Learning with the Mother

THE FIRST FEW LESSONS

The Bee

19.11.1950

The bee-lesson with French text along with a drawing of the bee copied from Mother’s original

The bee flies, flutters and gathers nectar and pollen. She swarms and colonizes. The bee is diligent and hard working and her home is called a hive. She makes honeycombs in which she produces honey. The one who raises bees is called an apiculturist. He devotes himself to apiculture. The bees in a colony are called a swarm. They are also called a colony.

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Shelter

20.11.1950

To hide, to stand, to take refuge, to shut oneself in, to huddle up, to hide away, to go to ground in a shelter. To search, to find, to find a shelter.

Qualifiers:

Safe, sure, inviolable, impregnable, unassailable, invulnerable, precarious.

Synonyms:

The den or lair (wolf), the burrow (fox), the wallow (wild boar), the hutch or a warren, lair or den (wild beasts).

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Cat

21.11.1950

The cat meows, purrs, scratches, hunts, gives birth, sheathes its claws. The tomcat (male), she-cat, the kitten.

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Invasion

To suffer an invasion, to repel an invasion. To be delivered over to an invasion. Invasion devastates.

Qualifiers:

Fast, slow, formidable, merciless.

Invention

To carry out an invention

Qualifiers:

Sensational, marvellous, pure, recent, wonderful.

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Tree

22.11.1950

To plant, to uproot, to transplant, to cut down, topping, pruning, to trim, to cut off, to prune, to uproot, to denude a tree of its leaves, to bark a tree, to graft, to pollard, to shake.

To climb a tree. The tree stands, grows (to grow). The tree bears leaves and sheds leaves. The tree top, the trunk, the base of the tree.

The sapwood (new wood), the sap, the tree fiber. The thicket, the brushwood, the bush, the shrub, the cluster of trees, the copse.

Qualifiers:

Vigorous, puny, stunted, native/indigenous (of the country), exotic (foreign), hoary, leafy, bushy, gnarled.