Month: January 2012

Nature Study Demonstration: Lily by Deborah Dobbins

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Last spring, Margaret demonstrated the nature study process for us. This demonstration took less than one hour. Journal writing includes the common name of the species, the scientific name, the date and the student’s initials. Students may include other notes such as the location of the nature walk. Margaret began by painting the stem using a thin line of green which she mixed using yellow and blue watercolors.  Margaret then outlined the shapes of the lily’s petals and leaves. It’s important to capture the correct size, shape, and color of the specimen.  Margaret added the stamen.    Margaret filled in her petals using a mixture of red and red- violet.  Margaret paused for further observation of her lily after adding the pistil.   Pollen color was created by mixing a combination of yellow and brown.  “Dots” of pollen were added on the petals.   Margaret’s final touch was green at the center of her flower.   ©2012 Deborah Dobbins Deborah teaches 2nd grade Nature Study classes at Perimeter School in Duluth, GA.  Margaret is currently …

Margaret Coombs – The Authoritative Biographer of Charlotte Mason

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Margaret Coombs Speaking at the 2012 ChildLightUSA Charlotte Mason Educational Conference June 6, 7, 8, 9, 2012 Gardner-Webb University, Boiling Springs, NC Near Charlotte, NC Margaret Coombs at Newtown School Archives Margaret Coombs is a social historian, researcher and retired mental health practitioner, who has worked in a variety of mental health posts, including community care rights and as a Mental Health Act Commissioner. She is married to an Anglican Priest and has two children, an artist and a theatre director. Through exploring the history of education for parenthood for a post-graduate degree in the 1980’s, she first discovered Charlotte Mason  via the Parents’ Review, listed in the vast hand-written catalogues in the former round Reading Room of the British Museum, where the Founder of the PNEU had studied for her Geographical Readers, around 100 years earlier! Margaret met with Essex Cholmondeley, Charlotte’s first reluctant biographer, at Nynehead in 1983. Finally retiring in 2008, she resolved to research Charlotte Mason’s secret family history in preparation for a new, more accurate biography. Although there is no …

In Gratitude by Rebekah Brown Hierholzer

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I miss teaching.  I miss reading books together and hearing 16 different ideas about one passage.  I miss washing 32 muddy feet and socks after recess because “we just had to see what it was like to make bricks without straw.”  I miss the conversations about how to forgive someone after she has called you “stupid.  S – T – O – O – P – I – D!”   I miss wiping tears and praying together for the strength to forgive and to learn how to start over and be a friend again. I miss teaching.  But I have the best reason to miss it.  Her name is Genevieve Rose and she will be 15 months on Thursday.  She has an older sister and three older brothers but they are 27, 25, 23 and 20 and though they adore her they are on their own now.  As a child I sometimes dreamed it would be heaven to grow up without siblings, but truly it was a rare thought and most of the time I loved …

A Boy and His Granddad…Mason Through the Eyes of a Nearly Four Year Old by Dr. Jack Beckman

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 “GaGa,” Jack called while swinging ever higher, “How big is up?” Ever since Jack Henry was a baby, I have had the privilege of being there with him.  As many of you may already know, Jack and his mother live with us, and we form a rather intriguing, noisy, fractious, loving and sometime dysfunctional family.  From the moment I held this little boy, my heart was taken…  Well, actually from the moment the nurse exclaimed from the sonogram monitor, “It’s boy!” while he was carried in his mother’s womb would be more accurate.  I have played practically every role in Boy’s (That is what I call him.  He calls me GaGa.) nearly four year old life.  As a babe in arms, I carried him all over Chickamauge, GA in the wee hours of the morning to give his mother a bit of rest.  In our walking about, we looked at the stars above and talked about God’s creative nature.  We marveled at a moon that filled the sky with its lambent light.  We strolled around the Baptist church’s historic …