Winter Beauty

Black are my steps on silver sod;
Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;
And tree and house, and hill and lake,
Are frosted like a wedding cake.

~Robert Louis Stevenson (Winter Time)

Looking forward to reading these

A Biblical Home Education

My Country School Diary

Our "tour" of Scotland

...and he had to choose forever. But still Wee Gillis could not decide.







...and now Wee Gillis is welcome down in the Lowlands and up in the Highlands,...

Snow house

Wee Gillis and our mascot

Our latest Five in a Row book is Wee Gillis. This is fun because we have our own little mascot, Hamish, straight from Scotland, thanks to big sister and her husband! They even thought to get a couple of books--one on Scotland's flag and the other is the Story of Rob Roy. One lesson suggestion is to enjoy the poem, My Heart's in the Highlands, which would have not have meant as much had we not read Wee Gillis, so I am thankful for Five in a Row.

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.....

~Robert Burns

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."

Fun with the Duchess

We are having a great time with The Duchess Bakes a Cake. This is a fun way to introduce the Middle Ages. We also talked about cake baking, yeast and a baker's dozen!

We also happened to have another title, How Many Dragons Are Behind the Door? by the same author. We really got a kick out of the names of the girls in the book--especially Gunhilde!