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| You will emerge from this chrysalis . . .
NOTE: On rereading this post a couple of years later, I think I should probably make clear that what I'm describing is how to ADAPT something like Mater Amabilis to make it work for a one-room schoolhouse approach, which some families find easier, especially as they're starting out and are overwhelmed by the thought of managing multiple levels. If your oldest is 6 or 7 right now, and is the only child formally schooling, the easiest thing to do is to implement the appropriate Mater Amabilis level as written. If that's your situation, you can more or less skip this post and move on to the next one, which is about translating a booklist into a schedule. (Sorry, no idea why this post appears in italics. This has happened randomly from time to time on this blog, and nothing I do seems to help. I've stripped the formatting repeatedly, and still . . . italics. I hope it's not too hard to read).
In our last advice column, we dealt with the issue of managing lots of moving parts in your family, i.e., lots of children of differing ages, and how to structure your time so as to maximize your ability to "touch" each child and his or her needs during the day.
In this column, let's turn our attention to what you actually want to do in those time blocks, particularly the block or so devoted to schooling a fairly wide age range all together, via books read aloud and narrated in a group.
For this column, I'm going to assume that your oldest child is, perhaps, eleven. We'll leave middle- and high-school students for another day, because once you have teenagers, I think that the one-room-schoolhouse model becomes problematic. That is, I think their time is generally not best served by having them grouped with primary-aged children for the core of their learning. But again, another day.
When we began our Charlotte Mason education, after two years of unschooling, I had an eleven-year-old, a seven-year-old, and two toddlers. This could be our hypothetical model for today's discussion, although it might be safe to assume that you, for example, have a nine-year-old and a five-year-old in this mix as well. So let's work with that: children eleven, nine, seven, and five, as well as some toddler/preschoolers in the house with you. You will just have to assume that I am assuming a level of chaos that probably will not be communicated in anything I write here. (That's one reason why, in my column on time blocks, I kept saying: Give yourself more time than you think you'll need. You will probably need more time than you think, because you're dealing with a family of children, not a well-oiled machine).
Now, one good thing about a Charlotte Mason education is that the books it includes are not definitively tied to any particular, specific grade level. There aren't "first-grade books" or "fourth-grade books," just books that appeal generally to fairly wide age ranges. This more open-ended quality makes it easier to manage multiple children, because you can group them into forms, with similar-aged children sharing the same book. But especially if your oldest is still primary-aged (and I'm thinking of sixth grade as the roof of that structure . . . that age often gets grouped, appropriately, with middle school, but they can easily trend down, too), and especially as you're just getting your feet beneath you as a Charlotte Mason educator, it is possible to group everyone into a single form. What would that form include? Here I'm going to reference the Mater Amabilis Catholic Charlotte Mason program, though many of the books I'm proposing also appear in Ambleside Online's Charlotte Mason curriculum. It might help you to look specifically at Mater Amabilis's Level 2 syllabus. I'm linking Year 1 here, just to keep things as simple as possible. We will pull a couple of elements from MA's Level 1 syllabus as well, because there are some can't-miss books in that level, but in the main, Level 2 Year 1 is going to be our core curriculum for this "getting-started" year. The reason I'm focusing on MA's Level 2 is that this level contains a great number of books that will appeal to both older and younger children, especially as read-aloud selections. They're neither too babyish and simple for the children at the older end, nor out of reach for the younger children, especially as they learn to listen and develop the habit of attention. They're just good books, full of interest for any person. I wouldn't consider these books meaty enough for high-school credit, but again, we'll deal with teenagers another time. Suffice it here to say that if you do have middle- or high-schoolers, you will want to look at the Mater Amabilis syllabi for those ages and plan for them to work largely independently, meeting with you in the afternoon when you have finished with younger children. These are the books that you would be scheduling for your core read-aloud time daily, though you will not be reading every book every day. For religion: Marigold Hunt's books are don't-miss books in the Mater Amabilis religion syllabi. Although it's not listed in Mater Amabilis, many families also like to use her Saint Patrick's Summer as well, either in place of or as a supplement for a more formal catechism (it does, in fact, cover all the topics a First Communion catechism needs to cover, but has a wide age appeal). Mater Amabilis lists Hunt's A Life of Our Lord for Children in the Level 1A syllabus for religion, but you could read it to a K-6 audience easily. 1x weekly Saint stories 2x weekly: Mary Fabian Windeatt, the Vision series, but also picture books by Tomie dePaola and Brian Wildsmith are good, even for older children. You might focus on the younger children during your core time together, but make sure older children are reading saint biographies as part of their free-reading regimen. I would schedule, for everyone, Saint Patrick's Summer 2x weekly this year. If you have children approaching sacrament years, you can work with them one-on-one with the appropriate level Baltimore Catechism or Faith and Life, as scheduled in Mater Amabilis. During Lent I'd replace Saint Patrick's Summer with My Path to Heaven, at least once a week. For history: National History (British): Our Island Story (2x weekly) You will want to supplement this book in places with Catholic resources, such as Our Lady's Dowry, which is linked on the Mater Amabilis website and free to Mater Amabilis users, or Hillside Education's reprint of A History of England for Catholic Children. NB: I would not replace Our Island Story with A History of England for Catholic Children, because the former is just a sui-generis, can't-miss, excellently-told living book. But there are places where putting a Catholic source in conversation with that book is desirable, and will teach children something about historical method and truth-seeking. Another good supplement or pairing with Our Island Story, at least through the High Middle Ages, is Amy Steedman's Our Island Saints. World History (Classical): Famous Men of Greece (2x weekly)
There are some alternatives to Famous Men which might have more appeal for the younger end of your audience, while not being too young for the older end. We have particularly liked F. J. Gould's The Children's Plutarch, available in two volumes, Tales of the Greeks and Tales of the Romans, from Yesterday's Classics as either a print book or a free e-text, or from Heritage History, in various e-text formats, also free. The prose is engaging, and the books overall are shorter than Famous Men, which could give you more scheduling leeway. IF you choose F.J. Gould over Famous Men, I would schedule that 1x weekly, and Our Island Story 3x. For geography: Primarily the Holling C. Holling books listed for Level 2 Year 1: Paddle-to-the-Sea Seabird 1x weekly plus Earth Studies: Rocks, Rivers, and the Changing Earth may be a good choice here. It might be a stretch for your younger listeners, but it's a good idea to have something in the mix that tilts toward your oldest. This is a very engaging, living book which my children narrated well and enjoyed. *Note: this book has become expensive and hard to find. You may wish to revisit the Mater Amabilis plans for Earth Studies/Geography in either Level 1 or Level 2 for more alternatives. We loved RRCE, but it's not the only good book out there by any means.
1x weekly For this just-starting-out phase, I would not try to do formal mapwork. Have a map in the room where you're reading. Any time there's a location in any reading that you do – not just geography, but history, science, a novel, a saint story – find that place on the map. Bingo: any lesson becomes, also, a geography lesson. For science: Now, Earth Studies, under geography, is sort of a crossover with science, for one thing, so already, before you even arrive at the "science" slot in your planning, you can feel that you're not neglecting this subject. I might add one study that your youngest children can participate in – a nature study/nature lore reading – and then one science reading/session that tilts toward your older children, and that your younger children could be excused from if it's over their heads. Nature Lore: There are many really lovely nature-lore books that skew "young," and that you might want to make time to read one-on-one with a younger child, or find some time once in a week to read with a first-through-third-grade set, but not older children, unless they just want to listen. These include Among the Night People and others in the same series by Clara Dillingham Pierson, and anything by Thornton Burgess: The Burgess Bird Book for Children The Burgess Animal Book for Children The Burgess Seashore Book for Children There's also this book which would be good for that younger, lower-primary grouping, but like the others, would really be too young for the oldest children in your group. It's worth considering when you might be able to catch up with that age demographic for a short reading or lesson in nature lore, apart from the older children. As a slot in your combined-school core-studies time block, though, you might consider some of these options, which do have a wider age appeal: Life in a Bucket of Soil The Lost Words Fabre's Book of Insects 1x weekly Science: Some options, which will probably have the greatest engagement potential for your upper-primary students, but could also engage younger ones: Blood and Guts or The Way We Work for a strand in human anatomy. Note that The Way We Work is a gorgeous, living, keepsake-quality book, but that it ends with a section on human reproduction: beautifully handled, in my view, with no political overtones of any kind, but parents of pre-middle-school-aged children will obviously wish to use their prudential judgment about the level of exposure their wish their children to have in this particular area. The Way Things Work Now for a strand of physical science, using activity ideas described here. The Story Book of Science, for a narrative overview of integrated science. 1x weekly ******* For your first year, these books will form the core of your children's education. In that year, I think I would not worry about formal language arts too much: focus your energy on helping pre-readers learn to read, and on establishing copywork as a habit for everyone. I would not worry about foreign language with lower-primary children, except to learn, perhaps, prayers and simple chants in Latin, or prayers in a chosen modern language. If you have the time and energy, label things around the house with the word in your chosen language for those things (chairs, tables, books, the clock, etc) – or set your older children to work doing that. For your older children, a simple workbook/CD/DVD program in your chosen language, or something online, like The ULEAT (French and Spanish), is enough, and is perhaps something they can do independently in the morning while you are dealing with younger children's needs. Add your chosen math program, and you're set. Next up: THE ACTUAL SCHEDULE. |