We're a Canadian family of five, farming and home schooling. I'm nowhere near as regular a blogger as I used to be, and tend not to blog as much about our home schooling efforts as I used to.
"There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live."
James T. Adams
Family, books, food, organic farming, classical home education, books, gardening, journeys, music, books, thoughts, movies, and books.
Davy is in seventh grade, Daniel in eighth grade, and Laura in tenth grade
Email: farmschool at hmsinet dot com
"The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall, nations perish, civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead."
Clarence Day
"Anyone who has a library and a garden wants for nothing."
Cicero
"Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend."
Sir Francis Bacon, "Essays"
"The chief aim of education is to show you, after you make a livelihood, how to enjoy living; and you can live longest and best and most rewardingly by attaining and preserving the happiness of learning."
Gilbert Highet, "The Immortal Profession: The Joys of Teaching and Learning"
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."
Walter Wriston
"I'd like to give you a piece of my mind."
"Oh, I couldn't take the last piece."
Ginger Rogers to Frances Mercer in "Vivacious Lady" (1938)
"No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem."
Booker T. Washington
"Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member."
Attributed to Groucho Marx in "The Groucho Letters" by Arthur Sheekman
"If you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me."
Alice Roosevelt Longworth
"If we bring a little joy into your humdrum lives, we feel all our hard work ain't been in vain for nothin'."
Jean Hagen as "Lina Lamont" in "Singin' in the Rain" (1952)
Copyright © 2005-2012
Please do not use any of my words or my personal photographs without my express permission.
Jr. is a big Calvin & Hobbes fan, too. He just loves those books. The spelling list is a great idea!
Great idea! I just love C&H — the perfect thing to send me off to sleep smiling even after the roughest day. Happy to hear your kids have discovered the collections. Have they come to the Dad polls yet? ; )
We are all big C+ H fans as well. We’ve used them for short creative writing exercises. Copied a strip, twinked out all the words, enlarged the copy and then had the kids fill in the blanks. Lots of fun and it did stop the constant “Listen to this one Mum” that went on when my youngest discovered them.
A little warning: my 10yos uses C&H as *instruction manuals*.
Don’t forget lobotomy. (We fielded that one this year.)
Gosh, who knew C&H had such erudite vocabulary. My sons love them so much it’s almost amazing to me. They must really appeal to the male mind in some mysterious way (building evil deformed snowmen is SO not my thing although I like a good gross pumpkin…).
I’m not a serious C&H fan, but we’ve had a similar experience with the Asterix stories. Last spring hubby introduced the girls to these childhood favourites of his when we discovered the library had an absolute ton of them.
Who knew? Not only were there wonderful vocabulary selections, but also Latin phrases and historical references. And oh, the puns!!!!
It’s fun getting to use books like these instead of dry old textbooks :)
Cheers!
Ruby
With the latest version of the OED on disc in the computer, a new and exciting word pops up every time the program is opened.
‘Expunge’ came to the fore this morning. Only a few hundred thousand more to go.
My kids read and reread Calvin and Hobbes – I’m quite sure some of their spelling capabilities come from those books, along with Lego catalogs!
This is too funny! When I read this post earlier I thought, well, nobody is on a Calvin and Hobbes kick right now; lo and behold, my eight-and-a-half year old just picked up some from the library and now when I need to find anyone (husband included) I just head for the living room couch and the snorts!
Thank you for the list, and best wishes with *everything* this fall!
Chris in PEI