Friday, May 30, 2014

Eggleston-ish


At my art class at NY's Children's Art Museum, they let us loose with fancy SLR cameras! Here are some of my shots. I really like the photography of William Eggleston - and I think these are quite Eggleston-ish!

 

Monday, May 5, 2014

Homeschool History, Religion, and Culture Studies (Part 8): The Romantics


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In our Homeschool History, Religion, and Culture studies, we have been studying the Early Modern era in the West (which has included reading John Milton's Paradise Lost and studying the English Civil War, among other things). However, because we had a trip to England and the Lake District coming up, we fast forwarded a century to the Romantic era. Before setting off on our travels, we read lots of books and poems and watched documentaries about the famous Romantic poets (Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, and Shelley) and painters (Blake, Turner, Constable). We also learned about the French Revolution that inspired the Romantics.

As usual, we used Gloria Fiero's Humanistic Tradition to start us off with our studies, but here are the the other books and resources we used: 

Books: 

Lyrical Ballads, Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth
Poetry for Young People: William Wordsworth
Poetry for Young People: William Blake
Poetry for Young People: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, William Blake
The Grasmere Journal, Dorothy Wordsworth
A Very Short Introduction to the French Revolution, by William Doyle
The Norton Anthology to English Literature: The Romantic Period, edited by Stephen Greenblatt

Documentaries 

The Romantics - a 3 part BBC documentary by Peter Ackroyd: Episode 1: Nature; Episode 2: Liberty; Episode 3: Eternity 
Singing for England - a BBC Omnibus documentary about William Blake. See part one of 5 here.
Bright Star - 2009 movie about John Keats
Byron - 2003 BBC TV movie about Lord Byron
William Wordsworth - documentary made by Wordsworth Trust.

The Rise and Fall of Versailles - 3 part documentary about the run up to French Revolution
The French Revolution - History Channel Documentary. 
La Revolution Francaise - French 6 hour movie that dramatizes the French revolution (available in its entirety on You Tube). 

On our travels in the Lake District, we visited Dove Cottage in Grasmere, the home of William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, who was an important inspiration and contributor to William's thoughts and poetry. Dove Cottage is the place that Wordworth wrote his most famous poems. Many of which appeared in the Lyrical Ballads.
At the museum attached to Dove Cottage, we also attended the Dorothy Wordsworth Festival of Women's Poetry, where we saw Britain's poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, read some her poems, including one about Dorothy! We also visited the house in Rydal, where Wordsworth lived as an older man.
And of course, we saw a lot of the beautiful lakes and views (and daffodils) that inspired Wordsworth.
On the way from the Lakes to London, we stopped at Tintern Abbey - the Abbey made famous in Wordsworth famous poem. Here I am, reading the poem!


In London, we got to visit Keats' house in Hampstead Heath, as well as seeing and drawing a whole lot of Romantic artists' work at the Tate Britain and National Gallery.
And don't miss our "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" outtakes!