Teaching with Cinderella

Like many other girls in the United States, Oldest Daughter was just nuts about the Disney Princesses when she was 5.

We restricted TV to two hours a day, but as often as not, those two hours were spent watching Ariel battle the sea witch, or Belle bringing salvation to the enchanted castle of the Beast. Around and about the living room, the kitchen and her bedroom were dolls of Mulan, Tinkerbell, Snow White and Cinderella. And one of her favorite games was to dress up as Cinderella and pretend she was being forced to do housework. (It was hard not to take advantage.)

It's great to see your child excited by something, but when that something is as superficial as the Disney Princesses often are, it can be frustrating as well. As a father, I want my children to focus more on character than on appearances, and too often the marketing driving the Disney Princesses has been concerned with looks. What's a dad to do?

We had fallen into homeschooling because of the policies of local school district. Oldest Daughter had been born two weeks too late to begin kindergarten with her preschool classmates, but she already had begun to unlock the wonders of reading on her own, and we weren't about to miss the opportunity to educate her.

So, wanting to make Oldest Daughter's enthusiasm for Cinderella my ally, I asked her if she would like to hear another version of the story, from Germany. When she agreed, I pulled my beloved copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales down from the bookshelf, and introduced her to Ashenputel, the Cinderella whose stepsisters actually cut off parts of their feet to get into the shoe.

That simple action was the first step on a journey that took us around the world. In the months that followed, we made one trip after another to the local library to discover stories of Cinderella from other countries, other times, and other cultures. When those had finished, we snatched up other fairy tales, wherever we could find them, and made connections to other tales we had read, wherever we could.

With Cinderella alone, Oldest Daughter was exposed to fairy tales from Mexico, Ireland, Cambodia, the Philippines, Germany, Swaziland, England, France, West Virginia, Haiti and Los Angeles. She has seen the fairy godmother as a maid, a grandmother, a magical fish and a bull. Once we even read a story where Cinderella was a boy.

And, more than literature, this was a lesson in geography. Every time we read a fairy tale, Oldest Daughter and I would find the country of origin on our world map, and place a sticker of that country's flag on the map.

It's been seven years since then. My daughter doesn't play the Princess game any more, except where her little sister is concerned. But she still remembers the other Cinderellas whose stories we read, and she's been known to make connections between stories that I never saw.

Not a bad start for homeschooling.

Playing by ear

Oldest Daughter has been doing a decent job learning the piano.

I started pushing her about two weeks ago to start playing the piano for at least half an hour each day, usually at the start of the day. Music is an essential part of being human, and studies have shown that our brains pick up a fundamental connection between music and mathematics, and even between music and speech, so that becoming "fluent" in an instrument can have other benefits. (Some anthropologists have speculated that humans sang before we developed speech.)

Besides, she's been puttering about with our keyboard off and on for years. It was time she got serious.

She's been doing a fantastic job  The only guidance she has received has been to start each song at C-natural, and then figure out from her knowledge of the song which note to play next. It's a method that takes time and patience, and will never get her to Carnegie Hall, but it's got fairly rapid gratification in that a player can usually work out a song fairly quickly.

With no help but her own ear and lots of practice, Oldest Daughter has figured out how to play four or five songs the entire way through a verse, with nary an error aside from the difficulty of maintaining a steady tempo. Today I had her play for me the songs she's worked out, and she played "Holy, Holy, Holy," "My Bonny Lies over the Ocean," "Silent Night" and "Joy to the World." She's also been working on "Peter's Denial" from "Jesus Christ Superstar" and a host of other songs, but she's got the idea.

So today, following her successful performance, I gave her lesson two: Figure out how to play those songs starting at a key other than C-natural, and no, playing it an octave up or down doesn't count. It's got to be a completely different note.

The idea here, of course, is that she is teaching her ear to judge the correct relationships among the keys, and training her fingers to move to the right spots at the same time. While she's doing this, I also am working on getting her to hold her hands correctly, and to use just her right hand for the melody line. We'll start using the left hand for harmony, and then for chords, soon enough.

Meantime, Middle Daughter has received a flute, and is very excited by it. Now we just need to figure out how she can play it, since neither of us knows how, I suspect this means that she will be getting lessons, since I've no idea how to play a flute and would have no clue on where to start.

Book club: 'Jane Eyre'

I've been running a book club out of my house the past few months. After a short break for the holidays, we're getting ready to resume on Jan. 9, when we look at Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre." As always, the club is open to new members as we start a new book.

Often described as an early and influential feminist work because of its focus on the feelings and character of a strong female character, "Jane Eyre" has been adapted into a number of movies, most recently this past year, and into a number of musicals and even operas.

The club generally meets at 11 a.m. Mondays at my house. We'll be looking at a few things over the course of the book, but with a particular focus on Brontë's characterization of her major characters. Other discussions are likely to touch on Brontë's depiction of religion in the persons of Brocklehurst, Helen Burns and St. John Rivers, and on Jane's efforts to maintain her independence in the presence of strong male characters such as Brocklehurst, Rochester and St. John Rivers.

The book club is intended for young teens, but is open to anyone who reads the books and is up for the discussions. There is no charge for the group. Our first discussion, of the first five chapters of "Jane Eyre," is set to begin at 11 a.m. Jan. 9.

Feel free to contact me for directions, or with any other questions.

Book club: 'Frankenstein' session

We had a fantastic discussion of "Frankenstein" today; beyond the standard plot summaries. All four children surprised me with the depth of their understanding of some of the thematic issues.

The past couple weeks we've had some wide-ranging discussions about the notion of playing God, and whether Victor was in his rights or not to create life. Today there was discussion, backed up with some pretty solid reasoning, about whether Victor should have created the monster a companion, as he originally had promised to do. It was interesting to hear each of the kids weigh in on whether Victor should be concerned more with what the monster's descendants might do, years later, or with his obligation to the immediate problem of the monster's isolation and loneliness.

It was a fascinating discussion, however brief, and it was a kick to hear it coming from children who are only at the end of what would be middle school age. It's a sign that they're starting to process some of the deeper underlying issues of what they're reading, and not just with the surface story. That's fantastic to see at any age, but especially as young as they are.

 

If anyone is interested, sci-fi author Fred Saberhagen has written other books about Shelley's creation. There is also a mashup of Sherlock Holmes and the monster, by Dan Baranowski. I've no idea if it's any good, but it's available online fromAmazon.

Thanks to everyone to all for a good fall "semester." Looking forward to continuing after the holidays, with "Jane Eyre."

Book club: Discussion questions for 'Frankenstein'

Shelley spends about as much time developing the monster's "childhood" as she does telling us about Victor's formative years. For instance, Victor grows up in a loving family, with parents who take in the children of strangers to ensure that these children have a future, and they evidently pour a lot of love out upon him, his brothers and his "cousin." The monster, meanwhile, spends more than a year in the presence of a deeply loving French family, and feels himself warmed by the deep affection they have for another.

 

And, like his creator, the monster is devoted to his adopted family and does all manner of things to help them, to the point that they call him a friendly spirit.

 

So:

 

1) What are some other similarites between the monster's story and Victor's, and what are some differences?

2) The monster never has a name except for the invective that Victor keeps heaping upon it. How does that affect how we view it?

3) Now that you've read the monster's story, and understand what drove it to kill William, whom do you consider to be more evil: the monster, or Victor?