Around the Spinney

A Gentle Feast

  • Little Friend

    Little Friend

    Little Friend is a Song Sparrow in the Burgess Bird Book. He is a little sparrow characterized as the opposite of Bully, hence his name is “Little Friend.” The Cornell Lab notes that, “it’s one of the first species you should suspect if you see a streaky sparrow in an open, shrubby, or wet area.…

  • Bully, The House Sparrow

    Bully, The House Sparrow

    I almost titled this blog post “Bully,” but I realized that may be a bit misleading. What an interesting name for Burgess to name the little house sparrows that we see so often. If you look at a range map for the House Sparrow, you’ll see that they reside in 49 of the 50 states…

  • Jenny Wren

    We started The Burgess Bird Book this past week with Jenny Wren. Jenny is a common House Wren. I have to admit that I don’t think I’ve ever identified a Wren before, even though they are common over most of the Western Hemisphere. As we read the book and learned more about Wrens, we realized…

  • Burgess Bird Book

    We began our time in a Cycle 2 of A Gentle Feast this week and started a new nature study book that you know we are excited about… The Burgess Bird Book. Thornton W. Burgess is so good at capturing the animal life of the forest through his characters. In The Burgess Bird Book, Peter…

  • AGF Year End Review

    What’s the best way to look back at a school year? Here it is: We finished A Gentle Feast Cycle 1! Look at how many great books we were able to read together. When I see these books I have memories, and guess what? My children also share those memories. This year in Form 1…

  • The Last Chapters of Burgess Animal Coloring Pages

    Last week, I finished all of the coloring pages for the Burgess Animal Book covered in A Gentle Feast‘s curriculum for Cycle 1, Form 1. Last night, I finished the rest for the book! I’m so grateful to have grown through this process because I had the chance to get to know these animals better.…

  • A Year with A Gentle Feast

    In September of 2020 we started our Cycle 1 year diving into “Columbus, Conquests, and Colonies.” Here are some of the highlights of our first year in A Gentle Feast: History In History we covered early exploration, conquests and colonization, and what life was like for different people groups in the midst of this period…

  • The Burgess Animal Book For Children Coloring Pages

    I’m so happy to announce that I finished all of the coloring pages that go with A Gentle Feast curriculum’s coverage of The Burgess Animal Book for Children. We have loved doing Cycle 1 of A Gentle Feast this year. Each term of the curriculum, of which there are 3, includes 12 weeks of beautiful…

  • When a Poem Touches the Heart

    I remember being young, sitting with a pen and my journal, and greatly desiring to be able to write a poem. I sat on my bed in my room trying to do this, and while I probably actually was successful at times, I usually ripped it out of my journal and threw it away because…

  • Why We Use A Gentle Feast

    As a part of the #whyweloveAGF challenge this month, I wanted to let you know why I chose this particular homeschool curriculum. As a part of my introduction last week, I mentioned that I started out homeschooling thinking that resources and workbooks were the important part of getting ready each year. Those things are important,…