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Becky Parker
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| Posted: April 04 2014 at 7:03am | IP Logged
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Not sure if this is the best place for this or not. Go ahead and move it if-need-be moderators.
Over at Erin's blog she posted a link to another blog post about a book, Norms and Nobility.
Has anyone read it? In her discussion of the book, the blogger talks about how her children were missing out on some of the great literature mostly because she uses history as her homeschool spine. Her children missed out on a lot of the fairy tales of early childhood.
I've thought of that in the past. While we read picture books here, although not as much as we used to, even though I still have young children  , I worry that these younger kids are missing out on some of the really good literature that doesn't fall under the category of history.
Maybe it is just a matter of prioritizing our literature reading time; making sure I pull out some of the old favorites like Beatrix Potter and books of fairy tales. Maybe I need to make the younger kids a priority instead of the olders (my tea time read alouds are usually pulled from the booklists of the older kids and that means usually based on the period of history that we are studying). It just seems like there isn't enough hours in the day to meet every literature need for every level.
I'm curious if anyone has read Norms and Nobility and I'm interested in your opinions, both on the book and on the philosophy in general. I'm intrigued by what the author has to say but I really don't need to add another book to my "to read" pile just yet.
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: April 04 2014 at 7:47am | IP Logged
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Can you link to the blog post you are referencing?
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SallyT
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| Posted: April 04 2014 at 9:29am | IP Logged
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I haven't read the book, but one thought I have is that not all reading has to be part of scheduled school time, especially with younger children. We didn't do fairy tales, Beatrix Potter, etc., all that schematically as part of our school day all the time -- though we have done them in our Morning Basket -- but often enough that was bedtime reading for younger children.
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: April 04 2014 at 11:57am | IP Logged
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When doing history lists you might also consider adding in some of those books either as an example of the literature of the time or because they're set in that time period.
But I also pull stuff like that out for reading when we're camping or things.. my mom read Beatrice Potter to the kids while I drove them to a swim meet a couple of hours away. All the kids found it fun.
So it doesn't have to be regular reading either.
And my oldest read the original fairy tales when she was older.. 13 ish I think, on her own.
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JuliaT
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| Posted: April 08 2014 at 8:32pm | IP Logged
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I have read the book. I read it about 6 years ago so I can't remember all that he wrote. N&N is a treatise on Classical Education. It is a hard but good read. I have been wanting to re-read it this year as I am hoping my brain has become a bit bigger since my first read-through.  AO uses this book (there is a reading list/curriculum at the back) as a jumping off point for the HEO (high school) years. N&N is also looked highly upon on the Circe Institute site.
The book largely discusses the principles that make up Classical Education. It does not come right out and say that literature should be read instead of historical fiction. The blogger that Erin linked to, came up with that thought on her own from reading N&N.
This has been a much discussed issue on another homeschooling forum. The blogger is not saying that historical fiction should not be read, what she is saying is that every family should do what feels right and important for them to bring all that is true, good and beautiful. For the blogger that means that she needed to find more time to bring fairy tales and well-written literature to the table. Historical fiction wss the thing that was taken out.
Personally, I agree with that blogger. We do not read a lot of historical fiction. We do have favourites that we re-read like Adam of the Road and Sign of the Beaver, but I want my children to know the childhood classics and I don't have time to do both. Many families are able to do both and that is wonderful for them but I just can't so this is what I have figured out that works for our family.
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ekbell
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| Posted: April 09 2014 at 3:51pm | IP Logged
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For history or geography I tend to focus on stories of the Saints, myths, folk tales, fairy tales and so on when adding read-aloud enrichment for the younger set. Historical fiction is generally presented as optional reading for the children comfortable with independent reading.
Classic children's stories tend to be bedtime reading, I make a point of reading some books every two to three years while others are read upon request. We're currently on our second hardcover copy of the complete Winnie-the-Pooh.
There's no particularly strong reason for this
-I have a big book of Fairy Tales (The Joy of Fairy Tales) which has a useful timeline broken into rough geographic areas from 600 BC onwards,
-my MIL (plus Santa  )has given us a fair amount of fairy tales plus classic children's literature while historical fiction tends be at at the bottom of my to buy lists only bought if we still have some room in the budget after buying the rest of our books and other supplies
-last but not least I prefer to read-aloud stories I have fond memories of or that have language suitable for oral storytelling.
I also tend to give priority to books for my children who are not yet reading by themselves when choosing what to read aloud. There's plenty of good in reading aloud to my older crew but if push comes to shove they can read the books on their own or take turns reading to each other (that's how the Narnia series was read in our house).
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4Real Forums : Philosophy of Education
Topic: Norms and Nobility
