Sparrow Tree Square Blog

Forgotten Books by Famous Authors

2012-02-22T16:17:00.002-05:00

This post was kindly provided by my sister Maureen, whom you may remember from Halfway Down the Stairs or her book reviews and blog posts here at Sparrow Tree Square. The books she discusses here are all in the public domain, so the title links will take you to free editions from Project Gutenberg. If you prefer a print edition, click on the cover images.

It sometimes happens that authors become synonymous with the most famous of their books. Most people know that A. A. Milne wrote Winnie-the-Pooh, but much to Milne's dismay, his plays and humorous fiction for adults fell into obscurity following Pooh's success. Some readers might remember that Kenneth Grahame wrote The Relucant Dragon in addition to the The Wind in the Willows, but how many know that "The Relucant Dragon" is an excerpt from a longer book called Dream Days?

Books like Winnie-the-Pooh and The Wind in the Willows are deservedly famous, but that doesn't mean that their less well-known siblings aren't just as lovable. It's time to give these "forgotten classics" a turn in the spotlight.

Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll

This innovative novel jumps back and forth between reality, fairyland, and the "eerie" state in which humans and fairies can interact. There is plenty of paradox, wordplay, and nonsense verse that Alice aficionados will adore, including "The Mad Gardener's Song". However, this is also a more serious story that explores religious and philosophical ideas that were important to Carroll. Carroll himself preferred Sylvie and Bruno to the Alice books for this reason.

Racketty-Packetty House, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Racketty-Packetty House is a charming novella about two dollhouses, the shabby Racketty-Packetty House and the shiny, modern Tidy Castle. Even though their owner Cynthia neglects them, the dolls of Racketty-Packetty House manage to have fun, enticing their aristocratic neighbors to join them. Like A Little Princess, this is a riches-to-rags-to-riches tale that will especially appeal to doll lovers.

Dream Days, by Kenneth Grahame

Dream Days picks up where its predecessor, The Golden Age, left off. With their eldest brother Edward away at school, young Kenneth and his siblings are beginning to grow up themselves. Kenneth worries about keeping up with his younger sister Charlotte's imagination, while the youngest sibling Harold's latest past-time is not playing muffin-man, but writing "death-letters". Still, the humor, poetic style, and vivid imagination of the first volume remain in evidence, and one of my favorite stories from the two books, "Its Walls Were as of Jasper", appears in Dream Days.

Charlotte Mason Monday: Part 19

2012-02-20T18:52:00.000-05:00

This post is part of a series discussing the educational methods of Charlotte Mason. Each post will consider Mason's philosophy as she describes it in her series of books discussing home education. The complete series is available for free at Ambleside Online if you'd like to read along!

Before I begin today, I'd like to call your attention to another blogger who is currently reflecting on the philosophy of Charlotte Mason: the Handmaiden. She raises some very interesting points in her posts on Charlotte Mason, and offers another perspective through which to consider Mason's educational method. If you haven't already discovered her blog, I highly recommend that you give it a look!

Now, onward to the main topic for today: Mason's thoughts on the importance of bringing children outdoors. In A Growing Time, Mason returns to two ideas that she has previously considered: the importance of fresh air and good meals for growing children. In this section, Mason suggests combining the two for maximum health benefit:

On fine days when it is warm enough to sit out with wraps, why should not tea and breakfast, everything but a hot dinner, be served out of doors? For we are an overwrought generation, running to nerves as a cabbage runs to seed; and every hour spent in the open is a clear gain, tending to the increase of brain power and bodily vigour, and to the lengthening of life itself. They who know what it is to have fevered skin and throbbing brain deliciously soothed by the cool touch of the air are inclined to make a new rule of life, Never be within doors when you can rightly be without.

Besides, the gain of an hour or two in the open air, there is this to be considered: meals taken al fresco are usually joyous, and there is nothing like gladness for converting meat and drink into healthy blood and tissue. All the time, too, the children are storing up memories of a happy childhood. Fifty years hence they will see the shadows of the boughs making patterns on the white tablecloth; and sunshine, children's laughter, hum of bees, and scent of flowers are being bottled up for after refreshment.

This sentiment struck a chord with me, as I clearly remember autumn and spring days spent in classrooms longing to be outside in the fresh air. When I later began to home-school, my mother often took advantage of nice weather to take our meals or lessons outdoors. Even on chilly days we would try to get out for a brief walk, which I always enjoyed very much.

Mason then brings up the problem of finding fresh air for families who live in towns or cities. Before we turn to that point, however, I'd like to highlight a statement Mason makes in passing while discussing this larger difficulty:

In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mothers first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it spent for the most part out in the fresh air. And this, not for the gain in bodily health alone––body and soul, heart and mind, are nourished with food convenient for them when the children are let alone, let to live without friction and without stimulus amongst happy influences which incline them to be good.

While Mason doesn't go into detail about her reasoning, I thought it was interesting to note that she essentially recommends delaying any formal schooling until children are six years old. Children seem to be starting their formal education earlier and earlier, with American children entering school anywhere from ages four to six and British children beginning no later than age five. Recently, though, there's been a backlash against sending such young children to school, particularly in Britain, where some experts have called for the mandatory school age to be raised to age six in order to improve literacy. From a personal perspective, I had no trouble learning to read at age four. However, I did have trouble adjusting to school life, and actually refused to attend preschool for several weeks because I was rather burnt out from the school atmosphere.

To return to the question of how long children should spend outdoors and how city-dwelling families can incorporate time outdoors into their days, Mason offers a somewhat impractical solution:

But it is only the people who live, so to speak, in their own gardens who can make a practice of giving their children tea out of doors. For the rest of us, and the most of us, who live in towns or the suburbs of towns, that is included in the larger question––How much time daily in the open air should the children have?

. . . Long hours they should be; not two, but four, five, or six hours they should have on every tolerably fine day, from April till October. Impossible! Says an overwrought mother who sees her way to no more for her children than a daily hour or so on the pavements of the neighbouring London squares. Let me repeat, that I venture to suggest, not what is practicable in any household, but what seems to me absolutely best for the children; and that, in the faith that mothers work wonders once they are convinced that wonders are demanded of them. A journey of twenty minutes by rail or omnibus, and a luncheon basket, will make a day in the country possible to most town dwellers; and if one day, why not many, even every suitable day?

While a twenty-minute train trip probably would have brought most Londoners to the country in Mason's time, I don't see this solution working very well in modern America. The cost and hassle associated with taking a train out to the country every fine day would be off-putting, if one could even find a train that went to a suitable location. Instead, I think that it would probably be better to compromise between this ideal situation and the half-measures Mason scorns here: bring children out for walks and to play in local parks for an hour or so each day, and plan day trips to more rural locations a few times a month.

Next time, we'll be covering what it is that Mason says to do while spending time outdoors with children. Check back in two weeks for more!

Free Music Resources for Fun and Education

2012-02-16T17:41:00.000-05:00

The internet has made music cheaper and easier to obtain than ever, with songs available for instant downloading at only ninety-nine cents apiece from retailers like Amazon and iTunes. Still, even at less than a dollar each, the cost of buying music online can add up if you'd like to have a large variety of songs in your listening library. Cost concerns might be especially relevant to teachers or home educators looking to incorporate music into their lesson plans. For example, if you wanted to share one song a day with your children or classroom during the school year, you'd spend at least $180 a year.

Luckily, there are a lot of great resources online that allow you to legally listen to and sometimes download music from a variety of genres for free. Here are some of my personal favorites:

Pandora

There are a variety of internet radio services available online, but Pandora has a unique feature: after making an account, you craft your own radio stations by entering a particular artist or song. Pandora will find and play songs that are musically similar to your initial selection, which you can either thumbs-up or thumbs-down in order to shape Pandora's future selections. For example, entering "Bach" will prompt Pandora to first play pieces by composer Johann Sebastian Bach and eventually incorporate works by composers whose music shares features in common with that of Bach. This makes Pandora a great resource for learning about music from artists you may never have heard before, especially since biographical information for each artist is available with just a click of a button.

Freegal

One downside to Pandora is that while you can listen to as much music as you like for free, you can't download it. This makes it tricky if you want to return to a particular piece later or if you want a particular piece available to listen on a device other than your computer.

Freegal, however, works differently. It's a music download service available from Sony through many local libraries. If your library participates in the Freegal program, you can download up to three songs a week from Sony's online library of music. Songs are available in many genres, including classical, but the selection is limited to music produced under the Sony Music label. Still, there's a fairly wide selection to choose from, and you own each song for good once it's downloaded. To get started, visit the website of your local library system and check for a link to Freegal -- you'll need to enter your library card information to access the music library, and you'll have to connect using your library's particular link.

Musopen

Musopen is perhaps the most unique online music website I've come across, because unlike other music resources, Musopen releases their library into the public domain. This means that you can use music downloaded from Musopen any way you like, including sharing it with friends or using it in music videos on YouTube. Musopen is heavy on great composers like Beethoven and Mozart, but also has a growing selection of more modern compositions. You can browse the site by composer, time period, or form, so creating a lesson on a particular composer or type of music is a snap.

Those are my favorite online music resources -- what are yours? Share your finds in the comments below!