The Christmas Stories of George MacDonald

When I saw this book displayed at our local library I knew I wanted to check it out!  George MacDonald was my Dad's favorite author and he has become a favorite of mine, too.  We read the first story last night and I wasn't disappointed!  The  paintings are lovely and the stories are moving and powerfully told.  

Shakespeare His Work & His World

We just finished reading Shakespeare His Work & His World by Michael Rosen and Illustrated by Robert Ingpen.
If you are looking for an introduction to Shakespeare, the world in which he lived and wrote, and his plays I recommend this book. The text is interesting and well-written and the artwork is really exceptional. We read it slowly, just once a week over five or six weeks. 

A Christmas Carol

This version of 
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens as recorded on Librivox is done by an excellent reader.  We are enjoying it very much.

Christmas Reading

Last night we finished The Best Christmas Pagent Ever.  By Barbara Robinson.  It's a wonderfully humorous story of a family of unchurched children who are exposed to the real story of Christmas for the first time as they decide to be part of the local church Christmas Pageant.  


I just started a knitting project that I need to get done by the weekend so I decided to look for our next Christmas story online. Librivox has many wonderful short stories for Christmas.  We listened to O'Henry's The Gift of the Magi and "The Little Match Girl" by Hans Christian Andersen and several others, two of which were new to me, but fun stories.  They have quite a few collections to choose from.  Search for old familiar stories or browse for new ones. We hope to listen to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol later this week.  My sister and niece were in a musical presentation of "The Gospel According to Scrooge" a couple years ago and we were able to purchase a video of that presentation.  It is very well done and it has become a tradition to watch it as a family during December.  It was filmed and edited by DTV20 in Sauk Centre, Minnesota and you may still be able to purchase a copy by contacting them at 1-320-351-7288 or www.dtv20.com.

What stories do you enjoy during the holiday season? 

Bracket Fungus Study

We studied mushrooms last week during our Friday nature time.  At first we weren't sure we'd find many as it has gotten quite cold out, but as we searched we found quite a few different kinds.

Today we studied Bracket Fungus, inspired by Barb at Handbook of Nature Study.  We read the section on Bracket Fungi in The Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock, (pp721-724 in my edition).  Then we went out searching our woods for bracket fungi collecting and photographing them as we went.  Finally we came in and drew in our nature notebooks some of the wonderful specimens we found.  Here is a link to a gallery of bracket and crust fungi.

Following are our journal entries and a few of our photos. 

J age 9 Bracket Fungi on a tree trunk

S. age 15

This fungus was growing on a piece of birch bark....  S age 15 did a lovely job of capturing it.

Sorry I couldn't get my entry turned....

R. age 11

underside of bracket fungus

 If you view this picture up close you can see the tiny openings....

Videos on nature journaling

A Picture of a nature journal I found online....

I found a couple of wonderful videos on nature journaling this morning.  So we watched a couple together this afternoon and hope to finish them in the next week when we have Friday art and nature walks. 

How to Draw Plants - Introduction This is a series of seven clips put out by the California Native Plant Society.  John Muir Laws shows how to draw plants with 3, 4, 5, or 6 petals as well as the daisy-type flowers symmetrically, demonstrating as he goes.  We watched the first two clips and are ready next week to move on to foreshortening. 

We also enjoyed the first half of a video also by John Muir Laws as he talks about ways to make your nature journal more interesting and helpful in the learning process, using his own journal pages as examples.  Keeping a Nature Journal is interesting and helpful.  I'm looking forward to the second half next week. 

I noticed that under Youtube's  heading of "botanical illustration" there are lots and lots of wonderful videos.  

I hope to enjoy a few more days of outdoor nature journaling before the cold of winter in the Midwest keeps us inside most days.  

Reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books

We're working our way through the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder again this summer!  We read them to the older children years ago but I wanted to share them with the younger children.  Some of the older ones are sitting in on the reading and enjoying them again.  Laura is so wonderfully descriptive.  When Mary went blind, Pa told Laura that she would need to be Mary's eyes now so she got in the habit of describing everything going on around them to Mary.  I would guess that it is this practice brought on by the tragedy of Mary's loss of sight that makes Laura such a wonderful, descriptive writer! As Ma would say, "There's no great loss without some small gain."  Anyway, we are enjoying the books very much.  We're presently reading  By the Shores of Silver Lake.