• About Farm School

    "There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live."
    James Adams, from his essay "To 'Be' or to 'Do': A Note on American Education", 1929

    We're a Canadian family of five, farming, home schooling, and building our own house. I'm nowhere near as regular a blogger as I used to be.

    The kids are 18/Grade 12, 16/Grade 11, and 14/Grade 10.

    Contact me at becky(dot)farmschool(at)gmail(dot)com

  • Notable Quotables

    "If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
    William Morris, from his lecture "The Beauty of Life"

    "‘Never look at an ugly thing twice. It is fatally easy to get accustomed to corrupting influences."
    English architect CFA Voysey (1857-1941)

    "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)

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  • Copyright © 2005-2016 Please do not use any of my words or my personal photographs without my express permission.

Our school subjects

The following are the pages (now posts) that used to be at the top of the Farm School blog as individual tabs. I’ve collected them here in one handy place, and to make better use of those tabs.

Science: Links to Farm School blog posts on science, and some of our favorite science books and resources for all ages

Art & Music: Links to Farm School blog posts on art, music, and also movies

Poetry: Links to Farm School blog posts on reading, teaching, and getting kids to enjoy poetry

History: Links to Farm School blog posts on teaching and learning about history, and lists of books from the Farm School shelves

Courting Danger: Links to Farm School blog posts on Courting Danger, and our favorite books, websites, and other resources to help you court danger, too.

2 Responses

  1. laura simpson, on May 7, 2009 at 12:20 pm said:

    cool site guys do you do anything with marine biology?

    Reply
  2. Becky, on May 7, 2009 at 5:02 pm said:

    It depends where we are — in the landlocked Canadian prairies, not often : ). When visiting my parents in the West Indies, absolutely, with a particular focus on life by the seashore. The kids still remember the baby hawksbill sea turtles they are able to touch and hold at the aquarium…

    And one of the kids’ favorite (natural) history books is the picture book version of Mark Kurlansky’s “Cod”. Also on the shelves here, “The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss” by Claire Nouvian (a Christmas present from my parents the other year); “Shelley” and “Sea Turtles Hatching” by Katherine Orr; “The Sea Around Us” by Rachel Carson; “Singing Whales & Flying Squid” by Richard Ellis; and “Civilization and the Limpet” by Martin Wells. We’ve got some good Caribbean ocean life coloring books and some good picture books, mostly I think from Macmillan Caribbean. We try to avoid many of the very dry library/book report-type books on the subject.

    Reply

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