As with the second post in this series, this post is applicable if a) you have multiple children schooling, b) have opted to combine them this year, and c) are kind of worried about what the future is going to look like if you implement your year this way.
If you have only one school-aged child, again the easiest thing to do is simply move forward with Mater Amabilis as written. As a younger child begins to age in, you might have that child tag along some with the older child, OR add Mater Amabilis Prep Level to your day (using that time block dedicated to younger children) --- but either way, this post will probably not be that helpful to you.
In previous posts in this series, we've looked at dividing your day into big time blocks, at what books you might choose to begin with in a one-room wide-age-range schoolhouse situation, and at what your school day might actually look like in practice: what you will do with those children and those books in those time blocks. Here again, too, is a grid showing a proposed daily routine over the course of a week.
All this series is oriented toward helping a family get a Charlotte Mason education up and running at home. I have presuming a large family with older and younger children – who maybe have been doing another homeschool curriculum up to now and want to change, or who have had children in school, have perhaps gone through a period of deschooling, and who are now ready to move into this kind of education. Of course, these ideas can adapt just as well for a family whose oldest child is a kindergartener or first grader. But my primary focus here is the large Catholic family with many moving parts and a need to address the academic concerns of a wide age range, as efficiently as possible.
At this point, we've got a plan for the first year, the big entry into Charlotte Mason homeschooling. We've combined a family with an oldest child of 11 or so into a single "class" or "form," with a core set of readings that will have appeal for everyone in roughly first through sixth grades.
But where will you go from here? Even as you're beginning your first year, especially if you do have children approaching middle-school age, with high school looming beyond, you may (and should) be at least starting to think a couple of moves ahead. Here, then, are some options to consider:
Option 1:
What you're doing this year is basically Mater Amabilis's Level 2 Year 1, with a little Level 1 thrown in.
"Officially" this level corresponds with Grades 4-5, but really, again, all the books appeal to a much wider age range, and are neither too "easy" for an older child, or too far out of reach for a younger one. So you're free to consider each child to be in whatever grade level is appropriate for his/her age, even when you're doing the same core curriculum for everyone right now.
But as you approach the end of this first year, assess your oldest child. If your oldest child is 11, or turning 11 before the next year begins, one good option may be simply to roll that child into Mater Amabilis Level 3. Don't worry about not having finished Level 2. If you follow Mater Amabilis, you'll run through another very thorough round of British history in high school, reading Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.
So Option 1 would mean that your oldest would be pursuing his/her own higher Level independently, while your younger group remain in Level 2. Any new first grader could be rolled into that younger group as well, OR begin in Level 1, if you feel ready to take on that many levels. Again, don't worry about gaps. It will all come out in the wash.
Option 1 is more or less what we did in our second year.
Option 2:
Option 2 is for families wishing to keep all children together in history. Some time back, I sketched out a "forms" rota, moving through all the history cycles in Mater Amabilis, for use by larger families and those seeking to keep their historical cycles consistent for all children in the family. Here is that rota, which you are free to download, use, and adapt as you like. Option B, which you'll need to scroll down to find, is going to be relevant to you right now.
In this option, you would continue to keep everybody together. You would scroll down to Option B in the document linked above and note that you've just done Year 1 (using Famous Men of Greece, or otherwise studying Ancient Greece/Classical history). Everybody, following the plan I sketched out for the first year, has been pretty much in Form 2, though you've also covered some Bible history via your religious-education reading, and that will continue into this year. If you read Life of Our Lord for Children last year, you'll pick up in religion with The First Christians this new year.
What you will want to do as you plan for the second year is to scroll down to Option B Year 2.
Your oldest child, aged 11 or 12 will be in Form 3 for the new year.
Everyone else can stay in Form 2, though if you also have a first grader coming up, and you feel you could juggle three forms, you might look at Form 1 options for that child and a kindergartener, if you have one. Otherwise, just let all children younger than 6th grade stay in Form 2.
You will be continuing to read Our Island Story to everyone this year.
You will read Famous Men of Rome, or possibly F.J. Gould's Children's Plutarch: Tales of the Romans, to your Form 2 younger children.
You will continue with Level 2 geography and science selections as seem appropriate to you, though you might also look at Level 3 science reading, if you need to fill in. The Paul Fleisher books, like Objects in Motion – the whole series is available in my Bookshop – would certainly be accessible to older elementary students as well as to middle-schoolers. These are excellent books, living and engaging and great to narrate, so if you want to combine your oldest with the others for science, Fleisher would be a good choice. Titles by Henri Fabre continue to be good choices as well for a wide age range.
What you may wish to do, in terms of scheduling, is slot all books that you want to read to everyone – Saint Patrick's Summer, Our Island Story, and science reading, on the same days, say Monday and Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, you may wish to dismiss your oldest child to read on his/her own while you read to younger children. Your oldest might do written narrations of those independently-read assignments: this is a good option especially if you have a hard time getting around to hearing oral narrations outside your set read-aloud time. Oral narration is still the gold standard, even at these older ages, but you really need to do whatever will help you ensure that narration happens. A narrated lesson is learned. A non-narrated lesson is not learned.
What will your oldest child be reading on his/her own?
Your oldest, in Form 2, can pick up Elizabeth O'Neill's The World's Story as an independent reading, starting at Chapter IX. This is a pretty meaty book, a step up in difficulty from anything you read last year, so you will want to assign a chapter over two weeks, read 2-3 times a week. That way your oldest will be studying Rome alongside the others, but at a level more appropriate to his/her age and more preparatory for the difficult reading that comes with high school.
Other readings your oldest might do independently, on the days when The World's Story is read:
For geography, M.B. Synge's A Book of Discovery and Richard Halliburton's Book of Marvels
For religion, selections from Mater Amabilis's Level 3 syllabus, particularly Ignatius Schuster's Bible History and the Gospel for the Lectionary cycle.
Literature selections from Level 3.
Other items you will want your oldest to pick up, even if you're still not doing them with the younger children:
Formal grammar and composition via Lingua Mater, as listed for Mater Amabilis Level 3
Studied dictation, possibly using Simply Charlotte Mason's Spelling Wisdom course. I used their Book 3 for this age. You can, of course, begin dictation as early as age 10, but if you can't quite manage that many moving parts in your day, continue having younger children do daily copywork, and focus on dictation once a week with your oldest, possibly in the afternoon when the younger children are finished with school and playing.
A foreign language more formally pursued, preferably via some video or outsourced medium, to save you time and energy. Dwayne Thomas's Visual Latin, for example, is an excellent choice for Latin at the middle-school stage, especially for a student who has had little to no Latin before.
I'm assuming that it's obvious that all children will continue with math at their appropriate levels.
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So, your reading schedule for your second year, if you're using Option 2 and keeping all children in the same history (but not necessarily the exact same books, because your oldest child needs to move up), might look as follows.
DAILY: copywork, math, foreign language on everybody's level, scheduled in whatever way worked last year, as long as that continues to work for you. Meanwhile, for your living-books core, you might break things down this way:
MONDAY:
Everyone together.
1. Saint Patrick's Summer or other catechism reading for everyone, like the #2 Baltimore Catechism
2. Our Island Story
3. a science reading for everyone
TUESDAY:
excuse your oldest to read independently for an hour (assign fairly short sections of the latter two books, especially):
1. a Level 3 religion reading like the Schuster Bible History.
2. The World's Story
3. Book of Discovery
You may either ask for written narrations of these readings, or set up an appointment later in the day to hear this child narrate. Just do whatever you will follow through on, so that narration happens.
Meanwhile, with your younger set, you will read:
1. a saint story
2. Famous Men of Rome or Children's Plutarch: Tales of the Romans
3. a geography reading from Level 2 Year 2
WEDNESDAY:
all together again, repeating Monday's rotation
1. The First Christians
2. Our Island Story
3. a reading in science or nature lore for everyone
THURSDAY:
again, excusing your oldest to read:
1. the Level 3 Gospel reading for the lectionary year
2. The World's Story
3. Book of Marvels
narrating in writing, or orally later on
while with the younger set, you read:
1. a saint story
2. the next reading in your selection in ancient/classical history from Tuesday
3. a geography reading for their level
FRIDAY:
You might excuse your oldest to read and narrate:
1. an assigned saint biography
2. another short section of The World's Story
while with your younger set you read:
1. The First Christians
2. something in science, nature lore, or geography for their level
and then have time for things like art, nature study, a hands-on science activity, or anything else that you'd like to combine everyone to do.
You will want to be sure your oldest also has a time slot for doing math, copywork and dictation, and more advanced language arts via Lingua Mater. Depending on what works best for that child and for you, this could be first thing in the morning, while you're working with younger children, or in the afternoon, when you might have a little more free time to focus.
Again, if you're just starting out, you don't really have to worry about all this in any great detail. This is just to help you visualize how you can pick up with a new year after the first year, and begin to develop a vision of where you're going, year to year –– or rather, just jump onto the existing vision and tweak it a little, rather than feeling like, "Oh no! I have to make this all up! What do people do for seventh grade???"