AustenDickensLitSociety

THE HUNTINGTON

 

The Bradley family spent a day at the Huntington in San Marino, California. 

Jeanne's design in buying year passes to the Huntington was to have a beautiful and inspiring place to regularly go for the girls to write. 

Above -- the mausoleum.

The Japanese Gardens.

They each went off singly to explore, but Jeanne occasionally ran across her daughters and took pictures.  The girls drew and wrote in their Journals of Discovery.

 

 

 

 

Jeanne sneaked up behind her daughter while she drew her favorite Greek goddess, Artemis.

She listened to a book on tape while she drew.

Another candid shot as Jeanne's daughter spent a quiet time reading in a garden.

 

Bust of Shakespeare in the Shakespearean garden.

Drawing a picture of Shakespeare.

One of Jeanne's discovery on a garden trail.

 

FRANKENSTEIN LITERARY SOCIETY MEETING

Everyone read "Frankenstein" in October.  They chose to read Mary Shelley's work because she wrote close Jane Austen's time period.  They had just studied Classical architecture, and as often happens in EPIC Adventures, thematic serendipity occurs -- the full title of the book is "Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus!

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They also enjoyed reading Frankenstein in the appropriate month of October!

One family added some extra Frankenstein/Halloween flavor.

Though, in truth, the girls learned that Frankenstein wasn't at all scary, as the TV or movie versions portray.

GETTY VILLA

Regency England was enamored by Neo-classicism - from the discoveries in Pompeii the English adopted hairstyles, clothing and architecture.  After a study of Classical architecture we visited the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California.  It was modeled after a Roman country house in Herculaneum, a town near Pompeii.

After the group picture, the girls split up with their Journals of Discovery to explore the Villa on their own.

 
 

The family room offered a hands-on experience with shadow theater and pottery.

 

 

 

 

Above: The inner peristyle.

Painted walls of the outer peristyle.

More of the outer peristyle.

 

 

Jeanne and her daughters.

The loggia.

The girls enjoyed making drawings of the statues and taking notes in their Journals of Discovery.

The next day, within individual families, the girls and mothers shared their discoveries.

THE PICKWICK PORTFOLIO

The Pickwick Portfolio is our monthly, or so, society newsletter.  The name is taken from the society that Louisa May Alcott wrote about in her novel, Little Women.  (We showed the Little Women movie clip of the Pickwick Society, at our opening day of the Adventure, while explaining what their own Pickwick Portfolio would be like).

Above - Template for the Pickwick Portfolio

Between society meetings, society members write articles and advertisements for the Regency (Jane Austen's time), and Victorian (Charles Dickens' time), editions of the Pickwick Portfolio.  The PP is written and edited entirely by the students. 

Each of the girls will have had the chance to be editor for the Pickwick Portfolio.  

Each editor receives articles, advertisements, etc. along with photos of engravings or paintings to illustrate the newsletter, from each society member, who uses her pen name (chosen during the Literary Academy), when writing articles. 

The editor compiles the articles and even adds her own quotes and anecdotes along with her own articles.  She then prints the portfolio and hands out individual copies at our society meetings. 

Each member eagerly awaits reading our Pickwick Portfolio, and seeing her name in print!

Literary Meeting - Pride and Prejudice

October 12, 2009

Literary Meeting -- Pride and Prejudice

At the beginning of this year, each student and mother was given three bookmarks to use while reading each of the books they planned to study this year. The bookmarks were patterned after the Trivium model for reading novels--Grammar stage, Logic Stage, and Rhetoric Stage, as found in Susan Wise Bauer's book, The Well-Educated Mind.  The first book  discussed at the Literary Society was Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. 

 

Here are the front and back of one girl's Grammar stage bookmark.  The Logic and Rhetoric stage bookmarks provide provocative questions which forced each reader to discover her own thoughts about each book. This proved to be much more than just a book discussion, but a time to delve deeply into the heart of each book and person.  Of course students were given the options to share or not to share opinions.  Mothers only shared opinions at the end of our discussions in order to give each girl time to express ideas.

Every society meeting ends in a 'tea' where we eat a dainty lunch and sample various herbal teas.