Early Childhood Education Commons^™

04. Elfie, Book 1, 1st Edition (Novel), Matthew Lipman

Early Elementary School Curriculum

Elfie is in the first grade and is so shy she can’t speak in class and can hardly even formulate a question. Yet little escapes her and her mind puzzles over everything that happens in class and at home. When the principal proposes a contest aimed at improving reasoning, her whole class is caught up in figuring out how sentences work and how distinctions and connections are made. At the same time, Elfie and her classmates discover many distinctions fundamental to inquiry: appearance and reality, the one and the many, parts and wholes, similarity and difference, permanence and change.

06. Elfie, Book Two, 1st Edition (Novel), Matthew Lipman

Early Elementary School Curriculum

Elfie is in the first grade and is so shy she can’t speak in class and can hardly even formulate a question. Yet little escapes her and her mind puzzles over everything that happens in class and at home. When the principal proposes a contest aimed at improving reasoning, her whole class is caught up in figuring out how sentences work and how distinctions and connections are made. At the same time, Elfie and her classmates discover many distinctions fundamental to inquiry: appearance and reality, the one and the many, parts and wholes, similarity and difference, permanence and change.

07. Getting Our Thoughts Together: Instructional Manual To Accompany 'Elfie, Book Two', Matthew Lipman, Ann Gazzard

Early Elementary School Curriculum

The cognitive skills emphasized in Elfie – distinction-making and connection-making – are those on which all-subsequent reasoning rests. They are accompanied by the criteria that are appropriate to them: sameness and difference. Other operations like the making of comparisons, the discovery of uniformities, the identification of classes, the formation of concepts, and the formulation of definition, all depend upon the logical infrastructure of these two sets of skills and criteria. Elfie should therefore be seen as the base of the Philosophy for Children program.

05. Getting Our Thoughts Together: Instructional Manual To Accompany 'Elfie, Book One', Matthew Lipman, Ann Gazzard

Early Elementary School Curriculum

The cognitive skills emphasized in Elfie – distinction-making and connection-making – are those on which all-subsequent reasoning rests. They are accompanied by the criteria that are appropriate to them: sameness and difference. Other operations like the making of comparisons, the discovery of uniformities, the identification of classes, the formation of concepts, and the formulation of definition, all depend upon the logical infrastructure of these two sets of skills and criteria. Elfie should therefore be seen as the base of the Philosophy for Children program.

09. Getting Our Thoughts Together: Instructional Manual To Accompany 'Elfie, Book Three', Matthew Lipman, Ann Gazzard

Early Elementary School Curriculum

The cognitive skills emphasized in Elfie – distinction-making and connection-making – are those on which all-subsequent reasoning rests. They are accompanied by the criteria that are appropriate to them: sameness and difference. Other operations like the making of comparisons, the discovery of uniformities, the identification of classes, the formation of concepts, and the formulation of definition, all depend upon the logical infrastructure of these two sets of skills and criteria. Elfie should therefore be seen as the base of the Philosophy for Children program.

08. Elfie, Book Three, 1st Edition (Novel), Matthew Lipman

Early Elementary School Curriculum

Elfie is in the first grade and is so shy she can’t speak in class and can hardly even formulate a question. Yet little escapes her and her mind puzzles over everything that happens in class and at home. When the principal proposes a contest aimed at improving reasoning, her whole class is caught up in figuring out how sentences work and how distinctions and connections are made. At the same time, Elfie and her classmates discover many distinctions fundamental to inquiry: appearance and reality, the one and the many, parts and wholes, similarity and difference, permanence and change.

11. Elfie: Sources And References For Book One, Matthew Lipman

Early Elementary School Curriculum

This sequential bibliography matches the 1989 edition of Elfie, Book One page by page. It contains both sources—works that influenced Matthew Lipman in writing the novel, references to philosophical works he Ann Gazzard recommend to explore the novels’ philosophical themes, and brief commentary on them by Lipman.

10. Index To Elfie, 1st Edition, Matthew Lipman, Ann Gazzard

Early Elementary School Curriculum

This Index includes a Table of Contents to the episodes of each chapter of the first edition of 'Elfie' (novel) and the Leading Ideas, Discussion Plans, Exercises, and Activities in each chapter of 'Getting Our Thoughts Together: Instructional Manual to Elfie'.

Two Islands (1985) By Ivan Gantschev, Gareth B. Matthews

Picture Books

This is the story of two islands in the middle of the ocean: Greenel, whose citizens kept it fertile and green, and Graynel, whose citizens covered it with factories and skyscrapers. Citizens of Graynel wanted to vacation on Greenel and proposed to build a bridge between the islands, but the citizens of Greenel refused. Intending to force the bridge, citizens of Graynel stockpiled steel and cement and weapons on one end of the island, eventually causing it to tip on its edge and slide into the sea. While the moral of this modern fable is obvious – overarching human ambition, …

Bee-Man Of Orn (1883/1986) By Frank R. Stockton, Gareth B. Matthews

Picture Books

In the country of Orn there lived an old man who inhabited a house full of beehives. One day a sorcerer informed the Bee-man that he had been transformed from some other kind of creature and should be changed back. The Bee-man set out on a journey to discover his original form and, after rescuing a baby from a dragon, realized he had been transformed from a baby. The sorcerer made him a baby again, who was raised by the rescued baby’s mother. Many years later, the sorcerer returned to Orn and discovered that the baby had grown up to …

3. Philosophical Sources & References For 'Kio & Gus', Matthew Lipman

Later Elementary School Curriculum

This sequential bibliography matches the 1982 edition of Kio & Gus page by page. It contains both sources—works that influenced Matthew Lipman in writing the novel—and references to philosophical works he and Ann Margaret Sharp recommend to explore the novels’ philosophical themes.

2. Wondering At The World: Instructional Manual To Accompany 'Kio & Gus', Matthew Lipman, Ann Margaret Sharp

Later Elementary School Curriculum

This instructional manual for the novel Kio & Gus aims at helping children think about the world by encouraging them to acquire reasoning and inquiry skills. Through hundreds of exercises and discussion plans, children are shown how these cognitive skills can be applied to the concepts by means of which we understand the world of nature. As a result, this program is an ideal introduction to science and environmental education, as well as an excellent language arts curriculum. There is also a strong ethical thread in the novel revolving around a myriad of issues in environmental ethics, our relationships with …

1. Kio & Gus (Novel), Matthew Lipman

Later Elementary School Curriculum

Kio visits his grandparents’ farm and becomes friendly with Gus, who lives with her family not far away. Gus helps Kio become aware of the world as the blind experience it, and some of the differences that characterize the creative activities of the blind. Kio's grandfather was once a sailor, and early in the book he tells of an encounter he once had with a whale. He is determined to visit a site where he can observe whales once again, and Kio persuades him to take the two families along.

Kio and Gus consists largely of conversations, because these are …

Leese Webster (1979) By Ursula K. Le Guin, Gareth B. Matthews

Picture Books

Leese was a spider, born in a palace throne room. Like other members of the “Webster” family, Leese knew how to spin an elegant and efficient web of traditional design. But then she started to produce webs of original designs like the flowers portrayed in the carpet and the huntsmen and hounds in a painting. Were these images pictures? Many animal species dance, adorn themselves, and build elaborate nests to attract mates. Can they be more and less aesthetically gifted? Authorities had Leese’s webs encased in glass and put on exhibit. Did that change their metaphysical status?

Bear That Wasn't (1946/2010) By Arthur Frank Tashlin, Gareth B. Matthews

Picture Books

What happens when a bear wakes from hibernation to find his forest home has been replaced by a human factory? What if the bear can't convince the factory workers, vice presidents, or president that he is, in deed, a bear and shouldn't be put to work in the factory? In reviewing Frank Tashlin's The Bear that Wasn't, Gareth B. Matthews discovers philosophical themes including dreaming and skepticism, being and nonbeing, appearance and reality, and the foundations of knowledge.