One day three princesses Abbie, Bonnie, and Lizzie were in Abbie's princess house. It was a very hot day. Abbie decided to have a water party. First, they played in the sprinklers. Then they dried off and made sure they were not dripping by using their towels. Finally, they went into the princess house and they ate icecream. The three princesses had a great time eventhough it was a hot day.
By Abbie Hinrichs
Monday, July 28, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Peter the Great
PETER THE GREAT
by Diane Stanley
report by Jonathan Hinrichs
Peter the Great was a great man who changed Russia. He really studied and in this paper you will hear how he changed his country.
Peter was the Tsar of Russia when he was only a boy of ten. He really liked war and ships, so as a child he would make war by firing cannons and guns.
When he was a little boy he watched trained monkey’s and bears dance before him. They used dwarves as his servants to honor him.
When he was 15 he discovered a boat that sailed upstream and he had never heard of something like that.
The Europeans wanted to change but not the Russians. The Russians wanted to live like their great-great-great-great grandparents lived. So Peter went to Europe to learn a bunch of things.
Peter learned how to work on boats and figured out about lots of things. The king of England knew he liked ships so much he made a fake battle that Peter could watch.
When Peter returned to Russia, he cut the beards off the men because it was just a custom. If they kept their beards they had to keep a chain around their neck saying “Beards are a ridiculous ornament.”
The men and the women didn’t stay together, they were always in a different room. They would give a daughter to a man with a whip and say that the new husband was in charge of her now. Peter had people give the woman a kiss not a whip. He held great parties to let the men see that the women didn’t need to stay apart and they could have a great time.
The poor were so terrified because their taxes went up and up and up and their sons had to go into the army.
There was this area near the sea that Peter wanted to build into a city. There were barley any shovels so the people had to dig with their hands. That is how St. Petersburg was built. The Russians called it “the city built on bones.”
One day Peter got an infection and doctors came to help him get better. Usually Peter got better, but this time he got worse. He died a few days later. There was a ceremony and some people said “Why did this great man have to die?”
by Diane Stanley
report by Jonathan Hinrichs
Peter the Great was a great man who changed Russia. He really studied and in this paper you will hear how he changed his country.
Peter was the Tsar of Russia when he was only a boy of ten. He really liked war and ships, so as a child he would make war by firing cannons and guns.
When he was a little boy he watched trained monkey’s and bears dance before him. They used dwarves as his servants to honor him.
When he was 15 he discovered a boat that sailed upstream and he had never heard of something like that.
The Europeans wanted to change but not the Russians. The Russians wanted to live like their great-great-great-great grandparents lived. So Peter went to Europe to learn a bunch of things.
Peter learned how to work on boats and figured out about lots of things. The king of England knew he liked ships so much he made a fake battle that Peter could watch.
When Peter returned to Russia, he cut the beards off the men because it was just a custom. If they kept their beards they had to keep a chain around their neck saying “Beards are a ridiculous ornament.”
The men and the women didn’t stay together, they were always in a different room. They would give a daughter to a man with a whip and say that the new husband was in charge of her now. Peter had people give the woman a kiss not a whip. He held great parties to let the men see that the women didn’t need to stay apart and they could have a great time.
The poor were so terrified because their taxes went up and up and up and their sons had to go into the army.
There was this area near the sea that Peter wanted to build into a city. There were barley any shovels so the people had to dig with their hands. That is how St. Petersburg was built. The Russians called it “the city built on bones.”
One day Peter got an infection and doctors came to help him get better. Usually Peter got better, but this time he got worse. He died a few days later. There was a ceremony and some people said “Why did this great man have to die?”
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Little Pear
Little Pear
By Eleanor Frances Lattimore
Report by Jonathan Hinrichs
Little Pear was a little boy who grew up in China. He was always getting into stuff, like mischief. He was the only boy in his family and he had two sisters.
Life in China was different from ours. For example, they shaved off all their hair except for a little bit on top that they grew long. They had fields instead of gardens. There were these trenches that they would flood and that would get more and more water until the vegetables were watered. Also, their beds were made out of bricks with blankets over them. There was just one bed. Under the bed there was fire. They would use the fire to heat themselves at night during the winter. During the day they would eat on top of their bed and cook in the fire.
Little Pear was always getting into mischief. One day he went down to the river. He fell into the river. He got saved by a man who put a long stick out to him and he grabbed it. When he got to shore he went home and all the men had been looking for him. Once Little Pear lit a firecracker and burnt a hole in his jacket. One day he wanted to go to a fair so bad that he hid in the cabbages that were in his father’s wagon so he could go to the fair. When he got to the fair everybody started laughing. His father was mad at first but then he saw everybody else laughing so he started laughing too.
By Eleanor Frances Lattimore
Report by Jonathan Hinrichs
Little Pear was a little boy who grew up in China. He was always getting into stuff, like mischief. He was the only boy in his family and he had two sisters.
Life in China was different from ours. For example, they shaved off all their hair except for a little bit on top that they grew long. They had fields instead of gardens. There were these trenches that they would flood and that would get more and more water until the vegetables were watered. Also, their beds were made out of bricks with blankets over them. There was just one bed. Under the bed there was fire. They would use the fire to heat themselves at night during the winter. During the day they would eat on top of their bed and cook in the fire.
Little Pear was always getting into mischief. One day he went down to the river. He fell into the river. He got saved by a man who put a long stick out to him and he grabbed it. When he got to shore he went home and all the men had been looking for him. Once Little Pear lit a firecracker and burnt a hole in his jacket. One day he wanted to go to a fair so bad that he hid in the cabbages that were in his father’s wagon so he could go to the fair. When he got to the fair everybody started laughing. His father was mad at first but then he saw everybody else laughing so he started laughing too.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Snow Treasure
Snow Treasure
by Marie McSwigan
Report by J. J. Hinrichs
Peter was a plain boy who lived in Norway, which is in the Arctic Circle, so there was snow, snow, snow almost all year. The children always went sledding, everyday. I’m going to tell you how the children saved their country’s money by hiding it from the Nazis.
Peter’s father was in charge of the bank and the bank had 12 tons of gold. When the Nazis invaded, the Norweigians did not want the Nazis to get the gold. So they hid it in a cave that they had built out of ice blocks. They were trying to get the gold to “The Snake” which was a river that led right to the ocean and was so thin that if you were in an airplane you still couldn’t see it.
The children went sledding every day and the adults thought the children should take the gold because they were not as suspicious. Everyday the children would go to the cave where an old man would place gold onto their sleds. Each brick would weigh 75 pounds. Then they put a burlap sack with some squishy stuff on top and then they’d lay on top and be on their way. It was 12 miles from the cave to the Snake.
They would pass the German camp and there was one mean Nazi ruler who wanted to make Peter his assistant to polish his boots. One day they were hiding the gold and made snowmen on top of the bricks. Then one of them, the captain, was kicking one of the snowmen down. Peter threw a snowball at him before he found the gold brick. They caught Peter and put him in a room. Peter was saved and they were on their way to America. That is the story of Peter and his snow treasure.
by Marie McSwigan
Report by J. J. Hinrichs
Peter was a plain boy who lived in Norway, which is in the Arctic Circle, so there was snow, snow, snow almost all year. The children always went sledding, everyday. I’m going to tell you how the children saved their country’s money by hiding it from the Nazis.
Peter’s father was in charge of the bank and the bank had 12 tons of gold. When the Nazis invaded, the Norweigians did not want the Nazis to get the gold. So they hid it in a cave that they had built out of ice blocks. They were trying to get the gold to “The Snake” which was a river that led right to the ocean and was so thin that if you were in an airplane you still couldn’t see it.
The children went sledding every day and the adults thought the children should take the gold because they were not as suspicious. Everyday the children would go to the cave where an old man would place gold onto their sleds. Each brick would weigh 75 pounds. Then they put a burlap sack with some squishy stuff on top and then they’d lay on top and be on their way. It was 12 miles from the cave to the Snake.
They would pass the German camp and there was one mean Nazi ruler who wanted to make Peter his assistant to polish his boots. One day they were hiding the gold and made snowmen on top of the bricks. Then one of them, the captain, was kicking one of the snowmen down. Peter threw a snowball at him before he found the gold brick. They caught Peter and put him in a room. Peter was saved and they were on their way to America. That is the story of Peter and his snow treasure.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
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.”
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.”
Friday, December 14, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Pilgrims
The Landing of the Pilgrims
by James Daugherty
Report by J.J. Hinrichs
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.
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