A peaceful day

My family got lost in Kara Kara State Park yesterday. All of them.  Husband.  Daughter.  Dog.

I first learnt about it by text at 11:48 am, 2 hours and 48 minutes after they'd set out for a short postprandial stroll.  It was probably a good thing that I learned about it so late, actually, since I was supposed to be concentrating on the conference speaker, and I certainly was not after I received that text.  Fortunately, it was not many minutes after that first message that I received a second, letting me know that they had worked out their location using the map on hubby's trusty iPhone.  Only thing was, Taltarni, where they were, was a rather long way from Warrenmang where I was, so I had to wait a good while longer before they actually walked through the door.

I was kinda happy to see them.

Apart from a raging thirst (Who goes for a walk in the Australian bush without water, I ask you.  Easy to see that my husband is a British alien), and rather sore feet, they were no worse for wear, although all three did sleep particularly soundly last night.  The dog, in particular was shattered.

Now that they're home safe and sound, it really is a great adventure - a story to dine out on as it were.  Things like this are always funner after the event, aren't they?

Here are some photos of the first part of their journey.  They stopped taking happy snaps for Mummy when things got serious.

• The 23rd Psalm illustrated by Michael Hague
• The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by Michael Hague
• Alphabears by Kathleen Hague, illustrated by Michael Hague
• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham, illustrated by Michael Hague
• Michael Hague's Favourite Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales
• A Siamese Fairy Tale by W. Somerset Maugham illustrated by Fleur Brofos Asmussen
• The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling illustrated by Nicola Bayley
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll illustrated by S. Michelle Wiggins
• Bonjour, Babar by Jean de Brunhoff
• Stuart Little by E. B. White illustrated by Garth Williams
• A Treasury of Kate Greenaway Stories
• The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi and Roberto Innocenti
• The Wombles by Elisabeth Beresford illustrated by Nick Price
• The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien illustrated by Michael Hague
• Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie illustrated by Scott Gustafson
• Charlotte's Web by E. B. White, illustrated by Garth Williams
• Paddington Treasury by Michael Bond

There are some very beautiful illustrated editions of those-books-children-must-read. Here are some of them. I have a soft spot for Michael Hague's illustrations, as you can see!

I'm enjoying these posts. I hope you are too.  Is your favourite children's classic pictured here?  Tell me about it!  Let me know in the comments if you'd like to hear more about one of the books pictured.

Yes, I'm still loving our new library.  We went to purchase more bookshelves for the opposite wall from IKEA last week, but did you know there is a nation-wide shortage of Expidit bookcases?  We'll have to wait for a month for more to arrive.  The things we need to endure.  Sigh.

Something is eating our next-door-neighbour's beautiful elm tree.  It's a teensy little white caterpillar that's skeletonising the leaves.  I do hope that the fact that it is autumn and the tree would drop its leaves naturally about now means that it will survive, because its really old and really beautiful, and if it dies, I, for one, will be really sad.

The skeletonised leaves are beautiful though, aren't they?



Anyone have any ideas as to what the little beastie might be?

But a child cannot dream parts of speech, and any grown-up twaddle attempting to personify such abstractions offends a small person who with all his love of play and nonsense has a serious mind.

Charlotte Mason A Philosophy of Education p210

Hey everyone, I know Miss Mason didn't like M. L. Nesbitt's Grammar-Land, but we've been really enjoying it this term.

The little story is a bit contrived - after all, it is about a courtroom of personified abstractions, but it does help illustrate the various parts of speech, and the application exercises at the end of each chapter are excellent.

We rarely use worksheets, since most of them are painful busywork, but these worksheets put together by a homeschool mum have proved to be most enjoyable.  I simply printed them out and bound them with a cover into a book.  Jemimah does an exercise each week, and they take about five minutes.

Some of you might find them useful.

You can find Grammar-Land free online.

Latin is a language
As dead as dead can be.
It killed the mighty Romans
And now it’s killing me.

You will know from previous posts that if there is an easy way of approaching a subject, that’s probably the method we’ll be using in our Peaceful Home.  'Keep it Simple' is my motto.

Latin is a case in point. There are some pretty erudite homeschooling mammas out there, and some of them are teaching some rather impressive Latin.  Their kids are learning the five declensions and four conjugations while still in primary school.  They know the indicative, imperative and subjunctive, and are perfect in the pluperfect. Remarkable.

Now I know my student fairly well, and I am quite aware that she is not going to enjoy that sort of teaching.  She really isn't.  To begin with, her English grammar isn't anywhere near the level required for serious Latin study.  Possibly, neither is mine.  Okay, definitely.  Secondly, she just isn't up for the type of rote memorising that goes with that method of instruction.

To be honest, neither am I. It sort of doesn't fit with my philosophy, y'know?  It smacks of Classical homeschooling rather than CM homeschooling, I reckon.  There is a difference.  Even if I'm not quite sure what it is.

Charlotte Mason realised that studies of this type are not attractive to young children.

Of grammar, Latin and English, I shall say very little here. In the first place, grammar, being a study of words and not of things, is by no means attractive to the child, nor should he be hurried into it...Therefore, if he learns no more at this early stage than the declensions and a verb or two, it is well he should learn this much, if only to help him see what English grammar would be at when it speaks of a change in case or mood, yet shows no change in the form of a word.

Charlotte Mason Home Education p295

AO introduces English Grammar very slowly into Primary School at Grade 4 level, the same year that Latin is begun.  Over the next three years the student gradually learns the nine parts of speech and a few other things in preparation for serious grammar study in secondary school. I figure that that's the time for serious Latin study too - Secondary School.

Moods and Tenses
Bother my senses
Adverbs, Proverbs make me roar.
Irregular Verbs
My sleep disturb
They are a regular bore.

When Jemimah moves into AO7 - next year, oh my! - we will be studying Latin using the Cambridge Latin Course that her father and I both used at school.  It's a rigourous English Classical Latin programme (that is, it was published in the UK) and is highly regarded, but the main reason I'm using it is that in my memory, Latin using this course was fun. Each of the first year's lessons contained a little story about Caecilius, a banker in Pompeii, his wife Metella, Quintus their son and Cerberus the family mut. There was a list of vocab, and a little bit of grammar and culture, introduced where it is necessary to proceed.  I want my daughter to learn Latin like this too.  Caecilius and Metella are my friends.  (Pompeii is not the best place for you to be living, people. Please move!)

But enough about Cambridge Latin - we're not using that yet.

In the mean time, while Jemimah's in Primary School, we decided on Minimus Latin.  It, too, is published by Cambridge University Press, which is the reason that I first looked at it, and has a similar layout to the Cambridge books, but the real reason I chose Minimus for Jemimah is because it looked like it kept Latin simple. Simple and enjoyable.  There are two books - Minimus: Starting Latin is for kids 7-10 (We started in AO4 when Jemimah was 9) and Minimus Secondus: Moving on in Latin for 11-13 year olds.

If you were keen you could easily complete a book easily in a year - there are 12 lessons per book. We've managed to find plenty to keep us interested for what will be the three years AO4-6, though, doing Latin for two short lessons a week.

What I have loved is how many of Charlotte Mason's methods we can fit into our study using this course.  The year, in particular, as our history rotation is in ancient times, I've also loved all the overlap between Latin and our history subjects.  Education is the Science of Relations, and it has certainly not been difficult to make connections this term!

Most lessons we read a little story first, which introduces the subject and grammar for the chapter.  The stories are in picture form, so you can guess intelligently at what you're reading without having to look up every vocabulary word. The vocab lists are arranged according to the parts of speech, allowing similarities of form to be discerned more easily. After Jemimah narrates back in English - or occasionally using a few Latin sentences if she really wants to impress, we might have a bit of a closer look at the grammar and do one of the short activities to reinforce what we've learned.  The Teacher's Guide (which is critical unless you're a much better Latin Scholar than I am) contains worksheets - some of which are time-wasting busy work, and most of which are not. Sometimes there's a game to play - Jemimah loves those - or a map for CM style map work - I love those.  Sometimes there are craft activities.  We generally skip them.  Sometimes the book explores the Latin roots of English words and we orally run through a few.  Sometimes, but not too often, there's a written activity. Each lesson also contains historical information about Roman life, and often a myth as well.  This information reinforces what we are learning in our literature and history subjects just beautifully!  All so easy!


The course also contains a series of little readers.  Some weeks we read through one of those for a few days in a row until the vocabulary is learned.  Jemimah tries to narrate these in Latin after she's heard them a few times and know the story well.  These readers are a great way of reinforcing what we've studied in the lessons.



The stories in the Minimus books focus on a real life family who lived at Vindolanda in Roman Britain in 100AD.  Flavius is the fort commander, and his family includes his wife Lepidina, their three children, assorted household slaves, their cat Vibrissa - and Minimus the mouse.  We know of their existence from the famous Vindolanda writing tablets.

This term especially, I've been impressed with the number of times our history and Latin lessons have coincided.  Last week in Latin, for example, we learned about the signifier - standard bearer - the officer that carried the unit's standard into battle.  Today, we read about him in history.  Last week in history we read about Saturnalia.  That features in next week's Latin lesson.  Children can't help but catch connections like those!

Minimus is a really gentle way to learn Latin.  But learning we are.  Recently we commenced translating Latin fabulae mirabiles into English.  The good thing about fairy tales is that we all know pretty well how the story goes, but even so, I have been delighted at how much of these stories we have been able to read. (Don't you love the royal 'We'?  I learn as much as Jemimah, y'know.)

We don't learn Latin in order to honk like a goose when declining pronouns - hic haec hoc; hunc hanc hoc.  We study Latin to understand how languages work. It's logical and teaches us how to think. It will enhance our knowledge of English grammar, but it will also make the study of other languages easier as well.  When you can read Latin you can not only read fairy tales in Latin.  You can read the Classics in the original as well.  I read the Odyssey (which was actually written in Greek, not Roman, but that's what I read), but there is also Virgil, Pliny, Cicero, Lucretius and Tacitus.  Mostly, though, we study Latin because it's fun.

Brutus adsum jam forte
Caesar aderat.
Brutus sic in omnibus,
Caesar sic inat.

• Mr & Mrs Bear and Friends by May Gibbs
• Stout Fellows: Chum, Angelina Wallaby, Um-Pig and Flip by Dorothy Wall
• The Enchanted Forest by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite and Gregory Outhwaite
• Budgeree Bill: An Australian Story for Little Australians by W J O'Neill
• Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner
• Magic Australia by Nuri Mass
• Scott's in Gumnut Land by May Gibbs
• The Muddle-Header Wombat by Ruth Park
• The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay
• Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs
• Blinky Bill by Dorothy Wall
• The Gumnut Land Adventures by May Gibbs
• The Flyaway Highway by Norman Lindsay
• A Tiny Story of Blinky Bill by Dorothy Wall
• The Complete Adventures of Blinky Bill by Dorothy Wall
• The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay
• Nittybub and Nittersing by May Gibbs

It's been one of those super busy weeks where we've sort of had to condense five days of school into three, and every extra minute has been taken up with important stuff that can't be put off.  I do have a couple of posts in the planning, but they're not going to get done this week at least.

In the mean time, and because nobody leaves me nice messages if I don't post, and I'm getting sad and lonely and downright miserable, here's a shelf from our library (I love typing that!) for you to have a browse through.  Don't you love stickying at people's bookshelves?  I do, but you already know that.

Below the photo is a list of books from left to right.  You'll notice a couple of copies of Magic Pudding, and two of Blinky Bill.  That's the way it is sometimes.

It turns out that I've had a bit to say about many of these books, and in that case I've linked to the post.  Some of these are actual reviews; others are just a bit of chat.  Some have photos of the insides of the book too, and if you're anything like me, you'll love looking at the delightful illustrations.

Let me know in the comments if you'd like to see more shelves like this. Or if you'd like to hear about any of the books here.

I'll be back next week with something a bit more erudite.  Have a nice weekend!

::  Swam butterfly laps of the swimming pool.  The girl and her friend Jay, not me. Perish the thought.  I cheered from the sidelines.

:: Went on a Mummy-Mimi Morning date with my beautiful girl.  It's starting to get a bit chilly for much sitting outside, though.  See that huge muffin?  She couldn't eat it all.  Just in case you wondered.

:: Went shopping for new cold weather clothes.  You know that day at the start of each season when you wonder whether you might, in fact, have spent much of last year running around naked, because you have absolutely nothing to wear?  It was yesterday.

:: Began translating Rumpelstiltskin from Latin into English. We thought this was really cool!  Okay, we may possibly be a bit weird.

- Est tuum nomen Marcus, homunculus?
- Minime, nomen meum non est Marcus.
- Aulus?
- Mimime.
- Publius?
- Minime.
Neque ulla nomen homunculo erant.

We're using this book, Fabulae Mirabiles.  It's just the right level to be able to read and understand without having to look up too many words.  Each story is less than 1000 words, and there's a comprehensive glossary in the back.



:: Watched this film.

Having just read The Wizard of Earthsea, it was interesting to see how Ghibli interpreted the mythical world of Earthsea.  The plot diverged significantly from LeGuin's books, but I think a knowledge of the story was important to understand the nuances in the movie.  We all enjoyed it.  Many reviewers have not.

So that's our 5 things.  What 5 things did you do today?  Do tell.