Heritage History

I found Heritage History, another great online book site with all kinds of old children's history books. It works a lot like The Baldwin Project; in fact a link to "Baldwin" appears in books that are on both sites. The Heritage History collection is not as extensive as Baldwin and is more focused on history in a broad sense to include legends and fiction. I especially like that it has more Catholic offerings than Baldwin, making the two great Christian companion sites.

For example History of the Catholic Church by Rev. James McCaffrey, complete with an Imprimi Potest, is available. The site also has quotes at the top of the page, several of which are from G.K. Chesterton (though none of his works appear on the site, probably because they are readily available elsewhere on the Internet.)

I've added the link to my Book Sites section. So much to read and so little time!

Living Media

"'Education is the Science of Relations'; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books, for we know that our business is not to teach him all about anything, but to help him to make valid as many as may be of––
'Those first-born affinities,
That fit our new existence to existing things.'"

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education with a quote from The Prelude by William Wordsworth

She goes on to state, "The children I am speaking of are much occupied with things as well as with books, because 'Education is the Science of Relations,' is the principle which regulates their curriculum; that is, a child goes to school with many aptitudes which he should put into effect."

Miss Mason lived until 1923, just at the time of radio's development and long before television, computers, or the Internet. While living books will always be the cornerstone of our homeschool, I am also always searching for living audios, videos, software, and web sites. We do not exclude any sources (though certainly families do for their own good reasons); instead I evaluate all these things in the same way I do our books.

A living book:

...is written by a single author with expertise and enthusiasm for a subject;
...is well written in an engaging style such that they are an enjoyment to read;
...has high quality information in terms of its depth as well as in relation to good character formation.

One does not have to stretch that definition too much in order to apply it to other media forms. Certainly we can find absorbing programing that has little educational value, or worse, with moral values counter to a family's own. We can also find boring educational media, or educational material that is over-simplified or not of "literary" quality (the recent fad of gross-based science materials comes to mind.)

Finding engaging, challenging media presented in a quality format, i.e. living media, can be hard to find in a world of media twaddle. Then again, finding living books in a world of twaddle is not easy, either. When we see our children forming a "relation" with material of which we approve, then we know we've found a living media.

Feed their minds nothing but the best.

December ice and now snow

You may have heard about or lived through the recent ice storm here in the Northeast. Our town was hit hard, though it was at the edge of the storm. Drive a few miles in any direction but north and the damage was far less.

We awoke last Friday at 3am to the frequent sound of trees cracking, bending, and sometimes falling. We waited for one to hit the roof, though that never happened. Many people likened it to gunshots in a war zone. We lost power for 6 days; thousands in the area are still without it. Please pray for them.

The next morning we saw the crystal coating forcing all to bend beneath it. The birches especially yielded low but did not break, while the hardwoods simply snapped. Branches were scattered everywhere.

By noontime the sun ignited the ice, and a stiff wind blew it off the trees in bursts of sparkling, pelting showers. The trees groaned again.

Still, it was beautiful. The light was so brilliant, and world so transformed, as if I were no longer home. And the ice is fleeting; already it is gone. And now as I type, we are being blanketed by a foot of snow.