Brief notes from the working academy — observations, confessions, the occasional field report, and a great deal of marginalia.
The youngest insists. The middle children abide. The eldest, with great dignity, reads ahead of us. There is no school quite like the same book, read again, by a different child each year.
Continue readingThe full entry is not yet bound.
Tradition
We use a brass hand bell, kept on the mantel, to signal the start and end of lessons. It belonged to a great-grandmother. It is not loud. It is not punctual. It is, somehow, exactly right.
Latin
We attempted amo, amas, amat with the youngest. She declined the third person singular as “amat-cat” and could not be moved. The lesson was abandoned. The phrase has stuck.
Field Studies
An afternoon spent identifying shorebirds and one mildly aggrieved horseshoe crab. The nature journals returned salt-stained and well-used. The works of the Creator examined, briefly, in good light.
Method
We do not, as a rule, traffic in worksheets. We will, however, concede that for the multiplication tables, the worksheet has yet to be surpassed. A confession.
Of Record
Our eldest was conferred her degree this spring, summa cum laude. Fifteen years of work and reading and prayer in evidence at last. The Lord is kind, and the work is worth doing.
The Journal is published as the headmaster finds time, which is to say, irregularly. New entries appear when there is something worth saying and someone with a free moment to say it.
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