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Friday night free for all

It's that time of night again - Friday night chat time.

Sorry for lack of posting today. I've had heaps of material, but I've been distracted with researching books that link into what we are studying in our history to buy from Amazon for the kids. Here's an example of what I've been looking at:

Black Ships Before Troy: The Story of The Iliad
The Wanderings of Odysseus: The Story of The Odyssey
In Search of a Homeland: The Story of the Aeneid
Gilgamesh the Hero
D'aulaire's Book of Greek Myths

I home-school and have been slowly moving to a more classical approach. I recently bought The Well Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home, a book that spells out in detail how to teach in this way, and it's blown my mind, so to speak.

Comments

  1. What a great book list! Bravo!
    Evening, Lucyna.

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  2. Evening all - how's the day been?

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  3. Off to the red hots shortly, but a tale from yesterday.

    I made an 11 year old girl cry.

    She and her mother knocked on my door (I work from home) and when i answered the young girl introduced herself and said she was giving out information.

    I knew at once they were witnesses, so asked her age, she said 11.

    So, I said to the mother she should let her child play, she was far too young to understand what she was doing and that, in my book, what she was doing was child abuse.

    The mother said the kid had played earlier in the day and understood what she was doing.

    Me to little girl - do you believe in god?

    Girl - yes.

    Me - do you belive in the devil

    Girl - no, but then a glare from mother changed the no yo a yes.

    Me - well, I can tell you something, there is no god and there is no devil.

    Tears welled in her eyes, it was like she'd just found out there was no fairy at the bottom of the garden.

    Am I right? Is it child abuse to drag a kid out proseletysing? And if not, why not.

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  4. Hi Kg, thanks! The Guide to a Classical Education at home states emphatically how important it is to fill the children's minds with all the classic myths so when they study the classical period again at highschool level and look at the actual translated texts, they won't be intimidated as they'll already know the stories. Sounds like a good system to me.

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  5. Hi Inventory!

    And Fugley, if I were that child's mother, I'd most likely not have taken her on such an excursion, but if for some reason I was stupid enough to have done so I'd tell her you were an evil man that would hopefully not burn in Hell some day. That maybe someone might be able to get through to you.

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  6. Perhaps no more abusive than teachers making kids sit through "An Inconvenient Truth" and filling their heads with alarmist garbage.

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  7. I assume you carried your heroics into the local schools and protested that, Fugley?

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  8. Fugley - ought not you have said "I don't believe that there is a god"? Personally I think you're wrong - but if you're right, when I die, I won't know it. Then again, if I'm right and you're wrong, when you die my friend, you WILL know it!

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  9. Evening from Christchurch City.

    I can't see any reason why an 11yo shouldn't spend time with their parents 'at work' under these circumstances. Especially not if their curiosity is going to meet useful characters like Mr Fugley to fuel their investigations.

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  10. Well, after that insight into Fugley's character, he's probably gone off to the "red hots" (is that dominos?), we can move on ...

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  11. Rosemary Sutcliffe is a great author, and Black Ships Before Troy - Mum read that to us to. So good.

    Hi Rick!

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  12. Good evening everybody.. Your weekly Bay of Islands weather report.
    Lots of rain since early June, not too cold.. Only half a bucket of cassarina being used tonight.
    weekly barnsley health report.. reduced down to 9 mg of warfarin per day.. :( very tired but all extremities working okay (surprisingly with the amount of drugs the doc is forcing into me..
    Sad news for Winston today. The timing stinks for everybody else.

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  13. Hi Andy, from the reviews it certainly seems that way. I've been looking at a number of her other books set in Britain around the time of the fall of Rome, and I'm ordering The Outcast for my older son. I'm trying to find other good historical fiction for children his age (11) from Roman times as well.

    The library is useless - it's mostly filled with fantasy. They got rid of their classics a number of years ago.

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  14. Beric the Briton, (about the Roman Invasion of Britain) and For the Temple (Fall of Jerusalem to the Romans) are both pretty good reads. By G. A. Henty. They'd be more suited to being read aloud though, great for the whole family.

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  15. Hi BB! Glad you are improving!

    What happened with Winston, did I miss something?

    Andy, thanks! Those books sound great! If you have anymore recommendations, I'll be glad to hear them!

    Here's a link to the first one for everyone else: Beric the Briton

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  16. Hey L and A.

    Didn't notice any Winston news either.

    I can't remember the title, but there was a book I read at school about a couple barbarian tribesman during Ceasar's day. They used to fight the Roman army with their bare hands in defense of their villiage and a special energy drink. What was that?

    Great illustrations.

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  17. Winston's mother died - aged 96.

    I guess that takes the heat off him for a few days

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  18. Asterix. I am not being stupid when I tell you that I learned history from those books.

    Vision Forum has been re-printing the G.A. Henty books, as they are pretty rare these days. And you do see the odd one on Trademe.

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  19. IV2, whilst condolences are correct and due. It really shits me that he will now get a pass from the media until the story is stale. he has a superhuman ability to wriggle out of trouble.

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  20. Evening all.

    Is it really Friday? I've been too busy.

    So Winston got a 100K donation from Owen Glen and apparently didn't know about it. No wonder he's in charge of foreign affairs.

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  21. He is a liar who has used his Mother's death to slip the news out there knowing the media will go easy on him. A new low.

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  22. Good evening all and I am disturbed with the mind set of fugley. What a crackpot. I do wonder what makes such a person tick -eh Alex?

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  23. My 11yo LOVES Asterix! Those comics gave him the desire to really delve into Roman history. It's been good.

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  24. Evening everyone.
    Things always happen when I go into Auckland for the Friday evening.
    What are these 'red hots' Fugley talks about.
    The wimmin in his local Liarbour club?
    I am glad to hear your health is improving BB.
    And how is Christchurch tonight Rick.
    That is a good selection of classical books.
    So Lucyna, if you educate your kids at home, the last week or two will have been business as usual.
    As a journalist, school holidays are a pain in the whatsit.
    You ring people and they are not their. And their workmates are too busy to talk to the press because they are doing the work of their holidaying workmates.

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  25. One news in its review of tomorrows headlines that Liarbour is in a poll boost from a new Fairfax Nielsen poll.
    No figures given but it seems their attacks on John Boy have paid off, says Neil Waka.

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  26. That was a great link Rick.

    Howdy FFM. What's this about Polls? Labour phoning themselves every night are they?

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  27. Good evening ZenT.
    I dont know anymore than they mentioned on One News tonight when Neil Waka read out the readlines of tomorrows papers.
    He said something about Liarbour attacks on John Key paying off and that was it.
    No figures were given.
    I thought Liarbour might have siffered from the Truckies protest, but it appears not.
    Maybe their muckraking has paid off.
    There again National doesn't seem to have handled policy very well.
    Its hard to get motivated about a bit of tweaking here and there and National essentially offering what Liarbour is.
    Yet the merest hint of change, like ACC, another issue that fails to motivate, has the left whipping up masses of fear.
    It does echo my 'damned if i do damned if i dont' posting
    last Saturday.

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  28. Yeah, Labour with a blue badge is hardly inspiring...

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  29. You lot need to get out a bit more.

    red hots = trots - fugley and mrs fugley went to play the horses at Addington. Sadly, as NZ lacks turf accountants, the night wasn't so uch fun.

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  30. Inventory2 said...
    Fugley - ought not you have said "I don't believe that there is a god"? Personally I think you're wrong - but if you're right, when I die, I won't know it. Then again, if I'm right and you're wrong, when you die my friend, you WILL know it!

    Friday, July 18, 2008 6:35:00 PM NZST


    From this, I assume you mean your god will exact some form of torment as his revenge because I failed to believe.

    A god who would think that I am so important to justify eternal torment is a god far too small to be worthy of worship.

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  31. You assume wrong Fugley.

    Could it be you have been operating under false conceptions all this time? What a waste of time and effort on your part.

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  32. wzen, nice of you to answer for inventory. But being under a false conception is better than believing in the impossibe - immaculate conception.

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  33. The diabolical fugley is unfortunately a Canterbury freak- bad-ill mutation, content on a life of frothing lies, venom rhetoric and debauchery.

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  34. No, Zen. I'll be saying no such thing.

    Clearly IVF works, cloning is working in some ares, problematical in others, but will eventually work.

    Immaculate conception, on the other hand, has never, and will never, work.

    What's a "secular fundamentalist"?

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  35. dad, I have just registered the domain name www.peterburns.co.nz

    I think I'll have some fun building a satan worshipping site for that domain. :-)

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  36. Fugley, so when something is clear to you, it seems obviously 'true'.

    When something isn't clear to you, you take the tack that it is 'clearly' false, as opposed to you simply not being able to understand something beyond your imagining.

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  37. Dad4J, that domain is currently available. It's likely Fugley is lying about the domain name registration.

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  38. Dear Zen,
    I have forwarded many emails sent by fugley onto police. That piece of filth can do what it likes as it has crossed the line and is going to face the consequences.Lots of people are watching fugley !!

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  39. zen, what's a secular fundamentalist?

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  40. Someone who believes in intransigent conceptions?

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