Poetry, Birds, Blogs, and Dairy

“How beautiful your feathers be!”
The Redbird sang to the Tulip-tree
New garbed in autumn gold.
“Alas!” the bending branches sighed,
“They cannot like your leaves abide
To keep us from the cold!”
—John B. Tabb

I decided that we just couldn’t wait until we could order books and gasp we would have to simply get by for the summer with the books I already own. I know, I know. It is a novel concept - one which I’ve oft considered, but rarely put into practice. Like I said, seven years of stable employment has a way of spoiling a gal. So I cracked open that wonderful, informative, and beautifully written “Handbook of Nature Study” by Anna Botsford Comstock.

The first section is about birds, which is a lovely lesson to begin at the start of Spring. As I read to the children about feathers, F1 found two feathers, which he had scavenged in the yard, sitting in his notebook. So we were able to demonstrate visually and kinesthetically the three parts of a feather: the quill, fluff, and barbs. The fruit were really interested in that and enjoyed showing one another that they now knew what the parts of a feather were. They were also interested in the raincoat usage of the feathers. At the end of the first lesson (which we couldn’t do, since we didn’t have any hens handy), there was a poem.

I read the poem out loud and the fruit all looked at me, fairly baffled. “I don’t get it,” F1 finally declared.

So I read it again, and asked what the redbird is. “A cardinal!” F5 shouted.

“Indeed,” I said. “Do cardinals stay here or do they migrate in the winter?”

“They stay here.”

“What keeps them warm?”

“Their feathers.” I could see understanding dawning on their faces. So I read it again, this time asking what “garbed in autumn gold” meant.

“The leaves were yellow?” I read it again, and this time they all had it under control. They appreciated the juxtapositions of leaves of the bird and feathers of the tree.

I asked them who wanted to memorize the poem and found that F3 already had it under her belt! F1 definitely didn’t want to, but while F2, F3, F4, and F5 all drew a picture representing the poem and copied it down (or I wrote it down on their picture for them), he looked up what a tulip-tree was. He printed off a couple of documents describing it (Indiana’s state tree, also known as the yellow poplar tree) and I read them aloud to the fruit as they finished their drawings.

I also got in a little plug for memorization, and the effect of good literature on one’s thinking and communicating skills. I’m hoping that, by September when the new school year starts, my propaganda crusade for memorization of poetry and passages of good literature will have developed in the fruit a desire to actually do so.

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I found a new, absolutely wonderful, educational, and inspiring blog. The Classical Scholar Diane is doing an excellent job defining a classical education and how to implement it in a homeschool. I spent all weekend reading her various articles. She has articulated much of what I’ve known instinctively, but have often failed to initiate. The whole poetry discussion was my attempt at a Socratic Dialogue, and although I’m sure I didn’t really get it right, I think the fruit really did learn something from it all and were very involved in the discussion. I also started some serious reading aloud, something that I must shamefacedly admit that I have allowed to fall by the wayside. This is all thanks to Diane’s excellent inspiration.

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Dairy. As in produce from a cow. I’m pretty sure that F6 has an intolerance to it. He’s been drinking goat’s milk for over four weeks now. He hasn’t had any cheese, except for some goat cheese I found at Stuffmart. I’ve checked ingredients (red dye 40? high fructose corn syrup? BHT? but no milk, whey, or caesin? Great! Put it in the cart!) and he hasn’t had any milk products or by-products. And he doesn’t have any red, inflamed eczema patches and most of the just dry spots are cleared up. The question is, were the eczema patches from the dairy or because the house was dry from furnace air? When he runs out of his goat milk this week, I’m going to give him cow milk for a couple of days and see if it causes his patches to be irritated. If it does, I’m going to assume a definite intolerance/allergy to cow’s milk and proceed to give goat’s milk to F2 and F5, to see if it helps them out, too.