For My Copybook

For them, power and more power was a drug, and in their addiction, they would scale any fence, climb any wall, to obtain their fix. ~ Jon Rappoport (Infowars.com)

For My Copybook

Charlie Sloane says he's going to go into politics and be a member of Parliament, but Mrs. Lynde says he'll never succeed at that, because the Sloanes are all honest people, and it's only rascals that get on in politics nowadays.  ~Anne of Green Gables

Good one!

For My Copybook

I just love my county. I love America.  I drive across it regularly. It and all its people are truly moving to me.  A beautiful place.
~James Woods

For My Copybook

"Perhaps ours is an era where politics has trumped principle to such an extent that the idea of resigning for the sake of honor and decency is almost unthinkable. But the truth will not be hidden forever...."


~Joel B. Pollack (Breitbart News)

Stormy, Misty's Foal

K10 and I just finished this wonderful book!  What a character! (and I don't mean the horse). 

Although the story centers around Misty and her foal Stormy, the standout character  is Grandpa Beebe. I would add that Grandpa does not seem  to care for church, though.  This is the second book (Misty of Chincoteague being the first) involving this loving family (or as they say in the book, fambly) which includes Grandpa and Grandma Beebe and their grandchildren Paul and Maureen.  We really got a kick out of Grandpa.

Wait-a-Minute, the cat, because she "never does"

This is much more than just a story involving a horse. There was more tragedy in the book (horses and animals) than I expected. There are also great character traits including helpfulness, willingness, and responsibility, just to name a few.

A couple of quotes from Grandpa:

"Nobody," he said, "not nobody but yer Grandma understands slab bacon. Over to the diner in Temperanceville they frazzle all the sweetness outen it so's there ain't no fat left. Tastes like my old gumboots." ~

"Folks is funny," Grandpa mused "Some jes' nacherly likes to waller in woe like pigs in a pen. ......"

My favorite line of the story -

~"Now you two perten up. Everything's going to be better this afternoon. Life's like a teeter-totter. Heartbreak, happiness, Happiness, heartbreak. You'll see. Everything'll be better this afternoon." ~Grandma Beebe

From our reading......this was great!

The scene: boys were about to throw rocks at Nathan Hale during recess when the schoolmaster caught them.

~ "Your recess is over," the master said. "In fact, your school is over. And you will not return unless one of your parents comes with you. Even then I'm not sure that I will take you. I won't have rock-throwers."

Wow!

Words that inspire me part 2

From My Country School Diary ~ Julia Weber Gordon

"In the front of the room on the right is our nature corner, which now contains a jar of hibernating ants, a turtle in an aquarium, wild flowers mounted on cotton under cellophane, a booklet of waxed fall leaves, a booklet of leaf spatter prints, a collection of rocks, fungi, birds' nests, and a winter dish garden of mosses, lichens, pipsissewa, and partridge berries."

"An exhibit of Indian relics including about twenty-five arrowheads, an ax, a mortar and pestle, slickstones, and pieces of pottery......."

"It snowed last night, our first really big snow! How happy the children were. They made snowmen, built a fort, and had soft snowball fights. ...we took time to compare the shapes of snow crystals with the shapes of quartz and salt crystals. I like to watch the children's eyes open wide with wonder."

"Children learn more when they can see things and think of them in relation to themselves rather than abstractly."

"This afternoon we began to work on our rock garden. We have a stone row that was well covered with soil when the road was widened. It is in a shady spot at the edge of the road. There were leaves to be cleaned out and bushes to remove. It was a beautiful day to work outdoors and the children were very happy."

"In the afternoon we tramped over Dad's farm and found quartz crystals, sandstone, shale, limestone, and flint for our collections. I wish I could do this more often. A teacher and the children can get so close in this way."

"We have some turtle eggs in our museum. Four hatched today while the children watched. It fascinated them."

"The children want to give Robin Hood for their puppet show this year. I began to read it to them yesterday. They gather around me and we have a happy time."

"I read the stories of Bach and Haydn to the children. They like the Mozart story best."

"For three years I have tried to bring back to these children the spontaneous desire for learning which their parents and teachers, including myself, have been busy taking away from them."

~This book, written in the late 1930s, takes the reader through four years in the teacher's career. Although this is a public school teacher's diary, I was really inspired! This is a great book for any teacher.

~from a review
The author is a woman who, having few of today's teaching aids to work with, used her ingenuity and resourcefulness to create a richer and more varied learning experience, one that would awaken interest and enthusiasm in children and that would give them a "sense that school was part of the real world, not just a place where you did meaningless things today so that later you might go out and do some other meaningless things somewhere else."

There is so much more in this book, these are just some highlights.

Horehound Candy - A sweet lesson

"Mary licked hers. But Laura bit her stick, and the outside of it came off, crumbly. The inside was hard and clear and dark brown. And it had a rich, brown, tangy taste. Pa said it was horehound candy." ~ On the Banks of Plum Creek

We had just read the chapter talking about this candy. A couple of days later, we found this at Fred's! We liked it! We also looked up information about the herb, horehound. I don't know if this candy is exactly like what Laura and Mary had, but that's okay:)

Words that inspire me

"But Susan Wright only laughed. In the summer she'd pack a picnic lunch and she, the two boys, and little Kate would go and spend a day in the woods. Mrs. Wright knew the name of every bird and she could tell a bird by his song. Wilbur and Orville learned to tell birds too."

"That was another thing about Susan Wright. Most other mothers would have thought that this was foolish talk. Most other mothers would have said, "Oh don't be silly, who ever heard of such nonsense!" But not Susan Wright. She knew that even an eleven-year-old boy can have ideas of his own..."

"Their father encouraged them; he felt that there was something special about these two sons of his. So did Mrs. Wright. When other mothers asked her, "What are the boys doing? We never see them around with our sons," she'd smile a sort of secret smile and say, "Oh, they're puttering around in the barn."

~The Wright Brothers

From my copybook

For an instant she was still, listening to the long, wailing howl from the dark prairie. They all knew what it was. But that sound always ran cold up Laura's backbone and crinkled over the back of her head.

The sky was so full of light that not one star twinkled in it, and all the prairie was a shadowy mellowness.
Then from the woods by the creek a nightingale began to sing.

When the strings were silent, the nightingale went on singing. When it paused, the fiddle called to it and it sang again. The bird and the fiddle were talking to each other in the cool night under the moon.

Its light (moon) made silvery lines in all the cracks on that side of the house. The light poured through the window hole and made a square of soft radiance on the floor.

The ground was hot under their bare feet. The sunshine pierced through their faded dresses and tingled on their arms and backs.

The whole sky was filled with lines of wild ducks and wild geese flying north. Crows cawed above the trees along the creek. The winds whispered in the new grass, bringing scents of earth and of growing things.

Then they sat on the clean grass and ate pancakes and bacon and molasses from the tin plates in their laps.

Pa didn't answer, but the voice of the fiddle changed. Softly and slurringly it began a long, swinging rhythm that seemed to rock Laura gently.
She felt her eyelids closing. She began to drift over endless waves of prairie grasses, and Pa's voice went with her, singing
"Row away, row o'er the waters so blue,
Like a feather we sail in our gum-tree canoe,
Row the boat lightly, love, over the sea:
Daily and nightly I'll wander with thee."