a new house

I have now three adults and three children a couple chickens and one dog plus goldfish

Poetry 9/21/2012

The Road Not Taken 

(from Mountain Interval, 1916)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.

By Robert Frost

Updated CO-OP Schedule

The CO-OP Schedule has been updated.  It can be found at CO-OP information tab.  The changes are Composer and Picture Study were swapped.  The schedule closely follows Spring 2012 schedule.

If your child needs a snack during the snack/Swedish Drill time, please have them sit down to eat their snack.    When they finish they can join everyone doing the Swedish Drill.

Fall Plutarch study

And we're off..We will be studying Solon this term.  He is the "opposite" or comparison study in Plutrach's Lives to Poplicola, our man last year.  Here is the link to the text we will be reading.   It is from Our Young Folks' Plutarch by Kaufman.  We will divide the text into 6 readings.  I will give background info on our character,  use a map, and ask questions.

  If you think your younger child will have a difficult time with the readings,  I ask that you keep them in the main fellowship hall, preferably quiet with coloring or outside.  Charlotte Mason did not begin Plutarch until 4th or 5th grade, so please feel free to decide if your child/children can handle this. 

If you think it would be helpful to see the text we will be reading each week posted here,  I can do that.  Please let me know. 

I will NOT be at the first co-op...booo...but you all will handle this day very well.  Crecy Regan will be teaching this first class. 

See you soon,

Rebekah

9/7/12 Poem

Hyla Brook (from Mountain Interval, 1916)

By June our brook's run out of song and speed.
Sought for much after that, it will be found
Either to have gone groping underground
(And taken with it all the Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago,
Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)
Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,
Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent
Even against the way its waters went.
Its bed is left a faded paper sheet
Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat
A brook to none but who remember long.
This as it will be seen is other far
Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.
We love the things we love for what they are.

~Robert Frost

Vocabulary:

1. Hyla brook: a stream near where Frost lived; Hyla is also a name for a species of frog.
2. sought for: looked for, searched for
3. groping: tunneling.
4. Breed: group; offspring.
5. flourished: prospering, doing very well.
6. jewel weed: large weed
7. foliage: leafy part of a plant
8. but who: except those who

Fall Co-op - Poet Study - Robert Frost

Who was Robert Frost?

Robert Frost, in 1910

·      Robert was born in San Francisco, California, but moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts after his dad died in 1885 of tuberculosis, leaving the family with only 8 dollars. 

Signature

          As much as he writes about country life and Rural New England, he actually grew up in the city.  He had an early interest in poetry, publishing his first poem in his high school magazine.

·         Though he loved to write poetry and preferred that over any other jobs, he came home from college early to help his mom teach, deliver newspapers, and work in a factory as a carbon filament changer (the wire inside lightbulbs, that help them glow).

·         In 1894 he sold his first poem, "My Butterfly. An Elegy,” for $15, which is the same as $300 today.  

Robert Frost, in 1959

         The first time he proposed to his wife, Elinor, she turned him down because she wanted to finish college. 

·         His grandfather bought a farm for Robert and Elinor in Derry New Hampshire.  It was there that Robert discovered he made a better poet than a farmer. He wrote most of his famous poems in the nine years he lived and worked on that farm.

·         After leaving the farm and tackling a career as an English teacher, the Frosts moved to Great Britain for a few years.  When World War I began, he returned to America and bought a homestead in New Hampshire.  That farm is now known as “The Frost Place.”

·         Robert Frost ultimately received 4 Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry, a profound accomplishment for writers.

·         After receiving accolades, he purchased 5 acres in Miami, Florida, in 1940.  This became his winter home for the next 23 years.  Floridians call people like that “snowbirds.”

Robert Frost's grave

·         Although Robert Frost never graduated from college, he received 40 honorary degrees!  

·         At the age of 86, he read his poem, “The Gift Outright,” during the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961. Listen to him read it here.

 ·         Robert encountered much sadness and loss in his life, with the death of his parents by the time he was 25 and his wife when he was in his fifties.  Siblings and children struggled with illness that led to untimely death for some and others being sent to live in mental hospitals.

 Robert Frost died in 1963, in Vermont, where he is buried.  His grave marker quotes a line from one of his poems: "I had a lover's quarrel with the world."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost)

Let's try this again!!

I think you all can post now.  Just sign in and post your class's information.  Please try to tell us what we need or what we are studying at least a week ahead.  We want to be prepared for YOU!! 

Rebekah