will, or sympathy, wherever he touches. This is no impossible programme. Indeed it can be pretty well filled in by the time an intelligent boy or girl has reached the age of thirteen or fourteen; for it depends, not upon how much is learned, but upon how things are learned.

Charlotte Mason

Volume 3, page 161

Understood Betsy

Understood Betsy has been our favorite read aloud so far this term. It is the one that I just cannot wait to read each week! Our last chapter is coming to an end...we will miss this book, until we read again. This is one of many of Julia's favorite parts:

It was a warm, dark evening in late May, with the frogs piping their sweet, high note, and the first of the fireflies wheeling over the wet meadows near the tumbledown house where 'Lias lived. The girls took turns in carrying the big paper-wrapped bundle, and stole along in the shadow of the trees, full of excitement, looking over their shoulders at nothing and pressing their hands over their mouths to keep back the giggles. There was, of course, no reason on earth why they should giggle, which is, of course, the reason why they did. If you've ever been a little girl you know about that.

One window of the small house was dimly lighted, they found, when they came in sight of it, and they thrilled with excitement and joyful alarm. Suppose 'Lias's dreadful stepfather should come out and yell at them! They came forward on tiptoe, making a great deal of noise by stepping on twigs, rustling bushes, crackling gravel under their feet and doing all the other things that make such a noise at night and never do in the daytime. But nobody stirred inside the room with the lighted window. They crept forward and peeped cautiously inside. . . and stopped giggling.

How a Child sets up a New Relation

Quote from Charlotte Mason's, School Education, Volume 3 page 78

This is how a child goes to work to set up a new relation: a little girl of seven was handling an oar for the first time and remarked -- 'What a lot of crab-water there is to-day!' Then the next day -- 'There's not near so much crab-water to-day.' She was asked -- 'How do you know when it's crab-water?' 'Oh! it's so tough and you can't get your oar through, and it knocks you off your seat!' The child was all wrong, of course, but she was getting a scrap of real science and would soon get on the right track. How much better this than to learn out of a text-book, 'the particles which constitute water have no cohesion, and may be readily separated by a solid substance.'

When we consider that the setting up of relations, moral and intellectual, is our chief concern in life, and that the function of education is to put the child in the way of relations proper to him, and to offer the inspiring idea which commonly initiates a relation, we perceive that a little incident like the above may be of more importance than the passing of an examination.

Autumn Color

The City of Falling Leaves, by Amy Lowell, 1874-1925

Leaves fall,
Brown leaves,
Yellow leaves
streaked with brown.
They fall,
Flutter,
Fall again.
The brown leaves,
And the streaked yellow leaves,
Loosen on their branches
And drift slowly downwards.
One,
One, two, three,
One, two, five.
All Venice is a falling
of Autumn leaves--
Brown,
And yellow streaked with brown.


My nature journal drawings of October color discovered at the San Joaquin Marsh this week.

The last time we observed the California Rose and the Freemont Cottonwood tree they were very different being that it was in June. The California Rose was noted as a wild bush with little pink flowers. The Cottonwood tree, with green leaves, was noted to release its white cotton fuzz into the breeze. Now that Autumn has arrived there were no pink petals to be collected and no floating cotton to jump up and capture, just beautiful color to relish in and a little fruity treat for a bird just waiting.

A quote from Tree in the Trail by Holling C. Holling, (a little geography book we are enjoying)

"The boy explored the shores of the pond. Among scattered rocks stood a single Cottonwood sapling, no taller than himself. Once you were a tiny seed -- a papoose wrapped in white down. Your cradleboard swung from a twig. Then a strong Summer Wind came by. He lifted you from your mother's arms and brought you here."

Our friend Naomi captured Mr. Common Green Darner for the children to observe.

Till the dragon fly, in light gauzy armor

burnished bright,

Came tilting down the waters in a wild,

bewildered flight.

Riley

Toyon or Christmas Berry

I would love to make a wreath out of these berries!

Fleabane on the bank of the marsh at San Joaquin...a beautiful wild purple flower.

Teaching Must be Fresh and Books Must be Living- Charlotte Mason

Education -

With this thought of a child to begin with, we shall perceive that whatever is stale and flat and dull to us must needs be stale and flat and dull to him, and also that there is no subject which has not a fresh and living way of approach. Are we teaching geography? The child discovers with the explorer, journeys with the traveller, receives impressions new and vivid from some other mind which is immediately receiving these impressions; not after they have been made stale and dull by a process of filtering through many intermediate minds, and have found at last their way into a little text-book. Is he learning history? His concern is not with strings of names and of dates, not with nice little reading-made-easy stories, brought down, as we mistakenly say, to the level of his comprehension; we recognise that his power of comprehension is at least equal to our own, and that it is only his ignorance of the attendant circumstances we have to deal with as luminously as we can. We take the child to the living sources of history - a child of seven is fully able to comprehend Plutarch, in Plutarch's own words (translated), without any diluting and with little explanation.

Children must have books, living books; the best are not too good for them; anything less than the best is not good enough; and if it is needful to exercise economy, let go everything that belongs to soft and luxurious living before letting go the duty of supplying the books, and the frequent changes of books, which are necessary for the constant stimulation of the child's intellectual life.

Parents and Children by Charlotte Mason, Volume 2, page 278-279

Joy in daily life

It is wholly impossible to live according to Divine order, and to make a proper application of heavenly principles, as long as the necessary duties which each day brings seem only like a burden grievous to be borne. Not till we are ready to throw our very life's love into the troublesome little things can we be really faithful in that which is least and faithful also in much. Every day that dawns brings something to do, which can never be done as well again. We should, therefore, try to do it ungrudgingly and cheerfully. It is the Lord's own work, which He has given us as surely as He gives us daily bread. We should thank Him for it with all our hearts, as much as for any other gift. It was designed to be our life, our happiness. Instead of shirking it or hurrying over it, we should put our whole heart and soul into it.

James Reed