Switzerite: 2025

Saturday, March 8, 2025

Games to Play with a Deck of Cards

I have very fond memories of playing cards when I was a kid. Someone always had a deck of cards up at the pool, so that we could play Hearts while it was adult swim for 15 minutes at the top of the hour. Someone always had a deck of cards at the Community House, so that we could play Poker during boring parts of the play rehearsals (in fact, I remember when Frankie missed his cue during a production of Tom Sawyer because he was backstage deep in a hand of Poker). My parents and grandparents played Bridge every night when we were there for Christmas, and it was a big deal when the children were considered old enough to be initiated into the club and taught to play Bridge. I remember sitting on a trunk in the Amtrak station in Chicago playing Bridge while we waited for our train. My brother and I played War for hours. I played a million games of Solitaire by myself.

I still have my favorite most-played deck from childhood (bear in mind that I was at a very "I heart butterflies" age!)

I also have the double deck that I begged my mom to get me from the Metropolitan Museum of Art catalogue. At that point I had moved on to the "I heart Tiffany stained glass age"!

And I don't remember where this deck came from but I've had it since I was a little girl. It is soooo cool that I protected it fiercely and hardly ever played a game with it. It comes in a cool storage case, and the letters for the face cards are different because it's French! It also has "1" cards instead of Aces!

Fast-forward to a few weeks ago when I taught my after school Magic Class the Kid's Spelling Trick. Then I told Zac that he could keep the deck for his very own. It's an adorable set of Dog playing cards, with a different puppy on each card. (The Saluki is on the queen of hearts.) I thought he'd be thrilled! Instead he was baffled. He asked me why some of the cards had letters on them. What is A, K, Q, J?

It was then that I realized that my son is almost 10 and he had NEVER SEEN a deck of playing cards.

He explained to me later that he thought every card game had a specific deck of cards that went with it. Think Clumsy Thief, Check the Oven, Blink, Plop Trumps, Find My Behind, Rack-O, Rhyme Out, Ravine, None of a Kind, etc.

He never knew that there could be one deck of cards that you could play many games with!!!

So I promised Zac that I would spend some time over Spring Break teaching him card games, and now I'm looking up and making sure I know the rules for a few that are rusty. Since it has been many many years since I played with a deck of cards! If anyone has suggestions, I'd love to add to this list!!

game rules courtesy of bicyclecards.com

Games for One Player

Solitaire

Games for Two Players

Cribbage *

War

* requires additional equipment

Games for Four Players

Bridge

Group Games

Go Fish (2 or more)

Old Maid (2 or more)

Hearts (3 or more)

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Friday, March 7, 2025

Art History - Leonora Carrington

In my Art History 2024-2025 blog post, I decided March would be Leonora Carrington. Here are some resources and my planning notes:

Leonora Carrington
1917 - 2011

also

Art History Kids - October 2022

Week 1 Project
Surrealist Self Portrait Collage, p.20

Week 2 Project
Paint a Realm of Dreamy Details, p.21

Week 3 Project
Paint on Dark Colored Paper, p.22

Week 4 Project
A Literary Sculpture, p.23

Self-Portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse), 1937-38

Green Tea (La Dame Ovale), 1942

Artes 110, 1944

The Giantess (The Guardian of the Egg), 1947

Ulu's Pants, 1952

And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur, 1953

How Doth the Little Crocodile, 1998 - painting

How Doth the Little Crocodile, 1998 - large sculpture

Leonora Carrington: The Celtic Surrealist
Exhibition Notes for Primary School Teachers (PDF)

I recommend joining Lotus Stewart's Art History Kids website (The Studio) and getting access to her past lesson plans. I like her work, and find it's really helpful to have so many ideas that I can use as a jumping off point.

week of Mar 17:

Mon

The Milk of Dreams

play WatchamaDrawit

look at Childhood Imaginations from The Celtic Surrealist PDF p.3 and do "create your own magical land" prompt

continue creative writing project begun last month

Wed

The Giantess (The Guardian of the Egg), 1947

discussion from The Celtic Surrealist PDF p.4

read Brigid's Cloak: An Ancient Irish Story retold by Bryce Milligan

week of Mar 24:

Mon

Out of This World: The Surreal Art of Leonora Carrington

display examples of her artwork from Art History Kids

look at Green Tea (La Dame Ovale), 1942

discussion from The Celtic Surrealist PDF pp.4-5

do Week 2 Project from Art History Kids

Wed

Are You Really Syrious, 1953

discussion from The Celtic Surrealist PDF p.6

Geography activity, p.33 of Art History Kids

look at And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur, 1953

read "Theseus" chapter
from D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths

read "Minotaur" by X. J. Kennedy, p.13
from Eric Carle's Dragons, Dragons ed. by Laura Whipple

Thu

Iguana and Fox, 1948-58

discussion from The Celtic Surrealist PDF p.7

read the Aztec legend The Princess and the Warrior: A Tale of Two Volcanoes retold by Duncan Tonatiuh

SWI post - modern English words of Nahuatl origin

week of Mar 31:

Mon

Artes 110, 1944

look at Ulu's Pants, 1952

look at How Doth the Little Crocodile, 1998

do Week 3 Project from Art History Kids

Tue

Shadowgraphs Anyone Can Make by Phila H. Webb and Jane Corby

Thu

How Doth the Little Crocodile, 1988

look at Cocodrilo de Leonora Carrington (large sculpture)
Mexico City, Mexico

do Week 4 Project from Art History Kids

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Thursday, March 6, 2025

Ethel, part 2

I discovered, while doing this whole Ethel Pochocki Marbach project, that she wrote one more book for St. Anthony Press, which is a season-by-season calendar of the saints. As before, when Bethlehem Books republished the book, they took out a significant number of stories (indicated here in red).

Saints of the Seasons for Children
© 1989 St. Anthony Messenger Press

Ruth
David
Isaiah
The Immaculate Conception
Elizabeth and Zechariah
John the Baptist
Luke
Simeon and Anna
The Magi

John the Evangelist

Adam and Eve
Noah
Abraham
Moses
The Woman at the Well
The Man Born Blind
Veronica
Simon of Cyrene
Dismas

Peter

Stephen

Here are my notes as to the revised version, published by Bethlehem Books.

Around the Year Once Upon a Time Saints
© 2009 Bethlehem Books
includes three new stories

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For those keeping track at home, yes, I did buy (and read and color-code the table of contents of) SEVEN books in order to fully answer the question of whether Ethel Marbach and Ethel Pochocki were the same person.

But if I'm going to recommend a resource to a homeschool consulting client, I need to know whether or not that book has come back into print, and whether the text has been revised in any way if so. So what else can I do???

Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Ethel Pochocki Marbach

Dana K. White from A Slob Comes Clean says that finishing a project IS decluttering. So I am going to finish this blog post from last July!!!

I have a homeschool consulting client who is currently working on preparing for the Saints block, a classic Waldorf 2nd grade block. A theme in the curriculum for the 8 year old child is the struggle between opposing forces, so we study fables (Aesop's Fables and Buddhist Jataka Tales) as well as traditional stories of Saints around the world. Modern day Heroes such as Helen Keller, Dr. King, and Gandhi are also often included in this block.

I have many notes in my blog and on my website as to what Saint stories I've used in the past, but I noticed something strange when I went to recommend a particularly beautiful retelling of the story of Martin of Tours.

I couldn't find the book link on Amazon.

A Note About Something Which Further Adds to the Confusion

So... something came up while I was searching all over for this old book.

The book series I have by Ethel Marbach seems to have the same exact titles as a book series by Ethel Pochoki (and Ethel is not a common name) but the saints included don't seem to match. So are they the same books? And is she the same person?

I spent an inordinate amount of time researching this question.

The upshot of the story is that Ethel wrote two books (Once-Upon-a-Time Saints and More Once-Upon-a-Time Saints) back in the 1970s using the last name Marbach and they were published by St. Anthony Messenger Press. These books are wonderful!

Decades later, these books were significantly reorganized and republished by Bethlehem Books, this time using the last name Pochocki.

All of that to say that, yes, there's just one Ethel.

Below I've put the table of contents of each of the original books, and marked in red any legends that didn't make the cut when they were republished later on. Sadly, the story of Martin of Tours -- which got me started on this entire project -- seems to be out of print completely!

Once-Upon-a-Time Saints: Faith-Tales for Children
© 1977 St. Anthony Messenger Press

Germaine

Brigid

Joseph of Cupertino

Margaret of Scotland

More Once-Upon-a-Time Saints: Faith-Tales for Children
© 1978 St. Anthony Messenger Press

Philip Neri

Catherine (Kateri) Tekakwitha

Martin of Tours

Rose of Lima

Francis de Sales

Teresa of Avila

And here's the table of contents of each new book. I've put the original copyright dates of the St. Anthony Messenger Press stories beside each chapter from Bethlehem Books. Note that things look all mixed up, but that's because Bethlehem Books decided to put the saints in alphabetical order!

It is important to me that we be able to find her old stories, because they are written so beautifully! Let's see where we can find these stories today.

Once Upon a Time Saints
© 1996 Bethlehem Books
includes four new stories

More Once Upon a Time Saints
© 1998 Bethlehem Books
includes eight new stories

One last book that I purchased... and greatly regret.

Saints & Heroes
© 2011 Bethlehem Books

I do NOT recommend this book as it contains significant edits of her original chapters, covered up by the innocuous words "Further revisions in 2020."

So it does include several of the stories that are marked in red above, but I continue to have them marked in red because they are NOT THE SAME.

One More Note About Ethel

It is my belief that Pochocki is her maiden name. (In her obituary in the Bangor Daily News, Ethel's last name is listed only as Pochocki [with no née] but all of her sons have the last name Marbach. Neither her marriage nor her husband is mentioned in the obituary. So my guess is that Pochocki is her maiden name and that she had an acrimonious divorce and chose to resume the use of her maiden name. Of course, I don't know that for sure.)

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Saturday, March 1, 2025

A Silent Movie That Is 101 Years Old

I have fallen completely in love with a silent movie. It's Peter Pan (1924), available on YouTube for FREE. This movie is 101 years old. My Grammy, who turned 105 on January 20, was 4 years old when this movie came out!

(WOW! I just realized that my Grammy may remember the invention of talkies! She was born in 1920, and The Jazz Singer came out in 1927.)

I've researched silent movies before, in this post about the Wizard of Oz, but Peter Pan is the first one that I'm actually going to show to Zac. He's reading Chris Colfer's Land of Stories series, and Neverland comes up in book 4 (along with Camelot, Sherwood Forest, Wonderland, and the Land of Oz... all of which he already knows about).

J. M. Barrie's original book, available FREE at Project Gutenberg, is wildly inappropriate for children, so when Zac asked about Peter Pan, I started looking for a movie adaptation. And I stumbled across this wonderful film!

Betty Bronson as Peter Pan

According to Wikipedia, the 1924 silent film was celebrated for its innovative use of special effects. It was seen by Walt Disney (born in 1901) and he later bought the rights and created his 1953 animated version of the story.

Wikipedia goes on to explain,

For decades, the film was thought to be lost. In the 1950s James Card, film restorer and curator of George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, discovered a well-preserved copy in a vault at the Eastman School of Music, and made a preservation of that source. Film historian David Pierce discovered an additional and hitherto unknown 16mm copy at the Disney Studios which had been made when the company acquired the rights to the property in 1938. A new restoration was undertaken by the George Eastman House combining the two sources in 1994, and Philip C. Carli composed new film music for it, which was premiered by the Flower City Society Orchestra at the 1996 Pordenone Silent Film Festival.

You may remember from Singin' in the Rain that silent films are not silent. They were actually presented with live musical accompaniment, and several selections from the soundtrack for the 1924 film are available on Spotify!

Bedtime in the Darling Nursery

Through the Window

Learning to Fly

The Forest of Make-Believe

The Clock and the Crocodile

Arriving in Never Never Land

Bothersome Fairies

Pirates and Indians Do Battle

Hook Poisons Peter's Medicine

Do You Believe?

Hook Brings the Lost Boys Up on Deck

A Mother's Last Words to Her Children

Sword Fight

The Flying Ship

If you do watch the film with your child, try playing some of the music along with it so that you get the full effect. Personally, I find silent movies really fun to watch because you can't get distracted and look away or you'll miss the title cards. Watching a silent movie makes me realize how often I tune out the film to look at my phone. But you can't do that with a silent movie!!!

P.S. Preview the film before showing it to your child, since there is offensive language (also found in the Disney version). It's from the original book.

P.P.S. I took all the time to track down music, and then found this version of the 1924 movie (from The Gallery of Anna May Wong) which includes music. So I'm including both versions here, and you can decide!

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Friday, February 28, 2025

Photos!

This week was a super busy one! Here are photos from the Maple Syrup field trip plus the Geography Fair! Thank you to Dan and Jennifer for sharing pics!

Tuesday, Feb 25