I had quite an interest in calligraphy when I was a teenager, and this interest has been passed on to our Dojogirl. I happened upon an interesting tutorial today when I was rounding up some foreign language resources, and while I think it’s probably a bit too soon for Dojogirl to be attempting this work I wanted to share it with you all. I’m sure somebody out there will be ready to put it to use!

Palæography is the study of ancient handwriting, and for anyone with an interest in either philology (essentially the study of classical languages) or calligraphy, it is an asset to have some experience in this field.

The British National Archives web site offers a free tutorial in palæography of English written between 1500-1800. There is an introduction that offers some hints about decrypting old texts, complete with some references for common abbreviations, currency, etc. What follows are ten interactive texts to be transcribed (and scored!) line by line. Once a student has completed these, she can try her hand at the ducking stool game (a sort of 17th century-palæography twist on hangman) or look at some of the texts recommended for further practice.

Enjoy the challenge!

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!

Arabella Buckley’s Fairy-Land of Science is used by some homeschoolers for nature studies, and was recommended by Charlotte Mason herself. A little while back an excerpt from the book was offered as a free download from CurrClick. I promised at that time I would post some Arabella Buckley resources. Here they are. Enjoy!

Texts by Arabella Buckey (Free Downloads):

• Extensive collection of e-texts in multiple formats at Internet Archive
• Several formatted texts at the Baldwin Project
• Books by Arabella Buckley at Early Canadiana Online
• Fairy-Land of Science (plain text) at Project Gutenberg
• Fairy-Land of Science (scans of original book) at Google Books Canada
• A Short History of Natural Science (scans of original book) at Google Books Canada
• Wild Life in Woods and Fields (human-read audio) at Librivox

NB: Downloads from Google Books Canada may not work outside the country. If anyone from US or international locations tries to download the books, please let me know whether or not you are successful. Viewing of the entire book should be possible, regardless.

Texts About Arabella Buckley (Free Downloads):

• Engines of Our Ingenuity #943: Fairy-Land of Science (audio, text transcripts, illustrations)
• Engines of Our Ingenuity #1105: Mary Roberts (audio, text transcripts, illustrations) - significant mentions of Buckley
• Engines of Our Ingenuity #2144: Arabella Buckley (audio, text transcripts, illustrations)
• Arabella Buckley entry at Wikipedia

Hard Copies Free or Cheap:

• Books by Arabella Buckley at BookMooch
• Books by Arabella Buckley at ManyBooks.Net
• Books by Arabella Buckley at PaperBackSwap
• Fairy-Land of Science at LuLu - Yesterday’s Classics version, benefits the Baldwin Project

More fun with Erin McKean. This video is considerably longer (close to one hour) and may be of more interest to word nerds. Folks with an interest in linguistics should really enjoy it.

For the homeschoolers among my readers, if you are doing grammar or word study with your kids you will want to make time for this review. Ms McKean goes over origins of English words, compounding, affixes, back formation, acronyms and initialisms, onomatopoeia, catachresis, and more. (OK, some of these are a little more esoteric than most people are going to need….)

Again, mild profanity or mention of sensitive topics. And wordservatives among you may get upset by some of the lexicographical gymnastics.

*****

Maybe you’d like to try making up words at home with your kids. View the video together, and give it a try!

I discovered Book Closeouts this year through some fellow homeschoolers, and I wish I had known about it before! It’s a vendor that resells overstock literature at prices considerably less than the big box book stores - whether you order online or visit a local store. Prices are often 50% discounted or more, and the books are in perfectly good shape unless you buy from their “Scratch & Dent” category where discounts are even better.

Some books will have a mark somewhere that doesn’t detract from your enjoyment of the book, like on the UPC code at the back. One of the books I purchased from this company has a visible line of black marker across the side of the book (not the spine but 90° off, across the cut edge of the pages - I’m sure there’s a technical word for that but it isn’t coming to me at the moment!) Other books are no different than ones I would buy in the local book store.

Books that were $20 or more at another bookseller I have bought for roughly $5. I also like that this vendor ships from both the United States and Canada. It was easy for me to pay for orders in US dollars while the Canadian dollar was valued higher, and my order was shipped from within Canada to improve delivery time and avoid issues over duties and taxes.

Orders are well packaged and processed fairly quickly. I find Book Closeouts only slightly slower than the big book selling chains. You do have to figure in shipping costs when you order from them, though. They don’t do the free shipping for orders over $39 that most big merchants have adopted. In general, I’ve found it works out less expensive even with shipping taken into consideration. I do try to order a few books at a time, though, and their prices certainly allow for that!

Selections on the site are admittedly not as big as those in one of the better known retailers. They are however, considerably better than your local second hand shop - and prices are probably comparable! Check the New Books page to see their latest additions, and when you do a search don’t ignore the books that don’t match perfectly. I’ve found a couple very worthwhile books that way, which I otherwise would have missed.

There are always special promotions on the site. At the moment gardening books are discounted up to 75% off the cover price. There are also specials for Mother’s Day, which falls on 14 May this year. There’s still plenty of time to find a page turner for your Mom! Finally, there are still journals and photo albums on special. Those of you who scrapbook will want to check this sale: they have a variety of scrapbooks priced at $3.50 or less. I have a girlfriend who spends an absolute fortune, just on the blank books she uses for scrapbooking. If you can get spiral bound books made with acid-free paper at such great discounts, it sure makes scrapbooking a more affordable past time!

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!

The girls watched Steve Demme’s video on how to memorize the Greek alphabet a short while back. Mr Demme uses a number of mnemonic devices to help kids and parents remember some of the letters, some of which are pretty comical. Now, Mr Demme explains in the video that some of the letter names are intentionally mispronounced to help develop a mini-narrative that acts as a memory aid. After giving the story with the mondegreens he reviews the written alphabet on his white board and gives the correct pronunciation of the letters. We’ve also gone back over the corrected alphabet several times ourselves, when Dojogirl was working on mastering it.

I think she’s pretty much got it, and our Banana is coming along as well. It’s not something they need at the moment, but it’s good for them to do memory work and since they enjoyed it I’m pleased for them to be following up on the video in their own time. I hadn’t expected the Commandant to remember any of the video but we had her watch it too. She enjoys being included with the “big girls” and since I’m thinking of using the Math-U-See Primer for her come fall, it’s good that she finds Mr Demme amusing.

So Dojogirl is out in the kitchen washing dishes, and she’s reciting the Greek alphabet aloud. The Banana is listening quietly as she does her own chores. Everything is going smoothly. “….. Lambda, mu, nu, xi, omicron—” Then from the Bug’s bedroom I hear, “No! Oh my corn!” The Commandant has been listening and she feels it is her duty to “correct” her big sister!

For those of you who haven’t seen the video, let me explain. The memory cue for these five letters is a little story about a farmer who raised little “lambdas” and these beasts were a bit confused, thinking themselves to be cows. So instead of bleating they say, “Mu… nu….” To remember the next two letters we have to imagine that the “lambdas” have gotten into the farmer’s field and are having a good munch on his crop. When he discovers this he exclaims, “K’see! Oh my corn!”

As I said, Mr Demme did a great job of explaining that he was twisting the pronunciation in order to make the letter names more memorable. That part made perfect sense to the rest of us, but the Commandant didn’t quite “catch it.” Apparently she did catch the sequence of letters, though!

It’s amazing what a 3-1/2 year old can learn! (Now I wonder if I’m going to have to go through un-learning it with her? Maybe we should have waited a bit before she saw that video…..)

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!