All Chocolate Chip Cookies are not the same!

I made some awesome chocolate chip cookies last week. The recipe called for roasting pecans for 10-15 minutes, then putting a bit of butter and salt on them, then grinding them up in a food processor and using this mix to replace some of the flour.

I used real butter, real vanilla, farm fresh eggs, real dark chocolate chunks and mixed the batter oh so gingerly so the cookies would be a melt-in-your-mouth delicacy. I scooped out rounded masses of the buttery mix, baked them on parchment paper for exactly 12 minutes and slid them on to waiting cookie racks. Can you see the delicately browned cookies? Can you smell the buttery, nutty chocolatey morsels? They are crisp on the outside and gooey and rich in the inside. Oh, my...heaven in my mouth. [recipe here]
Now, contrast that with a bag of Chips-Ahoy. I mean, they are both cookies, they both have chocolate chips, they both are round--but what exactly is partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil and artificial flavoring? They are not gooey, they are do not melt in your mouth, but in a pinch they will do and when you have a hankering for a cookie, they are not too bad.

So, when I was thinking about cookies, it made me think of curriculum. When you teach your kids by reading them great literature and exposing them to ideas and thoughts contained in literature, it is like the homemade chocolate chip cookie. It is pleasing and satisfying. Kids want more--they want to dig deeper, they enjoy the experience and learn an incredible amount as they go along. Learning through literature appeals to old and young, rich and poor, eager learners and slower learners. We can learn so much through stories--we can be transported across time and space and can experience more than we could possibly experience in our own lifetime. It is rewarding and satisfying.


But, when you learn through text books, it is kind of like a store-bought cookie. It is kind of the same--but it is not really the same at all. Textbooks take a bunch of great history or science and pre-digest it in a sort of "readers-digest" format so you get the gist, but none of the passion. Incredible events such as the explosion of the space shuttle are brieffly covered, a date given, and then the article ends with something like "but even though this launch was not successful, the space program learned from their mistakes so future launches were much safer."

UGH! Where is the passion? Where is the mourning? What is the point of the event? It leaves one wondering why they bothered to even read this book and how many pages more are assigned. Kind of like wondering why you are wasting your calories on a Chips Ahoy, when you could eat a Mrs. Fields cookie. There is just no flavor, no satisfaction-- no character at all to the cookie or the text.

Whether you are homeschooling or your kids are in a traditional school--please read to them. Read them books with passion and excitement. Introduce your kids to your heroes or read classic literature to them. If you don't know where to start, ask me, ask your librarian, ask an English teacher or get a Sonlight catalog and use it for a reading list. Use this summer to ignite your child's interest and imagination and to strengthen family bonds and have true quality and quantity time with them. Read to them and maybe whip up a batch of cookies too! It couldn't hurt!

Take care,
Jill

Recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Recycled Educational Philosophies..

I read an article this weekend entitled "The End of Grade Levels."

It is about a school in Colorado where students will be grouped into multi-age levels based on what they already know and will move up when they master the material at that level. [Wow! what a concept!]

Some "experts" are saying that this makes sense and many districts are hesitant. One expert from New York was quoted as saying, "It's very hard to get people to believe in something new."

NEW?

Have they never read Little House on the Prairie? Have they never studied early American History? I almost laughed out loud--NEW! Why this is not new at all.

When a new little pioneer child walked into the school for the first time he was not asked how old he was, but what reader [as in McGuffey] he was in. If you were 7 or 9, it really did not matter. If you were in the first reader, that is the group you studied with. When you mastered the first reader, you moved on to the 2nd reader. This explains why sometimes there was a 16 year old teacher who had 16 year old pupils.

How about Understood Betsy? Published in 1917 it is the inspiring story of a little girl who is transformed by love and understanding. There is a wonderful chapter called "What Grade is Betsy" where Elizabeth Ann [Betsy before she really became herself] says to her new teacher, "I don't know what I am at all. If I'm in second-grade arithmetic and seventh-grade reading and 3rd grade spelling, what grade am I?"

The teacher laughed, "You aren't any grade at all, no matter where you are in school. You're just yourself, aren't you? What difference does it make what grade you're in? And what's the use of your reading little baby things too easy for you just because you don't know your multiplication tables?"

Later, referring to this incident, the book says of Betsy, "She had always thought she was there to pass from one grade to another, and she was ever so startled to get a glimpse of the fact that she was there to learn how to read and write and cipher and generally use her mind so she could take care of herself when she came to be grown up."

Ahh, new indeed. This, like just about every other educational philosophy is not new--it is old and is being recycled for the 21st century. Homeschoolers I encourage you, keep on doing what you are doing. Don't get caught up thinking the educational experts have it all figured out. They don't. They recycle ideas regularly. They could learn from you.

Imagine...

starting where the child is and with what he knows and having him progress in his learning?? It is something homeschoolers have know and practiced for years. It is kind of nice to see the "Professional educators" finally catching on.

And, if you haven't read "Understood Betsy," by Dorothy Candfield Fisher, I think you would enjoy it-it starts a little slow, but is a very rewarding read and if you have a child to read it to, so much the better.


Take care,
Jill