Cacophony by Dawn Garrett Teeming with confusion; the world called to origins ancient. The roads bustle in one direction by proclamation sent. Tempers flare. Exhaustion trudges at the pace as set in front. Identified as mere possession; selfish aggrandizement. Greeting, welcome, discourse Argument, curse, invective, yelling. Immobility for ass and horse. Impatience revealing. Rivers run…
I’m not in love with the word I’ve chosen for my 2019 Word for the Year, but I can’t seem to get away from it. That generally means it’s the right one. There were a lot of contenders: Commit. Pray. Engage. Speak. Interact. All perfectly good words in themselves and a lot to consider over…
We ended the last post in the series with, “Good habits matter to the life of ideas.” Mason’s third is tool: “Education is a life. In saying that “education is a life,” the need of intellectual and moral as well as of physical sustenance is implied. The mind feeds on ideas, and therefore children should have…
Scaffolding also utilizes the discipline of habit. Scaffolding is evenly spaced, carefully layered, intentionally constructed. Mason’s habit-building is so done, too. Mason says, By “education is a discipline,” we mean the discipline of habits, formed definitely and thoughtfully, whether habits of mind or body. Physiologists tell us of the adaptation of brain structures to habitual…
As I’ve written this series and thought about it over the last year, I came to see how Scaffolding is just Mason’s tools of Atmosphere, Discipline, and Life. I started out planning to write just the first four or so posts, but as I actually wrote them I kept bumping up against atmosphere – how…
For Today… Looking out my window … it is dark. Late. I am thinking … it’s a little crazy to post this now because there’s a scheduled post at 6am tomorrow. I am thankful … for blogging as an outlet. One of my favorite things … my washer and dryer. I’ve run a number of…
When we think about lesson planning and curricular development, we can easily become overwhelmed by the vast amount of resources and approaches to any given lesson or study. But by using scaffolding in planning both the short- and long-term, we can make a plan that is reasonable and approachable without being overwhelmed. What is scaffolding?…
We’ve done a lot of copywork in our homeschool. My kids all taught themselves how to print before I taught them to write, so we used Cursive First for our writing program. It corrected a lot of their printing issues, which was great. They copied some random things until M-girl was third grade or so….
I like my cover better than the one GoodReads assigned Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot My rating: 5 of 5 stars Own. I’ve never read any Eliot before and reading this does not dissuade me from reading more. I loved this. I didn’t get most or all of it, I’m sure, but the…
Jacob’s Room is Full of Books: A Year of Reading by Susan Hill My rating: 4 of 5 stars Own. I’ve enjoyed Hill’s memoirs, although my favorite is, I think, The Magic Apple Tree. These bookish ones are both very readable and she mixes in so many ideas from the world at large. This one,…