“Always winter and never Christmas;
think of that!”
“How awful!” said Lucy.— The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
Lucy is right. It would be awful! Christmas is most definitely the light in the darkness. Such joy amidst the long winter months. Continue reading
If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.
―
There is something about autumn that draws me to gaze up at Continue reading
The Harvest Moon
It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
All things are symbols: the external shows
Of Nature have their image in the mind,
As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer’s close,
Only the empty nests are left behind,
And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Oxford is feeling very autumnal.
The holidays are nearly over.
We have got building work beginning on our house tomorrow morning!
But before I think to the term ahead, I wanted to share some of the books I’ve read over the summer. My older two have loved passing on some of their favourites to me and we have had lovely conversations over meals or on car drives comparing thoughts on characters or plots. Michael Morpurgo became Continue reading
Homeschooling is always a great conversation starter. I am pretty good at anticipating people thinking that I’m mad, so I normally preempt the look of surprise by saying, “Yes I know – I’m crazy aren’t I?!”
The questions very quickly come to, “How can you teach your older two with your little toddler around?”, or often more bluntly phrased as, “What do you do with her when you are teaching?” Continue reading
Last night we had fun over supper remembering all the stories we had read with pigs in! The conversation flowed from there as we darted from rabbit stories to mice and onto cats. It was the children that suggested we jot them all down and added “Put the books on the blog Mummy.” So over the next few weeks you can have a browse as I publish various animal instalments from pigs to rabbits to foxes. Continue reading
The summer holidays are on their way. A wonderful chance for us all to get stuck into a book for that bit longer each day. So, if you are looking for ideas for your children, Continue reading
Every child should leave school with at least a couple of hundred pictures by great masters hanging permanently in the halls of his imagination . . .
— Charlotte Mason
Last term our ‘artist of the term’ was the magnificent Michelangelo di Ludovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564). This was a treat, if a little brief for such an artistic giant – sculptor, painter, architect and poet.
CLASSICALLY CURIOUS 