Advent is a time of awe, awaiting the celebration of Christ’s birth. Madeleine L’Engle, famous for her book A Wrinkle in Time, wrote in her poem “The Birth of Wonder”: But now is the hour When I remember An infant’s power On a cold December. What is this infant’s wondrous power? Nothing less than to […]
Nautae caelum et terram vident is a humble Latin sentence. It means, “The sailors see the sky and the land.” It’s simple, yet it involves interconnecting thoughts and the ability to organize them in a systematic, coherent manner. This sentence is relatively complex in the knowledge and skills it requires. To translate it, you must
Summer fades into autumn; one season wanes, another flourishes. This is the undulating pattern of life, as well as that of our home-centered liturgy of education since my husband and I married and began a family. This liturgy is like a familiar hymn, one that began with the births of our children and has been
A Classical, Christian Education: Pondering the Fulcrum Read More »
A common theme I encounter in conversations with other home educators each spring, and often into the summer months, concerns preparation for the upcoming year. I’ve been classically homeschooling for over twenty-five years, and the liturgy of this assessing and planning season is an integral part of my own life, too—as fundamental to it as
Inside the Outside: Tactical and Strategic Planning Read More »
Our era is dismantling millennia of incarnated memories with increasing fervor and speed—“old” books are considered irrelevant, so much so that it can be difficult to find classics in local libraries or school curricula; monuments and artistic creations, some of which have withstood the ravages of decades, if not centuries, are toppled in the name
Most teachers would probably agree with this truth: “Interest and attention characterize the mental state of a true learner and constitute the essential basis on which the process of learning rests” (John Milton Gregory, The Seven Laws of Teaching). We want the attention of our students—their eyes focused, their ears tuned in, their minds alert.
“If we will make our seasons welcome here, asking not too much of earth or heaven, then a long time after we are dead the lives our lives prepare will live here, their houses strongly placed,” writes Wendell Berry in his poem “The Vision.” These past months, seasons have been welcomed and then bidden farewell.
Shortly after I ventured into social media many years ago, I discovered this poem by Emily Dickinson: I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there’s a pair of us! Don’t tell! They’d advertise – you know! How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog –
Allow me to tell you The Fable of the Fearsome √2, a proud irrational number with an unsettlingly sinister story behind it. Feel free to share this story with the little children whom you tuck in. Please note that this is, like any respectable fairytale, the stuff of legend. Furthermore, as is a storyteller’s prerogative,
In my last article, “Can Mathematics be Parables?” I considered the fantastical realm of “imaginary” numbers. Now, wander with me across a terrain of numbers even more dazzlingly head-spinning . . . and even more hazardous, perhaps, to encounter. I’m sure you’ll remember that there is a whole category of numbers that is (gasp) “irrational”?
Math Parables 2: Welcome to the World of Hyper-Sur-Reality Read More »
