A Joyful Army of Six

We are Brian and Cara Bergeron. We currently live, homeschool, work, and play soccer in beautiful Southcentral Oregon. We are children of God, children of two marvelous sets of parents who are still happily married, children of the '80s, children who fell in love when we were but children, children who have inherited four unexpected and undeserved blessings from the Lord--Brandt, Gresham, Seth, and Evangeline. Together we are (as Eva will tell you with a shout) "in the Lord's army. Lethirrrr!"

Friday, November 21, 2008

A Story by Brandt

This is Brandt's version of the Boston Tea Party story. You can see many of the same ideas and word choices as they both took from the same source document. But the style is different. As are the metaphors, similes and word choices. My favorite metaphor in Brandt's is "pickled vengeance." He worked hard for that one!

The Boston Tea Party
a story by Brandt Bergeron

In December, 1773, a cool evening had developed in the congested streets of Boston. Abnormally, the regularly clamorous crowds seemed tense, as though waiting for something. People conversed in hushed tones. Ten-year-old Paul stood with his elder brother, who was a member of the impassioned Sons of Liberty, waiting. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen but he knew that it had to do with the three sleek British ships, bursting with tea, lying in the harbor like still and defiant rebels.

According to rumor, Paul’s father had told him that the Exasperating Roadblock, King George of England, had taxed the colonies greatly on items such as paper goods, ink, lead, and, most of all, tea. The governor enforced taxes cruelly. Fuming colonists despised it. They became indignant. Determinedly, they refused to buy highly taxed items and felt cheated and angry and demanded that the recent shipment of tea to the colonies be sent back to England at once. However, the unrelenting governor stated that, “The King’s orders are imperative to right living and that, to obey them properly, the tea must be completely unloaded by the night of December 16.” Tonight was that very night.

Suddenly, dozens of “indians” wove warily through the crowds. As they passed, Paul realized that the “indians,” who were carrying axes, weren’t Indians at all. They were the Sons of Liberty! They boarded the ships. Then came an ominous noise . . . “Whack! Crack! Split! Splash!” After a few moments, the pungent scent of tea and sea water filled the night air like pickled vengeance. A cry broke out and people began to chant wildly, “Rally Indians! Bring your axes, and tell King George we’ll pay no taxes!” Paul was certain that the disdainful King George would understand this bitter message.

A Story by Gresham

The following is one of the promised writing samples from Gresham, our 8 year old. This is a fictional story that he created using his first "decorations," some metaphor/similes and three short staccato sentences. There are three similes in the story and they're as easy to spot as a yellow polka dot bikini in a sea of Oregon corduroy (pardon my late night attempt at the same).

The Boston Tea Party
a story by Gresham Bergeron

It was December, 1773. Colonists roamed the streets. They fumed. Patiently, Paul sat transfixed on a lumpy bench watching the crowd walk past. His brother was one of the irate Sons of Liberty, and had told him something exciting was about to happen. Above the tumult, mischievous Paul dallied like a dejected street urchin. He guessed the hullabaloo had something to do with the three towering ships in the harbor, which were loaded with British tea. These were cargo ships.

King George taxed the tea. Colonists calmly refused to buy. King George raged. Colonists felt cheated and angry. Concerning the matter, they told the governor, who acted like a puppet, to take the loathed tea back to England. But foolishly the flimsy governor said, “The King’s orders must be obeyed,” and the tea had to be unloaded like an autumn tree taking off its leaves by December 16th. That was tonight.

About this time, the crowd started to stir and 100 queer “indians” broke through the crowd like grim gila monsters. Paul comprehended they were obviously carrying axes. Then in the moonlight, the Sons of Liberty boarded the ships. Whack, whack, whack! Openly the “indians” endeavored to chop open the chests of British tea and discard the boxes into the harbor. The scent of tea was in the air. The people started to chant, “Rally Indians! Bring your axes, and tell King George we’ll pay no taxes.” Paul knew King George would understand this message. Paul sensed conflict had begun.

Monday, November 03, 2008

Why This Mom Treasures a Writing Program

Institute for Excellence in Writing has been a Knight in Shining Armor to this mother of three boys! I know from experience being around other children that our three boys have what might even be termed "verbal gifts"--perhaps sometimes in excess. But they are still boys. Boys do not like to write. Or maybe I should say that boys do like writing but would prefer to do anything else except write, if given the opportunity. Baseball calls. The green golf course beckons. Pencils are a thrall around the neck of a boy's desire for wide open spaces and the free exercise of their Outside Voices. Or, as Andrew Pudewa, the Atascadero-based commander in chief of IEW would say, "Boys know that the Whole Point of Life is to build forts."

So how did I, one lone mother in a sea of requests for special non-writing dispensations and the doleful pleas of writing callouses, manage to pull off not one, but TWO, reports on colonial life in two short weeks? The answer is in the IEW curriculum's sequential checklist format, its practice-until-you-master-it mentality, and its refusal to go the open-ended blank page creative writing route of most curricula. In week one, both Brandt and Gresham checked out several sources from the library children's section (research skills too!) Then they read the sources to one another while I made dinner in an entirely different room! Please don't tell anyone that I left my homeschooled children unattended. In so doing, the boys each collected their own key word outline of useful and most interesting facts about their topics (colonial travel and colonial houses). From this key word outline, they wrote one sentence after another until they ran out of facts. Then the paragraph was done. Whew! Did I really expect them to write THREE paragraphs? And how!

Thus far we're in Week 9 of our Classical Conversations-based IEW program. The "dress-ups" introduced to the children are
1. A quality adjective
2. An -ly word (adverb)
3. A strong verb
4. A who/which clause (adjectival clause)

The sentence openers introduced to this point are
1. A very short sentence
2. An adverbial (-ly) opener
3. A prepositional phrase opener

My goodness, are we learning English grammar too? Why didn't I ever hear the word "adverbial" before I was 35?

Because these dress-ups and openers are introduced gradually and practiced in every single paragraph every single week, my boys are finally to the point where they know how to find the better word choices and the clearer clauses and phrases for themselves. In the first week, their assignments were twice the work for me as for them. We literally spent HOURS every day trying to write what I began to think of as "That Insufferable Poem About America." My husband taught the writing one morning while I was at the dentist and claimed it was "the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life (F-15 training notwithstanding)." I have to admit secretly that the dentist was a decent excuse for a break that week. But that front-loaded work of explaining over and over again is now paying dividends.

Another step we took from the beginning was to write in a notebook our own collection of quality adjectives, strong verbs, -ly words and rousing nouns. While the boys often fail to find the word they're needing in these collections, I find that the suggestions get their writing genes up and stretching. At this point, I still answer PLENTY of their questions--but they're along the following lines: "Is it okay to put a prepositional phrase here?" or "Is this an adjectival clause?" or "Do I put a 'who' or a 'which' after this noun?" Compare these questions to the statements of desolate boys facing a blank page of creative "leaders:" "I don't know what to write." "This is dumb." "I have a writing callous from that last baseball game." And now you see why I've been prompted to wax eloquent over the idea of a writing program.

Additionally, the boys have learned how to formulate a topic sentence and restate it at the end of the paragraph in a "clincher." You may notice some of the clumsier attempts in the writing samples I plan to publish here over the next week. You will probably chuckle at the dressiness of some of the dress-ups ("They tied the thrilled horse to the post." Yes, it was in fact a "strong adjective.") However, a 'tween girl never learns how to expertly apply her makeup without some initial clumsy attempts involving glitter and blue eyeshadow, right?