Hidden Treasure of Glaston

During Easter break I finished reading THe Hidden Treasure of Glaston to Kieron. It was a good read (see Amazon reviews and there's also a review at Love2Learn (scroll down)). It was a nice time of year to read it, during Lent, because it sort of moves in its plot from winter to spring, from a quest to its fulfillment. In fact, one of the chapters contains a vibrant description of Holy Week and the Triduum in the abbey.

There is some information about Glaston Abbey here, and here.
There are pictures here, and I had Kieron read about the history and archaelogy of the abbey.

He also read about monastery life and order from several sources, including What your Fourth Grader Needs to Know, and the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, and Old World and America.

In one of those nice life coincidences, Liam was visiting a Benedictine Monastery in Oklahoma during the same time as we were finishing reading the book. Connections! Also, from the library arrived today Into Great Silence, which I've had recommended to me by several people. I hope to get the other kids to watch it with me and get some idea of the monastic life in visual form.

The book is rather satisfying philosophically because the Holy Grail and Excalibur are of course symbols -- icons -- as well as real objects in the history of the Abbey. Old books become an icon during the course of the book too.

I had hoped to get around to working a bit on calligraphy while we read the book and also some illuminating, since this is a big interest of mine from way back, but we didn't. However, earlier this year Kieron had read Across a Dark and Wild Sea about St Columcille and during this time he made his own ink and did some calligraphy in the uncial form.

Kieron is a wonderful kid to do these kind of loose rabbit trails with. I suggest books for him to read or sometimes just leave them lying around, and often he thinks up his own projects, and he always is at least willing to consider my suggestions (which I make in sympathy with his interest in hands-on, artistic or scientific type projects).

To be philosophical for a moment, I notice that once I get a good working relationship going with the individual child, learning becomes a lot easier and more delightful. Liam and I had a very dialectical relationship. My learning relationship with Brendan really took off the year I started a literature/map/history type unit approach. With Clare I learned to back off, and rely on encouragement and inspiration and sometimes a casual suggestion in the line of what she is interested in. Sean is extremely concrete and likes to "get it done". I've learned to work with his desire for efficiency and also give him good books and pretty much let him alone to develop his own relationship with them. I can tell how interested he is in a book by how fast he gets through it. I have learned from all of them how to learn and they also teach me a lot in their areas of interest. This is something Dorothy Sayers mentions as a natural result of real education in her essay The Lost Tools of Learning.

The little ones -- I'm not quite sure yet. And anyway, this line of thought is getting far away from the original Hidden Treasure. But one thing about the little ones -- they were really listening to a good part of this book. It is meant for ages 10 and up; I never would have thought of sitting down with Aidan and Paddy to read a book like this one, so far beyond their comprehension level. But they actually did absorb bits of it. Aidan loved shouting "Mystery of the Abbey!" whenever I said Abbey, and for some reason (I think it was the way his hair looked in the illustrations) the main character Hugh made him think of his young friend Malachy, so he corrected me, "Malachy!" every time I said Hugh. So he was listening and enjoying himself even if he wasn't getting everything out of it that Kieron was ;-).

This kind of receptive learning reminded me of when I read some of the Holling C Holling books to Sean, who was about six at the time, with 3 year old Kieron gravitating around us. A year later Kieron could narrate sections of Seabird, to my amazement. I guess interest across the age range is one of the "hidden treasures" of the homeschool.