Month: April 2009

Reading – A Habit and a Delight by Dr. Donna Johnson

Published by

It’s finally spring in Minnesota. The end of the school year is fast approaching, and the news in my classroom is both good and bad. The good news is that books and reading have become a source of – in Charlotte Mason’s words – “interest and delight” for me and my students.  Living books capture our minds and spirits; reading them together is the best part of each day. In the past weeks and months, my students and I have read The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare, Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, and The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Now we are reading two books more recently published and perhaps less proven, but that I feel can be categorized as living books: they are Holes by Louis Sachar and The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. Holes was first enjoyed by many of my students as a movie; they thought they “knew” the story but are finding that you “should never judge a book by its movie.”* The book is so much richer and …

The Rescued Daisy and Three Mason Applications: A Story from My Garden by Beth Pinckney

Published by

Three years ago, I rescued a sad looking plant from a neighbor’s kitchen window sill.  It had been a bright red gerbera daisy, blooming and filling her kitchen with color.  But after a few weeks of inattention, the plant began to wither and droop.  The soil in the pot got dry and crusty, resisting the water that my friend poured on it, in hopes of reviving it.  Eventually, she just gave up and the little plant languished, almost dead.  Being the hopeful gardener that I am, I attempted a rescue.  First, I removed the plant from its pot, soaked it in a bucket of water for a few hours to allow the water to thoroughly saturate the soil, spread the pot-bound roots a bit, pruned back the dead and dying leaves, and then planted it in my terrace garden.  The soil there was rich and moist, full of good compost.  The spot was sunny but somewhat protected from the wind.  It enjoyed the advantage in the wintertime of a microclimate created by the dryer vent …