Here Be Dragons: An Apprenticeship in Wonder

At the beginning of all things, there is love. A child awakens to self and other in the mutual loving gaze of a mother. That is a miracle, a wonder, and so the child knows that the world is a place of wonder, and encounters it as such. Wonder and love grow mingled in the heart of a child, and as the heart grows to take in more, both wonder and love must grow. The best food for both is stories, and so the best love to promote is the love of reading and literature.

That is what this course will do: help your young child to connect the wonder and love he or she already possesses to books as reliable places to encounter stories that matter. In this course, I will both teach and model deep engagement with a text through close reading, all in a format that values and invites the children’s wildest ideas. In the lifelong journey of developing and guarding a joyous heart, these are the first steps.

To learn more about these dragons courses, watch this video

Note: The .5 credit for this course is optional.

Course Objectives:

1. To nurture the sense of delight in well-crafted stories
2. To develop the ability to think and reason deeply using stories as a starting point
3. To strengthen textual analysis skills through close reading
4. To marvel at the mystery of the world God has made by engaging the imagination

Texts:

• Rebecca Rupp, The Dragon of Lonely Island
• Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
• C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
• J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

For the adult companion course, visit our site