some quotations I like

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts.” – Thoreau, Walden

“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!” – Thoreau, Walden

“We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thoughts for today

I just got an invitation to send this on to 12 people…but I don’t participate in chain emails. So, thought I’d put it out for anyone to see.

“May today there be peace within you. May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith in yourself and others. May you use the gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content with yourself just the way you are. Let this knowledge settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us.”

some English workbooks…

We’re raising a bilingual child in France, in a non-bilingual school within the French school system, but we want her to fully develop her English literacy skills. So, we’re working with her English teachers at school to choose materials appropriate for her level, that she can do during her ‘independent work contract’ time while other children are learning English at their level.

Her teachers have a ‘Word Study’ book (vocab and spelling development) that they’ll probably have her work in next year. I was looking for some more wholistic ‘language arts’ materials that would help her develop her writing skills more fully (she loves to write in both languages and is prolific).

What I would choose for her for the next year (grade 4) are these:

1. ‘Climbing to Good English‘, levels 3 and 4 (selected parts of level 3 this summer and level 4 at school)

2. ‘Reading Comprehension, Grade 5‘, by Spectrum publishers

3. ‘Writing, Grade 5‘, by Spectrum publishers

More on ‘Climbing to Good English’ –

I really like the ‘Climbing to Good English’ series, which lives up to the publisher’s description of being more advanced than most school grade levels. What I like most is that it’s a very integrated Language Arts program – spelling, grammar, writing – and it’s full of exercises that are ‘real life’ (if you live in a rural setting! )…and wholesome, and full of relationships between friends and family members…teaching ‘values’ in the process of teaching English. Not that I’m big on the need of materials that do this, but I was surprised at how refreshing I found it…how much I enjoyed reading through all the texts in the workbooks. This series is used in Amish schools, so there are very occassional uses of specifically Christian vocabulary; we’re comfortable with discussing the content of any such exercises as they come up as part of our daughter’s general cultural and religious education.

To use the ‘Climbing to Good English’ book 3, I’m changing the instructions for all of the ‘respelling’ exercises which are intended to teach children how to spell using an older version of dictionary spellings…not necessary in my book. However, the word lists that are used for these exercises are very good for focusing on sounds and their spellings, so instead, I’m having my daughter do ‘sound sorting’ and ‘alternative spelling’ exercises that I sketch out for her, using these same word lists. (The ‘sound sorting’ and ‘alternative spelling’ exercises are those I learned from ‘Phono-Graphix/Reading Reflex‘ materials, for teaching the ‘advanced code’ of English.)

I think the ‘level 4′ book is more appropriate to where she is in general, but there are a lot of important basics covered in book 3 that she hasn’t ever dealt with in her English instruction at school, such as recognizing and fixing run-on sentences, identification of parts of sentences, writing dialog, some punctuation and capitalization rules, plus stylistic things like choosing ‘good titles’ and ‘good beginning’ and ‘good ending’ sentences for stories. I’m choosing which exercises she should do. One could use the ‘Chapter Tests’ at the back of the book as assessment tools to decide where to focus a child’s work, if this book were used for remediation as I’m using it.

One can see some examples of the pages of these workbooks on using the links above. It’s notable that they’re ‘old fashioned’ in appearance, which might dissuade a parent or child…but I took others’ advice to not be disuaded by the lack of modern illustrations and up-to-date appearances as in some more readily available and modern language arts workbooks–I’ve bought and read some of these and have found some very difficult to read. I actually find these ‘Climbing’ workbooks more legible and more nicely organized, as they aren’t trying to squish a single topic on each page.

The series is produced by Pathway Publishers, SchoolAid. I bought my copies from JOY Center of Learning, located in Canada. Shipping to the US takes a bit of time…I think it was about 2 weeks for delivery. I don’t recall whether they even offer to ship to Europe.

More on the Spectrum books –

The Spectrum Reading Comprehension workbook has a mix of fiction and non-fiction, one-page texts, with comprehension, dictionary skills, word study and vocabulary questions on each facing page. Particularly attractive to me is the exposure to American culture through the fairly multicultural reading selections. The more modern and multicultural content help to balance the rather narrow, rural Americana content of the ‘Climbing’ series.

The Spectrum Writing workbook is also a good complement to the ‘Climbing’ series (which is quite strong in developing writing skills). What one gets with this workbook is more mainstream examples and topics and a modern, global presentation of the Writing process, the explicit teaching of which I’m a big fan. After looking at writing good paragraphs (topic sentences & supporting details) and introducing the steps of the writing process in the first chapter, each subsequent chapter leads the child through the process while doing different kinds of writing (Friendly letters, stories, etc). I particularly like the repetition of the writing process, the introduction of different kinds of prewriting exercises and the emphasis on editing and rewriting.

An advantage of these books is that they’re easy to purchase online, for example through Amazon, but one can also find them in big bookstores in the US, so it’s possible to look at actual lessons and see what suits a particular child.

untitled poem

Cows low wall (while?) the snow mows the low
Surrounding of dry grass.
I was standing there on a cold winter night.
An owl hooted, then I got scared and fell
Into the grand swimming pool of wonderful dreams.
(beginning of my dream)
In the night, an owl hooted for the morning.
It came, and I, me, as a boy, met a big eagle
that, to my surprise, picked me up, and I, me, for the first time,
Ate an eagle meal, in the eagle’s nest. I felt my
baseball cap fly away. Ahahahahahahahahahah
Ahahahahah! I yelled. And I said, My baseball
cap flew right onto the head of an
Ostrich. Funny! But there are things that
are more worth it to think about. Like the
fact that I woke up from my dream.

(written early this June, age 7.10. Published here with permission…)

red lentil soup with a spicy drizzle

This soup is always a hit and it’s very easy to make. For English-speakers, here’s the recipe on the Eating Well magazine website (originally published in Eating Well, January/February 1995).

While looking for a translation of “chicken stock” I came across the Hungry French Man website based in our hometown, San Francisco. Double-whammy nostalgia, tying my past and current lives together.

For French speakers who just want to make the soup (and not do an English exercise), here’s my translation of the Red Lentil Soup recipe into French:

free AVG 8.0 is available

You may have noticed/been notified that your antivirus AVG-free is about to expire (May 31). You may be under the impression that you need to pay for the new version, but that is not true. AVG continues to produce a free version of their software. (They just don’t make it easy to understand, because they wish you to pay for their more robust product…).

You can download the free, updated version to your computer’s desktop from here: http://free.grisoft.com/ww.download?prd=afe

After the download is finished, you should double-click on the AVG 8.0 icon on your desktop (or wherever you saved it to), and the installation of the new software will begin.

During the installation, you’ll see a message that the old version must be un-installed; you should agree/say yes.

You’ll be prompted to restart your computer before the installation is complete.

“word mapping”

Here’s an interesting presentation of coaching/learning spelling in English. The author uses the term ‘word mapping’ which is the same term used with the Reading Reflex Phono-Graphic Method that combines reading and writing/spelling from the very beginning.

The underlying concept for ‘word mapping’ is that words are composed of sounds (phonemes) and that we represent these sounds with particular symbols (letters and combinations of letters). The Reading Genie website presents a nice progression for analyzing a word and learning its spelling, in 9 steps, where one doesn’t look at the actual spelling until step 6. This approach really puts the emphasis on the sounds involved and then the code necessary to represent those sounds.

There are a number of aspects of the Reading Genie website’s information that I don’t appreciate, e.g. a focus on blending of syllables and developing discrete phoneme awareness last (which I’m not sure is necessary, despite its relative difficulty). But there are some very useful tools there as well, including Developing Fluency, and for parents/teachers, How to Count Phonemes in Words.

The batle

(composed this past weekend, age 7.6)

“The batle will be soon.
Blue and Red, shall fight but I shall not!
But you must o noble knit!
I shall not it is to dangerous for me!
O.K but not next time.

So the armese march twords us. We will not die!
(You can invente the end.)”

———
Re-reading the ‘Thae Magik Hetr’ story tonight made me realize how long it’s been since any of E’s ideas have been published here, and how much her writing has developed since the last time. Thanks, Heidi, for mentioning these entries over the weekend.

galette des rois recipe – easy and delicious

‘Tis the season of the “kings’ cake” in France…starting on the day of Epiphany (Jan 6) and continuing…well, apparently until the bakers stop selling their ‘galette des rois‘. This year’s research into what this holiday is really about (in the religious sense) brought in the information that the bible doesn’t mention “3″ kings specifically, just “3″ gifts. So the number of ‘wise men’ (or kings) is uncertain. Which is just fine for the galette tradition, where in a season or at a party, the number of kings (or queens) varies greatly. The kids (the 7 year olds) argued this year about whether the person who finds the one ‘feve’ (a porcelain figurine for us) gets to keep the paper crown or has to give it to his/her queen/king, and who keeps the feve? All this became much too confusing last weekend, and thankfully, the 5-year-olds saved the day by initiating a pass-the-crown sharing game, and we all just ate the lovely galette.

What we know for certain, however, is that the PRICE of these galettes at the local boulangerie is always shocking relative to the size, and we’re always left craving just a bit more of that luscious, fatty, lovely almond filling. So

chicken mole

Here’s a luscious winter favorite. Most kids we’ve offered it to find the concept too weird—they won’t even try it—leaving plenty for appreciative adults and more adventurous young palates. Serve with roasted/steamed potatoes, rice or fresh, warm corn tortillas.

I’ve slightly modified the recipe below for my use in Paris; it’s based on one found at recipezaar. Thanks to that author, Izzy Knight, and to Rose for bringing it our way…

Chicken (or Turkey) Mole