31 the other side . I t took him 3~ hour s of hard work to convince himself of this fact. Th e n and only then did he quickly confirm his suspicion that six wooden cubes would balance six wooden cubes; 12 marbl es, 12 marbles, and so on. I had desperately itchy fingers watching Daryll make his dis covery because h e 'd be on the verge of it, and then he'd mess it up by putting the bottle caps and a block on one side and four marbles o n the other side. Scientific method can be as mess y for 6-year-olds as it is for Nobel Prize winners . Teachers can 't provide shortcuts to discovery. What the y can - and must - do is provide time and space for the child who is ready to make his own discoveries ...
WRITING TO COMPOSERS Susan Jaffe r wrote in the Wes tern PA Homeschooler s, Spring 'E): ... My Junior Gir l Scout troop worked on their Music Lover badge thi s year, and one of th e requir ed activities was to listen to several different types of music and to write down their feel i ngs about each piece as an imaginary letter t o the compo ser. I decided to use this opportuni ty t o expose the girls to some music they might not hav e heard before, even though it would of course be exposure on a very limited basis . I chose part of S hostakovich 's 5th Sym phony , Linda Ronstadt's rendition of George Gershwin's "I' ve Go t a Crus h On You," and th e Hoedown dance from Aaron Copland's "Rodeo . " The girls wer e r a ther uncomfortable with the Shostakovich, loved the Gers hwin, and were very e nthu siastic about the Copland. To be honest, I h adn 't expec t ed much in the way of writing f rom them, so I was touched t o read their let ter s to Mr. Cop land, describing how the music made their feet tap, and h ow they could see the dancers in their minds. One fourth - grader wr ote, " . . . Be s t of luck with your future hits'" I was f asc inat ed , and it occur r ed to me that Aaron Copland might feel the same way about the let ters, so I made Xerox copies and sent them t o him. To my enormous delight, we received th e most c harming note from the composer . I th ought some of you might like to adapt this activity to do with your h o meschoo l ers . I have the s tr ong suspicion that the girls were able to write so freely because at the time they (and I ) thought they were writ ing imaginary letters ...
THE EFFECT OF ART LESSONS From Marsha Rullman in Flagstaff : ... Nancy Wallace's letter in GWS #44 on Vita ' s art lessons really got me to thinking. We went through a sim i l ar th ing with our son Nic holas (12). For several years he took art lessons in a smal l group situation wit h a wonderful teacher. She had introduced him to the joys of clay and scul pt,. " and kiln-fi ri ng. He couldn't wait to go to those lessons each week ... Then suddenly last sum mer Nicholas began saying he couldn't think of a n ything neat to do in art class any more. I had already n oticed that his a rt work between sessions was dwindling, too. This had con cerned me, and I had even spoken with his teacher abou t it. She seemed to feel i t was the age he was a t.
So last fall we did not sign up for the c lass es . I felt saddened by this a little, especially when I r ecalled his joy wi th it. Even as a preschooler he had painted pi c tures daily with our tempura s, and now it just seemed to be all gone. But, 10 and be hold, after two or three months of doing nothing, Nicholas began draw ing again a nd is now at it daily with little stories t o go along with the pictures. I have come to feel that he had just reached a sa tur a ti on point and had to get away from it for a while. So it may be that l esso ns of this so rt - and probably all l essons, sc ho o l included - can o nly be absorbed at periods of intense inter est, and once that is past, it is best to stop for a period of assimila tion. Perhaps, too, one subtly becomes dependent on the teacher to t e ll you how you are doi n g, and so you lose some of your own balanc e . Do n't get me wrong - I think l essons ca n be great at the right times . But it seems there are danger signals to watch for. As a former flute teacher, I am wondering if any Suzuki students get into this situation. I can recall many students who just reached a pla teau after a time and were just wast ing their time and money . If I were to give flute lessons in the future, I would definitely encourage s tudents to do it for s hort spurts and not year after year, as is the case many times ...
NEW BOOKS AVAILABLE HERE LITTLE BEAR'S VISIT and LITTL~ BEAR'S FRIEND, by Else Ho lme luna-- Min ar~ k (each $2.95 + post). As I wrote i n GWS #38, we had been frustra ted trying t o find books that were appropriate for Joshua (t hen 6~) as he entered the world of written words. He was expressing the de si r e to read a "real book" that told a [tory. He had actually been-reaaTng or quite awhile before this time, but not sentences from books; largely just tw o or three wo rd s together from Sig ns, labels, catalogs , etc. and a few s impl e (a nd o ften boring to him) picture/word or rhyming books. To Jos hua this didn't coun t - reading was wh en you read full sentences from a "real book" complete ly and correct ly without adult intervention. The search began - and ended wi th the pleasant discovery' ( th anks to Nancy Wallace) of the Little Bear books. At first Joshua didn't think he could manage them, but after some gentle prodding and encourageme nt , he read the first page all the way through b y himself and that was all it took. He was reading a "real book" and it was official - he knew he could ~ read' Tne-DOOks are nicely illustrated by Maurice Se nd ak, a lo n g time favor ite of ours . Most every page is depicted simply in shades of brown and green, with the bear family represented in a human-like fashion. The chap t ers are s h ort and pro vide quick satisfaction to the begin ning reader. Many pages contain only four or five s h ort sentences with an occasion al fu ll page of text. I some times volunt eere d t o read the "long" pages for Joshua, but we soon began taking turns - each of us reading one page. He was surprised and happy to discover that he could read an e nt ire page of "just words." So the Little Bear books were a real confidence builder for him.
I n LITTLE BEAR'S VISIT, Lit tle Bear spends time with his grandpar ents. One especially touching chapte r deals wi th a story that L ittle Bear's grandmother t e lls him about his moth er's c h ildhood. We all sighed and sniffed a little at the end of this sho rt yet very meaningful story of how Mother Be a r gives a young robin its freedom . LITTLE BEAR' S FRIEND contains four short chapters all about Little Bear meeting someo n e new, becoming friends f o r the summer, and having to say goodbye to his new friend at sum mer's end. It is a nice story about friendships, caring, and continuing a relationship when apart . As we re-read these two books fo r the purpose of this review, we were all under the spell of Little Bear once again. We found ourselves chuckling at how cute and comic a l a character he is, and enjoyed these books from the series just as much as we did two years ago and then some' --- KAREN SCHADEL A GAT HERI NG OF DAYS by Joan BIos ($3 .95 + post). thi s beautiful novel, s ubtitled "A New England Girl's Jour nal, 1830-32" will appeal to any fami lies who enjoy the Laura Ingalls Wilder series, DIARY OF AN EARLY AMERI CAN BOY, CADDIE WOODLAWN, and other realistic historical fiction. Catherine Hall, age 13, lives on a New Hampshire fa r m and has been responsible for looking after the house and her younger sister since their mother died four years before. Her journal entries cover both routine daily l ife - th e weather, the crops, new recipes, neighborhood gossip - and the stirring events that break the ordi nary : a runaway slave , long visits from faraway relatives, holiday celebrations, courtship a nd marriage, illness and death. The writing is sprinkled lightly with quaint words, spellings, and phrases, such as "mayhap," IlIt is, " "tho' , " "cyder," "prolong'd," "t eaze, " "h e bade us consider, " and lots of ampersands. There's just enough of thi s o ld-fa shioned usage to lead you to believe th e diary is genuine, yet not so much of i t as to make it difficult for the modern-day reader t o understand. A particularly apt turn of events - late in the story, the cruel ty of a schoolmaster causes Catherine and her sister to be r emoved from sc hool and taught at home' - DR ALL SAIL SET. by Armstrong Sperry (8.95 + pos t ) . The first para graph of any good book is a grabber a hook to catch you into the book and
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