The Place of Dialogue in Christian Education

Lessons from Plato and Postman: The Place of Dialogue in Christian Education
by Autumn Hinrichs

Socrates, in his educational dialogue, Meno, bases his pedagogical method upon his understanding of human nature. Believing that the soul experiences knowledge of the true forms prior to its embodiment, Socrates explains that this knowledge can be drawn out of a person’s memory through reasonable dialogue in a process that he calls recollection.[1] Another thoughtful educator living many centuries after Socrates suggests a similar pedagogy, but bases it upon an extremely different concept of knowledge and human nature. Neil Postman, in his book Teaching as a Subversive Activity, argues that humans are makers of meaning, and that through language, a student can express the meaning he has projected on the world around him. Therefore, he says, a teacher must engage his students in dialogue to draw out this meaning. What is it that makes dialogue such an effective method, even in the context of thoroughly contrary worldviews? While neither Socrates nor Postman has a perfect understanding of human nature, they both recognized certain truths about the human experience which must be considered in the production of an effective education, whether it be Christian or secular.

Man is a creature who values and is able to grasp meaning. This principle is at the core of both Socrates and Postman’s pedagogical methods, but they hold to polar opposite beliefs about the nature of meaning. Postman locates meaning in man, while Socrates locates it in the forms. Postman’s view of meaning may be summed up in his statement that, “we do not ‘get’ meaning from things, we assign meaning.”[2] As the maker of meaning, man is “at the center of the universe.”[3] Socrates’ man, on the other hand, is far from being at the center of the universe or the source of meaning. Rather, meaning is found in the forms, which the immortal human soul has seen before entering the body, and which a person must endeavor to recall through searching and learning.[4] Whatever the source of meaning is, both Socrates and Postman help their students access it by means of dialogue. In both cases, dialogue is successful as a pedagogical method because it guides students to meaningful questions and enables them to hone and express their thoughts through the art of articulation.

The Christian worldview is much more akin to that of Socrates than of Postman: humans get truth; they don’t assign it. Therefore, a Christian pedagogy ought to draw more from Socrates than from Postman, but this is not to say Postman’s pedagogy is thoroughly unuseful. Postman presents dialogue as a way of discerning relevance, by which he means that which is truly of interest for the student. He writes that a “teacher cannot always project himself into the perspective of his students, and dare not assume that his perception of reality is necessarily shared by them.” [5] Postman held that “man is an island,” and therefore, each man must ultimately pursue his own sense of meaning. It is true that a teacher must seek to understand the perspectives of his students because he can only be effective when he understands what they care about. It must be noted, however, that this understanding is not the only purpose of dialogue. Socrates’ worldview enables a teacher to use dialogue not merely to draw out the thoughts of the student, but to relate those thoughts to the reasonable reality of the outside world. Hence, he asks his students questions that expose their ignorance and make them wonder about things. By this method, he stirs up an interest in the learner that is born not only from the student’s own self, but from the mystery of the knowledge which has hitherto alluded him. In this way, Socrates opens his students’ eyes to meaningful topics of inquiry that ought to be considered because they are good in themselves, not merely because the student takes personal interest in them.

A Christian pedagogy will help students desire to learn both by understanding (as Postman recommends) where the student is at in his thinking and questioning, and by guiding the student to important questions he had not yet thought of, as demonstrated by Socrates. Contrary to Postman’s claim, Christianity dictates that man is not an island: he has access to eternally objective truths. Lewis gets at this concept in his discussion of objective value, which is “the Way the universe goes.” “It is also the Way,” he writes, “in which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and super cosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar.”[6] Because men are not islands, they can assist one another in conforming to the great cosmic Way, which is the ultimate source of meaning. The dialectical method of Socrates is an effective way to do this.
In addition to producing meaningful content for education, dialogue also serves as an effective method for helping students to think well and grow in understanding. Postman advocates a “language-centered” education because it is through language which men attribute meaning to things.[7] While Postman’s reasons for this method are incompatible with a Christian worldview, the method itself is not. Language is a significant means by which humans grasp reality and articulate ideas to themselves and to others. Melanchthon, in his oration, “Praise of Eloquence,” emphasizes the significance of speaking well because we “represent the sentiment of our mind by speech.”[8] A conversation-based pedagogy requires a student to do just that: to externalize his ideas by expressing them in verbal form. This process entails thinking through his ideas, clarifying them, and organizing them in a sensible way through words. As a result, a student increases his ability to think critically and deepens his grasp on the meaning of things.

God has created man with the capacities of reason and speech in order that we might know and express His truth. Dialogue is an excellent method of helping one another grow in understanding of the objective reality of God and his creation. The uniquely Christian aspect of dialogue is that enables growth and learning to occur in the context of human relationships. As we dialogue, we are not only growing in knowledge; we are communicating truth with another human soul.

Footnotes


[1] Plato Meno.
[2] Postman 99.
[3] Ibid., 98.
[4] Plato Meno 81.c-d.
[5] Postman 60
[6] C. S. Lewis, Abolition of Man, 18.
[7] Postman 102.
[8] Melanchthon “Praise of Eloquence.”

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle
by Betty MacDonald
Report by Jonathan Hinrichs

Who was Mrs. Piggle Wiggle? Mrs. Piggle Wiggle was someone whom everybody liked. She was different from everybody. Like she had a house that was built upside down. Also, she always had holes in her back yard because all the boys were trying to find the lost treasure that her husband had buried. She always had flowers in her front yard. People were always pretending they had a campfire on the floor in the house, because her living room had a really long chandelier. Everybody would pretend like they were cowboys or Indians when they were at her house. She could do stuff for kids to help them listen to their parents.
One time she helped a little boy eat more. She did this by letting the boy have really little amounts of food. The boy grew very weak. So he listened to his mom and ate the amount of food he was told.
Another time there was a girl who never wanted to take a bath. One morning her mother told her take a bath and she screamed at the top of her lungs “I don’t want to”. Finally she grew so dirty that she went out to get the mail and the mailman screamed because she was so dirty and she didn’t have her hair brushed. Then one morning she went into eat breakfast and said “Addy, ould you ggget a ink of ater, ease?” (That says, “Daddy, could you get a drink of water please?) Her mom and dad never let people see her because she was so dirty.
Finally one morning she had radishes growing out of her. She said to her mom and dad, “Ould I ake a bath?” She said it so clearly that it broke some of the dirt on her cheek. She never, ever wanted to be dirty again.
There were other cures like the fighter-quallers cure, and the never-want-to-go-to-bedders cure, the selfishness cure, and the won’t pick upper toys cure, and the answer-backer cure. Mrs. Piggle Wiggle always knew what to do to help children do the right thing.

Pilgrims

The Landing of the Pilgrims
by James Daugherty
Report by J.J. Hinrichs

The pilgrims were separatists. Separatists means they were separating from the church of England. The church of England was adding things into the Bible and the separatists did not want things added to the Bible. They were living in England and they were being threatened by being put in prison so they had to flee. They went to Holland and then they were called pilgrims.

While the pilgrims were living in Holland, they lived in an area called “Stink Alley.” They lived there because they did not have a lot of money and they did not have very good jobs.

Then some of their daughters married some of the Holland boys and some of their boys joined the Holland army. All of the boys and girls were forgetting the ways of England. The parents wanted to move because they did not want the children to forget the English ways.

They decided to go to America, but they did not have enough money. They decided to get the Mayflower to sail them to the New World. When they were sailing one of the sailors said that he hoped to throw half of the pilgrims over but within a few days he died. Everyone thought it was God’s hand. No one else got a sickness.

When the pilgrims landed they started exploring and found a graveyard of the Indians. They found a man that had yellow hair and they did not know if he was a chief or a lost sailor. They also found mounds of corn. They found pots and a bunch of stuff.

Then the pilgrims built a storage house where they put the sick and the food. Next they built some houses on the hillside and finally they built a fortress that was 12 feet high all around the houses.

There was a terrible sickness and they got really cold from the winter. Only nine women survived. The ones that were still sick but could still walk had to go work on the storage house. They did not have a lot of food. They had to give only one scoop of corn for each person.

One day Squanto came and he taught them how to plant corn, stomp on the ground at the beach and eels would come up (which doesn’t work anymore). Squanto had a friend named Samoset they could both speak English. Samoset brought Chief Massasoit to do the peace pipe with William Bradford. He brought ninety other braves with him. The woman were afraid to feed this many. Samoset fixed it, he told his braves to go into the woods and bring back four other deer. They also ate lobster, clams, duck, goose, and of course turkey. It became a barbecue.

Many things happened, like Squanto died. Some of the Indians planned war once against the pilgrims, there was a rattlesnake skin that had a bunch of colors on it and it was filled with arrows. The pilgrims filled it with bullets and sent it back.

Once they had a drought and they prayed for eight hours and then it began to rain lightly with no wind. The pilgrims praised God.

Sarah, Plain and Tall

Sarah, Plain and Tall
by Patricia MacLachlan
Report by Jonathan Hinrichs

There was a father with two children, Anna and Caleb. Their mother had a son, Caleb, then she died the next day. So Caleb never had a mom. They always wanted a mom.

Once there was a man who advertised for a wife and he got one. So that’s what Caleb and Anna’s dad did.

Then a woman wrote a letter to them and said, “I do not have a husband. I live by the beach. My name is Sarah and I am plain and tall.”

Then they wrote letters back and forth. Then one day she wrote a letter that said, “I will come. I have a yellow bonnet and I am plain and tall.” She said she would be at the train station.

The day that Sarah came, papa went to the train station. Caleb and Anna first saw dust in the passage. Then they went to the wagon and out came Sarah and she came with her own things. Then they wondered if she would be nice and she was.
Sarah brought many special things with her. She gave some of them to the children. Like a shell that you could hear the ocean in. And a stone that was white and very round. She also brought her gray cat named Seal. Seal was gray and white just like the seals. Sarah told them that she would miss the ocean.

They went through a lot of hard times. Like one time they went through a kind of storm that was really bad and they had to stay in the barn and the house almost fell but it didn’t.

Caleb always asked Sarah if she brought some of the sea. One day she brought gray, blue and green pencils, and candles. She said to their father Jacob that they would get married in the summer.

Snakes

Snakes, Snakes, Snakes
by Jonathan Hinrichs

Snakes are very powerful reptiles. A reptile is cold blooded which means it needs to get heat from the sun because it doesn’t make its own heat.

Snakes can eat things much bigger than their head. Because their jaw unhooks and their teeth only go backwards it helps them to suck the prey into their mouth. We would be able to eat a whole watermelon if we could eat like a snake.

The way God designed a snake they don’t have stretchable skin like us. So they have to shed their skin when they grow out of it.

Snakes have to eat just like people. They’re more like the second on the food chain because they are good at killing things but other animals can eat them, like road runners, raccoons and hawks.

Snakes are powerful but don’t be afraid!

The Princess and the Pea

The Pea Princess
From Abbie-gail

One day a princess went knock, knock at the door. Then a king opened the door and a beautiful princess said that her hair was all wet and her shoes were all wet and her dress was wet and all torn from the rain. The queen put a little, little pea and a lot of covers right into a bed for the princess. Then they said, “Here is a bed for you.” She stayed awake because her feeled something really tough. Then everyone said, “Why it’s a princess!” Then she married the prince.

The Bears on Hemlock Mountain

The Bears on Hemlock Mountain
By Alice Dalgliesh
Report by Jonathan Hinrichs

Once there was a boy named Jonathan. His momma told him to go over this mountain named Hemlock mountain to get a pot. So one day he did go to his aunt’s to get this big iron pot.

Some people said there were bears on Hemlock mountain, but his mother didn’t really think there were any bears.

His mother, when he was out of sight, started worrying and started baking cookies. She found herself saying a pattern in her mind: There are no bears on Hemlock mountain, no bears at all. No bears. No bears. No bears at all.

Jonathan got to the top of Hemlock mountain and he started munching on a cookie and threw out a carrot and bread crumbs for the rabbits and birds. And he threw out nuts for the squirrels. Then he started saying the same pattern as his mom: There are no bears on Hemlock mountain, no bears at all. No bears. No bears. No bears at all.

Then it started getting later and he started trudging down the mountain. Then he got to his Aunt Emma’s house and rang the brass door knocker. His Aunt Emma started coming to the door and then she opened it and said, “Goodness sakes Jonathan, why did you come here?” Then she let Jonathan in and she wondered why Jonathan had come. Then she asked if Jonathan would like some cookies. Jonathan started eating cookies and drinking milk and then fell fast asleep.

When he woke up he said goodbye and put on his muffler. When he had gone quite a ways he felt quite silly about himself because he had forgotten the iron pot. He started back and rang the brass door knocker again and his Aunt Emma opened the door and asked him what he had come here for. “My mother wants to use the iron pot.” Then she gave him the iron pot.

He started going home and when he got to the top of Hemlock mountain he got tired and sat on the big iron pot. Then he heard a big heavy Crunch, crunch, crunch. He started saying to himself right now, which was quite silly to say right now: There are no bears on Hemlock mountain, no bears at all. No bears. No bears. No bears at all.

Then the bears got closer and closer and he got under the pot so he had a little hide out. He started wondering if anyone was looking for him. He heard a crunch, crunch, crunch. He heard his father say, “Jonathan” he said, “Hello Pa!” Then he heard a voice say “Hello Jonathan!!!” The bears got tired of this and trudged away.

His father and uncles got to him and Jonahtan said, “There ARE bears on Hemlock mountain. There ARE bears on Hemlock mountain.” His father said, “Nonsense”. Then they saw the footprints in the snow. All the rest of his uncles went to look for the bears. Jonathan and his father heard a bang and Jonathan felt like they were going to have bear meat for dinner.

Germs

Germs, Germs, Germs
Report by Jonathan Hinrichs

Germs live everywhere. They are mean little things. You can only see them with a microscope. Flies are one of their big helpers.

They are so mean they give you colds and more sicknesses. And they are so mean that they are like these little people who sting you with colds.

They live in trashcans, warm-moist places like your mouth, and a lot of other places.

You spread germs by putting your hand in your nose to get yucky things out of your nose; and by chewing on your pencil; by not covering your mouth when you sneeze or cough; when you don’t wash your hands when you go to the bathroom or forget to flush the toilet.

You can kill germs by putting them in hot water with soap and when you are in the sun. When you eat good food, like spinach, it makes it so the germs have a hard time getting to you. Germs, germs, germs.

The Sword in the Tree

The Sword in the Tree
by Clyde Robert Bulla
Report by Jonathan Hinrichs

One day there was a man that fell at the castle gate and it was Shan’s uncle. Shan was the son of lord Weldon and they lived in a castle and fortress called Weldon castle. As the uncle got better he showed that he was a cruel man.

One day Shan’s uncle and father went on a hunt to catch foxes, but his uncle really meant to kill him. When he got home then all the others left until just the uncle was alone and he said that Shan’s father fell in the quicksand. Shan and his mother cried and cried. Finally they had to leave the castle.

Shan went to Camelot to talk with King Arthur. Two days a month King Arthur would talk to the people about their problems. There was a huge room with a table that was the biggest table that he ever saw. King Arthur said one of his knights would go with him to defeat his uncle.

Sir Gareth helped him to fight his uncle off of his land. Then Sir Gareth was badly hurt before he came and he got a little hurt during this battle.

One of the old servants, Nappus, a great doctor, took a torch and keys and had Shan follow him. He led him to the dungeon and then he had some keys and he unlocked a couple doors and then they came to a room and there was a man laying there and it was Shan’s father! Then he ran to his father and they saw he was still alive. Then he tried to pick him up but his father said, “Oh no, you are a prisoner too.” But Shan said, “You are free!”

The Three Little Pigs

The Three Little Pigs
Retold by Abigail Hinrichs

One day a little pig said, “Can I have some hay? I make a house with it.” So the pig did! So him was making, making, making. The terrible wolf said, “Little pig, little pig, tuff, huff, blow yours house down!” He said, “I won’t let you come in, not by the hair of my chinney, chinney.” So him tuff and huffed and blowed the house down. The little pig runned away.

So the next pig wanted to build a house with sticks. But sooner the wolf comes and say, “Tuff I blow the house down” So the little pig run away.

The next pig got bricks and soon you know who came? The mean, mean wolf. He said, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in.” The pig said, “Chinney, chin, chin I won’t let you come in.” The wolf tuffed and huffed and the house did not blow down. So he got on the house and put his nose down (the chimney). The pig put water and the wolf jumped in the water and screamed, jumped out and ran away. The end.

Red Sails to Capri

Red Sails to Capri
by Ann Weil
Report by Jonathan Joseph Hinrichs

Red Sails to Capri is a story about a young boy named Michelle. Michelle lived on Capri, which means goat, and is an island near Italy. Micelle was with a fisherman, named Angelo, who was mending a net, when Michelle saw a boat that was moving into the harbor. The thing that was unusual about the boat was that it had red sails.

There were three men on the sailboat. They all went to Michelle’s house because his father had an inn. Michelle had to work for them because they were guests who paid money. Michelle got to know them really good.

One of the visitor’s names was Lord Derby. Lord Derby came to Capri to find beauty. He asked Michelle to show him the most beautiful spot in Capri. Michelle showed him a beautiful area. To get there they had to travel up a lot of steps until they got to a place at the steps where they could go up a trail and then they could go to a place where it was very beautiful. And then Lord Derby started to do his painting. When he was done he showed it to Michelle and it was not of the beautiful place it was a picture of the steps. Then Michelle said it looked like a stairway up to heaven. Michelle had never thought there were that many colors and so much beauty in the stairs.

Another visitor’s name was Monsieur Jacques. He came to find adventure. One day he wanted to take Michelle on the sail boat and they sailed around the island of Capri. Then Michelle said that all of the people who lived on the island took a big loop around a cove that was on the island. The people were too afraid that their ship would sink. They anchored and had lunch but they didn’t know what the danger was in the cove.
The third visitor’s name was Herre Nordstrom. Herre Nordstrom liked to eat two eggs for breakfast. He also liked to read. Herre Nordstrom wanted to find out why it was unsafe to go to the cove. Angelo was really going to make Herre Nordstrom not go to the cove. But he just had to go to the cove. Then all five men wanted to go to the cove to find out what the danger was. Everybody in the village was afraid of the cove except the three friends and Michelle’s father, Michelle, Pietro (Pietro was his friend) and Angelo.

When they got to the cove they had to lay down to get into the cave. When they got inside it was really beautiful because there was an opening under the water that let light in so it shone up and made everything look blue. They discovered that even though everyone was afraid there was really nothing to be afraid of. It was beautiful in the Blue Grotto of Capri.

The Iliad (Part I) by Homer, retold by Benjamin Hinrichs

**Disclaimer: The following content contains some descriptions of battle.

Paris was hunting and there was a flash of light and then Hermes came down out of the sky and told him there were three pretty ladies come and he needed to decide who was the prettiest. Hermes gave him a golden apple. Athena said that he would never lose a battle. Hera promised him that he would be the wisest man in the world. (That's just what I thought. (Ben's interjection)) The last goddess was the goddess of love and she said she'd give him the beautifullest woman in the world. Paris chose the goddess of love, Aphrodite. He gave her the golden apple and then he got to have Helen but she was already married to the King of Troy, Menelaus. Then he went over and stole her and then there was a war.

Then, Agamemnon took away Achilles' war prize, a lady. They got mad at each other and Achilles didn't want to fight to help the Greeks. Achilles was a really good fighter and the Greeks were getting hurt really bad and then all these people got hurt and there was a guy that came to kill and to put the ships on fire and Ajax was pushing all the Trojans away with his spear and then one of the warriors came and whacked off the blade of his spear.

One night, Patroclus and Odysseus went into the Trojan camp and stole some Trojan horses and chariots and the Trojans had the same idea as the Greeks. Odysseus and Patroclus went into the bushes when Dolan (a Trojan) went by. They threw a spear over his shoulder to scare him and they hopped out at him and said they wouldn't kill him. They asked him where all the Trojan stuff was and he was breaking all the secrets for his life and after he told them, they killed him. Then, they snuck in right where he told them and they stole all the horses and armor and they killed like 200 people and they snuck back to the camp.

Then, Achilles didn't mind about all the people getting hurt and he set all the Myrmidon army out and his best friend led and he wore his armor so that he'd look like Achilles but he got killed and the Trojan that killed him took off his armor, and Achilles didn't have any armor but he needed to get back into battle to fight to lead the Myrmidon army since his friend Patroclus was dead. ("He was sad." says Christian)

"The box was covered with arrows." (C) He got some really nice boxes and around the whole shield it had his whole life around the shield. The god of fire made the armor for him ("Because he blew it with fire, it came into tin!" C)

First, Achilles didn't really have compassion for all the people that were getting hurt and then his friend died. And he changed because it was his best friend and he was crying and all of the water-nymphs came up and asked him why he was crying and he told them why he was crying and he went back into battle and then he fought by the river and he killed so many people that it filled the water with blood. Then, he hit the water to clean out his spear and he hurt the water and then the water started fighting him and he had to fight the water and then the god of fire came down and blew fire on the water and then it stopped when he asked him if he would stop hurting Achilles.

This is as far as we got so far.

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

Three Billy Goats Gruff
By Abbie Hinrichs

One day there were three goats who wanted to eat grass and get fat. But they couldn’t because there was an ugly troll under a bridge. One day the littlest goat went on the bridge. “Who’s that walking on my bridge?” “It’s me.” “You can walk on my bridge.” Then the middle one came. “Who is walking on my bridge?” “It is me.” “I will eat you up.” “No fair. You wait for my brother comes, he’s bigger than me!” His brother came and the troll said, “Who is walking on my bridge?” “It is me” And he poked him with his horns and the troll fell off the bridge. The billy goats Gruff walked on the grass and ate it.

Paricutin

Hill of Fire
by Thomas P. Lewis
Report by JJH
10-5-07

There was a farmer in Mexico who thought nothing ever happened but something did happen. Everyday he would get up early and work in his corn field. And one time he was working in his cornfield when his son Pablo came out to help. Then the ox stopped because it thought there was a rock. But the plow really got stuck in a small hole in the ground.

Pablo and his father heard this rumbling sound and it smelled like rotten egg. Smoke began to come out of the hole and then an explosion! They ran and ran. Then Pablo’s father ran to the town and rang the church bell. Everybody came to the church and prayed. Then they came outside to look if it was still there and it was!

The people ran away to a different place of town. And then they hoped that it would be gone the next day but it wasn’t. Then there were people who came in uniforms that helped all the people move to the other part of town far from the volcano. Too far that the volcano wouldn’t get the people.

The farmer was saved from the volcano. He built another house and a new cornfield. Everyday he could see the glow from the volcano. Sometimes Pablo would get other children to look at the farmer and the children would ask his father, “Are you going to make another hill of fire?”

Grandma Gretchen's Visit by Benjamin, Christian and Dante

We picked her up from the airport and then we had lunch. We had big tongue sticks (fruit bars) and we had sandwiches and cheese pops (cheese sticks) and apple juice. ("And cream soda, Sawzie!" says Dante.)

First we went to the 'Prise (Surprise) and then we went to the Star of India. It was fun when we went to the Star of India because there were skeletons in the basement and Grandma got to come with us.

When we took Grandma back to the airport, we went to Seaport Village. We saw lots of boats and minnow fishies. It was neat to see the school of fish, when Grandma gave us her glasses to see them because the fish looked really neat.

Grandma read us Peter Rabbit and "row hoe, row hoe". She read us the dinosaur book.

I like Grandma because she comes to see us.

Goldilocks

Goldilocks
by Abigail Marie
10-2-07

There was a golden-hair girl and she had a dollie and she was picking flowers. She went to the woods. She saw a little house and clapped her hands. Her go in and started eating their food. She sat in the chairs. There was a momma chair and a daddy chair and a baby chair. That one was too soft and that one was too rough. Her sat in the baby chair and it got broken!
She climbed up the stairs and her go in the momma’s bed and that one was too soft. Her go into the daddy bear bed was too rough. The other one was just right. So she slept in the baby’s bed.
Then the bears came home. “Who eat my food?” said the daddy bear. “Who eat my food?” said the momma. “Who eat my food?” said the baby?
“Who got on my chair?” asked the daddy bear. “Who in my chair?” asked the momma bear. “Who got my chair and crashed it?” asked the baby bear.
When they went upstairs that daddy asked “Who get on my bed?” The mommy asked “Who got on my bed?” Baby said who get in my bed?” Her run out the house. Her run out of the bear’s house to her momma.

Riding at Aunt Marie's House
By Christian Hinrichs

When I went horse-riding, we went trotting a lot. I was riding Silver. He's a nice horse because he lets us ride on him. I like trotting because it's like I'm running. Aunt Marie told me to put my arms out and then put them down. When I'm trotting, she tells me to take my hands on and off of the saddle. It was really, really, really, really, really fun. Aunt Marie is nice because she lets us ride on her horse, and she really likes me and Ben a lot.

The Lizard Eggs
By Benjamin Hinrichs

Well, one week when the students came, one of the students said that they had some lizard eggs under their hose. I was interested in them and then next week, they gave them to me in a little container. I put some moss and water and some nice dirt in it and we looked at them with the microscope and I think they are skink eggs. We saw little tiny lizards in them through the microscope. They haven’t hatched yet, but I am still taking good care of them. And that’s all.

Vesuvius

The Sleeping Giant
By Jonathan J. Hinrichs
9-18-07

In Pompeii, which was built around two thousand years ago, there was a sleeping giant. It wasn’t really a person, it was really a volcano. Pompeii was a town that was built underneath the volcano. The people thought it was a beautiful mountain.

One day it started getting ready to blast off. All these people were just coming and coming to Pompeii, to sell things, and to buy things. And there were carts rattling which woke up the people. It started as a normal day. Then the people were looking out of their windows just as the volcano blasted off.
The volcano’s name was Vesuvius. It had hot lava and gases. The gases are what make the volcano erupt and go everywhere. The people started to hide in their houses or run out of their houses to the beach. They had to run to the beach to escape. There were little volcano pebbles falling on their heads. Some people found pillows to cover their heads. The volcano was not done. There were ashes that started to fill up the houses to the second window. Soon the city was buried, only the tops could be seen.
There was a little boy who lived near Pompeii who grew up and became a writer and he wrote about the volcano. Hundreds of years later scientists came in and they had a lot of excitement that they found Pompeii.
Now it’s more like a museum than a town. A lot of people came and scientists to see if the sleeping giant would wake up again. Then there were a lot of people who came from all these different countries, America, and Italy. Vesuvius and Pompeii are in Italy. They don’t know if the sleeping giant will wake again.

Twenty-One Balloons

The Twenty-One Balloons
by William Pene du Bois
Report by J.J. Hinrichs
9-25-07

There was a man, Professor William Waterman Sherman, who wanted to fly away for a year, or months, to be alone. So he prepared a hot air balloon with a house beneath it. The house had a bed made out of air and when he was getting ready to go he would give the command and he would go.

Professor William Waterman Sherman left from San Francisco and flew over the Pacific Ocean. The days were sunny days. When he needed to wash something he would just dip it into the ocean with his fishing pole. When he needed to go higher he would just release some junk, or old food scraps.

Then once there was a sea gull what went right into the balloon and got trapped inside. He was terrified and didn’t know what to do. He started throwing all his things off of his balloon. He made it to an island which was called Krakatoa.

On the island of Krakatoa he met a guy named Mr. F who helped him to go through a jungle to a diamond mine. The diamond mine was so sparkling that they had to wear dark glasses. Some of the diamonds were as big as little pebbles, some were was big as baseballs, and some were as big as boulders.
At certain times of the day the whole island would move. Well, all except where the diamond mines were. After they left the diamond mines the volcano started to shake.

Mr. F. took Professor Sherman to his house. His house was French. The next day he saw all the houses and they were all different. Like T was for Turkey. One of the most interesting things was that all of the men’s names were after the alphabet like Mr. T, Mr. F…

There were 20 families living on the island. For money they would take a few small diamonds and sail to any place in the world and sell the diamonds and get the material to build their restaurant on Krakatoa.

For fun the children built an airy-go-round. Where you build a merry-go-round with hot air balloons. There was a tall pole that was like a screw thing and inside a little round thing there was a screw what went up and when they landed the commander would tell them to pull the strings and they would pull them and they would go up and around. Then finally they would go off the pole and then they would just go right around and go until the commander to let all the air out of the balloons. Then they would let all the air out and they would land in the ocean.

The day the volcano erupted everyone was in a restaurant and they saw the wall break into two. They all fled on a sort of platform and finally they got off with parachutes. Professor Sherman had to run back and forth to let the air out of the balloons. He landed in the Atlantic Ocean where he was rescued.

Of special note: we read that there was a volcano named Krakatoa which exploded in the 1880’s creating the loudest sound ever recorded. Krakatoa and Pompeii are the two most famous Stratovolcanoes.

Lengths of Time

Uncle Joe wants to send his thoughts on "Time"

Lengths of Time

by Phyllis McGinley

Time is peculiar

And hardly exact.

Though minutes are minutes,

You'll find for a fact

(As the older you get

And the bigger you grow)

That time can

Hurrylikethis

Or p l o d, p l o d, s l o w.

Waiting for your dinner when your hungry?

Down with the sniffles in your bed?

Notice how an hour crawls along and crawls along

Like a snail with his house upon his head.

But when you are starting

A game in the park,

It's morning,

It's noon,

And suddenly dark.

And hours like seconds

Rush blurringly by,

Whoosh!

Like a plane in the sky.

Sharing

Hi Family!!!
We are excited about the possibility of sharing our "writings" with each other. We look forward to reading from YOU! :)