---Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
What's In A Name?
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet."
---Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)
Autumn (8), Alaina (3) and I all enjoyed this humorous book about a porcupine named Fluffy who discovers he isn't so fluffy. It is written by Helen Lester and illustrated by Lynn Munsinger. It produced numerous belly laughs from all of us. Afterwards we discussed names and how they can affect our feelings towards people, places and things. We discussed what it would be like if we were to change our names. I asked the girls what other names they feel most reflect their personality? Would we still be ourselves if we had a different name? Would our lives change...would they turn out differently....would people treat us differently? What is it like to be bilingual and have more than one name for different objects? Would certain famous landmarks and celebrities be as famous if they were given more simple names? It was a great discussion that spurred Autumn on to stay up late this evening and read a nonfiction book called "Where Words Were Born" by: Arkady Leokum, Paul Posnick and Stanley J. Corwin. She was really fascinated to read about the origins and stories behind words like siren, atlas, piano, flu. There were 110 words in all and there was great exposure to Latin, French, Italian, German and Spanish languages. I am glad I let her stay up to enjoy it, and since she read much of it out loud to me I learned quite a bit myself!
---Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)
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Are you using just books from your library to homeschool your children with? Wow, that's great. Maybe I can learn from you how to use literature books more. Just became your first follower. Check out my blog....
ReplyDeletewww.ourhappyhomestead-freeman.blogspot.com
Welcome! Thank-you for becoming my first follower. I am obviously new to blogging and I wasn't sure if anyone would even find my site. Of course I will be happy to zip on over to your blog and check it out.
DeleteYes, we are currently using only library books to home school for all subjects except math. (For math we use www.khanacademy.org) If you haven't been to this website I HIGHLY recommend taking a look at it.
The reason we are using our library as our number one resource is because it is FREE! With MEL Cat (Michigan statewide inter-library loan system) I have never had a problem getting a book that we need. In fact, my family's only problem is having too many books to choose from! We read more books in a day than I am sure most families read in a week. This often leads to long check-out slips and at times exasperated looks from our librarians (like are they really going to read ALL of those?). But it is so rewarding and liberating to know that we can explore and not have to settle on using specific materials just because they were expensive.
Before we decided to rely on our library we were purchasing books and creating a home library. Our house was cluttered with books...it felt like we were swimming in them! Now, the girls each have a very small collection of special books that are signed by authors or have hand written notes from the gift givers inside. The rest of our books we took to the library and requested that if possible they place on the shelves. We asked that the books they used included a name plate in the front stating that the book was donated by our family.
Now there are many of our favorite books on the shelf at our library with special book plates inside. When we check out one of these books or receive a comment from someone who notices we feel proud. We figured out a way to get the best of both worlds. It was hard to let go of our collection of personal books, but now our house feels less cluttered!
I hope that my future posts will be of interest to you and that we can share ideas and inspiration. I look forward to it!
Sarah