What we're reading Summer 2010

Hello long lost readers...if there are any of you anymore! It is already August, and I thought it was time to share some books the Nelsons have enjoyed this summer. Some were read collectively, some individually, and some we're slowly looking through. This list isn't comprehensive. There are a few I'm leaving out so maybe I'll have more material for another post sooner that a half year from now!

Trumpet of the Swan by E B White. I enjoyed this book as a girl and the children and I greatly enjoyed having Rodney read it aloud each night in the early summer. There are some really witty quotes from the father swan, the old cob. Rodney commented that the last chapter was really lovely.

Watership Down by Richard Adams. This book does appear in our middle school curriculum, but was such a joy to read aloud to our children. Really this is one of the books I enjoyed the most from my childhood. It is filled with true heroes.

American Girl books: read by Cora. She powered through these during the early part of the summer and enjoyed them. I think they were good beginning novels for a girl, but I've only read a few. I sometimes felt like some of the girls bucked the norms for girls of the day, and I am not fond of books that encourage rebelling against norms, but overall these have been enjoyable.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM, funny, not until writing this blog post did I realize how all of these books were ones I read as a child or youth, but this is one too. I remember being quite enamored with the rat, Justin. It was charming, maybe a better early novel than a read aloud, but a nice bed-time book. We've done a lot of books with anthropomorphism, a word that Cora's quite proud to understand thanks to Mrs. Sutphen and second grade! This was good, but I enjoyed the others more.

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Read by Cora as she anticipates returning to school. We did the entire series as a read aloud a couple years ago, but since the previous book is part of second grade, it made sense to read the next. These are great American classics in my opinion.

Silas Mariner by George Elliot. Oh how I love this book. I've told people for about 18 years that this was one of the most powerful books I've ever read. I loved it in high school, and thought it was high time I re-read it just in case over the past many years I've changed my views, but nope. Rock solid. Love it. A book about the transformation of purpose and love in ones' life. Powerful...I think it too is part of the high school curriculum, but you could read it over and over again.

Keeping our Children's Heart by Steve Maxwell. This too is a re-read for me. I read it about 5 years ago and liked it but balked at much of it. Funny thing is though as my family grows and my children mature I find myself remembering this book. It really talks about restructuring your family life so that the priority is the spiritual maturation of your children. This means a serious dying to self. This book recommends a radical approach of not doing a lot of things that our culture both secular and church consider normal. I'm just beginning my re-read, but have realized I'm leaning more and more toward their approach.

Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright. I can't speak to this, since Rodney is reading this, but many evenings he is curled up in his chair reading this and doesn't like to be talked at by me while reading this, so I think it must be rather good. He keeps telling me I would love it and should read it when he's done.

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Cora has helped mix the basic dough which keeps well in the fridge for a week. This means she has been able to whip up a lovely boule loaf for guests this summer. I think soon we will graduate to some fancy things like cinnamon rolls and pizza dough. So far so good. Yum.

What we're always reading:
Here are some periodicals we read often:
National Review - the magazine. I usually flip to the back and read journalist Mark Steyn first. He's clever, witty, and at times depressing, but I keep coming back for more.
Touchstone Magazine - the magazine I believe every Christian home should receive. It was a spiritual and intellectual lifeline for me for many years before we found our church home.
St. James Daily Devotional Guide - this is a basic lectionary which I like to use while reading my ESV Bible. It takes you through a two year plan of reading the Bible and does coincide well with the church calendar. For example the past 3 days I've been reading various accounts in the gospels and portions from the epistles that deal with the transfiguration (which is observed in the church calendar today and this Sunday). It is a good tool for Bible reading.

Hope your summer reading has been fruitful and enjoyable too!
Blessings from our house to yours.
Marybeth Nelson

A Sad State of Affairs in Education Schools

This is a particularly egregious example of what I perceive to be a systemic problem with university schools of education. So much time is spent on priorities such as these that graduates have time for little else. In my experience the biggest deficit most recent education graduates have is not a lack of cultural sensitivity (this generation of young teachers is extraordinarily respectful of cultural and ethnic differences), but rather that they simply don't know very much. One of the questions I routinely ask during interviews is about recently read books. The answers are frequently depressing.

If the role of the teacher is to inform ignorance in her students, the first priority of her training should be to remedy her own ignorance. Sadly, this is something that most education departments at most colleges and universities, are currently unwilling or unable to address.

Discipline vs. Control

One of our RiverTree moms raised a question with me the other day, one that is very important to understanding RiverTree's and Ambleside's approach to education and why it is different. She asked, how can we maintain high behavioral expectations for our students without descending into legalism? It is a very good question; one to which many Christian schools have not yet found a satisfactory answer.

Arrival at a good answer, I believe, depends upon how one views the role of the school as it pertains to behavior. It is the role of the school to maintain control of students behavior so that the instillation of knowledge might go forward? Or, is it to help a student to grow in self-control and discipline as an integral part of the education itself? Although these two possible answers might seem similar, there is a world of difference between them. The school that approaches its relationship with students as one of control, will inevitably resort to a complex and overly thorough code of rules to which students are held accountable. This code, while perhaps well thought through, becomes the primary tool of control. Because control is a means to an end in these schools, the code becomes it's justified by its utility; we need rules of behavioral control, because we can't let the children be disruptive to the work of education. That is to say, the code exists for the convenience of the adults. From the student's perspective it will, therefore, seem arbitrary and oppressive. A student who asks "why" to any of the myriad of rules will be answered with some version of the response "because it is a rule, and you must follow the rules." In short, a legalistic system.

By contrast, a school that seeks to instill discipline in the students is taking a much different approach. For under this way of thinking, the purpose is not just to maintain good order so that the business of education may go forward, rather it is to help the students to grow and mature. That is, such a school seeks to help the student gain greater control over himself and gain more and more habits of good behavior, each of which becomes an asset upon which he can draw later in life. Student behavior is seen as a manifestation of his or her character and it is the proper role of the school to help children develop good and godly character. Schools that take this second approach find that they do not need a complex code of rules because their goal is not rule-following, but rather maturity. And the students do not chafe under such a method nearly so much because they can (usually) sense that the teachers have their benefit in mind. Correction of student by a teacher is a manifestation of love. It makes all the difference in the world.

Charlotte Mason writes profoundly about this in School Education under the topic of docility and authority which she says are natural conditions, divinely ordained. It is important to note that the meaning of "docility" has changed a bit since she used it. What she means is that it is good and in accordance with our God-given nature that each of us exist within a structure of authority and in peaceful submission to authority. She also goes into great length on the difference between authority and autocracy. You can read her whole argument starting here.

Hello, I'm your personal shopper

Today it is in the high 70's here in Minnesota, and yet I've spent the bulk of my day at my computer shopping. That's dedication, I tell you. I've got a garden to plant and a yard to clean up, but I'm happy to announce that the RiverTree school uniform is almost completely picked out and will soon be available to order. We are still working on getting the logo ready for various items, but soon, you'll see it! In the mean time if you want a sneak peak you may look at the uniform shop at www.landsend.com We are using the classic navy plaid and will have various items in white, french blue, cobalt blue, maise (yellow) and navy. It is going to be classic, yet bright and cheerful. I've ordered several samples and will have photos of the options up on the blog hopefully next week. There also will be distict differences between K-4, 5-8, and 9-12 when we finally get to those upper grades.

Now, I'm going outside. Enjoy your day!

Don't forget the info meeting!

Thursday night @ 6:30 we are having another information meeting. We'd love to have you there. Even if you've attended one previously please come again. I think it is really good to have many opportunities for the RiverTree community to be together. For directions please email Rodney (rnelson@rivertreeschool.org).
Hope to see you there.

A wise little poem from 1st grade penmanship

This delighted us the other day. The children quickly memorized it. I find it particularly delightful to hear the 3yo recite it to the 1yo.

A wise old owl lived in an oak.
The more he saw, the less he spoke.
The less he spoke, the more he heard.
Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?

Teaching Longitude and Latitude

The other day a homeschooling mother of a 5th grader asked me how I, using the Charlotte Mason method, would teach longitude and latitude. Here's a brief summary of my response.

• Make looking at maps part of your other subjects. For example previously this year they were reading The Story of the Greeks by H. A. Guerber. It is only natural to find the places they were talking about and reading about on a map of the Ancient World and then to compare it to a modern map so that the names and locations were recognized as places in the story, but actually places still there today perhaps under new names. Currently they are reading Treasure Island and it makes sense to look at a map of Britain and then the passage across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. In both cases it would make sense to explain that places on the map had addresses and from that explain the nuts and bolts of longitude and latitude.

Last year I was reading Just So Stories by Kipling to the children, and I enjoyed "How the Whale Got His Throat" where you may find this line, "If you swim to latitude Fifty North, longitude Forty West (that is magic), you will find, sitting on a raft, in the middle of the sea, with nothing on but a pair of blue canvas breeches, a pair of suspenders (you must not forget the suspenders, Best Beloved), and a jack-knife, one ship-wrecked Mariner, who, it is only fair to tell you, is a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity." Of course it only made sense to grab my globe and then the atlas and find the location (that is magic).

• Have fun with maps at other times so to feed that sense of curiosity about geography. That is something this family (with the original question) does expertly. I remember this now 5th grader sitting with an atlas as a Kindergartner and identifying places I knew my current high school geography students would be hard pressed to i.d. An example of having fun with maps is to simply have maps, atlases, and globes around. One family I knew got a world map the size of their dining table and put a clear vinyl table cloth over it. The map was just there and the children had fun studying it. Then when a country came up in conversations or books the children often knew right away where the location was or were eager to go find it.

• Incorporating our longitude and latitude is so much more accessible today with tools like Google earth, Google maps, and using a GPS. A practical exercise in understanding global positioning is to take up geocaching. If this is foreign to you, here's the beginning of the entry on geocaching from Wikipedia: "Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called "geocaches" or "caches") anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook and "treasure," usually toys or trinkets of little value." If you want more information on getting involved with this hobby check out Geocaching.com. There are many adventures awaiting you in this area. We haven't done this yet, but hope to this summer. I'll do a follow up once we do.

These are just a few ways that I believe you could have a living geography lesson using the Charlotte Mason method.

Happy learning!

What We're Reading -- April edition

I often have people ask me what we're reading in our house, and I enjoy hearing what others are reading. I thought I would periodically share a little about what's being read by anyone 7 and older in the Nelson household. (Considering several members of our household are still enamored with the millionth reading of The Big Red Barn and Peak-a-Boo I figured that was a good cut off point!).

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett: This was/is a favorite of mine and since we've read all of our "read alouds" for 1st grade, I decided to add it in. Today we read the first, rather morbid chapter of this mysterious and engaging children's classic.

Among the Pond People by Clara Dillingham Pierson: A delightful collection of nature stories told by the animals which include great information on their species. My five year old nature enthusiast son loves these! These and the others like it are available free online.

The Complete Fairy Tales by George MacDonald: George MacDonald was my favorite author from about age 9--19. He's still one of my favorites. These stories were delightful to me as a child and still are as an adult. My favorite from this collection is "The Light Princess". I also highly recommend The Princess and the Goblin. My children have heard that novel at least twice now and still would love to hear it again. The MacDonald fairy tales are some that will be utilized in the fairytale portion of the RiverTree/Ambleside curriculum.

Redwall: the Legend Begins by Brian Jacques: Rodney is reading this to the 7yo and 5yo for bedtime stories. I read this about 10 years ago and enjoyed it then. Several boys at our church love, love, love this series. The other day Rodney commented that this book is different from the others he'd read to the children recently in that Cluny the Scourge is a modern villain vs. the classic villains of the other recent books like Treasure Island and The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. The children are enjoying this, although Cora looks forward to a "less intense" adventure book next time.

Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter published by Orbis Books: This book is arranged so that there is a reading for each day of Lent by great Christian thinkers of the past and present. I haven't read exactly one a day, so have a bit of this book left even though this is holy week. I have been blessed, and recommend it for a deeper devotional life during the penitential season of Lent.

All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholemew: Spring is here in Minnesota and I'm eager for gardening! This book lays out very clearly what I've been trying to do the past couple of years, but was trying to figure out for myself. This is a great resource for gardening efficiently in small spaces. We're doing nine 3ftx3ft vegetable beds. This is a great size for kids to work in too. Mel has a program called Square Yards in the School Yard. Wouldn't that be a fun option for RiverTree to do someday?

Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin: I tend to read and re-read various books about simplicity each year. This is one of the original books of the "movement". While I don't agree with all the principles or rational given by this author, I am a fan of voluntary simplicity. I'm hoping to be less cluttered and distracted each year and more focused on the truly important things of life. One of my favorite simplicity books is Living Simply with Children by Marie Sherlock. I've read this a couple times and continue to be inspired by it. I also enjoy a similar book called Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry by Katrina Kenison. Both are worth reading at least once.

Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon: If you've seen this book, you'll understand why I can say I've been reading this particular health and nutrition book for about a year. It is a tome filled with good recipes and basic traditional foods and nutritional wisdom that I think every family should ponder and own.

The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner: Our 7yo read this in about 3 days in between school and other commitments. I think that's a pretty good endorsement. I enjoyed the narrations I heard of it. She's now moved on to book #2.

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes: Again the 7yo brought this along during errands this week and is enjoying it. I haven't had her narrate it yet, so I'm not sure of the details, but it came highly recommended by my children's literature expert sister.

Rodney's Books: I can't exactly list them here because I'm sure I'd miss several. At present I know he's reading two books he's mentioned in an earlier post. The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes our Future * or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30 by Mark Bauerlein is one that Rod claims is a bit depressing, yet compelling. It marries well with some of our other favorites such as Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Another he's reading, or queuing up to read is Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age by Maggie Jackson. I'm sure there's some more uplifting reading that he's doing too, just not sure what. Rodney and I also enjoy a couple periodicals each month.

So those are the books, as far as I can recall, of April. We do a lot of reading around here and are thrilled when we find good books and can share them with friends.

Come pray with me!

Our first prayer meeting for RiverTree is on Monday April 13th at 4p.m. at the Dunn Bros. Coffee Shop on Bass Lake Road in Maple Grove. Please join me and other parents as we pray God's blessing on the future of this school, the two teachers we've hired, the teachers we have yet to hire, our board, our head of school, Brooklyn Park E Free, our students, Ambleside Schools International, and many more things. Let's lift this venture up to Jesus!

What? You're still reading this?!!

Actually, that's great! BUT if you are relying on this blog for all of the current RiverTree gossip, activities, etc, you're looking in the wrong spot. We will continue to post here, but the most current info can come directly to your email box if you only sign up for our newsletter (click on newsletter). You don't have to be someone planning on sending your children to RT (of course we hope that you do), you can just be someone who think this is all rather interesting and is curious. Our mailing list is managed bt Constant Contact which ensures that you won't get spammed, aren't sharing your email address with others and can safely unsubscribe. So go ahead...sign up! But yes, keep reading the blog too!

Now Accepting Student Applications

Our student application is now available and we are accepting applications for 2009-2010.

Information Meeting, Tuesday March 24

Marybeth and I will be hosting an informational meeting in our home in Maple Grove on Tuesday, March 24th at 7:00 p.m. If you are interested in a RiverTree education for your children this would be a good opportunity to find out more. Please RSVP to Rodney at: rnelson@rivertreeschool.org. We will look forward to seeing you.

Some good reading for the day

Today in our small home branch of RiverTree School we enjoyed this wonderful short biography of Saint Patrick, a great missionary whose story is often not as well known as it should be. I highly recommend reading it.

The Importance of a Literary Education

The November issue of First Things has a must read article about the intellectual peril our society finds itself in. If you needed evidence of the value of an education like RiverTree's, full of ideas and filled with literature, please check it out. Also consider the book the author draws from: The dumbest generation: How the digital age stupefies young americans and jeopardizes our future. I have not read it yet, so this is not a recommendation. However, my copy is in the mail and I will be sure to let you know.

The Website is Now Live!

We have just gone live with the RiverTree School website. Tell your friends, neighbors, friend's neighbors, and neighbor's friends.

New Address for this Blog

If you have successfully made your way to this blog despite my messing around with domain name records and the like, you already know that the address has changed.

From the beginning, one of the purposes of this blog was to be a place-holder for the RiverTree School website. Well, it is almost here. Accordingly, I have moved the blog to its new, permanent home at http://blog.rivertreeschool.org. Because Blogger is our host, you can also find it via http://rivertreeschool.blogspot.com.

The former URLs (www.rivertreeschool.org and rivertreeschool.org) will soon be the home of the main site. I will, of course, announce the website launch here as well.

Informational Meeting this Saturday

There will be an informational meeting this Saturday at 2:00 in Maple Grove for interested families. If you would like to join us, send me an email at info@rivertreeschool.org and I will send you the details.

It your chance to express your opinion!

Hello dear readers. Lest you think we aren't doing anything to further the plan for RiverTree opening Fall 2009, I thought I better write a post. One reason you haven't heard a lot from us is that we are still spending every moment we can pursuing a location for RTS. More on that later from Rodney. Much of our search is calling, waiting, wondering, learning patience and trust. All are valuable things, just not good blog posts.

But wait, I do have something to report, and am hoping for your feedback. RiverTree will be a school with a uniform. The details will be coming out in the future, but I'm working on the specifics of color, plaid etc. That's where I'd enjoy your input. There are many uniform companies, but I'm a fan of natural fabrics. I believe children are more comfortable in cotton clothing and other natural fabrics. Many of the uniform companies use a lot of synthetic fabrics which I plan on avoiding for RiverTree. My favorite place for uniforms so far is Land's End. It is basic; you can order it all online; and can take advantage of the Land's End Inlets here in the Twin Cities. If you have specific questions on the uniform, please be patient. I'll have that available shortly after our website is up and running. If you have questions as to why a uniform, please feel free to send me an email. I'd gladly converse about the benefits of a uniform.

If you care to express your opinion about colors of polo-type shirts and which plaid you prefer, follow these links to check out the options. Then come back to this article and leave your comments. Remember our colors are those seen in our logo. Our logo will also be on some of the clothing. I already have a few preferences on the tartans, but nothing set in stone. I'd enjoy hearing your opinion!

Sign Up for our Mailing List

Would you like to be added to our mailing list?  Through the "magic" of Google Forms, you can!

If you signed up with us in Rogers on Jan 6th, or if you have sent me an email asking about RiverTree, you are probably already on the list.  However, just to be sure, you can sign up again.

Informational Meetings

As part of our plan to get the word out about RiverTree, Marybeth and I would like to have a series of informational meetings for interested families.  If you would be willing to host such a meeting in your home, please let us know.   Ideally, a family would invite a few of their freinds who might also be interested, but if you would rather have us put the invite list together, we can do that too.