If you happen to have noticed that I haven’t been around much lately, I do apologize. I keep thinking that I can make this space a priority but the reality is that most of the time, I can’t right now. I am deep into my Master’s degree at the moment. In fact, I am spending my summer preparing for my final two classes and writing my thesis. It has been the most exhausting and exhilarating experience of my life!
I am getting my Master’s in classical education, and specifically in literature. This means I have had to do an awful lot of reading over the past two years–with plenty more to come this fall, when I tackle both Children’s Literature and Drama while also doing the preliminary research for my thesis. Not to mention spending time with my daughter who will be a senior this fall, teaching my middle child to drive, directing Challenge 1, doing school with the youngest, etc. It’s going to be a very VERY intense fifteen weeks around our house. But we all know that, we all agreed to it together and we are all doing what we can to prepare for it.
For me, that looks like freezer cooking, decluttering the house, and doing ALL the assigned reading now so that I can just review it this fall. I’m not a fast reader–and I am especially slow when I “have to” read something. Doing it over the summer will take a lot of the pressure off of me. I highlight like a madwoman so I can just review my highlights and carry on.
Anyway, all of that and I haven’t even gotten to my point yet. Sometimes I have to read something that intimidates me. And if you are trying to give your kids a classical education when you yourself have not had one, I am sure you understand what I mean! This past semester I had to read The Odyssey for the first time and I was scared to death. This fall I have to read Doctor Faustus and some other rather intimidating-sounding titles. Sometimes I start to panic. And then I remember, we’ve been teaching our kids how to approach intimidating-sounding material classically for years! It’s time to do the same for myself! So here is what I’ve come up with for how to approach classical literature and the specific things I found for Doctor Faustus that helped me out. My plan is to add more to this series and share what I did to approach each one.
Step 1: Watch the play (if it is a play, that is!)
Here’s the thing. No playwright has ever intended people to sit down and read the script. The script is for the actor. You were expected to WATCH the story unfold before your eyes. So watch the play. Do not feel guilty. Do not think you are cheating! It’s a play! This was the intention. What you MIGHT want to do is keep the script in front of you in case there were major edits done, but honestly, even that is not necessary in step one.
Hello friends! As most of you are aware, I sell study guides that go along with Henle Latin. For some reason, Etsy flagged SOME of them as violations of intellectual property. Of course, they are not. Henle Latin is public domain and I don’t even directly quote anything in the study guide anyway. It’s just a help in walking through the lessons. It also seems like a glitch because only the listings I went in to do small edits were flagged–and instantly after editing them.
I tried to contact Etsy about this for over six months and they refused to respond and even closed my case without responding to me. I re-listed my study guides with some small changes and so far they’ve left me alone this time. You can purchase my study guides on Etsy once again. You can also buy them on Teachers Pay Teachers if that’s your preferred site, although it shouldn’t be. TpT keeps SO MUCH of the profit for itself that it makes Etsy’s fees seem non-existent. I think they keep 50% or more. Etsy keeps like 6%. Anyway… the other option is my new stand alone site: ThePlacesWeLearnBlog.Sellfy.Store. I MUCH prefer this site to either Etsy or TpT, but I know some people prefer to stick with a site that is familiar to them, which is why I do list them on all three.
Hey momma, look at you! You’ve made it this far with your student! Challenge 2 and Challenge 3 are so rewarding because you finally get to see the fruits of your labor. Your student is growing, maturing, learning to love truth, goodness, and beauty… but maybe still is not loving Latin. Or maybe she is. Either way, I’m guessing YOU have not had time to do much Latin with your student because, really, who has that kind of time? I mean, I’m going into year five of directing Challenge and I do not know nearly as much Latin as I’d like… life gets in the way.
But that does NOT mean we should all just throw in the towel and skip out on latin completely in Challenge 2 and above. This is when Latin finally becomes… worth it. Instead of meaningless sentences about war and mountains and barbarians, we finally get to read Caesar and Cicero and learn history, learn what made Caesar brave and what made Cicero a great orator. This is the time to drop back IN if your family has been slacking; it is not time to drop out!
How? I know, I know. It seems impossible to dive into Latin full force if you haven’t given it your full attention the past three or four years. But here’s the thing: getting something out of Ceasar and Cicero requires understanding the THOUGHTS expressed, not the exact WORDS expressed. That’s another thing that makes it so much better than the boring old exercises (Sorry, Challenge A kids!). This means you don’t have to be a Latin All Star and your student does not have to be a Latin scholar. You can muddle through it and figure out what you can and grasp the story.
Maybe that seems impossible. But I’ve got a plan to help you figure it out. Now, I am using the week 1 translation assignment from Challenge 3, which happens to be a very familiar Bible story. This makes it a lot easier to translate. So PLEASE do not. judge you and your student’s work with the Ceasar and Cicero translations against this. I chose this as my model simply because it is a lot easier to make sense of than the other writings.
Supplies:
You will need your Henle Second or Third Year text book, your preferred answer key, and either some blank paper or my Challenge 3 Latin study guide, which includes all of the translation work set up on pages as seen here, with plenty of room to work. (My Challenge 2 study guide does not presently include the translation pages but I do plan to add them in the future). You could also take pictures of the pages to be translated and print them out on letter sized paper to give lots of room to work. I also recommend different colored pens for the different steps, because it does help the student see her own progress.
STEP ONE
Decide how much you expect your student to translate. Some weeks there are 150 or more lines assigned. Many students will feel incredibly overwhelmed by that. So sit with your student and decide which sections you want translated this week. Start small and work your way up as you get the hang of it. AND DO NOT WORRY ABOUT NOT TRANSLATING EVERY LINE. It is far, far better to come to class with SOME of this week’s translation complete instead of playing a constant game of “catch up” and being seven weeks behind. Pick your lines for this week and carry on. (And keep reading, because I have instructions for what to do about the parts you didn’t translate).
STEP TWO
Ask your student to look at the lines you have decided she should translate and label all the vocabulary she can recognize on her own. You might want to make a game out of this and see if next week she can beat her number from this week. Chocolate is a good motivator, just saying. 😉 (Don’t forget, in this situation, I happened to know a lot of the words because this is a super easy story. Do not expect your student to label ALL the words.)
STEP THREE
Change pen colors. Make it a good contrast. Now, open up that text book to the page where the original Latin is found and check out those footnotes. Those footnotes are your best friend! They give you all the words you haven’t learned yet, as well as unique translations of familiar words. Your student should label all the meanings given in the footnotes.
STEP FOUR
Change pen colors again. Now, go back through and find all the words you still haven’t labeled in English. Look those up in the back of the text or in your favorite Latin-English dictionary. Some might be tricky to find because you can’t figure out the stem. No worries, skip those.
STEP FIVE
Now that most to the words are labeled, your student can do her best to piece together sentences. For example, in the first line, I translated the following words: Said. Pilate. to. Jesus. You. are. king. of Jews? Well that one is pretty easy to put into a sentence! “Pilate said to Jesus, are you the king of the Jews?” A lot of sentences, especially in Caesar and Cicero, might not be so easy to decipher. That’s OK. Do your BEST. The goal is not perfect translation. It’s gleaning the sense of what is happening.
STEP SIX
Break out your old friend, the answer key. Now, your student can do this on her own, but this is a really, really great opportunity for Mom to get involved with Latin even if she doesn’t actually know much Latin. Your student has taken her best crack at figuring out a portion of the translation. Now sit together and read the story in the answer key–because in Challenge 2 and 3, the answer key is really a story book. It’s the story of Caesar and Cicero written out in English. If you, Mom, read the English to your student, she can follow along. Than you can ask her, “How close was your translation attempt to what really happened?” and conversation can flow from there. PLUS, you can read ALL of the English that was assigned for the week. This way, your student can attend community day armed with a knowledge of all that went on in the story, even if she was unable to translate ALL THOSE LINES.
BREAKING IT DOWN OVER THE WEEK
There are six steps here and you only have four days at home. I know, I know. How do we make that work?!? I suggest that you do steps 1 and 2 the first day at home of your week. Steps 3 and 4 can be done on the second day. Step 5 can have it’s own day. And your last day at home before the next community day is a good day to sit and read together from the answer key (Step 6).
This method will allow your student, regardless of how strong or weak her Latin is, to feel that she is participating in the strand and can contribute to class conversation. And it will give you, as the parent, the ability to know what’s going on in Latin. Win-win!
Don’t forget, my Challenge 3 Latin Study Guide has EVERYTHING you need for Latin! It has a place to record all the vocabulary and rules, work the translations with lots of space (like the pictures posted here), and it even has room for recording the definitions of the stylistic devices that are studied second semester. It does NOT have space to work the exercises, but those can be done in a plain old notebook. I created the study guide for students who were really struggling so that they would have a way to stay connected in latin on community day. It’s been a tremendous help to us. There’s one available for Challenge A, B, I, II, and III. Check them out here in my Etsy Shop.
If you have a young student in your home school, someone has probably recommend that you use Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It’s a staple in most home school communities. It’s incredibly inexpensive, it’s reusable, it’s one simple book instead of complicated curriculum, and it literally holds your hand as you walk through teaching your child to read, even if you do not have the faintest idea how to get started.
Besides all that, it works. I’ve successfully taught two out of three of my children to read using that little book. The middle child told me I could try but he wasn’t going to read because he could make up far better stories on his own than anything some else put on paper. He’s still that over-confident about all his endeavors, haha. But eventually, somehow, reading clicked for him. He spells atrociously since he refused to learn his phonics, but that’s another story and another headache for another time. 100 Easy Lessons teaches children how to sound out words. It works them through hearing all the sounds and getting the word. By the end of the book, they can sound out any word that is spelled phonetically ad they’ve learned a handful of sight words that can’t be.
What 100 Easy Lessons does NOT do is dig into all of the various weird parts of the English language–the various sounds g can make; the silent k, g, and w at the beginning of some words; that wind can be pronounced two different ways and have two different meanings; and so much more. When your student graduates from 100 Easy Lessons, he will have truly accomplished something BIG and should be celebrated, but his reading lessons are far from complete.
A new school year is upon us. I am directing Challenge 2 for Classical Conversations this year. I am terrified of some parts of it and really, really excited about others. Dissections in biology: Not excited. British Literature: HAPPY DANCE!
We start off the year with Beowulf, a story I have had to read several times over the course of my life. But until this time, I never learned to LOVE it. I wish my high school or college teacher could have inspired me to appreciate it, but it felt like a burden. Over the summer, I decided to tackle Beowulf with a new attitude and find a way to enjoy it so I could pass that on to my own students.
One thing I’ve learned to do with stories that don’t intrigue me is to read a children’s version if I can find one. Luckily, for Beowulf, I found many options. I really, REALLY liked this version, which has beautiful illustrations. The language is simplified but it keeps the beauty found in the translations, such as the alliteration and use of kennings.
I also made an accidental discovery of the Classical Stuff You Should Know podcast. I am not big on podcasts, I just don’t often feel like I have time to pay attention to them. This one is worth my time, though. They talk about all kinds of things within classical education–new and old. I stumbled upon their podcast on Beowulf and then I could not wait to read the story! If you always hated Beowulf as a kid, I suggest giving this podcast a shot. It might help.
One of the interesting things discussed in the podcast was that there is only one surviving copy of Beowulf in the Old or Middle English (I can’t remember which). It was an oral story so it was passed that way for a long time until someone finally wrote it down. All of our current versions of the tale are actually translations. That’s something I had never thought about–we would not have a very good time trying to read the original, modern English looks nothing like it. It had never occurred to me that Beowulf has multiple translations. Classical Conversations uses this version, but Seamus Heaney has another well-loved version and J.R.R. Tolkien has his own translation as well! And, to be thorough I read all three.
All three tell the same tale but tell it slightly differently. One of the really cool things you can do is compare the versions with your students (whether that is your CC class, a traditional classroom, or your children at home). I took a quote right from page one and put all three versions on the board:
“In every tribe, a man shall prosper by deeds of love.” (Dover Edition)
“By worthy deeds in every folk is a man ennobled.” (Tolkien)
“Behavior that’s admired is the path to power among people everywhere.” (Heaney)
Which do you like best? Why? Which one most clearly gets the point across? So much can be said in a group discussion!
Five Common Topics Questions for Beowulf
Definition: What is a hero? What is epic poetry? What is alliteration? What is a kenning?
Comparison: Which version of the quote (above) do you prefer? Why?
Circumstance: Why is Beowulf available in so many translations? Would Beowulf have been a Christian? Why is there so much Christian religion sprinkled into it? Can you think of any reasons that would happen?
Relationship: What caused Beowulf to go fight Grendel? Were his reasons good? Was he motivated by pride or by love for others? How about when he fought the dragon?
Authority/Testimony: Is Beowulf a hero? Use quotes from the story to back up your stance. Where do you see truth, goodness, or beauty in this story? What was your favorite use of alliteration? What was your favorite kenning? (Mine was when the king stood up to speak and instead of saying he opened his mouth, the translation said, “The King unlocked his word-hoard.” LOVE IT. So beautiful).
Fun with Beowulf
If you have younger kids joining in on the enjoyment of Beowulf, crafts are a great way to get them involved. You could try a paper mache Grendel arm to decorate the classroom.
Have a banquet while you listen to an audio edition of the story, just as would’ve been done when the story was first told! And of course, include root bear as your “mead”!
Beowulf is worthy of love and appreciation and the right approach with your students can make them let go of the idea that it is dull or “too difficult” so that they can enjoy the experience.
Moms, Challenge students, directors… Henle Latin is hard. I’ve talked about it here before. It can really suck the love out of learning if you aren’t careful. The workload is heavy–particularly by the time you reach Challenge I and have to complete the entire book in one year, as opposed to Challenge A when you’ve only got to do 1/3 of the book.
As a director, I found myself stuck in a really hard place. Aside from a couple of students who actually enjoy languages and plan to have futures in careers where Latin will serve them well, the rest of my Challenge class was drowning. I would stand up to lead our Latin strand and get blanks stares and slow blinks as I tried to get answers out of them. It was such a frustrating hour of the day because hardly any one was keeping up with the exercises and therefore they could not participate in class. It also felt like the weight of being behind in Latin was weighing so heavily on them all that it was impacting their attitudes towards being at CC and towards the rest of their work. I went home week after week and cried. I felt like I was failing the kids and failing as a director.
Hello! I have been a blogging-slacker. I know it. This year has not exactly gone according to plan for any of us and the one thing that has continually fallen off my “to do” list has been writing the next blog post. But I don’t want it to be that way. I’m sorry for being such a slacker.
As our school year winds down (we are on week 13 in Challenge and week 22 in Foundations/Essentials), I always take this time of year to assess what went well, what flopped, and what I want the upcoming year to look like. Next year, I will be directing Challenge II and taking my first class towards my Master’s in Classical Studies (yup!). My big kids will be in Challenge A and II, so most of their curriculum choices are made for them. Pressure is OFF me! Woohoo!
That means all my attention in curriculum planning is on my little guy for next year. And this is the perfect time to get my plan together and do all the prep work–it’s not like we can leave the house during the great Quarantine of 2020. I try to do all my prep work for the upcoming school year in April. Why? First of all, the current school year is still happening and the realities of what worked and what did not are fresh in mind. By August, I’ll probably be in a sunburned haze and not really recall as well. Second, Challenge starts three weeks earlier than Foundations, so having everything planned lets me smoothly jump into Challenge without a worry. Third, it’s a lot easier to enjoy summer if all my prep work is already done for fall!
And so, I’ve been in full blown prep mode. Thanks to my beast of a printer, the Epson EcoTank, I can print and print and print and never run out of ink. Seriously, if you are still paying for cartridges that have barely any ink in them, you need to make the switch to an EcoTank. I have printed 2.5 reams of paper this week. That is A LOT of printing. You know how much my ink tank has dropped so far? Almost 1/4 of a tank. Almost. You can literally print forever… Anyway… I buy all my curriculum in PDF format and print it myself. I laminate the covers and use my handy dandy comb binding machine to make books. Three tools save me a LOT of money. Besides all the printing, there has been lots of research into what to choose for this year. I want to follow the seven subjects of memory work as best I can for second grade, and this fall will be cycle 3, which is US History and science is anatomy.
Here’s what I came up with for each subject and why I chose it.
As a director and a parent, first semester of Challenge I kicked my butt.
I was NOT ready. Fully unprepared. I didn’t expect the changes that were facing us. We had struck up a good routine for Challenge A and B (which I had also directed with the same kids). But when Challenge I started, I realized it was no longer a routine, it was a rut. And it was NOT working for us in Challenge I. The first six or eight weeks were very bumpy as all of us, parents, students, and myself, tried to find a new normal in the workload, the expectations, and the class time.
The good news is, second semester has been the smoothest, easiest, absolute BEST semester I’ve ever had at CC. So here’s my advice for parents and students on what to do over the summer to be ready for each strand of Challenge I. If you don’t do school in the summer, I would still suggest getting back into schoolwork at least three weeks before CC starts back up. That’s reasonable–CC only covers 150 of your 180 days, so you’ve got to fit that other 30 days in somewhere. This is a way to get most of it.
We are now beginning our tenth year of home schooling. I’ve got things running pretty smoothly at this point but it’s taken us quite awhile to get here. We have tried so many different ways of doing things and none of them have worked very well. But the way we do it now is pretty fool-proof and I’m loving it.
At first, I did try to plan the entire year out. I would go through an entire book and break it down into daily lessons and assign each lesson to a date in my lesson planner. Then I’d get the next book out and go back to the beginning of the planner and do the same thing. When I was done, I had every subject planned out to be broken into what to do each day. The trouble was, I had assigned those lessons to dates. And I had assigned how much had to be done in a given day. So even if we could keep up on math, we might fall behind three days in science and a week in history.
As you can imagine, this was a disaster. I had decided in August exactly what we were going to do on May 10 of the following year! What a mess. By the end of September we were, inevitably, “behind” and drowning because we had to “catch up”. But we were catching up to self-imposed deadlines that didn’t even matter! And I was making myself SICK over it.
One of my favorite things about Classical Conversations is that it is NOT a one-size-fits-all boxed curriculum. There is so much room for making it work the way you want and need it to for your home. Two of the biggest areas for flexibility are choosing a phonics program that works for your child in preschool and elementary school and then choosing a math curriculum that works best for each of your children from kindergarten through high school. Of course, CC has recommendations for what they would suggest you use but it’s merely a suggestion because CC takes to heart the belief that YOU are the best teacher for your child and you know your child best. Every child has a different learning style and every child needs a math program that suits his or her needs. But I also believe that you need to choose a curriculum that suits YOUR needs as a teacher.
