I've seen the movie...

...and it's funny and best of all, a wonderful learning project. It's not quite finished but Matthew and Andrew R. really KNOW those words now. The title: Epic Vocabulary. I'm working on the word list for the sequel. I don't think anyone ever had so much fun prepping for the SAT.

If you give a kid vocabulary words...

...he'll make a movie.

At least, if that kid is Matthew. Last night, while the rest of us were out, he and his buddy, Andrew, worked to create a video using the words we've studied for the last couple of days...all 68 of them. I haven't viewed the video yet - it was finished late last night - but I can't wait to see how they used maladroit, nefarious, salubrious, and effervesce. I heard that the movie making involved a trip to two drive-through windows. Hmmmm????

Poetry in our house

For the last two years I have made a more concerted effort to foster poetry appreciation. It started with simply memorizing a few poems. Last year, we learned "The Charge of the Light Brigade", "O, Captain! My Captain!", parts of "Paul Revere's Ride", and Macbeth's soliloquy in Act V after Lady Macbeth dies. I chose all of these from Laura Berquist's collection, The Harp and the Laurel Wreath.

People have asked me how we memorize long poems. It's really pretty simple. I read a line or two, the boys repeat it. I read a couple more lines, they repeat. We put them together, read, repeat, read, repeat. Then I have them recite what they have learned. The next morning they recite again what they did the day before and we keep adding lines day by day reading, repeating, reciting until we've learned the complete poem. I guess the fourth "r" of our poetry learning method is review. Every so often, we review by reciting poems we've learned before. So, for example this year, we will occasionally recite one of our poems from last year. I think we are all amazed that we remember them. Hey, I guess that's "r" number five. So there you have it, our family's five "r" system for poetry memoriztion: read, repeat, recite, review, remember!

Last year we learned more literal, narrative, and historical poems. So far, this year we are learning poems with more spiritual import, symbolism and imagery. We are talking more about figurative language, forms, and literary devices. We have learned "God's Grandeur", "The Clod and the Pebble", and our current poem is Shakespeare's Sonnet 116:

LET me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love ’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

The other books we have relied on most in our recent study are The Norton Anthology of Poetry and The Roar on the Other Side: A Guide for Student Poets by Suzanne U. Clark. Enjoy with me a few lines from Clark's introduction:

Poetry starts with silence - not silence in the world but silence in the mind.

If we cultivate the art of inner quiet and develop habits to nurture the mind's green fields, we will hear the melodies of Heaven.

Stillness needs a larger room than most of us give it. By making decisions to read a good book instead of watching TV or take a walk instead of playing a video game, you are enlarging this room. Writing poetry will add floor space and a skylight.

We love God with our mind when we admire smoothness, strangeness, structure, intricacy, fragrance, complexion, motion. 'Glory be to God for dappled things,' exclaimed the poet-priest Gerard Manley Hopkins.

We read that poem this morning and now I look out at the dappled play of afternoon light on flaming trees. Glory be to God, indeed!

This poetry study is another one of those homeschooling stretching and enriching experiences for me. I remember snatches of poems I learned in 7th grade, but I am now relishing reading, learning, and memorizing as well as listening and seeing in ways I never did when I was in school. The boys do, I think, enjoy our poetry now, but I expect they will appreciate it even more when as adults the line "It is the star to every wandering bark" slips into their thoughts as they contemplate love, or when as they gaze on a brilliant fall afternoon, they realize that "The world is charged with the grandeur of God..."

Excellent reasons for having more poetry in our days. Do you have favorites? Would you share?

On a college decision and a joyful fruit of homeschooling...

For those of you who may be wondering...Thomas is planning to attend Covenant College in the fall. He did not receive the McClellan Scholarship but his participation in the scholarship weekend convinced him that he really wants to attend Covenant, McClellan Scholar or not. He did receive a Presidential Scholarship and a leadership award. Those grants combined with work study and his own hard work and saving in the meantime will make attending Covenant this fall a reality, Lord willing. We are thankful, encouraged, and excited for him. Thanks for your prayers on his behalf.

We are now planning for his graduation with the Cabarrus County Homeschool Association. He’ll be the first of our Pinckney Family School graduates to “walk” in a high school graduation ceremony. Even homeschoolers get to wear a cap and gown.

I am in awe and wonder that Coty and I have now guided three children through 12 plus years of schooling. My honest answer to the frequently asked question, “How do you do it?” is “by the grace of God.” And I don’t say that in a flippant, cliché sort of way. It is God’s grace alone that has enabled us to pour into our children’s lives in homeschooling. God has so graciously provided the resources and given us the strength, wisdom, perseverance, patience, humor, and encouragement to pursue a life of learning with our children. I could not do it on my own. I am humbled and grateful.

And then today I was given yet another joyful reminder of why we homeschool. This year Matthew, Joel, and I have been working on memorizing more poetry. So far we have memorized The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Macbeth’s soliloquy upon the death of Lady Macbeth by Shakespeare, O Captain, My Captain by Walt Whitman, and portions of The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere by Longfellow. This morning it was time to pick a new poem. I thought the guys should choose since I’ve done all the choosing so far, so I asked for their ideas. Matthew immediately suggested that instead of choosing a poem, we memorize a book of the Bible. I asked if he had anything in mind. He has been reading Isaiah and promptly suggested that we learn Isaiah 59. His reason – it presents our sinfulness, God’s righteous judgment, confession and redemption in one very poetic chapter.

To have a child that would choose such a chapter to memorize for the reasons he stated is for me the God-given fruit of long ago decision that God would not be kept in a box and brought out on Sunday only. Our long ago decision to homeschool meant that God would be an integral part of our daily lives and the center of our homeschool. His glory would be the goal of all our endeavors, educational and otherwise. This decision has given us the freedom and time to read, discuss, pray, and live with our children in an extraordinarily close way.

I must also extol my husband’s faithful, daily Bible reading and leading in prayer, as well as his consistent modeling of spiritual disciplines. I am so thankful for a Godly husband whose influence in the lives of his children is so tangible. Yet, I know that any good that has accrued to our children as a result of our schooling choice or our imperfect striving after obedience is all a gift from God.

Matthew’s chosen chapter ends with a very precious promise that I will hang onto with thanksgiving, as my children and I repeat the words of Isaiah 59 this month til they are firmly planted in our mouths and hidden in our hearts:

“As for me, this is my covenant with them,” says the Lord. “My Spirit who is on you, and my words that I have put in your mouth will not depart from your mouth, or from the mouths of your children, or the mouths of their descendents from this time on and forever,” says the Lord. Isaiah 59:21

Ebenezer...