What to Teach in Homeschool

Dear Reader,

When I went to the state homeschool convention, I was overwhelmed by the amount of things available. There is an awful lot we as homeschoolers are trying to teach our children and a myriad of ways to do each subject. And while the purveyors of all these products are usually nice homeschool moms and dads themselves, they are also business people. They are trying to sell you something. Everything sounds essential when you listen to the sales pitches. So how do you know what you really need?

Charlotte Mason urges mothers to consider these questions:

“[The mother] must ask herself seriously, Why must children learn at all? What should they learn? And, How should they learn it?”                                                   [Home Education, p.118]

These are wonderful questions to ask oneself, and I think every parent should spend some time on them.

Before I began to read much about Charlotte Mason’s philosophy, I began to think about these questions of why we study each thing we do. I was inspired by my oldest son who asked at the end of a grammar lesson why he had to do this anyway. Now I am not opposed to all grammar by any means, but I have to admit that the grammar we were using at the time was quite tedious. And I was already paring it down quite a bit from what was in the text.

So I started with grammar and asked myself, Why do we learn this? The answer for me was to be good communicators, both in communicating to others and in understanding what others are saying to us (or writing to us).  I do think it is good to know how a sentence is constructed so that we ourselves can compose good ones. But the truth is that as an adult I have never needed to know how to diagram a sentence or what an adjective is versus an adverb. Grammar is tools we need to use effectively, but usually we are not even aware of the tools.

I went on to think about each area of study in these terms and to ask why we are studying each. I posted long ago on our own philosophy of education that I came up with here. I won’t reiterate here what I came up with for each area. But here are some general principles: We all have some general callings like telling others about Christ and being good stewards of what He has given us. These things require basic skills that all should develop, particularly good communication skills, basic math skills, and a general understanding of government and economics.  Also included in this category can be what would traditionally be called home economics skills. Our children will also have specific callings that we cannot yet discern (we may think we can, but I would hate to assume and limit children as to what they can do in the future). So we should give them a broad basis in a number of areas so that it is easier for them to delve deeper into these areas if they find they need them in the future. The sciences fall into this category as well as certain other skills that not everyone ends up needing but which are commonly needed in our culture, like basic computer skills including some understanding of programming.

But all these things are in the realm of tools we need. None of them feed the soul. Charlotte Mason’s philosophy is all about giving our children (and ourselves) spiritual and intellectual food. The food we give them is ideas. There are some ideas that we can pick up from addition facts and grammar rules, ideas about constant truth and orderliness. But there are even more ideas ready to be discerned when we come to history and science. In science we learn about creation and the One who has made all things as they are. In history, we learn about humanity, about their courage and their many recurring faults. We also learn how God has dealt with them.

The arts also have their value. Ideas can be transmitted through visual media and music and not only through words. But even without that, our God is a God of beauty. He has created a beautiful world and instilled in us a sense of beauty and we do well to feed it on lovely things.

As my children get older, it is easier to see how the whys of our education affect the hows. I can look at how other parents choose to structure their homeschool time and discern what their values are.  Often these are not things they have consciously thought about, but the values still come through. So I would encourage all homeschool parents (and all parents) to consider early on what their goals are and what they value for their children. And to adapt their schooling to those values. It can be hard to pass by all the curricula that you are told is so essential, but our time is short and we need to be focused on what we truly value.

Nebby

Psalm 23 (Part 2)

Dear Reader,

I covered my translation of Psalm 23 and some technical issues relating to it in an earlier post. Now it is time to discuss the meaning of the psalm. Here again is the translation I am working from:

1 The LORD [is] my shepherd; I do not want.

2 In pastures green he makes me lie down.

3 By waters calm he leads me; My soul he revives.

4 He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

5 Although I walk in the valley of death’s shadow I do not fear evil.

6 For you [are] with me.

7 Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

8 You prepare before me a table opposite my enemies.

9 You anointed with oil my head;

10 My cup [is] overflowing.

11 Surely goodness and loving-kindness pursue me all the days of my life.

12 And I will dwell in the house of the LORD for long days.

I began my explaining to the children the structure of lines 2 through 5. You can read the details in that earlier post, but basically all four have a very similar grammatical structure. Lines 2 and 3 go “preposition-noun-noun verb,” and lines 4 and 5 go “verb preposition-noun-noun.” This actually came up right away because my older daughter said that line 3 should have been divided in two to put “my soul he revives” separately. I explained that I did not do this because it would mess up the parallel structure found in these four lines. Instead I left “my soul he revives” where it is as  a sort of addendum to line 3 in much the same ay that line 4 has “for his name’s sake.”

But what, you may ask, is the point of all this? Why do we care about similar structures in the Hebrew? Here is why: look at the prepositional phrases in these four lines. They all describe places one can be. Which ones are good? Where would you like to be? The kids were able to see that the first three are all good places, but the last is not. In fact, it is about the darkest of the dark. There is a juxtaposition here. It is that age-old conflict between what we think we should experience as God’s people and what we actually do experience. The psalmist expresses confidence that God is leading in good places, but at the same time he acknowledges that sometimes he finds himself in the dark. Yet he still trusts his standing before the LORD, saying “I do not fear evil.” Why? The answer is in the next line: “Because you are with me.” It is the gap between our very real standing before God, safe in Christ, and the reality our eyes often see which can be quite dark and fearful.

We also noted a shift in line 6 from the third to the second person. Hebrew does not seem to mind these transitions.

My older daughter looked at what God does in this psalm: he guides, leads, revives, prepares, and anoints. We asked what picture we get of God in this psalm. For once it is easy to see! The LORD is my shepherd. I also asked what other things we get beyond the first line that show this shepherd picture. The kids were able to pick up on the rod and staff being the shepherd’s tools and the green pastures and calm waters being good places for sheep.

One of my sons noticed that LORD appears only in the first and last lines. It makes kind of a framework for the psalm, like a pair of bookends.

Finally we talked about the verb tense in line 9, “you anointed my head with oil.” As I discussed in the earlier post, most of the verbs in this psalm are the imperfect, expressing uncompleted action. But this one is the lone exception. It is in the perfect tense, showing completed action. It is possible we could amend this form or take it as a narrative form which looks like the perfect but is really imperfect. But I like it w=the way it is here. Because who is the psalmist? It is David. And he has been anointed as king over God’s people. It is the one fact here that is accomplished and is not ongoing. It is something for David to look back on when those dark times come, much as we can look back on our baptisms as a sign and seal of God’s covenant with us.

Nebby

Examples of Narration

Dear Reader,

A major part of the Charlotte Mason approach to education is narration. It allows children to process what they have read or otherwise experienced. But what does narration look like? Most of ours is oral, but we do try to do written narration at least once a week. I probably really should be upping that for the older kids. Miss Mason does not require children to narrate before age 8 or so but my 6-year-old likes to do what the older ones do so she does it too. Usually for written narration, the younger two dictate to me which allows them to express a lot more than they could writing on their own. Lately, though, the 6-year-old has chosen to do her own writing, which ahs indeed led to shorter narrations from her. I do not correct spelling errors or otherwise edit their narrations. So without further ado, here are four narrations from a recent geography lesson from Hillyer’s A Child’s Geography. The chapter was on India.

From the 11-year-old:

“In India the people in charge -called rajahs- are not very nice. They gorge themselves while the poor people starve. Rajahs like to go tiger hunting. In India the main belief is hinduism. It states that if you were god you would become a good person or animal when you die and if you were bad you become a bad person or animal.”

He drew a cartoon in which the rajah hunts a tiger, taxes the people, hunts some more, and dies and comes back as a tiger.

From the 10-year-old:

“In India, the ruler is called a rajah. He rides on an elephant and wears jewels and pearls. There is an island just off of India that is very famous for its pearl-divers.

It is against the law in India to shoot an elephant. So people capture elephants and tame them. This is how they do it.

They build a pen to put the elephant in. Then, when there is an elephant near the open, they make loud noises on the other side of the pen and the elephant gets scared and runs into the pen. Then they have to train the elephant.

Training elephants is hard because elephants are very dangerous. But when elephants are trained they are very useful. They can lift things or you can ride them. They are like machines or cars.”

From the eight-year-old (dictated to me):

“In opposite feet land, there are people called rajahs who rule towns, and they go hunting for tigers. How do they do it? Good question. First you have to have to do it: a tiger to hunt, a rajah, and slaves, and maybe a couple of friends. So you send the slaves out playing drums. And the tiger doesn’t like it so he goes in one direction. And there the guys are waiting in trees, and they shoot him. It is very bad for the tigers though. Even tough you can;t do it because there’s no tigers in the USA. Be sure not to get that confused with the UAE.”

The gun is going “bang, bang, bang.”

And lastly, from the six-year-old, written ion her own:

“INDIA HAS SOME OF THE FINEST AND BEST JOOLS [aka jewels] SOME OF THEM ARE HINALS [Hindus, I think] THER IS CITY CALD BOMBAY AND THER IS A RIVAR CALD GANGES PEOPEL LIVE IN A PLAS CAKD CEYON [Ceylon] AND THEY COEM THER HARI THER [No idea on that last bit] THE END”

So her handwriting is atrocious, she uses all caps and she doesn’t spell well. But she remembered things.

And that was our weekly written narration.

Nebby

Psalm 23

Dear Reader,

So we had relatives visiting last week and we took the week off school. And I also had less time to prepare for this week. So I thought I would pick something easy for our weekly psalm study. Psalm 23 is short, familiar, and doesn’t seem to contain any particularly hard concepts. So I thought it would fit the bill well. I can even recite it from memory (in Hebrew).

And then I looked at the psalm. It is not so easy as I expected. There is really quite a lot there that we could discuss. And some things in the translation that really need explanation. So this may end up being two posts, this first one on the translation itself and a later one on how we studied the psalm.

Here is the translation I came up with:

1 The LORD [is] my shepherd; I do not want.

2 In pastures green he makes me lie down.

3 By waters calm he leads me; My soul he revives.

4 He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

5 Although I walk in the valley of death’s shadow I do not fear evil.

6 For you [are] with me.

7 Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

8 You prepare before me a table opposite my enemies.

9 You anointed with oil my head;

10 My cup [is] overflowing.

11 Surely goodness and loving-kindness pursue me all the days of my life.

12 And I will dwell in the house of the LORD for long days.

The big issue I puzzled over in this psalm is the verb tenses. Biblical Hebrew does not have tenses  in the way English does. It has essentially two verb forms, an imperfect which expresses incomplete action and a perfect which expresses completed action. The latter would be used mainly for things that have happened in the past and are done with: Moses led, the people grumbled, God saved. The imperfect can be used for the future: We will go. But it can also be used for continuing or habitual action in the present: God leads. To complicate things further Hebrew narrative has forms that look almost like the other form but mean the opposite. These sometimes show up in poetry as well. Have I made you want to study biblical Hebrew yet? It’s actually not as hard as it sounds. There are a lot fewer verb forms than in most languages. I can’t help but think that what we have in the Old Testament is really more of a literary language and that they must have had other ways of saying things when they were actually talking to one another. I have trouble seeing how any language can work well day-to-day with no productive present tense. But I digress.

My point is that in Psalm 23 most of the verbs are on the imperfect, the form that indicates uncompleted action. The only ones that aren’t imperfect are “anointed” in line 9 and “dwell” in line 12. The latter probably has some other textual issues so I am not sure we can count it as evidence of much tense-wise in this psalm. It should be noted that in line 1 we have to supply a verb (“is”) in English, but Hebrew has no verb form (that lack of a present tense again). “Overflowing” in line 10 is also not a verb form strictly speaking in Hebrew but a participle which is how biblical Hebrew usually deals with the present.

So what are we to do with all these imperfects? There are a number of acceptable ways to translate them. They could all be futures: “I will not want”, “He will make me lie down.” They could be present tenses in English, showing ongoing actions: “I do not want”, “He makes me lie down.” The problem I had in translating this psalm is that the version in my head and most of the translations I looked up don’t pick one way to translate all these imperfects. They use legitimate translations but they are not consistent. Line 1 would be “I shall not want”, a future. But then even though the verb forms are the same, we tend to switch to a present tense, “He leads me” etc. By line 5, we go back to the future: “I will fear no evil.” The forms in Hebrew haven’t changed, but in English they appear to.

So my conclusion was that I wanted to use the same English tense for all these verbs. I don’t have a strong opinion on whether that tense should be the present or the future but I want to use one and not bounce back and forth from one to the other. I opted in the end for the present, mostly because it felt the most familiar. My feeling is these are all ongoing actions, not just something that will happen in the future.

Another thing that came across to me as a wrote out the translation is how lines 2 through 5 are structured. They all have phrases that go preposition-noun-describing word. In English we would normally use an adjective. We say, for instance, “in the gold cup,” using gold as an adjective. But in Hebrew it is normal to say “in the cup of gold” in which case gold is a noun but still describes the cup. There is not even a word for “of” in there in Hebrew. Instead they use a special form of the first noun called the construct form and they don’t need the “of.” So in Hebrew lines 2 through 5 all have this structure:

2 Preposition-Noun-of-Noun verb

3 Preposition-Noun-of-Noun verb  extra phrase

4 Verb Preposition-Noun-of-Noun extra phrase

5  Conjunction Verb Preposition-Noun-of-Noun extra phrase

Can you see how the parallelism is created by the grammatical structures? This doesn’t always come through so well in English. It also explains why I put “My soul he revives” in line 3. To give it its own line would disrupt the parallelism. But at the end of line 3 it balances out the phrase at the end of line 4, “for his name’s sake.”

“Death’s shadow” in line 5 is just one word in Hebrew by the way. It is kind of a funny one too. It is really the words shadow and death out together as we might make a new word like “cowboy” or “houseboat.” Only Hebrew does not usually make compound words like that. But now that we see the parallel structures in lines 2 through 5 this word makes sense here. The psalmist has combined the two to make one word so he will have the same “preposition-noun-noun” construction as in the previous lines.

Another thing that doesn’t come through well in translation is alliteration. It is hard to think of words to use in English that alliterate when the Hebrew does. In lines 3 and 4, the words for “lead” and “guide” sound very similar. But even lovelier to say in Hebrew is “I do not fear evil.” The last syllable of “fear” is the same as the word used for “evil” here. In Hebrew it is “lo ‘ira ra.”

So those are my textual notes. The meaning still remains to be discussed but I think I will save that for part 2.

Nebby

Charlotte Mason on Learning Facts

Dear Reader,

One of the lines I highlighted as I read through Miss Mason’s first volume, Home Education, is:

“Much of what we have learned and experienced in childhood, and later, we cannot reproduce, and yet it has formed the groundwork of after knowledge; later notions and opinions have grown out of what we once learned and knew.”  (pp.107-108)

Now maybe this just appeals to me because I don’t have  a great memory for  a lot of things. If you ask me about movies I have seen or books I have read, I can usually tell you if I liked them and how they made me feel, but I remember little of the actual plots. The emotions stick with me, not the details. (Probably I would have done better if in my education I had been asked to narrate things I read.)

One big reason our family homeschools is because my husband and I both felt that our school educations just wasted a lot of time. We were both bored most of our school careers. And when I think of all the time and stress I put into memorizing and studying spelling words and history dates and so many other things, well, I just think that time could probably have been spent a lot better. I remember in 11th grade American history the teacher insisted we had to outline a chapter of the book every week (it might even have been more often) and it took hours. And I don’t think even at the time that I learned anything from it. Much less did those facts stick with me.

That is why Charlotte Mason’s approach feeds even the youngest children on ideas, not facts. Facts are boring. And they mostly end up in our short-term memory. When we stop reviewing them, we usually stop remembering them.  But ideas settle into us. They form that “groundwork” that the above quote speaks of.

There are some facts, of course, that we need to know. Math facts seem the most obvious to me. And I want my children to be able to spell well. But I am not sure weekly spelling tests really ensure that.

But most other facts should really just be servants to larger goals. In the long run, I don’t care if my child can say what a noun or a verb is or diagram a sentence or find all the prepositional phrases. I just want him to be able to communicate clearly in writing. If learning grammar helps him write better, that is all fine and good. But I don’t see that a lot of the grammar kids are doing actually leads to good, clear writing.

And I would a lot rather have my child be able to talk about the heroism or even the treachery of some historical figure than to know his exact dates.  I can’t think of a single time in my adult life when I have needed to know a historical date. Yes, it is good to have a sense of the scope of history and to have a rough idea of how long ago things were and what came earlier and what came later. But I have never had anyone say, “You can have this job if you can tell me when the American Civil War was.”

So to get back to the quote, if we are laying a groundwork, hadn’t we better make it not of dry facts which are hard for anyone to retain for long, but of living, vital material, ideas about integrity and authority and order in nature and  . . . the list could go on for quite a while.  As a bonus, ideas are a lot more fun for the teacher too. If you are bored to tears teaching spelling rules, how do you think your student feels?

Facts seem to be the backbone of a lot of our American educations. But they are  a sandy surface. They do not make a good foundation for what comes after because they have no real substance and they so easily slip away from us. But ideas are like a living rock. They are solid but they also expand to take in more material. They make a good foundation for whatever will come later.

Nebby

Let’s Talk About Sunday School

Dear Reader,
Thanks to the forums at Simply Charlotte Mason I ran across this article from the P.N.E.U. Parents’ Review Magazine. The P.N.E.U. for those who may be uninitiated was Charlotte Mason’s organization. The Parents’ Review was sent to parents and teachers using her methods. The article I am interested in today was not written by Miss Mason but by another woman, Helen Wix. The subject is Sunday schools and how they could be taught following Charlotte Mason’s philosophy. And I have to say when I read it I thought, “Wow. I wish my kids’ Sunday school classes were like this.”

I could try to sum up the article or quote a very long part of it. It would be better to just click over and read it for yourself. Sunday school in a Charlotte Mason world would look much like any other Charlotte Mason class–reading the text, in this case the Bible, and then having the children narrate what was read. If you are unfamiliar with how narration works, this article gives a good description of it in its own right.

Here’s what I like about the Charlotte Mason method for Sunday school: It focuses on a specific Bible text, taking it in context (the article is not explicit but seems to imply that they are working through one biblical book at a time, not jumping around or taking a topical approach which chops up the text). It doesn’t involve a lot of fiddly worksheets and crafts. It gets the children hearing (or reading) God’s Word and interacting with it. Most curricula we design for children provide them with lots of “fun” activities like puzzles to solve, blanks to fill in, and maybe crafts. All these things amount to us essentially chewing our kids’ food for them. They are morsels predigested by adults in a way that they think will be palatable to children (Miss Mason was not a fan of unit studies which relate everything together for the children). We sell children short when we do this. They are capable of a lot more than we give them credit for.  In contrast, narration forces them to listen and to interact with the  material. And as the children narrate, they have to form thoughts, put things in order, remember, and basically make the text their own. If those things are important in their history or science curricula, how much more so in their Bible study.

The idea behind Miss Mason’s approach to education is that children form relationships with their material. Ideas are transmitted from mind to mind, usually through the use of living books but also through other things like art and music. When it comes to religious education, it is even more important that the children form their own relationships with the material. And what book could be better for forming a relationship with than the living Word of God? The other things we grown-ups add, the tedious exercises and fill in the blank type questions, come between the child and the text and become a distraction from what is most important. This is a principle that applies to all areas of education, but none is more important than the area of their religious education.

Part of the problem we have in this area is, I think,  that we don’t know how to approach or deal with children in a religious context. We seem to be of two minds about it. I have actually blogged a lot on this in the past as I have tried to sort through the issues (see here, here, here, and here). On the one hand, we expect our children to behave like God’s people. This usually comes in the form of our moralizing to them a lot. On the other hand, we are constantly evangelizing to them as if they are not yet God’s people. But my view is that we need to disciple, not evangelize, our children.  They are just short believers (until and unless proven otherwise). They are short in stature, short in language skills perhaps, short on understanding in many ways, but no worse off than many adults truth be told. I particularly love this quote from the Parents’ review article:

“Now Mr. Fisher, the Minister for Education, said in a speech a few weeks ago, ‘It is as well in teaching to think of the children as cleverer than yourself, with less knowledge, but more imagination.’ The word ‘cleverer’ does not quite satisfy me, but we all know what Mr. Fisher means. Now the underlying idea of the P.N.E.U. method I am going to tell you about is just that. A child is a person; with mind, intellect and spirit,—all there, all clamouring for food and exercise, all ready to grow if only—such an important ‘if’—we do not hinder them.”

Children may not be ready to study Revelation or Romans or many other biblical books. But in some ways, they are better able to understand and accept God’s Word. They have an inherent belief in what they read and hear. They have a strong sense of justice and consciences that, while not fully honed, are also not yet so corrupted as those of many of their elders. And they have quick, imaginative minds.

The best spiritual food for us adults is God’s Word. It is the same for children. We do not need to predigest it into moralistic pellets and cute games for them. But we can walk alongside and guide them. The Parents’ Review article says:

“The main thing to be aimed at is, that the children should learn a new idea about God; it is unwise always to draw only a personal lesson from the day’s reading.”

So after the narration, there is gentle guiding towards some conclusion. And it is a point worth making that this should be mainly about God Himself. When we come to God’s Word, there is a lot we can learn about ourselves. But we humans spend too much time on ourselves. We should all, adults and children,  remember to look for what the text teaches us about our Creator. For older children studying harder books, there may also be some framework given that helps them understand the arguments being made. But as much as possible, we must step back and not hinder the children from coming to the Word of God.

I will admit when I first read the P.N.E.U. article I had some qualms. Part of my brain said, “But how will they learn about predestination and the 5 points of Calvinism?” But if they don’t get these things from the biblical text, then the are not going to be worth getting.  They need not even wait until they are old enough for Romans to understand the sovereignty of God. There is much to learn of His ways in Genesis.

Of course, all this need not take place only in Sunday school proper. We do family worship and Bible study during school time at home. In both of these I could probably do a better job of stepping back and letting the children interact with the material.

I guess the bottom line for me is that the best food for children is also the best food for adults. There are an awful lot of Christian books out there for sale that boil things down for us. And many probably make good points and have a lot of truth in them. But only one is infallible. Adults as well as children probably need to spend more time doing the hard intellectual chewing that is necessary to take in the life-giving morsels that are there for us (did I draw out that eating analogy a step too far??).

Probably the best verse that we adults can remember is Matthew 19:14:

“But Jesus said,  ‘Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.’”  [ESV]

These children were already coming towards Jesus. They were pointed in the right direction. What they needed, just like what our children need, is for the adults to gently guide and generally get out of the way. This is really a good summary of Miss Mason’s overall philosophy (as I understand it): children have a natural appetite to grow in knowledge and understanding. We need to make sure that they are pointed in the right direction and that they are being fed quality intellectual and spiritual food, and then we just need to step back and to not hinder them.

Nebby

Exclusive Psalmody Website

Dear Reader,

In looking for a church to visit while on vacation I ran across a great website which allows you to find psalm-singing churches wherever you go. Upon further exploration, I stumbled across this post which quotes a report of the Synod committee on Psalmody. So much of what they say in the report struck me as so true. And the report is from 1888!

The report argues that we need to occasionally explain to our congregations why we sing psalms and that we need to strive for beauty and skill in our singing (which I am sadly lacking in, but I am glad to be in a church where others have these talents).

In 1888, the Synod reported that “We are surrounded by those who are hostile to the exclusive use of the Book of Psalms as the praise book of the church.” I am afraid our problem today is not so much hostility as ignorance. Most don’t even know this practice exists (I certainly didn’t before I walked into an RP church). Nonetheless, we can agree with our predecessors that:

“We need to do this because of the natural inclination of man to substitute the human for the divine, and to consult his own feelings, even in matters of worship, rather than the revealed will of God. The question in all such matters is not what is most pleasing to human sense, but what does God require.”

Their problem seems to have been an argument that the psalms were not enough. Ours is  a complete lack of the psalms, unless they are chopped up and used in repetitive praise choruses. When I find myself having discussions on this issue with Christian friends, most often I am just trying to convince them that the psalms are even a viable option for singing in worship. I wish I had the boldness of that committee to say:

“To use hymns of human composition in religious worship without divine warrant is daring presumption; it is to say that ‘God’s Spirit acted niggardly in doling out an insufficient supply of praise songs;’ and it is to profess that we are wiser than God. Let us beware of charging God foolishly.”

They seem in 1888 to have been on the verge of beginning a new psalter since they say, “The demand is growing louder and louder year by year for something more smooth and agreeable not only to poetic taste but to the original.” We are at the point where after years of work, we have in our hands a still relatively new psalter. Personally, as someone who has studied biblical Hebrew, I am not overawed by the version we have. It is hard to take a very different language whose poetry works on different principles and to render it in good, singable English. I would love next time (in 20-30 years or so) to see a psalter that has more of an appreciation of the Hebrew poetry while still being singable in English. I don’t know to what degree this is possible. But I agree with those elders from 1888 that we need something  ”agreeable not only to poetic taste but to the original.”

In the meantime, I would add one further suggestion to those of the Synod committee– let’s try and cultivate an understanding and appreciation of Hebrew poetry and how it works. It is not necessary for us to all read Hebrew and Greek. God give sus understanding of His Word without these tools. But I also believe that  our understanding and appreciation of the Psalms will be enhanced the more we can appreciate their poetic structures. When we see how the poetry works in Hebrew (which can be seen by looking at English translations that preserve the Hebrew poetic features), we not only see their beauty but I believe we also get more meaning out of them. We see what the psalmist was emphasizing and where his focus lays. That is why I am trying to teach the poetry of the Psalms to my children. Wouldn’t you like  to join us?

Nebby

Books I Bought at the Homeschool Convention

Dear Reader,

I told you earlier what I didn’t buy at the homeschool convention (science). Here is what I did buy:

– A Young Scholar’s Guide to Composers by Craig and Hogan. This could be part of their curriculum. I plan to use it as a resource to point us to composers to study and to give us background info on them. Up until now I have been either using the blurbs in the Themes to Remember series or looking stuff up on the internet. I am looking forward to having that information in one place so my prep time is quicker.

– How to Read the Bible by Fee and Stuart. I tend to be very picky about books about theology or the Bible, but this one looks good. Our recent family worship was the impetus for picking up this one. We have been going through I Chronicles and it has been rough-going sometimes. There are lots of genealogies and other lists of names. I am hoping this book will help my husband and I make intelligent helpful comments like “Now, children, the author is switching topics and talking about . . . ” without us having to do too much background research.

– Bible Doctrine for Older Children by James Beeke (volumes A and B). We already own and have been through the “Younger Children” volumes. I have posted on them previously here. They are not perfect, in my opinion. But they are the best I have found for teaching kids real, reformed theology. They use the King James text which I edit as I go (changing “loveth” to “loves” and the like). They also spend some time on the guiding documents of Beeke’s denomination which didn’t fit for us, but again I edited or skipped. They did get my kids knowing the 5 points of Calvinism. Though somehow they came up with “unlimited opponents” for  “limited atonement.” There is something very cute about a five-year-old saying “total depravity means you are ALL bad.”

–Uncovering the Logic of  English  Denise Eide. This was an unexpected find. I sat in one Mrs. Eide’s talk because I had a big gap in my schedule. I was pleasantly surprised. It was wonderful. She claims if you follow her method English spelling will make sense (well, maybe 98% of the time). She would have us learn phonograms, of which English has something like 70+, and then about 30 spelling rules. The examples she gave in her talk were very convincing. So I bought the book as well as phonogram and spelling rule flashcards. I opted not to buy the curriculum book, but to try to teach this to my kids without it. I figure I will just introduce the concepts in the order she has them in her book and we will all work slowly through them together. I will have to let you know how it goes. Though we haven’t started yet, I would urge you, especially if you are just starting teaching kids reading and spelling to look into her books before committing to a spelling curriculum. (See her website here.)

Nebby

Things I Highlighted in CM, Volume 1

Dear Reader,

So I have been reading through Charlotte Mason’s six book series on home education. I am currently in book three, but I wanted to spend some time going through the earlier books. I highlighted as I went through so these will mainly be observations from looking back at what struck me at the time.

I am pretty pleased with myself that I am understanding most of what I read. I had read bits of Charlotte Mason previously, mostly what I ran across on others’ websites. The I read through two books about her philosophy but not by her–For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay and A Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola. I enjoyed both these books and would recommend starting with one of them if you have not had exposure to Miss Mason’s philosophy.

But back to my topic. Here is some of what struck my in volume 1, Home Education. (I am working, incidentally, from the print copy put out by Wilder Publications in 2000. You can find it free online, but I find when I am really reading something I need it to be a hard copy.)

“. . . we do not often get as a gift that which we have the means of getting by our own efforts.”

(Home Education, p.12)

This is from the preface and the point, I think, is that we must use our reason in educating our children. I think it is probably a good general principle though. God calls us to diligence (with prayer). We are not simply to sit on our bottoms relying upon Him when He has given us the power to act. It is also a good principle to use with our children– don’t do for them what they can do for themselves.

” . . . and that a glass of water, also, taken the last thing at night, and the first thing in the morning, is useful in promoting those regular habits on which much of the comfort of life depends.”

(p. 29)

Okay, this one is mostly funny to me. But it does show how practical Miss Mason was. She moves easily from statements about how God deals with us to practical tips for keeping your kids regular.

“Never be within doors when you can rightly be without.” (p.39)

I wish we followed this one more. I remember reading in the fall a recommendation (I think it was Charlotte Mason’s) to spend 2-3 hours outside each day. And there are some days we can do that, but even in the best weather it is tough to do it every day.

We once saw a reconstruction of the log cabin Abraham Lincoln lived in when he was a boy. It was tiny. And there were a fair number of people who lived in it. But the guide said that unless the weather was truly horrible, they just never spent time indoors. We also saw the reconstruction of Thoreau’s cabin at Watson Pond. He had spaces outside that he called his “dining room” and the like. The problem for probably all of is today is that our houses are too big and nice. When there is plenty to do indoors, when it is comfortable there, there is little incentive to go outside. If we lived in the Lincoln’s cabin, my kids would go outside on their own because there would be nowhere else to be. But as it is, I have to kick them out and then I feel like the bad guy and they are always asking to come in or thinking of reasons to come in.  We do better when we have specific reasons to be outside, like park days and nature walks.

My next highlighted quote may take  a bit more time so I think I am going to end there for now and you can look forward to part 2.

Nebby

Psalm 24

Dear Reader,

I decided to go for a fairly short simple psalm in our psalm-study this week. Here is Psalm 24:

1 Belonging to the LORD [are] the earth and its fullness,
2 The world and the inhabitants of it.
3 For He upon the seas founded it
4 And upon the rivers established it.
5 Who will go up on the mountain of the LORD?
6 And who will stand in His holy place?
7 The innocent of hands and the pure of heart
8 Who does not lift to falsehood his soul
9 And does not swear deceitfully.
10 He will lift a blessing from the LORD
11 And righteousness from the God of his salvation.
12 This [is] the generation of those who search for him
13 Those who seek the face of the God of Jacob.
14 Lift, gates, your heads!
15 Be lifted up, ancient doors,
16 That the king of glory may enter.
17 Who is this king of glory?
18 The LORD, strong and mighty,
19 The LORD, a mighty man of war.
20 Lift, gates, your heads,
21 And lift, ancient doors,
22 That the king of glory may enter.
23 Who is he, this king of glory?
24 The LORD of armies
25 He [is] the king of glory.

A few notes before we begin:

– As always, the line numbers are for easy reference. They are not verse numbers. And the line divisions are open to question. This is how I saw it to try and highlight the parallelism.

– “LORD” means the proper name of God (YHWH) is used. Words in brackets are not in Hebrew.

– I try to use the same word if Hebrew uses the same word and to vary my word choice if they do. In lines 12 and 13, Hebrew uses two different words for “seek” so I did too (in comparison to the ESV which just uses “seek” both times).  Giving away a little bit of the answers here but I used forms of the word “lift” six times in this psalm because the Hebrew does. This may make line 10 in particular sound odd (“He will lift a blessing from the LORD” make sit sound like he is stealing it doesn’t it?), but I am hoping you can tell what is meant. And again, it is important to me to use the same words when the Hebrew does. Repeated words are a poetic device in Hebrew and if we obscure those in our translation we can miss something. This may not be the translation we want to sing or even have in our Bible, but it is what I want for psalm-study.

– Sometimes my word order may seem awkward too. I try as much as possible to preserve the Hebrew word order so that we can see the parallelism. Switching it around to make the English smoother can change what kind of parallelism we have. English of course tends to have “subject-verb-object” and varies fairly  little (as opposed to some languages like Greek which because they have so many cases can vary things a lot). Hebrew’s basic word order in prose is “verb-subject-object,” but it is more tolerant of switching things up than English is.

– Line 13 in Hebrew would read “Those who seek your face Jacob.” Other ancient versions have this reading and I think we have to prefer them. The Hebrew doesn’t make much sense. (For more on dealing with the fact that we have different texts see this post.)

So before we go any further, get out your colored pencils and print out the psalm. Look first for pairs of lines next to each other that say basically the same thing. Those are the parallel lines we have been talking about. Come back when you are done and we will continue.

Are you back? Ready? What did you find? What I found is that this psalm is all pairs of parallel lines. So line 1 goes with 2 and 3 with 4 and so on. My only exception is line 7 which really is parallel with itself. And I could have divided that up and made it two very short lines: “The innocent of hands” and ”And the pure of heart.” Then we go back to pairs, line 8 and 9 and so on till the end, lines 24 and 25.

You probably noticed other things as you went through the psalm. Any repeated words, maybe? This psalm has more repeated words or even whole lines than most. Which did you find? Lines 14, 15 and 16 are almost identical to 20, 21 and 22. So too 17 and 23 are almost identical. Note though that they are not exactly the same.

I always tell my kids that you can tell what someone cares about by what they say a lot. If I use the word “fair” a lot, I probably feel I have been gypped somehow in my life and fairness has become a big thing with me. Last week in Psalm 99, the word was holy. What strikes you this time? It may not be one word but a group of related words (look back at the psalm now and think about it).

My six-year-old observed that the phrase “king of glory” appears a lot. This leads to another question I like to ask which is what aspect of God’s character does this psalm focus on? Psalm 99 focused on holiness. Psalms 3 and 4 appealed to God’s covenant love. My eight-year-old said this psalm focuses on God being almighty. This actually led to a dispute, because the word almighty is not in the psalm. But we did find the word might. This is definitely a God who is in charge. He is strong, but He is also active. It is He who built the whole world and all of us in it (lines 1-4).

What about that word “lifted” which I mentioned? It is repeated a lot, but what does it mean here? Let’s look at who is lifting what in the psalm. In lines 8 and 10 the person who does not “lift” falsehood will “lift” a blessing from God. In lines 14, 15, 21, and 22 it is the doors and gates that lift themselves (presumably lifting to open so that God can enter). But with all these poetic techniques we have to ask, so what? What is the meaning that they convey? What do they add to the psalm? To me (and here we are back in the this is how is strikes me personally realm), all this lifting highlights God’s exaltedness. Everything has to be raised up for Him. And what about us? If we want to enter with God, we must also be lifted. And to be worthy of that we need to not have lifted ourselves to something antithetical to God, falsehood or deceit. Of course, that is probably more than I would expect a child to think when they went through this.

One question that arises though is what is everyone entering here? We begin asking who can enter God’s holy place. And then in the second half we ask who is the king who is entering through the gates and doors? I picture a crowd of bystanders at a parade saying “who? who? who is coming?” They are straining their necks to see the procession approaching. The reference to the mountain and holy place could lead us to think of the temple. But the “ancient doors” which could also be read “eternal doors” makes me think something even bigger is in view. This is a warrior king, but he is not fighting. He is triumphantly processing back into his kingdom. To me this conjures up an end of time picture. That is when all God’s enemies will be vanquished and He (presumably God the Son) will reign triumphantly over what He has created (see lines 1 and 2) and victoriously redeemed. It is mostly a psalm exalting God as this hero. But there is also that call to us to choose blessing over falsehood and so to be worthy to enter with Him.

What do you think? Do you see other things?

Nebby