trees, poetry and latin

Ah well, the best laid plans and all that – ended up being a really busy morning and now the piano tuner is here. I am using this enforced stay in time to write this post on educational bits long promised  

We were really delighted to find a horse chestnut tree in a hidden bit of the woods recently – didn’t think we had any here Going nicely with this are some great resources from the Woodland Trust, nice that the ks3 bit there has poetry as that’s something else that has come up naturally this summer and been enjoyed.

We watched the Darling Buds of May series (from the early nineties I think?), lovely title of course from Shakespeare’s Sonnet no. 18 so looked at that. I loved those books when I read them in the past and the best bits of the series are definitely the ones based on the books – it gets a bit silly in the latter episodes when they’re just based on the characters. However the titles and poetic value remain: Oh! to be in England from Browning, When the Green Wood Laughs from Blake and even Cast not your pearls before swine taking us into the sermon on the mount, not poetry but interesting, my favourite bit of the bible I think. Primrose develops a love of poetry later in the series leading us to John Donne and many others. The set of poetry books from The Book People has been a very handy resource for dipping into as has England’s Best Loved Poems which gives some background information and also has an index of first lines at the back. Recently watched In Her Shoes which has some lovely poetry read by a possibly dyslexic character, love that film

Onto Latin. The Galore Park books are good (latin prep book one, workbook 1, and answerbook, happy to say not really needed also this puzzlebook, mainly used by Dan while waiting for us to catch up!) though weve come across one or two errors, nothing major, a repeated verb in a list to conjugate and the odd one we’d not been given, but that’s easily looked up online. Never found any curriculum that didn’t have mistakes in. They do have a touch of humour throughout which always helps – almost everything helped by laughter I find. Well, maybe not brain surgery… or breaking tragic news to someone… but YKWIM Also included are little facts on geography and history, helping to give a good allround understanding of the subject. The latin work within must be quite good because just two days in to it we were able to translate a charming story about some girls and some sailors from Extreme Latin (you don’t want to know, and definitely not for young children!!). On a more wholesome note weve been reading Amo, Amas, Amat which is highly entertaining too, full of amusing school  and academic anecdotes, not to mention celebrity trivia (didn’t know Beckham had latin tatoos) and actual latin education. We listened to an audiobook of Joanne Harris’s Gentlemen and Players - love that book with it’s unseen dramatic twist near the end. Set mainly in a private boys school, one of the characters is a latin master and there are little bits of the language spattered about here and there. It has led the kids to explore further the mystery/thriller genre of writing.

Lingua Latina saepe dicitur mortua esse* but I’ve found the little bits I learned from my Dad have enhanced my life with a deeper understanding of various things, be it inscriptions on sundials or basic language itself. I remember a slight fuss being made by some parents at my secondary school when it came out that the headmasters son was applying to Cambridge and was having private latin tutoring for that. But really, I don’t think many people there would have taken it had it been offered. My aunt taught latin and ancient greek at another school and they didn’t replace her when she retired. Two friends have told me of their hatred of learning it at school and how they don’t remember any of it… so far our home ed learning style seems to work well with it – no hatred anyway, memory we will hope for :D

and more hope that the piano will be spruced up shortly and this can actually happen today, the sun is shining:

* It’s often said that latin is a dead language

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