A.A. Milne

I'm reading the poetry of A.A. Milne from a large hardback edition of Winnie the Pooh: The Complete Collection of Stories & Poems ( illustrated by E.H. Shepard) to my youngest. She loves his poems & I love reading them. We have many favourites but Teddy Bear would probably be at the top of her list. You can find a copy here.

Forgiven (Alexander Beetle) was put to music years ago and recorded by Melanie Safka.




The BBC Radio Collection has The House at Pooh Corner & other stories from Winnie the Pooh delightfully  narrated by Alan Bennett. We listened to hours of these on a trip interstate a couple of years ago & even the older kids thought they were funny (well the first time around anyway).

 The Red House Mystery, published in 1922, was A.A. Milne's only mystery novel. It has been published by BJU Press but a free version is here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1872. Suitable for around age 12 & up.

Nature Study

"If the love of Nature be frozen or crushed out, the character can hardly fail to suffer from the loss.

To look is much less easy than to overlook; and to be able to see what we do see is a great gift.

Many of us walk throught the world like ghosts, as if we were in it but not of it. We have 'eyes

and see not, ears and hear not.'" - Sir John Lubbock.

Litoria phyllochroa - otherwise known as Green Stream Frog, Green Leaf Tree Frog or Leaf Green Tree Frog.
Very cute little beastie that came inside clinging to the hydrangea I'd just cut.

For information on Aussie frogs:

http://frogsaustralia.net.au/ 
http://frogs.org.au/frogs/species/Litoria/phyllochroa/


A Visitor for Lunch

Sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita - 'cockatoo with a crest'). Beautiful large & very raucous birds. Very common where we live but we don't often have them land on our verandah, thankfully. They can be very destructive and make an ear-splitting racket. We have bush around us and they tend to stay up in the big old hollowed out gum trees.

"Above all, it is hoped that the habit of open-air study will make life more satisfying to many. We have to forget ourselves in order find ourselves; and an interest in Nature, aroused in youth, will not only save a man from much useless fretting, but will do much to awaken powers that adds to the worth and dignity of life."

"The exercise of the faculty of admiration does more for a child than perhaps anything else. For many centuries the great minds of the race have been telling man that he who has not learned to love has not learned to live. Now, love is based on admiration. It is vain merely to tell a child to love God, or to reverence God, as if by some effort of will this could be done. But let the child learn the joy of sudden wonder and delight at the Creator's work, and then reverence will rise without effort." (William Gillies, "First Studies in Insect Life in Australasia")

Folk Songs

Our current (Australian) folk song is "With my Swag all on my Shoulder."
The words & music can be found here http://folkstream.com/100.html

We've been listening to a version on the CD "Bushrangers, Bolters and Other Wild Colonials"  by Warren Fahey which we found at the library (an ABC production). It has a good folky acoustic sound but here's the Seeker's version which I remember hearing years ago:

Shakespeare

Starting Shakespeare

Our first real  introduction  to Shakespeare's works came when I borrowed a friend's copy of Tales from Shakespeare by Charles & Mary Lamb and gave it to our then 12 year old daughter to read.  I had a volume of The Complete Works of Shakespeare, given to me years before by a friend  who had a spare copy, and it had sat on the shelf for years after I'd decided that I'd never make any sense out of it. Before long the Complete Works were in my daughter's hands being understood & appreciated & to my surprise, enjoyed. I still hadn't read any Shakespeare and it wasn't until a few years ago that I started connecting with his plays at the prodding of my second daughter who has become quite a Shakespeare buff and with her help I began to enjoy Shakespeare's works for myself. He now has become a regular part of our homeschooling.

I've read often enough that Shakespeare was meant to be watched and it did help me to watch some of the movie versions of his plays but my daughter had to give me a running commentary to help me know who was who as I was watching so I've tried  to use a mixed approach when we study Shakespeare. I've  also found it wise to preview all the movies as even the G rated versions have unsuitable scenes but often it's easy enough to skirt around without missing much of the story. 

Here are some of the things we have done.
We read Romeo & Juliet by Margaret Early -this is a re-telling with lovely illustrations.
I had a look at the 1968 movie  by Franco Zeffirelli and chose some scenes to give a feel for the story and the time period & we watched those selections. (I didn't think the film was appropriate in places for general viewing but even looking at a few of the scenes was a great introduction to the play & the boys loved the sword fights.)

Our first introduction to Henry V was with the Laurence Olivier movie, followed by reading the re-telling found in Ian Serraillier's The Enchanted Island (see description below). We then listened to the BBC Arkangel fully dramatized version on CD. (We did this over a couple of months covering about 10 minutes at each listening.) After this we watched the very well done 1990 Kenneth Branagh movie which I edited at a few places (battlefield scenes). It was interesting to compare the two movie versions  of Henry V. The Branagh version was certainly more appealing to my boys but the Olivier film commences and finishes as a play at The Globe Theatre and so gives a good feel for the Elizabethan era which I found helpful.
My youngest loved the Jim Weiss CD versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Taming of the Shrew and after she had listened to them innumerable times we watched the animated version of The Taming of the Shrew here:

www.squidoo.com/shakespeare-animated-tales  (scroll down the page a bit)

Our current Shakespeare play is Much Ado About Nothing. The boys read it in story form in Lambs' Tales and now we are listening to the BBC Arkangel audio plus following along with Cambridge or Oxford guides which have the individual plays with commentary. Reading along with the audio is very helpful even if it's only to know who is speaking when, which can get quite confusing with Shakespeare.

The Enchanted Island by Ian Serraillier is a book of stories from the plays, not of them. He often chooses secondary plot lines to follow which makes for an interesting read that isn't just a repeat of every other book of Shakespeare summaries.  Easy to read with engaging language, the eleven stories include Henry V, King Lear, Macbeth and The Tempest.