Garden Surprise

Look what I found on the dill today...Caterpillars that will become swallowtail butterflies! One of my favorite things ~

The tiny one ~

(there are two that I saw that are this size)

And the large one ~

I thought about bringing them in to observe them in a jar, but I think I'll wait till closer to "chrysalis" time.

The summer is starting out pretty well. I've had a sore neck of late, but have enjoyed puttering around in my garden, bringing in the first harvest of snow peas and now enjoying the caterpillars.

How has your summer begun?

Javamom

On This Day

In 1859:
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes born in Edinburgh, Scotland.

My guys enjoy Sherlock Holmes well enough. Are any of my readers, or their children, Arthur Conan Doyle fans?


Javamom

Buttercup Squash Soup

This fantastic recipe came to my attention today and I wanted to share the link with my friends.
We make two variations of this soup here the Bookncoffee house, but I am excited to try a different squash in the recipe. We are always open to new, healthy recipes to add to our regular meal rotation. Especially while in the typical 'slump' of just making 'the usual' because we are inundated with special events like graduations and their follow-up parties and weddings in this ever-so-busy month of May.

Do any of my readers have other squash or sweet potato soup recipes they'd like to share?


Running low on cooking inpsiration,

Javamom

Prepping for a presentation on C. MAson & Foreign Language Learning Pt. I

I was asked to come speak to another local CM group which was started by a friend of mine. She had been visiting my CM bookclub but wanted to start a group on her side of town when she moved across the city.

It feels wonderful to be studying again, after a pretty long break during our daughter and son-in-love's engagement and recent wedding. There's just something about it that gets my adrenaline pumping and my motivation kicked into third and fourth gear.

This week, I have made some more possibly significant connections. This time regarding Charlotte Mason's process of fine-tuning (over her lifetime) Foreign Language recommendations. I told my hubby tonight that I need a copy of a first edition of _Home Education_ to compare it to the revisions made in the form we have now. It is noted in the preface that lectures VII and VIII and the appendix were moved to another volume and that part V was written at a later date. This note being dated 1905. This may be nothing at all new to some of you, but I just had a personal lightbulb moment during my studies. Seeing the original manuscripts from the first "Lectures for Ladies" would probably shed some light on my quest, as well, since revisions were likely made when it was first published into book form.

Gouin's work was published in French in 1880, then painstakingly translated into English by a friend of his in 1889. This work reads so much like Charlotte's own writing. I have a couple of other insights about the educational philosophers that Gouin drew from, and what Charlotte thought about their work; where she agreed with them, and where she didn't. Most people won't be interested in that, but if you are (my bookclub friends, especially) just let me know and we can discuss it over a virtual latte or iced coffee! I'd be glad to share, since we won't be studying from volume's I or III as a group again for some time, yet.

Charlotte seems to have a better grasp of M. Francois Gouin's work by Volume three than she had in Volume one, but I'd love to see the first editions in order to compare. This only occured to me studying these things this time around. It would make sense based on the samples of lessons in Volume three, which are very specific and true to Gouin's examples from his writings, The Art of Teaching and Studying Language. Her Foreign Language suggestions and examples in Volume I don't conflict with Volume III, but they are a little different. Anyone who has read all Charlotte's Volumes and studied them carefully note how she seemed so idealistic in the earlier years, pre-World War I, and how her methodologies were fine-tuned over the decades of her lifetime as they were practiced and fine-tuned, even after her death in 1926.

Back to my new revelation, though. Charlotte seems to imply this incomplete understanding that I picked up on this time around (my third thorough reading over the last 13 years) when she writes, in a section presenting the method and the background of Gouin's FL 'research,' "But any attempt to quote [Gouin] gives an uncertain and unsatisfactory idea of this important work..." from _Home Education_ (also known as Volume I) pg. 304.

Then it struck me: That very quote reflects how I have observed so many CM moms and how we felt about reading CM herself for the first and second times; that first revelation of understanding, yet still being in wonderment and awe feeling, no knowing we'd only touched the tip of this educational iceberg and that there was so much more to read and drink of, to sift, let simmer, and slowly come to better understanding.

What's exciting about all of this information is that I first really cared about this information just a few years ago while reading with my own CM bookclub and it was timely to me, because I've been teaching Jr. High and High School Spanish for the last five plus years (including several summerschool sessions).

I won't linger over all the details, as I've shared them on this blog before. Briefly, modern and popular effective methods today reflect work by researchers named Dr. James J. Asher and also another researcher, Krashen, have written books and success stories about "Total Physical Response" methods. Imagine my joy when one of the main linguistic researchers they cite was not only a contemporary of Charlotte Mason, but they man she discusses most in her FL learning recommendations. In her time and country (England) that meant French, German, Italian. Latin was still taught the old classical, drill way, since it was not a conversational language like the others.

Other similar work and research still continues yearly in classrooms and seminars all over the country (and internationally) by the teachers and proponents of TPR Storytelling. I have described the differences and the similarities in previous posts before, if you are interested.

Most all corroborates with CM's intuition, philosophy of education and treatment of children as smart and capable persons. There are only a couple of minor, specific suggestions which differ from her own. As I organize the details, I will try to post them in simple form for those who are interested.

I wonder, would Charlotte have tweaked her recommendations a bit with our modern tools such as the computer (I think of power-point type programs), animation, DVDs, etc? What do YOU think? Since oral lessons were a hallmark recommendation, I think audio lessons would be approved, *but* they must fit her philosophy, and Gouin's, which is based on immersion, or how we all learned our first language, not on twaddly, mixed language, dialogues that some recommended "programs" provide, and not the drill and kill of grammar and vocabulary-heavy programs, nor what I call the "chopped-up," and "parts-to-whole" programs that are also popular.

Just keep in mind "whole-to-parts" learning and *common*, *daily*, useful chunks of language with all-important, most common verbs. Just a few a day, and keep building on those.



Until next time,

Javamom

Penchant for Purple Petals

Wildflowers first:

front yard ~ a sea of blue-eyed grass

blue - eyed grass close-up

wild spider wort

Cultivated Flowers:

One exception: peach in the lot ~ there used to be more, but the purple ones seem to be stronger.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Javamom

Gardening around the yard

It was the perfect day to do some yard and garden work today. A lot of weeds and wildflowers were invading the veggie patches, so today was my first day to get to them. They needed thinning out anyway, after planting them the weekend after our daugther's wedding.


I think they are looking great, now!

bush beans

bush beans

Peas!

Onion being let go to seed

very cool moth


Roses! These smell fantastic. I can even smell them through the bedroom window when the wind is right.

I also re-potted some large ferns that we used in the wedding. They had become root-bound in their containers, and I just happened to have larger pots all ready for them on the front porch.

The the tulips are those I grew and babied for the wedding. There was a yellow one in each pot, as well, but they finished their blooming cycle just after the wedding, when the wind blew our last snow in! They are all done this season, but you can get a glimpse of one of the beautiful ferns, just to the left.

Tell me about your gardens this year, my friends!

Happy Spring Gardening!

Javamom

What is this thing?

Please help me identify this critter. We have done a lot of nature study and camping over the past 25 years and I have never seen a winged bug like this before!


side views ~







vertical views

Virtual Toblerone to the first person with the correct answer.

Curious!

Javamom

Wordless Wednesday Wedding Edition

My Dad's first dance ever

Rehearsal Day

Our other bride and groom from last July

A few more details

We have chosen our cake and it is scrumptious! The bride's cake flavor is 'cuatro leches' which has a Latin-American flair. That's pretty cool if you ask me, since the kids met in [my] Spanish class almost five years ago. Ky wants each of the cakes to have a different toasted meringue texture on the outside but they will all be the same on the inside. Her daddy, my Hubster, is making the mahogany cakestands in various heights to display them on the bride's table. Picture to follow when they are finished :-).

I washed 164 cloth napkins in the last 24 hours. I'll be ironing them for a while, haha! These are in the wedding colors of persimmon, butter cream (or canary yellow), and chocolate brown. We have @ 165 rsvp's which include pre-schoolers and toddlers, so this should work just fine for us.

I got to rent more tables and chairs today as the rsvp number increased.

I also found a fantastic website to help me out with purchasing massive pounds of vegetables for the hors d'oevres table. It is also good for how much meat and veggies you would need to purchase for large parties and weddings.

I hope you enjoy this peek into our wedding planning journey, which is nearing an end before we know it. The big day is only eleven days away, and we want everything to be set up and ready ten days from now.


Javamom

Sewing for the Wedding

This is what I'd love for us to be able to pull off!! Haha

We do have all the brown, yellowish-cream, and red-orange napkins that we could need, the canning jars, and some neat, old-fashioned items, which is a start.

One of the neatest ways to save money on a wedding is to do some of the sewing yourself, or find friends who can cut and sew and throw a crafting gathering. Provide snacks and drinks and enjoy the fellowship of friends and family. Talk about the possibility for Titus two moments and wonderful building of shared memories...this will do it!

We will probably stick with something simpler like the following that we put together on one of our craft days with friends:

We found the fabric on the clearance bins at our local fabric store, and the shades were exactly what we needed.

Here, you find us cutting and sewing together the wedding favors, which are heart shaped sachets.

Yep, that's me. I thought my eyes were going to swell shut from sewing at least 75 of these, then my friend (sitting next to me at the other sewing machine) handed me a chocolate and caramel Cadbury bar! It perked me right up.

The heart sachets are almost finished!

Tomorrow is another craft day. We'll bustle up Ky's dress so it is easier to wear during the reception. We'll also finish our centerpiece fabric cloth mats and sewing up the padded hearts. We plan to embroider on the hearts, as well.

We've a couple of birds to paint to look like Starlings, and we got our cake tasting finished today.

It has been a busy weekend, since we also moved our dd out of her apartment in the city, cleaned with her, and got half her things put into storage. All in the rain.

Yes, it has been a busy weekend.

Javamom