One thing that struck me about Charlotte’s Web was how philosophical it was. Author E.B. White asks some tough questions about fairness, justice, friendship, and the purpose of a life. Here are two of my favourite passages:

“But it’s unfair,” cried Fern. “The pig couldn’t help being born small, could it? If I had been very small at birth, would you have killed me? (Fern to her father, who has axe in hand to kill runt Wilbur)

“You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. “That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.” (Charlotte to Wilbur, who, as Charlotte is in her final hours, has asked her why she helped saves his life, when he has done nothing for her and didn’t deserve the help).

After reading E.B. White’s other novels with my boys—Stuart Little and my personal favourite, Trumpet of the Swan—I can see elements of why I became the adult I did, a vegetarian who studied philosophy at university. Other than John D. Fitzgerald’s The Great Brain (Canada) (US) 7-book series, I can’t think of a set of books that were as formative for me as a child as those of E.B. White.

And what did the boys think? They liked the book and the movie, and found parts of the movie quite funny. There is a scene where Templeton, the rat, eats to his heart’s content after the fairgrounds have closed that had both boys howling with laughter. Templeton was Gareth’s favourite character—he’s got a thing for mice and rats—whereas Daegan liked Fern because she was the exact same age as him. They both thought that reading the book and watching the movie were both important, as there were some things that happened in the movie but not the book—like Templeton becoming a father—and some things that happened in the book but not the movie. Happy reading / watching!

I also find things like this on the board. Gareth is showing his scientific knowledge, drawing different species of dinosaur and putting them into their correct time period (C, J, and T stand for Cretaceous, Jurassic, and Triassic):

Another day, he wanted to draw eight different species and put them in their own boxed off area of the board. Gareth was surprised to learn that to by drawing only 7 lines, he made 8 boxes:

In the finished work I could identify a few of the species: a triceratops middle left, a pterodactyl lower left, an ankylosaur lower right (plating and club tail), etc.

Another day we made biscuits to have with our soup, and Gareth insisted on getting out the dinosaur cookie cutters. I have to admit the T rex and Stegosaurus biscuits were pretty fun:

But it’s not ALL dinos around here. I also found Gareth doing some prehistoric sea creatures (sea scorpion, jellyfish, and unknown):

And this one I found most interesting of all, as it never would have occurred to me to use the craft sticks in this way. This is Gareth’s fox. He is just finishing with the ears on the triangle-shaped head (with whiskers), neck-splayed legs-body, and bushy tail:

I look forward to finding more of his art around the house soon. I do want to emphasize that none of these were in any way my idea. I doubt that I would have gotten such creativity by saying “draw 8 creatures on the white board’ or ‘create an animal of craft sticks on the floor’.  But as Gareth seems very into art right now, I make sure to leave sticks, blocks, paper, crayons, markers, etc. within easy access for him at all times. “A teacher’s job is observe her students, and to prepare the learning environment.” –Maria Montessori (paraphrased).

The usefulness of mathematics in everyday life is undeniable, but overemphasized. “What if literacy were taught only by means of parking tickets, job applications, tax forms, and other material that people will need to read? That would be an accurate analogy to much of the traditional curriculum in mathematics.” Thus mathematician Dr. Neil Koblitz and computer scientist Dr. Michael Fellows argue for including entertaining, enticing math topics in primary grades.

   -page 8 of Patricia Clark Kenschaft’s Math Power: How to Help Your Child Love Math, Even if You Don ‘t  (Canada) (US)