Thursday, April 16, 2009

Thank Gutenberg

Earlier this year we read about how monks laboriously copied books by hand. We looked at pictures of some of those books - like the Book of Kells.














You're looking at the top part of the letter "P".

Yeah.

So you can imagine how long it took to make a book like the Bible.

And how few people had them.

Or pretty much any books... until Gutenberg and his wonderful printing press.

Just to remind the boys to be thankful, I challenged them to "illuminate" the letter A and copy this prayer, from the Middle Ages.

















Now, posting this picture below the one above really doesn't do it justice. Honestly, I was blown away by how much time Tate spent writing this. Normally his writing is only marginally more legible than Gunnar's, so this is a great achievement for him :0)

I don't know if his poor writing ability has anything to do with his hearing loss, or if it's just pure 10 year old boy who would much rather be outside hunting bugs for his lizard. I do know that when he was still in public school his writing "skills" were low enough to be addressed separately on his IEP. But anyway... there is hope :0)

I have to wonder if the fact that it was a prayer contributed to his willingness to take his time.

Hmmmm... future inspiration there!

3 comments:

Ann Marie said...

Impressive, Tate. :)

leah said...

That's beautiful! And my handwriting got somewhat better when I was around 11, so there is hope (g). I've seen the actual Book of Kells at Trinity College in Dublin. Very, very cool! There's a book called "How the Irish Saved History" that is very interesting. Can't remember who wrote it, though...

Mrs. Squirrel said...

Beautiful work! Well done!
:)