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- Course name
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Christmas with Dickens with Eleanor Bourg Nicholson
- Summary
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Deck your schoolwork with boughs of holly and enjoy the Christmas season with Charles Dickens!
Instructor Access (Optional grading support) is available for this course. Please note: this is ONLY recommended if you wish to write the optional paper. All quizzes are internally graded in this course. Optional papers will be completed via this page (click here) for an Instructor Access fee of $75.
How to get the most out of Christmas with Dickens with Eleanor Bourg NicholsonFirst, read the course materials below before watching the first class recording.
Then have a notebook ready and available as you watch.
Continue to read assignments before watching the recordings.
Do the assignments, quizzes, and any extra work assigned for that class.
Once the course is completed to the parent's satisfaction, there is a Certificate of Completion at the end to be filled in for your records
Special notes: Includes optional writing component.
Total class meetings: 6
Duration of each class: 55 minutesPrerequisite: Willingness to read!
Suggested grade level: 9th to 12th grade
Suggested credit: ½ semester Literature, Victorian Literature, or British Literature (One full semester if you choose the optional paper project.)
Instructor: Eleanor Bourg Nicholson
Course description: "Marley was dead, to begin with…” Dickens’ A Christmas Carol has such a deep cultural importance that most of us probably are familiar with its opening lines. To unpack this familiar and yet widely misunderstood work, we will proceed backward chronologically, exploring three of the most important Christmas stories ever written. As we become more intimately acquainted with the great writer and the period in which he lived, we will gain through him a deeper appreciation for the sacred mystery of Christmas. In addition to cultivating artistic appreciation and a love of reading, this course facilitates the development of critical reasoning, the disciplined use of the imagination, and a strong knowledge of historical and literary context.
Course outline:
Class 1: The Cricket on the Hearth (first half)
Class 2: The Cricket on the Hearth (second half)
Class 3: The Chimes (first half)
Class 4: The Chimes (second half)
Class 5: A Christmas Carol (first half)
Class 6: A Christmas Carol (second half)Course materials: Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, and The Cricket on the Hearth. Any edition is acceptable (e.g. ISBN-13:978-1593080334, https://amzn.to/3BD47uu), just make sure, if you select a Christmas Stories collection, that these three stories are included. These are also available for free online via Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/.
Homework: Expect to spend 1-3 hours per class reading. Before each class, complete an identification quiz (12 questions, multiple choice, open book). At the end of the course, complete a concluding thoughts assignment. There is an optional paper project which requires Instructor Access. This paper project can increase the suggested credit for the course to a full semester. An answer key is not provided for this course.
Optional Literary Essay Deadlines (Requiring Instructor Access):
Week 1: Commit to paper topic
Week 2: Brainstorming document turned in
Week 3: First Draft turned in
Week 4: Second Draft turned in
Week 5: Third Draft turned in
Week 6: Final Draft turned in
Technical Help: If you have any technical trouble or questions about course content, please email us at homeschoolconnections@gmail.com.
©2023 Homeschool Connections and Eleanor Bourg Nicholson. All rights reserved. This course is designed by Eleanor Bourg Nicholson.
This material is only to be used for its intended purpose by active subscribers of Homeschool Connections. Any other use without explicit permission is in violation of the seventh commandment (yes, the 7th commandment) and in violation of US and International copyright laws.
You may print or download to local hard disk extracts for your personal homeschool and non-commercial use only. This is not to be used for homeschool co-ops without express written permission from Homeschool Connections.
- Course name
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Christmas with Dickens with Eleanor Bourg Nicholson
- Instructor
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Eleanor Bourg Nicholson
- Semester
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Recorded
- Category
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Literature ➤ Early Modern/Victorian Literature
- Grade level
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High School
- Start time
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July 22nd, 2023 at 12:00 AM ET
- Course type
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Recorded, free with subscription
- Relative due dates
The Nineteenth-Century Novel (Mansfield Park, Oliver Twist, & North and South)
Literary-Critical Paper: Independent Study (available for all of Mrs. Nicholson's courses, live or recorded)
Introduction to the Nineteenth-Century (Emma, David Copperfield, The Warden, & Barchester Towers) (Victorian Classics)
Christmas with Dickens (Victorian Classics)
Gothic Book Club
Jane Austen, Part One
Jane Austen, Part Two
The Brontë Sisters (Victorian Classics)
Sensation Genre Novels (Victorian Classics)
Middlemarch (Victorian Classics)
Our Mutual Friend (Victorian Classics)
Nicholas Nickleby (Victorian Classics)
Dracula: Ignatius Critical Editions (editor)
A Bloody Habit (Ignatius Press, 2017)
The Letters of Magdalen Montague (Chrism Press, 2021)
Brother Wolf (Chrism Press, 2021)
The Hound of the Lord (children’s biography of St. Dominic, Ignatius 2023)
Wake of Malice (Chrism Press, 2024)
- This material is only to be used for its intended purpose by active subscribers of Homeschool Connections or purchasers of the course. Any other use without explicit permission is in violation of the seventh commandment, and in violation of US and International copyright laws.
- You may print or download to your own storage extracts for your personal homeschool and non-commercial use only. This is not to be used for homeschool co-ops without express written permission from Homeschool Connections.
- Upon completion of the course, you must delete all copies of course materials from any storage on which you saved permissible extracts.
Eleanor Bourg Nicholson
Mrs. Nicholson, our resident Victorian literature instructor, occasionally strays into fiction, including her epistolary novella, The Letters of Magdalen Montague (Kauffmann Publishing, 2011; Chrism Press, 2021), and her Gothic novels, A Bloody Habit (Ignatius Press, 2018) and Brother Wolf (Chrism Press, 2021). A former assistant executive editor for Dappled Things, she is an assistant editor for the Saint Austin Review (StAR), as well as the editor of several Ignatius Critical Editions of the classics and has collaborated with other editors to provide footnotes for numerous other works. Her work has appeared in the National Catholic Register and Touchstone, as well as with First Things and The Catholic Thing. By day, she and her husband, Dr. Sam Nicholson (Logic/Philosophy instructor), homeschool their five children. By night, Mrs. Nicholson reads the Victorians, writes Gothic novels, and cares for small children. Fun facts: Mrs. Nicholson has an extremely low tolerance for scary books and movies. She's still petrified of "The Speckled Band", and won't sleep in a room where the bed is under a vent. Also, one of Mrs. Nicholson's numerous sisters-in-law is middle school writing instructor Mrs. Bonnie Donlon. For more information, visit: eleanorbourgnicholson.com.
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© 2023 Homeschool Connections; Eleanor Bourg Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
Violation of the above copyright policies may result in expulsion without any refund and/or legal action.