Weekly Review - the start of a new year

This was Moozle's first week of Ambleside Online Year 6 and a good week it was. A highlight for her, especially after visiting Hobbiton in New Zealand earlier this year, was the first chapter of The Hobbit, which I'm reading aloud to her. This is the first time I've actually read the book - I know, one of the few persons on the planet - everyone else in the family has read the book and seen the movie. I decided to wait and enjoy it this year with my daughter knowing it was coming up in Year 6 Literature.

Benj is halfway through his Liberal Arts Certificate (two days per week) and continues to fit in some of the Ambleside Online Year 11 & 12 selections along with piano practice, work one afternoon a week and a piano student once a week.

We've started a new composer, Gabriel Faure and a new artist, James Abbott McNeill Whistler.
I've made a YouTube playlist for Faure with the selections we'll be listening to this term. Lovely music!

Shakespeare


King Lear is our play this term, using the Naxos version below, that so far sounds very good. We've used a few Naxos Shakespeare productions and have been very pleased with them.

Plutarch


Marcus Porcius Cato (234 BC-149 BC) - Marcus Cato the Censor, also known by a few other names,
using Anne White's Guide. We've done two lives without the complete guides (Demetrius & Themistocles) as I started them and didn't realise until we were halfway through that they were still unfinished. I made sure to check this time!

Poetry

This term Moozle is savouring the poetry of A.B. (Banjo) Paterson, who penned Waltzing Matilda and is one of Australia's best known & most loved poets. Benj's is doing poetry as part of his course.

Hymn Study


I'll be adding to this later but here is what we have so far.

Folksongs

This is a playlist of Australian folksongs I'm considering. I haven't listened to them all yet so not sure how suitable they will be for an 11 year old. Here are some of the Scottish folksongs we listen to - part of my passing on a cultural inheritance to my offspring.

Reading 


Benj - finished Uncle Tungsten and The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer. He's started reading Don Quixote. I bought the cheapest version I could find as it's not high on the list of my 'most wanted.'  (Apologies to my friend, Silvia!) I asked Benj what he thought of it and he said, "It's pretty stupid, but it's meant to be. It's a satire..." Anyhow, he's studying it this semester so it will be interesting to see what he has to say later on.

Moozle - the book devourer extraordinaire, has been on a G.A. Henty splurge, yet again. She read a couple of the books he wrote about Afghanistan while she was reading Kim for Year 5. They help in understanding some of the circumstances of The Great Game: 

Herat and Cabul, A Story of the First Afghan War and  
For Name and Fame: To Cabul with Roberts (Through Afghan Passes) 
We've managed to find them via Amazon, free for Kindle, so I've linked to what was there at the time I looked, but check first as I've noticed that the availability of free titles changes from time to time.
She also read A Final Reckoning: A Tale of Bush Life in Australia.

My reading - Finished recently: The Painted Veil (loved the writing); A Good Man is Hard to Find (not your average cup of tea, and definitely not for everyone); The Five Red Herrings - a Dorothy Sayers' mystery - say no more. She is more than your average mystery writer.

Started recently: The Double Helix by James Watson. This was one of my opshop finds. I've wanted to read it for awhile so I was so pleased to pick it up for $3.

The Road from Home by David Kherdian - I read this years ago but wanted to re-read it as it's a Newbery Honor Book and covers a portion of history we don't hear much about. It's based on the true story of an Armenian girl whose family were caught up in the Turkish governments systematic destruction of its Armenian population in the early days of WWI. From memory, I think it was written for a young adult audience.

Ambleside Online Years 3 & 9 - Jacobite Folksongs

In the third term of AO Year 3 Our Island Story covers some Jacobite history. We've been listening to the song below, Ye Jacobites, which was re-written from the original by Robert Burns in 1791.
At first look it seems Robert Burns was anti-Jacobite but I've read a few opinions about whether or not this was the truth. This blog has an interesting perspective.

Here is an audio of the song plus the words written by Burns and the original version.





The Massacre of Glencoe, which occurred in 1692, is covered in Our Island Story. I use the song below (sung by Alastair McDonald) for older children as it also fits in Term 1 of AO Year 9, but have a look at the words here to check its suitability.

Oops, my apologies. Just realised I didn't include it here when I first posted but I can't get it to load now. It's here and it's the one we like best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yYjG6nUwyc

Another version is this one but it's not a great video and there are a few misspelled words:





The Jacobite Heritage is a good place to browse if you're interested in anything to do with the Jacobites.

Ambleside Online Year 7 History

These are mostly supplements to Ambleside's year 7 History - Scottish historical fiction and folksongs in the main. I've used them in the past before I knew of AO and recently with my 14 year old who started AO year 7 late last year.

The Battle of Stirling Bridge, September 11th, 1297 in which William Wallace's greatly outnumbered Scottish army defeated the English forces commanded by John de Warenne. The words to the song, Stirling Brig, are here.

'Tell your commander that we are not here to make peace but to do battle, defend ourselves and liberate our kingdom. Let them come on, and we shall prove this in their very beards.' William Wallace

I finally worked out how to upload videos to you-tube so I could share one of our favourite folksongs from a CD bought in Scotland. Well, I had Natty & Bengy figure it out and I just added some commentary. Next time I'll have to be more adventurous and work out how to put in some visual content. Field of Bannockburn celebrates one of the most important battles fought for Scottish Independence, the Battle of Bannockburn, fought on the 24th June 1314, and this year marks its seven hundredth anniversary. The video commences with a short, stirring  narrative, around 40 seconds in length, and then the song starts.

Scotland's poet, Robbie Burns, wrote Scots Wha Hae, also known as 'Robert Bruce's March to Bannockburn,' in 1794. I like the version below but everyone else prefers the one performed by the Scottish group, Scocha.





Historical fiction for this time period in Scotland:

In Freedom's Cause by G.A. Henty is scheduled in AO for year 7 and is a lively account of the Scottish war of independence written by an Englishman. He handles it in a masterly fashion and is even-handed in his treatment of both the Scots and the English. My husband read this book aloud to us about 10 years ago and the kids have never forgotten it.

The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter was written in 1809 and the author was also English. I read this one aloud years ago in my best Scottish brogue. She overdid the character of Wallace by portraying him as totally unblemished, but being a true Scot I let it pass. Memories of the book include my struggle to say the word pusillanimity, which the author employed on a regular basis, and the predilection for just about every woman in the story to swoon and faint at one point or another, but it was exciting, heroic and epic enough for me to commit to reading all 504 pages! We have a lovely hardback copy of the book illustrated by the estimable N.C. Wyeth.
This is what Kate Douglas Wiggin had to say in the introduction of our Scribner Illustrated Classic:

If Miss Jane Porter sometimes exaggerated the the virtues of the noble Wallace, his achievements never fell upon incredulous ears in the days of youth, nor do they now, when I heartily believe that she is right in acclaiming him as "one of the most complete heroes that ever filled the page of history."
The author's portraits of Wallace, of Robert the Bruce, Edwin Ruthven and Andrew Murray are penned with a high enthusiasm that lifts the reader to her own altitudes. She bathes them in glory and we see them with her eyes; but though "Scottish Chiefs" is a panegyric, (lofty and elaborate praise) rather than a formal history, it has been accepted by critics as genuine in spirit, if not in absolute detail.

Gutenberg has The Scottish Chiefs on their website.

This is a poetic narration from Bengy (14 year old boy) on the memorable encounter on the first day of the Bannockburn battle.You can read a short account of it in H.E. Marshall's Scotland's Story.

A more recent book on this time period is The King's Swift Rider by Mollie Hunter, a Scottish author who has written other books based on historical events in Scotland. I wrote about that book here.

From the Declaration of Arbroath, 1320:

'...as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom — for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.'

If you're interested in Highland dancing...

Folksong: Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go?

This is one of my favourite Scottish folksongs I remember growing up with. I always knew it as Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go but it's also called Wild Mountain Thyme and Blooming Heather.
I like the first video because it has a lovely folky feel and uses the double bass, violin & cellos as an accompaniment but the singer is a pom! I thought I should add a Scottish version which happens to be more upbeat and not such a folky feel, but I still like it.




Oh the summertime is coming
And the trees are sweetly blooming
And the wild mountain thyme
Grows around the blooming heather
Will ye go, Lassie go?

And we'll all go together
To pluck wild mountain thyme
All around the blooming heather
Will ye go, Lassie go?

I will build my love a bower
Near yon' pure crystal fountain
And on it I will build
All the flowers of the mountain
Will ye go, Lassie go?

And we'll all go together
To pluck wild mountain thyme
All around the blooming heather
Will ye go, Lassie go?

If my true love she were gone
I would surely find another
To pluck wild mountain thyme
Grows around the blooming heather
Will ye go, Lassie go?

And we'll all go together
To pluck wild mountain thyme
All around the blooming heather
Will ye go, Lassie go?