All of these can probably be read in 20 minutes, but skimming over them too quickly won't be effective at conveying all that a CM education is. Each of these posts encompasses such a wealth of accompanying ideas that it's best to go slowly, take one at a time, and let it sink in. Even better would be to think and discuss them one at a time with related thoughts brought in, because even though these can be collected and summarized neatly in one place, they won't have any impact until the reader digests and internalizes them, and that requires slowing down and taking time to consider each of them individually.
1a. Welcome to AO
1b. About AmblesideOnline
2. About Charlotte Mason
3. Personhood: This is Foundational
4. The Three Tools of Learning
5. What Makes an Education?
6. Narration
7a. Language Arts
7b. More on Language Arts
8. CM is for Moms, Too
9. Education is an Atmosphere: The Environmental Tool
10. Education is a Discipline: The Good Habit Tool
11. Education is a Life: Ideas That Awaken a Mind
12. Nature Study
13. More on Narration
14. Self Education: the Only Education, for the Win!
15. Don't Worry About the Gaps
16. Personhood Again
17. Atmosphere Re-visited
18. Books as Food
19. The Most Important Habit
20. Are You Enslaved to a System?
21. Where Do Vital Ideas Come From?
22. Copywork
23. The Double Duty of Books
24. Short Lessons
25. Math
26. History
27. Dictation
28. Folksongs and Hymns
29. What's in a Book?
30. The Beauty of Culture
31. Geography
32. An Extraordinary Realization
33. Don't Trust This!
34. The Earth is the Lord's
35. Personhood, One More Time
36. Curriculum
37. The Way of the Will and The Way of Reason
38. Who's in Charge?
39. You Made It!
1a. Welcome to AmblesideOnline
Welcome to AmblesideOnline! Before you get started with your school year, we'd like to say hello and make sure you've stopped by our Introduction page for beginners. That page explains how all of this works, tells what you need in order to start, offers a word about which grade/Year to start with, and gives some scheduling tips. It's not very long, and should help you get acclimated.
View that page at http://www.amblesideonline.org/New.shtml
We've arranged a special area of the forum just for you -- it's sort of our Patio, where you can hang out and ask questions without making a commitment to come all the way in, and with no worries about finding your way around the rest of the forum -- you can stay on the Patio just long enough to get your questions answered, or stick around for awhile to discuss these informal Patio chats with us. If you decide to stay, you can look around the forum until you feel comfortable enough to venture off the Patio. There's a wealth of information there!
As you begin your child's school, we want to begin helping you in your journey to understanding the Charlotte Mason method of education. So, over the next 36 weeks, we'll chat with you briefly about this journey. We hope these little snippets will whet your appetite to learn more. Most are taken from one of Charlotte Mason's 20 Principles -- what she felt were the 20 most important points about education that works. If you'd like to talk through some of the concepts we bring up, join us on the AO Forum.
https://amblesideonline.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=100
We want this year to be a great time for you and your student(s). A Charlotte Mason education is wonderful, not only for your children, but for you, too. The freshness of the outdoors, the beauty of art and music, the awakening in the mind sparked by a new idea, the inspiration of a touch from the Holy Spirit -- these are meant for you as well as your student(s).
Today, as you read to your child, or explore nature, or look at a picture -- stop and appreciate. Allow your own mind and soul to be fed.
See you next week! Until then, here's an article that explains the benefits of this kind of education: Why Choose CM?
http://archipelago7.blogspot.com/2017/01/why-choose-charlotte-mason.html
If you'd like to read Charlotte Mason's 20 Principles, you can see all of them at http://www.amblesideonline.org/CM/20Principles.html.
1b. About AmblesideOnline
How is your first week going? Here's a tip for you: instead of thinking about whatever you couldn't fit in, focus on what went right. So maybe only one book got read. Hey, you read a book! Super! Or maybe you didn't get to any of the books, but you rocked your Picture Study. That's great! Look at your successes instead of your shortcomings, and realize that things will get easier once you find your stride. Even then, you may never get it perfect, but that's okay -- think about what went well.
And now we'd like to let you know a little about us, about who we are and why we created AO.
We on the AO Advisory are six homeschooling moms who are the creators of AmblesideOnline. Our vision then and always is to bring a full, rich life, and a sense of purpose to all children. Twelve years into the work, we added the Auxiliary -- six homeschool moms who help us. We fell in love with Charlotte Mason's idea of what education could look like, and we wanted that for more than just our own children. We want you to know that we offer this curriculum as a gift -- our gift to you!
But curriculum is just part of the "CM" package. We provide that part of the package so you can set aside your worries about how to teach and what to teach, and get on with the enjoyment of sharing this kind of life with your child(ren) and learning about this journey you've begun.
We hope AO blesses you and your family. Please feel free to tweak this plan to fit your needs. If your child is struggling, step back and slow down. Ask for help on our Forum; we've all had to make our own adjustments to fit the needs of our own child, and we're happy to share what helped and offer some suggestions.
https://amblesideonline.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=100
We hope you, too, come to fall in love with Charlotte Mason's style of education. Are you wondering what a Charlotte Mason style of education is? Stay tuned! That's the next thing we'd like to share with you . . .
2. About Charlotte Mason
Are you new to a Charlotte Mason (CM) education and wondering what it's all about? Here's a quick run-down.
From a CM perspective, the child is a bona-fide, full fledged person made in God's image, complete in his personhood in the same way that a seed is complete and already has everything within it to become a plant. The child is an individual to be treated with dignity and respect. This respect for the child drives everything about a CM education. It means his education isn't supposed to make him fit the world -- there's a larger purpose. His education builds him up as a person and broadens his mind by connecting him to the world around him, building relationships with God and people from various places and times. The goal isn't to make him a suitable employee, but to make him a useful person in general with a heart to serve others, and an ability to find joy in his surroundings.
Plenty of time is spent outdoors to introduce him to the wonders of God's creation, but this time isn't all idle. There are times of specific nature observation to learn the ways of plants and animals, and to teach him what's in his own backyard.
He learns to focus his attention fully on his schoolwork, so his lessons are shorter and yet more effective. That means less time doing school and more free time for personal interests.
There are plenty of interesting things to think about and keep his mind busy. Most of these stimulating ideas come from books -- but not just any book. Pleasant, narrative books that use well-written language serve a double purpose by reinforcing language arts while teaching in an engaging way. Narration, or telling back the story, forces his mind to process those ideas and make them "his own."
Copywork and dictation are the bulk of language arts instruction. They may seem simple, but they are effective enough on their own to eliminate the need for spelling books, vocabulary lists and handwriting programs.
The educational course of study is carefully planned, and the teacher helps as a guide and co-learner, but the actual learning is the responsibility of the child. Nobody can learn his lessons for him.
That's a very condensed version, and there's more there than meets the eye, but we'll be going over each aspect over the year. Consider these chats as your weekly educational reading assignments -- your child has a weekly schedule of reading, and now Teacher does, too. :-) Have a great week!
Have a great week!
3. Personhood: This is Foundational
Your child is a person. A Charlotte Mason education is based on this principle -- that your child is a person. Are you wondering how something so obvious can be the basis for anything?
Think about your own concept of children, and the ideas we hear about raising children. We mold them like clay, we prune and coax them like tender flowers in a greenhouse, we fill their minds with the kinds of things we hope will make them good people.
But how much can you, as a parent, really do to guarantee the outcome of the adult your child will grow into? Your child is neither a lump of clay to be molded, nor a plant in a greenhouse, nor an empty mind to fill with whatever you want. Your child is a full fledged person with a mind and personality all his own. Just like a seed that already has everything in it to grow to planthood and all we can do is water it, a child already has all of his personhood. He was born with it, and you as the parent are limited in how much you can mold that child, and what methods you can use to prune and coax -- because your child is an individual made in God's image, worthy of the same respect and dignity that anyone else is.
This week, take a long look at your child. Try to see the world through his eyes. Don't imagine him as the responsible, accomplished adult you dream he'll be someday; love him and enjoy him for who he is today.
"First of all, we take children seriously. After all, they're persons just like we are . . ." [from Charlotte Mason's Vol. 3 pg 63]
[Today's patio chat comes from Principle 1]
4. The Three Tools of Learning
Your child is a person -- a full fledged person with his own personality, his own mind. He has a right to as much respect and dignity as anyone else.
What does this have to do with education? Everything! It means there are limits on what's okay, and what's not okay in our attempts to educate him. Obviously it's not okay to beat a child for misspelling a word like teachers used to do in past generations. But, in a lesser sense, it's also not okay to bribe him to learn with candy or money. It's not okay to guilt him into learning to prove his love for you. Punishment, bribery, and guilt tripping are all forms of manipulation, and only seem to work by appealing to the wrong motives.
But what IS okay to use in order to educate him? Three things: his natural environment, habits that make his (and your!) life smoother, and interesting ideas that awaken his mind.
Charlotte Mason called these three tools "an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life," and they are the foundational building blocks of a CM education.
Atmosphere means that your child is learning valuable life lessons just by living in your home, observing what goes on in your town, playing with his friends, going through the routine of his day. Discipline means he is learning good habits that help him regulate and control himself. Life -- ah, life! Our minds are sparked and inspired by all kinds of ideas, and a major source for these ideas that awaken us to real living is books. Books are important in a CM education because they introduce us to such a wealth of diverse ideas.
We'll look at those three educational tools a little more in depth later. This week, see if you can identify some of these in your child's life.
[Today's patio chat comes from Principle 5]
5. What Makes an Education?
What is education? Have you ever tried to pin down precisely what it is?
Education includes facts, but it's more than that. Education includes passion, but it's more than that. Education includes reading, but it's more than that.
Education takes all of those things and sees connections and how one thing is like another, and that what happened here is related to what happened there. Education is all about building relationships between things and people and places and incidents. It's about developing a personal relationship with those things, so that it's not just a disinterested recognition -- it's truly caring about those things. Education is about what makes those relationships happen.
Or, to put it in Charlotte Mason's own words, "education is the science of relations."
But how do you see relationships between different things if your experience and exposure to things is limited? How do you notice that a snail shell is designed with the precision of a Fibonacci numerical sequence if you've never heard of a Fibonacci sequence? What if you've never even seen a snail?
The more you know, the more of these wondrous relationships you see, and the more interconnectedness you notice. That's why a CM education tries to expose the student (and his teacher!) to so many different kinds of things -- not just snails and numbers, but music, and customs in other lands, and the wonder of water, and kings of long ago.
Is it possible to learn everything? Well, no. But don't worry about gaps in your child's education -- the more amazing wonders he finds out about, the more he'll realize there is to know, and the more he'll want to fill in those gaps on his own. He'll never be the kind of person who thinks he "knows it all," because he'll have a sense that the little bit he does know is just the tip of the iceburg!
"'Education is the science of relationships' means that normal children have a natural, inborn desire for all knowledge, and they have a right to be exposed to it." [from Charlotte Mason's Vol. 3 pg 216]
[Today's patio chat comes from Principle 12]
6. Narration
Let's talk about the all-important key to making a Charlotte Mason education "stick." Let's talk about narration.
Have you ever assumed you knew a thing, and then when you tried to explain it, you realized you didn't know it as well as you thought you did? Hold on to that thought, because it relates to narration.
Narration means you read your child a book -- maybe a chapter of history, or a Scripture passage, or a story -- and your child tells it back to you. He uses some of his own words and some he picked up from the reading. He might forget that the king wore a royal cloak, but he includes the part about the jeweled sword. Or maybe he includes both, but doesn't mention the location of the battlefield. Every child will pick up on something different (because every child is an individual person, remember?)
You might not have seen it, but some real learning just happened. Your child had to remember the story. He had to put the details in order -- what happened first? Which parts were important and need to be mentioned? If you're really, really quiet, you might hear it -- the sound of the gears turning as his mind is sorting through that information, sifting, organizing, making choices about what to keep and what to discard, and finding the words to put it all back together again. That's the sound of real learning happening!
What about our earlier example, when you had trouble putting your vague notion into words? That's what happens to information we take in, but never really verbalize -- it never gets truly assimilated.
This week, try your hand at narrating yourself. It isn't as easy as it sounds! But when you've done it, that knowledge is yours "for keeps."
"We know that if a person, whether a child or adult, can tell something, they really know it. But if he can't put it into words, then he doesn't really know it." [from Charlotte Mason's Vol. 6 pg 172]
[Today's patio chat comes from Principle 14]
7a. Language Arts
Language arts are probably the easiest part of educating with Charlotte Mason's methods. It's so deceptively simple that it can look like it's not enough -- but it's doing more than it looks like on the surface.
Here's your Charlotte Mason language arts curriculum: reading, narration, copywork, and dictation. Are you wondering what to buy? Not a thing! The books you're using for school are all the materials you need.
In the very earliest years, you probably read picture books to your child and talked with him. Did you know you were covering language arts? Yes, you were! What does language arts mean but to have the skill of using language? If you're a list checker, you can check language arts off your preschool list: Done.
In first grade, you add reading lessons if he's ready, narration, and copywork. Copywork means exactly what it says -- you, as the teacher, write a word on a sheet of lined paper, and your child works at copying it. This just takes a couple of minutes -- we're only talking about a single word. In a year or so, that single word increases to a full sentence, and then later to a slightly longer sentence with punctuation. Eventually, your child will be able to copy half a page of writing in ten minutes or so.
Much later, some written narrations can be added, and studied dictation. Dictation means your child looks at some text (such as a page in a book), studies a section until he's sure he could write any part of it, and then you, the teacher, dictate part of that section while he writes it from memory. The process takes just a few minutes.
Grammar is an abstract concept best saved for later, but even as a toddler, your child is already learning to use language by hearing and reading words used properly. In late elementary years, he can put labels to those words by learning the eight parts of speech. Formal grammar lessons come even later, and can be eased and helped along by learning a foreign language.
Does that seem too easy? Let's look at what's going on. Reading itself -- the very act of seeing the words on the page and converting them to meaningful concepts in the mind -- takes in vocabulary and spelling at the same time, and copywork assists that while training handwriting. Dictation forces your child to notice how things are spelled and where the punctuation goes. And written narration makes up writing assignments.
Are you convinced yet?
7b. More on Language Arts
(This is a guest post from Wendi Capehart expanding on our last topic.)
There is more to language arts in Charlotte Mason's plan, but it's not actually doing more, it's how much of what you do with a CM education also contributes toward grammar and composition. Charlotte Mason said that nature study, and teaching the children the right words for things they saw at the time they needed those words is also teaching them skills they will later use in composition. For instance, she talks about a little game she has children play -- the children go look at something, a scene, and come back and describe it, and then Mom asks for a bit more detail. "Yellow flowers, Jenny? Were they buttercups, dandelions, or something else? Describe them to me, please. You can look again if you need to."
Jenny returns, and her description tells you, "Oh, they were on bushes, and they smelled lovely? I suspect you saw some yellow roses. Were there thorns? Did each flower have many, many petals, or only a few?" (I'm making up the example, but Charlotte Mason gives a similar example in her first book, "Home Education.")
And so on. This finding of the right word for the right thing based on a description is part of building skills they will use later. When your children spend thousands of hours reading printed words on the page, you notice that they start talking like their books. They use words like 'jolly' and 'aghast,' words that you never use in every day life. That's because they're internalizing the vocabulary and using it, and they do the same with the sentence structure.
Later you will introduce formal grammar, but at that point you'll be giving terms for things they mostly already know are true. They know that in English, the adjective usually goes before the word it's modifying (the red chair, not the chair red). They don't know that's what those classes of words are called, but they know how to use them properly. They know the verb is not usually the first word in the sentence in English (it is in some other languages) -- even though they have not yet learned what the term 'verb' means. They even know there is an exception or two -- and they use them properly. They just don't know the formal words for what they know and do every day.
Foreign language contributes quite a bit to grammatical understanding as well.
8. CM is for Moms, Too
How is your school year going? Is your child challenged? Are new things being learned, new wonders being discovered?
And how about YOU? We've mentioned that this CM education is not just for kids -- it's a lifestyle for you, too.
Charlotte Mason told one of her teacher trainees who thought she was there to learn to teach, "My dear, you have come here to learn to LIVE."
Are you, the teacher, learning to live? Have you started nature study in your school time? Do you have your own notebook to make your own observations? Are you singing hymns along with your child and allowing the lyrics to touch your heart and spirit? Are you letting the beauty of a poem or picture you share as part of school inspire you?
Let's take it a step farther. What are you reading for your own intellectual growth and joy? After all, you are a person, too, and your mind needs ideas to keep it fresh and alive. Do you have a challenging book that opens your mind to lovely things you never thought of before? Do you have a devotional time for your spiritual growth? If you're learning and being inspired from your child's schoolbooks during school time, that counts!
Are you finding the support you need to help you along in your homeschooling, perhaps a local CM reading group? Don't neglect your own need for mental stimulus in your efforts to do the best for your student!
If you find yourself without a local support network, please find yourself a place at our online Forum. We would love to help you, encourage you, and get to know you!
https://amblesideonline.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=100
"If mothers would learn to do for themselves what they do for their children when they're over-stimulated, households would all be happier. Let the mother go out to play! She should have the courage to let everything go when life becomes too stressful, and just take a day, or even a half day, alone, to go out into the fields, or enjoy a favorite book, or go to the art gallery and gaze long and intensely at just two or three pictures, or relax in bed, without the children. Life would go on more smoothly for both parents and children." [from Charlotte Mason's Vol. 3 pg 34]
9. Education is an Atmosphere: The Environmental Tool
A few weeks ago, we talked about three tools: your child's natural environment, habits that make his life smoother, and interesting ideas that awaken his mind: what Charlotte Mason called "an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life," and they are the foundational building blocks of a CM education. Let's look at those a little more closely. This week, we'll talk about atmosphere -- your child's environment.
Think about your child's life from his perspective. His environment is like the air he breathes. Is his atmosphere warm and loving, with the warmth of a mother's smile, the camaraderie of siblings that he alternately bickers with and plays with? Are there friends to add a bit of fun? Extended family? Is he learning about love and responsibility by caring for a pet?
What else is in your child's environment -- what makes up the atmosphere of his life? Does Dad have a job he talks about at home? Are daily news and local events sometimes talked about around the dinner table? Are family members treated with dignity and respect?
Does he see you reading, and modeling that as an enjoyable experience? Are there prayers given regularly? Are there regular times spent outdoors? Is music a part of your family's life? Or is there the constant noise of a TV going in the background?
Your child is learning all the time, whether you're intentionally teaching him or not. The life he experiences is teaching him -- about love, trust, family dynamics, kindness, how to handle adversity. This week, take a good look at the atmosphere that's teaching your child. What is his atmosphere teaching him about life?
"No artificially created environment could possibly compare to the natural atmosphere of real life, which blows like a fresh wind over the child." [from Charlotte Mason's Vol. 6 pg 93]
[Today's patio chat comes from Principle 6]
10. Education is a Discipline: The Good Habit Tool
Your child's education happens through "atmosphere, discipline, and life," the three tools that are your child's natural environment, habits that make his life smoother, and interesting ideas that awaken his mind. Last week we looked at the atmosphere your child is surrounded with. This week we'll look at habits.
What habits have you intentionally taught your child? To say please and thank you? To put his dishes by the kitchen sink after dinner? To make his bed and brush his teeth every morning? To wipe his feet before he comes in the house?
What about habits he's picked up, but that you didn't set out to teach? Whisking his Legos out of reach when he hears Baby Brother's toddling footsteps approaching? Drawing a smily face in the top right corner of his schoolwork? Waiting until Mom sounds like she means business before he takes action? :-)
Did you know that paying attention is a habit you can intentionally encourage? Not only can you encourage it, but it's important for your child's education. When your child pays attention, your school time can be more effective, and time will go by quicker and more enjoyably. A child who's distracted by every little thing, or whose mind wanders all day long can make a few lessons drag on for hours.
How do you encourage this habit of paying attention? You start small. Keep lessons short and successful, before his attention starts to lag.
Stay tuned for the last of these three tools: "life!"
"Forming good habits is what an education is made of. Education is merely forming the right habits." [from Charlotte Mason's Vol. 1 pg 97]
[Today's patio chat comes from Principle 7]
11. Education is a Life: Ideas That Awaken a Mind
Your child's education happens through "atmosphere, discipline, and life," the three tools that are your child's natural environment, habits that make his life smoother, and interesting ideas that awaken his mind. This week, let's think about the life of the mind which is sparked by ideas.
Do you remember when you first had an inkling that you were going to be a parent? Did the very idea of a baby on the way change the way you looked at things? Did you suddenly start looking at your dietary habits with new eyes? Did names suddenly take on new importance for you? Did you start noticing children at the grocery store, at the mall, all around, that you had always taken for granted before?
That's the power of an idea, and this is the power we're going for in education: the power of an idea to awaken, to inspire, to change the way everything is looked at, to awe, to influence even your child's actions. Where do these ideas come from? They come from other people -- your child will hear them, or see them in movies, but mostly, they come from things people have said and thought, and the best of these are recorded in BOOKS. Your child deserves to be exposed to the BEST ideas, the ideas that are worthy of his personhood and will inspire him to be a better person. This is why books have such an all-important place in a CM education.
What kinds of ideas are picked up from books? Ideas like these: Even a king has to work hard to learn something as simple as reading. A hero doesn't always wear a cape; in fact, an ordinary person can be a hero. People who lived six hundred years ago felt and thought like real people do today. God's hand is at work, even in the details of the tiniest weed sprouting through a crack in the sidewalk.
What idea has awakened and broadened your child's mind today?
"What is it that parents sow? Ideas. It's imperative that we recognize what the only educational seed we have is, and how to distribute this seed." [from Charlotte Mason's Vol. 2 pg 29]
[Today's patio chat comes from Principle 8]
12. Nature Study
Spending lots of time outside is one of the hallmarks of a Charlotte Mason education. It's not just good for kids to be outside (although it is good for them), but, by spending lots of time outside, your child will start to notice things like what kinds of plants and birds are typical for your area, how the elements behave, and changes that happen in the weather and sky.
This early relaxed experience with nature is the basis for later science knowledge. Without early first-hand contact with dirt, bugs, water, wind, fog -- many scientific concepts won't make sense, because those concepts have no real experience to relate to. How can a child who has never watched wave upon wave at the beach ever grasp the idea of ocean tides? How can a child who has never looked under rocks around a tree trunk understand how a forest supports an entire ecosystem? Is it possible to believe that metamorphosis is real without seeing a caterpillar change into a butterfly?
Studying an anthill, watching a frog on the edge of a pond, following a bee as it collects pollen -- all of these are wonderful opportunities for your child to observe. As he gazes, he is getting fresh air, practicing his ability to focus his attention, sharpening his observation skills, and learning something about what he's watching. So much win, and all while your house stays clean!
"The most valuable thing children can learn is what they discover themselves about the world they live in. Once they experience first-hand the wonder of nature, they will want to make nature observation a life-long habit." [from Charlotte Mason's Vol. 1 pg 61]
13. More on Narration
Let's talk more about narration. Recent studies are coming to the same conclusion Charlotte Mason came to a hundred years ago: there's no more effective tool for making knowledge stick than narration. It may look inconsequential, but a whole lot of learning is going on when your child is narrating -- in fact, he's learning even when he's mentally preparing himself to tell back, even if he isn't actually called on to narrate!
But what if it doesn't happen so naturally? What if, "can you tell back the story?" doesn't work, and your child says, "I don't know," or just stares at you blankly? What then?
Some parents have started their child off: "There was a king and his name was . . ." Some use a little fun and make it silly, "It was about a pink bunny who bought some chewing gum, right?" and that sometimes gets their child going.
What about prompting the child with, "What was the king's name? Yes, and what did he take from the castle? Do you remember what he wore at his side?" No, that's not really narrating. That's your child telling you your own thoughts. What we're after is what comes from him, all by himself. After he's done, you can add a comment of your own (but, please -- make it a brief comment to get his mind thinking, and not a lecture), but in the narration phase, get out of the way and leave your child to do his own thinking, because it's while he's doing his own thinking that the best learning is happening.
What if misses some of the details? What if he forgets to mention the date? Don't worry, he'll get better at this. You can make that your brief comment, or if you're on top of things before the school day starts, you can give a hint about what you hope he'll remember by writing a couple of words down to introduce the reading: "Today we're going to read about what William the Conqueror did in 1066." But remember -- narrating is your child's work, not yours.
"A narration should have the child's unique stamp on it as evidence that the material has been assimilated and gone through some processing in his mind." [from Charlotte Mason's Vol. 1 pg 289]
[Today's patio chat comes from Principle 15]
14. Self Education: the Only Education, for the Win!
Last week, we closed by saying, "narrating is your child's work, not yours." We're going to think about that this week. Why is it so important that the child not be told what to tell back?
Because of this very CM idea: the only education is self-education. Have you ever sat through a lecture and all you got out of it was words, words, words -- until you forced yourself to pay attention and make your mind latch onto what was being said? Words can come at you 'til the cows come home, but they don't benefit you until your own mind decides to receive them and work with them. Until then, it's all just words.
Your child is a person, same as you (remember that from weeks and weeks ago?) and the effect of being lectured at or bombarded with facts has the same affect on him as it does on you -- it's just words, words, words. Narrating forces him to pay attention to those words, make sense of them, ruminate on them, work with them, filter them, and find the words to tell them back with his own personal touch.
Do you see what happened there? His mind chewed on those words as if they were food, digested them, and they were assimilated into his very person: he learned! And it only happened when his very own mind did that work. His education can only happen when his own mind gets involved. Charlotte Mason was right: the only real education is SELF-education.
"Teaching, lecturing, dramatizing, no matter how brilliant or coherent, does no good until the student becomes an active participant and goes to work on it in his mind. In other words, self-education is the only possible education." [from Charlotte Mason's Vol. 6 pg 240]
15. Don't Worry About the Gaps
So many ideas, so many books, so many things to know. How will your child ever learn them all? He won't. Neither will you. But it's okay.
Are you one of those parents who's worried about their first grader's ability to some day pass the SAT? Don't worry, it's really okay -- it's going to be fine. If it makes you feel better, read some of our stories on our website about AO graduates who have gotten college scholarships, become engineers, gone on to successful lives and careers -- they all had gaps in their education, even after a high quality education like AO.
Think about what you know, what you you learned in school, and how much of what you needed to know was learned when you needed to know it.
Now think about your child. Think about what he's going to be learning about as he goes through AO: the British basis of our constitution, the history of medicine, ancient Greek culture through Plutarch's Lives, child labor through the life of Oliver Twist, what makes a hero, how corn grows from a seed to a tall plant . . . whatever gaps there are, they're details that help fill in his broad base of understanding later. Your child will always have a sense that the world is a huge place, and that he only knows a tiny bit of what there is to know. That kind of intellectual humility is necessary for anyone to continue learning. Your child will have the rest of his life to fill in the gaps, and his mental "map" will have so many places and ideas already in place, that when he hears about a new discovery, it won't be some meaningless trivia that he passes over, he'll be able to recognize that it goes somewhere on his mental map because it relates to something he remembers from his school days.
Plenty of AO students have passed their SAT's with no prior cramming, and you have plenty of time before you get to that place. We encourage you to enjoy where you are on journey right now. Enjoy who your child is today.
P.S. You can read some stories about AO graduates at http://www.amblesideonline.org/HighSchool.shtml#Testimony
16. Personhood Again
The last thing we said last week was, "Enjoy who your child is today." Your child is a person NOW. He's not someone who is going to be a person someday, he's been a person all along.
Personhood was one of the first things we talked about. It's so foundational to Charlotte Mason's way of thinking, that we're going to look at it again. Your child, like everyone else, is a full fledged person created in the image of God. But what does this mean? How does it affect the way you parent him today?
It means we appreciate and respect him, as we would appreciate and respect anyone else, for who he is right now. He has his own thoughts and ideas, and deserves to be heard and taken seriously. He is no longer your baby, and he may resent being treated like a baby. He is not an annoying problem with a potential to be somebody. He already IS somebody, and you can't know how much future he has. Is he living a full, rich life right now?
Think back to yesterday. Did he come away from his lessons with a feeling of success, even a small feeling of success? Did he feel loved? Did he have something interesting to think about? Did he entertain a new idea? If yesterday was the only day he had, would he have lived a full, rewarding life? He is a full fledged person, and he deserves that much, like anybody else.
On the flip side, we are made in God's image, and God is love. We aren't made to be self-satisfied and to live only for ourselves. We were made to love and serve others. Thinking back again on yesterday, did your child have an opportunity to do a kindness to someone else? To have a designated place to belong in his family or community by fulfilling his duty, even if his only duty was to feed the cat? To express love? Did he feel himself maturing in his ability to control himself? All of these things are just as important to a rewarding life as being on the receiving end of love and interest.
If you looked back to yesterday with a feeling that the day might have been better spent, take heart. Today is a whole new day, and you can determine to make this day a day worth living. And, while you're at it, don't leave yourself out. Have you been sparked by an interesting new idea? Shown or received love? Experienced something beautiful? Strive to make today a day worth living.
A quote from the Charlotte Mason Series, likening a child to a seed that will grow into a plant: "A child is a complete person with all the possibilities within him, present even at this very moment." [from Charlotte Mason's Vol. 2 pg 260]
Cindy Rollins discussed the ins and outs of what personhood means in her Mason Jar podcast at https://www.circeinstitute.org/podcast/mason-jar-what-does-it-mean-children-are-born-persons. It's 39 minutes that will help you wrap your mind around this all-important concept.
17. Atmosphere Re-visited
Since we re-visited personhood, we're going to re-visit atmosphere again, too.
We already established that atmosphere is simply what surrounds you. You don't need to create an atmosphere with art on the walls, music playing, bookshelves full of books . . . atmosphere is already there. There are things you can do to enhance and enrich it, but even if you do nothing deliberately, your home and life already has (and is) an atmosphere. It's real and it reflects all the messiness, individuality, beauty and humanity of your life, and your children will learn valuable lessons from it. It's theirs, something they'll carry with them as a part of themselves all their lives, and it's different from what other people will carry with them because no two lives are the same.
It's like personhood -- there are things you can do to improve yourself and learn things, but your personhood would be just as real and valid even if you didn't do those things. Let that sink in -- nothing you can do will make you more of a person. You might become a more educated person, or a more cultured person, or a more self-controlled person -- but your personhood was there to begin with. You don't have any more personhood for making self-improvements, and you don't lose personhood for failing to do any self-improvements (although self-improvements will enhance and improve your experience through life!)
How did we end up talking about personhood again? Are you getting a sense of how important and foundational personhood is? Once you fully grasp the concept of your child as a person, it will influence everything -- the way you treat him, the way you discipline him, the way you educate him. The personhood of your child is the essence of a Charlotte Mason education. It drives every principle, and every practice of the CM method.
18. Books as Food
By now, you know that books have an important place in a CM education. This week, we're going to focus on those books. Will just any book do? Is it only important that a child reads, no matter what he reads? Well, no. Let's work with an analogy: food.
We all need food. We all love to eat. We NEED to eat. Let's ask ourselves the same question, but with our new analogy: Is it only important that a child eats, no matter what he eats? What if he eats candy all day? Sugar causes a craving for more sugar. Your child will be left with an insatiable appetite for more candy, yet his body will be starving. How about sawdust? If he can manage to choke any of it down, it will probably do him more damage than good. What if he had all the nutrients he needed, but blended into a paste that you slopped into a bowl for him every morning? That may be healthy, but he wouldn't want to eat it. Those nutrients wouldn't ever make it into his body.
Okay, let's be more realistic. What about fruit? Fruit is healthy, fruit is good. But can a child live on nothing but fruit? Can he live on just bread? No. A growing body needs nutrients, but those nutrients have to be in something appealing and tasty, and those nutrients need to come from a variety of sources.
Let's get back to books. There are silly books that have enough action going on to stimulate a child's appetite for more of the same. They're like mind candy. Comic books might fall into this category. Some series books also fit here. Those books are like pure sugar -- they taste great, but too many will spoil the appetite and cause starvation -- not starvation of the body, but of the mind. Sawdust might be likened to dry, boring textbooks that are hard for anybody to choke down with enjoyment, even when all the relevant facts are there. And there are books that have all the right ingredients, but for some reason, children just don't take to them.
The right book is a joy -- the phrasing is delightful, the words themselves are beautiful and convey advanced vocabulary seamlessly, the pages are alive with plenty of interesting ideas to get the mind going . . . but even then, a variety of books about different things is necessary. Reading nothing but classic fairy tales would be like living on fruit. Where's the meat of history, the bread of geography? (What should we liken brussels sprouts to?)
You'll hear a lot about "living books" and "twaddle" if you spend much time with CM educators. Can you guess which books we've talked about would be "living," and which would be "twaddle"?
"When we say book, we don't mean any printed text with a binding. We mean a work that possesses certain literary qualities that can bring the kind of sensible joy to a reader that comes from a literary word fitly spoken." [from Charlotte Mason's Vol. 2 pg 262]
19. The Most Important Habit
We talked about the discipline of good habits earlier: "Did you know that paying attention is a habit you can intentionally encourage? Not only can you encourage it, but it's important for your child's education. When your child pays attention, your school time can be more effective, and time will go by quicker and more enjoyably. A child who's distracted by every little thing, or whose mind wanders all day long can make a few lessons drag on for hours."
Charlotte Mason thought that, educationally speaking, the ability to pay attention and focus was the most useful habit a person could have (this habit isn't just for kids!) Attention is tied to memory. How many times have you misplaced your keys because you weren't really paying attention when you laid them down? What if you could train yourself to stop and pay attention for two seconds every time your keys left your hands? You'd probably never misplace your keys again!
Let's transfer that to education. What if you could train your child to pay focused attention for two minutes every time you started a school lesson? Your child would catch every detail, which would be reflected in his narration, and remembering lessons would be a cinch.
What if you could extend that to four minutes next year?
What if you could extend it to fifteen minutes by seventh grade, and twenty by high school? Imagine how much material you could cover by never having to re-read, or stop to coax back your student's flagging attention. This could revolutionize your whole school! Two hours, boom, the day's reading is done, and it's done thoroughly and well!
And that, folks, is the beauty of training the habit of attention. Start small. This week, figure out your starting point. Are you at two minutes? Thirty seconds? Wherever you are, work at making it a little longer. You'll get there!
There some painless exercises you can use to build attention. Trying to remember what was seen in a shop window, listing from memory some random items you placed on a tray (this is a game often played at baby showers), remembering a scene from nature are some fun ways of encouraging better attention.
"A person's ability to pay attention is a good assessment of their competence." [from Charlotte Mason's Vol. 1 pg 137]
[Today's patio chat comes from Principle 15]
20. Are you Enslaved to a System?
How can you prevent your homeschool from feeling like you're stuck in a rut? What can you do if you feel like the joy has been sapped from your homeschool because all you're doing is checking off items from a checklist? What if your child is complaining and it's not working?
If you know the driving principles behind WHY you're doing what you're doing, you can get creative when it isn't working, and find a different way to get it done. After all, there's more than one way to skin a cat! If you don't know WHY you're doing it, you won't be confident about finding a different way -- you might even completely miss the basic principle altogether by slavishly sticking to a specific practice that isn't working.
That's the difference between a method and a system. A CM education is about joy in learning, self education, forming relationships, and doing your duty. Those are the "why's." Narration, engaging books, nature study are some of the methods -- but there can be some flexibility in how you apply those methods: if you don't follow a system of "one 4-minute oral narration within three minutes after every reading," that doesn't mean you aren't doing CM, or even that you aren't doing CM "the right way." It's important to understand the "why" behind the method so you can flex and tweak the system to make it work for you, but still be true to the underlying principles.
If you can wrap your mind around this concept and truly grasp it, you will experience freedom in your homeschool like you never have before.
We urge you to listen to Karen Glass (she's one of the original founding Advisory members of AO) as she explains the difference between a method and a system. It's about an hour long, but she also talks about some creative ways to make narration more fun, and how to adapt CM for teenagers. It won't be wasted time!
Listen to Karen Glass: Don't Let Your Methods Grow Up to Be Systems
http://www.scholesisters.com/ss20/
Karen Glass has also written about this idea on her blog at http://www.karenglass.net/the-spirit-and-the-letter-of-a-charlotte-mason-education/
21. Where Do Vital Ideas Come From?
We've talked about sparking the mind with ideas, and about books as a major source of those ideas. Let's think more about ideas. Remember our analogy about books as food? Some books were like mind candy, some were like mental sawdust, but some were delicious and healthy and even looked appetizing. Let's think about how that foundational concept of ideas from books drives our curriculum choices.
We don't just want books that are rich in vitally living ideas. We don't just want books that model well spoken language and teach vocabulary by using big words. We want those things, but there's something else we want: we want variety.
Our world is a big world, full of exotic places, people with different customs, discoveries to be made, laws like gravity to explore, geographical formations to wonder at. Let's think beyond the present and look at the past: there have been people living and doing heroic things and changing the very fabric of society with revolutionary ideas like freedom and electricity. Let's go even further and think beyond books. There are cultures who know dances we don't know, sing hymns we don't know, eat delicacies we never knew existed!
How do you bring all of this to a child? Well, you can't bring it ALL, but you can go for a diverse variety from among the best of those ideas. How do you determine which are the best? Nobility, greatness of mind, kindness have a large part. There are examples of heroic deeds, wonders of God, small kindnesses, breath-taking beauty everywhere you look. Those are the kinds of things we look for.
And we insist on variety. Every child must sample a little bit of history, geography, science. And there are not only books -- your child should experience science and songs, and crafts, and activity. If you follow AO's curriculum, you can be assured that your child will experience some of everything. And if you're working at training the habit of attention, you can get all of the school work done with plenty of time leftover after school time for your child to throw himself into whichever of those new ideas becomes a passion for him.
By the way, did you know that most of these Patio Chat snippets come straight from Charlotte Mason's 20 foundational Principles of Education? You can read all 20 for yourself at http://www.amblesideonline.org/CM/20Principles.html .
"The best thoughts that the world has are stored in books. We must introduce our children to books--the very best books. Our concern as educators is to have abundance and orderly serving of them." [from Charlotte Mason's Vol. 6 pg 26]
[Today's patio chat comes from Principle 11]
22. Copywork
This week, let's focus on copywork. It's super easy, and can be done on the fly.
In the very earliest years, when your child is just learning to write, copywork might be one single word. You, the teacher, can write the word on a sheet of double lined paper, and the child can copy it underneath, slowly and neatly, on the same paper. Some children might like to trace the word with a colored pencil.
When a single word is too easy, move on to short sentences of four or five words. Same thing: you, the teacher, write the sentence on a sheet of paper, and the child can copy it underneath yours. This is important: remind him to copy word by word and not letter by letter, so he pays attention to the spelling.
Later, the sentences he copies can get a little longer and more complicated -- maybe you can try a sentence with a question mark, or quotation marks. At this point, you might want to use your schoolbooks for inspiration. Scan what you read that day to find something that works, then write it on a sheet of paper for your child to copy. Or maybe he'd like to copy it from the book all by himself.
Some children get their own ideas about what they want to copy -- a passage from a book, or the second verse of a poem. If not, you can continue finding something different from a school book every day, or you can look for something a bit more systematic -- a Proverb a day, or a collection of quotable quotes.
What exactly is copywork teaching? Spelling, punctuation, and handwriting. Neatness counts, but you know best how much you can expect from your child. The goal is not perfection, but his best work.
How long are these lessons taking? All of two to ten minutes. Did your school day just get a whole lot easier?
"The best way for eight or nine year olds to learn to write is not letter-writing or dictation, but transcription, done slowly and beautifully." [from Charlotte Mason's Vol. 1 pg 240]
23. The Double Duty of Books
When we talked about books, we focused on the ideas inside them. We also mentioned that we wanted "books that model well spoken language and teach vocabulary by using big words." We barely brushed over it before, but this week we're going to think more about that.
Have you noticed that the books you're using with AO are sometimes a stretch, sometimes even difficult to understand? That's not a mistake. That's by design. Books have a dual purpose here, a double duty -- besides giving your child something to think about, they're building vocabulary, modeling grammar, and stretching your child's ability to pay attention. It takes a bit of focus to figure out what's being said, and that's an exercise we want to happen. Your child is slowly learning to comprehend language that's a little over his head through stories like Robin Hood and Oliver Twist.
Wouldn't it be easier to use a paraphrase, or a retelling? Maybe, and sometimes we do. But doing that all the time won't build your child's skills incrementally. By taking it slowly, a step at a time, the day will come when your child will be able to pick up the Declaration of Independence, or Moby Dick, and not be thrown by the language. We're helping your child to build himself a key to unlock all the literature written in the English language.
Are you thinking you wish you could do this for yourself? You can! Read along with your child. Don't be surprised if it takes you longer to acclimate to the language; it comes to children quicker (this is why learning a foreign language is easier for kids than adults). But you'll get there. You may be reading a paraphrase version of Charlotte Mason right now. That's okay -- you don't want to wait to learn what she had in mind for education. But your mind can grow right along with your child's.
The key thought here is that reading comes by reading. If you're finding a book insurmountably hard, don't give up. Take it slow. Stop and untangle it sentence by sentence, trying to put it into your own words. Write your own paraphrase. If that means it takes you twice as long to get through a book, that's fine. It's a valuable learning experience. If you need help, we're happy to help you on the AO Forum.
https://amblesideonline.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=100
Do you want to read more about this? Click on this blog post, "Why You Should Read Challenging Older Books" http://thecommonroomblog.com/2017/03/why-you-shoul-read-challenging-older-books.html
"In general, for most people of all ages and classes and frames of mind, literary books are a necessity. They need them every day to satisfy the intellectual craving that everyone has." [from Charlotte Mason's Vol. 6 pg 333]
24. Short Lessons
"And we insist on variety. Every child must sample a little bit of history, geography, science. And there's not only books -- your child should experience science and song, and crafts, and activity."
Remember when we said that? Are you wondering how on earth you can squeeze so much into five school days and still have afternoons free to pursue . . . well, to pursue any semblance of a life outside of school? Charlotte Mason gave us the secret. That secret is short lessons.
In first grade, all of your lessons should be about 10 to 20 minutes long, depending on the subject. That's four subjects in an hour. That means you could do Bible, sing a song, read history, do copywork, and your day is half done. Add in a math lesson, a picture study or handicraft, a literature reading, and school is done in less than two hours. (Here's another secret: you don't have to do every subject every day. You can do math and copywork four days a week.)
What about the other grades? In middle school, lessons should take 10-30 minutes, depending on the subject. Once you get into a good routine, school at this level might be done in three hours. Don't force your child to spend a long time at a lesson he detests. If math is a struggle, just do twenty minutes a day. Yes, it might mean it takes longer to get through your math book, but isn't the point to learn math at the pace your child can handle? It's far better to take your time and make sure your child is solid on basic math skills than than to plod along through long, tortuous lessons to complete a book at the price of making your child dread math.
By high school, students can go longer, but even then, lessons should be 20-40 minutes long. It's reasonable for school to be kept to four hours.
Here's one more tip -- a bonus! Stagger your lessons by planning music, math, art in between readings. Doing the same kind of lesson one after another is as tiring and tedious as moving around on the same leg all day, while switching legs isn't tiring at all (I'll bet you can walk farther than you can hop!) Switch things up! Break up books with something different. This helps keep the mind fresh, which helps to maximize the time you spend at school, so you get more bang for the buck out of your school day.
25. Math
Math teaches us absolutes -- that there is a right and a wrong. By this time, you're probably settled into whatever math program you've chosen, so we aren't going to make this a "which math program should I use?" chat. If you're still wrestling with the decision of math curriculum, we invite you to ask about that on our Forum.
So what ARE we going to talk about? We're going to suggest a couple of additional inroads to getting your child interested in math -- ways that can even be done instead of a curriculum if your child is pretty young.
You can use math around the house -- measuring for baking, playing with different sized containers in water to see which holds more, counting during jump-roping . . . Estimating is a great way to get your child's mind thinking mathematically: How many pens could you line up across the counter? How many inches wide do you think this envelope is? How many centimeters? How many steps is it from the couch to the rug? How tall is the ceiling?
Stories about math and mathematicians (like 'The Librarian Who Measured the Earth' by Kathryn Lasky, or 'A Grain of Rice' by Helena Clare Pittman) are a fun way to talk about concepts without actually "doing math."
Just a reminder -- If your schedule is really tight, one way to add some breathing room is to only do math three or four times a week instead of every day. Or cut your math lessons in half -- this is a big help for kids who struggle to complete a full page of a math lesson. Math is not a race! You can take it at the pace your child needs.
26. History
Did you love history growing up in school? Would it surprise you to know that history is often the favorite subject of AO students? The way a subject is taught can make all the difference!
Charlotte Mason didn't teach history as a basis for background knowledge of random dates and meaningless battles and foreign names. That's not why we study history. No, we learn history because those people in the history books were real people with their own battles to face in life, and we can not only get to know those people, but we can look at how they dealt with the issues they faced in their own day, and perhaps take courage from their example to face our own battles.
When your child feels like he's really gotten to know someone from the past, perhaps Napoleon, or Catherine the Great, or Abraham Lincoln, he will never look at history the same way. He will have developed a relationship with that person, and, through that person, he will have developed a relationship with the times he (or she) lived in. He may want to learn to speak French "like Napoleon," or develop an obsession for anything related to the Civil War because of Abraham Lincoln. What has actually happened is that, through a relationship with a real person, your child has unlocked the door to the world of that historical era, and once one door is opened, others almost invariably follow. The child who was obsessed with the Civil War becomes fascinated with WWI, and then WWII, and wants to know everything about pre-war Germany.
Do you see what's going on? Connections are being made, relationships between one thing and another. Way back in Week 6, we said, "Education is all about building relationships between things and people and places and incidents." Those connections show that education is happening! And that tends to build on itself, spreading and broadening to include more and more things, to embrace more and more, all because of that first connection, which happened when a child "clicked" with someone he read about in his history lesson.
History is so much more than battles and political names and dates. It's a doorway to a whole new world for your child to think about.
"History, with its collection of interesting characters, is as good as a story because children can picture the scenes in their minds." [from Charlotte Mason's Vol. 6 pg 50]
27. Dictation
We've talked about copywork. Dictation is simply a next step, and it's just as easy.
Here's the process, simply explained: find a sentence in a book. Hand the child the book, and ask him to study the entire paragraph that includes your sentence. When he thinks he could write any part of that paragraph correctly without looking at it, he hands you back the book. You dictate the single sentence while he writes it as he remembered, making sure to get the punctuation right, too. It should be correct since, after all, he studied it first. If it's not, give him less to study next time. You want this to be a successful exercise for him, so adapt the length of the sentence to what he can handle without any mistakes. As he gets better, you can lengthen the dictation exercise.
This whole process takes about ten minutes, and voila! you can cross handwriting, spelling, punctuation and vocabulary off your list for that day.
Here's a free bonus tip: On the days you do dictation (once or twice a week), your child can skip copywork.
28. Folksongs and Hymns
Let's talk about music this week. Have you been enjoying the AO hymns and folksongs? They're part of the extra riches that add a little something special to your child's day.
But they're more than just novel and fun. Back in the day, before people had iPhones and CD's, the only music they had was what they played and sang themselves. Folksongs are a lively way to bring geography to life, and they can build bridges between people -- imagine how welcoming it would sound for a visitor to your area hear your children singing and enjoying a familiar song from their own country. There's a connecting bond with people from faraway places and even from people long ago that happens when you sing the same songs they sang. It's cultural and it's just plain fun.
Hymns are even more than that. The lyrics have sustained generations of Christians who lived out their faith before us. They can sustain your child, too. They can sustain you. Really focus on what's being said as you sing these hymns. Allow the words to touch you and build up your own faith.
AO chose hymns specifically to be cross-denominational. We are all part of the family of Christ. Learning hymns outside of our own familiar church favorites helps us to connect with our brother and sister Christians who worship in other churches.
29. What's in a Book?
Have you ever heard that "it doesn't matter what your child reads, as long as he's reading"?
That's only partially true. Reading is a useful skill, but it's not an end in itself. The point of reading is to follow someone else's train of thought, or be inspired by an example of heroism in a great story, or be amazed by a concept that never occurred to you before. Reading is only a tool to broaden the mind with new IDEAS.
Imagine if you could give your child the gift of being able to pick up anything as an adult -- Descartes, or The Brothers Karamazov, the US Constitution, or Aristotle -- and read it without intimidation. Guess what? You CAN. You can give your child the key that opens the gateway to a whole new world of ideas -- the greatest ideas the world has ever known, and is still talking about.
That gift isn't something you can hand your child in a box. It's a process, and it comes by slowly stretching his mental muscle, one step at a time. The Robin Hood he hears at age seven is what prepares him for Robinson Crusoe at age eight, and Ivanhoe at twelve. Yes, these are tough books, but this is where he'll pick up advanced vocabulary, complex sentence structure, and an ear for rich language -- book by book, a year at a time.
Don't be discouraged if you start a book and neither of you can make head nor tails of it at first. Just go slow, take it in small "bites," and you'll find yourself getting used to the flow after a while. Your child will probably catch on before you do because kids pick up language much quicker -- we've known of parents who only understood what they had just read out loud after their child narrated it back to them!
This gift will benefit you as much as your child: you'll find yourself slowly gaining an ear for the richness of this kind of language yourself, and finding that books you never thought you'd ever be able to understand aren't as hard as you thought -- not because the book has changed, but because your own mental muscle has grown.
Do you want to read more about this? Click on this blog post, "What If We Just Don't Enjoy That Book?" http://thecommonroomblog.com/2017/09/what-if-we-just-do-not-enjoy-that-book.html
30. The Beauty of Culture
This week, we're going to think about art and classical music. Perhaps AO is your first introduction to this type of culture. If it is, we hope it's just the beginning of a life-long love affair for you and your child with beautiful classical works.
Are you wondering why we didn't match up our artists and composers with each year's history? That was deliberate. Our purpose in including art isn't to give a quick course in art history. The underlying theme in a CM education is always noble thoughts, heroism, and truth. Our art line-up introduces your child to selected master artists and composers scheduled on the basis of their work, not when they happened to be living.
This is an area some moms take to passionately. For others, it can take some time. If you have time to do extra research and follow rabbit trails to learn more about a particular artist or even one specific work, go for it! If you don't, just keep it simple. Make the painting your computer wallpaper for a couple of weeks. Use the YouTube links we provide on our website to play through the music. A term (or two, or three) where simple exposure is all you can manage is still exposure. The day may come when you're able to do more. It's all good, and most of us have done a "hit or miss" approach at some point over the years, with some terms involving more intense focus, and some terms where basic exposure was the best we could do. And some of our children developed a passion for art or music in spite of it. :-)
31. Geography
Are you ready to take a trip? We're going to go to some exotic, quaint place. How shall we prepare ourselves? Shall we study up on that place's imports and exports and memorize a list of all the counties and cities there? What? That sounds boring?
Okay. How about a book that takes us on a guided tour, where we read about some of the most interesting places, the most curious customs, and the more colorful locals? Does that sound more interesting?
Your child thinks so. So AO has a few books scheduled that do just this. We hope your child will want to visit some of these places in person someday!
But there's more to geography than books. There are land forms, bodies of water, what's under the ground, cardinal directions -- all of these things can be easily talked about as you take your child for a walk. We've posted a short list of these topics every year in the elementary ages. If you make sure to cover what's on the list every year, you will have completed the whole thing painlessly over six years.
Don't be worried about doing it wrong. Can you explain to your third grader how to tell where east and west is by looking at the sun? To know what a lake is like by looking at a little pond? Yes? Then you'll do just fine. Not sure? We have a couple of online texts that will explain it for both of you. :-)
Long's "Home Geography:" http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12228
Charlotte Mason's "Elementary Geography:"
https://www.amblesideonline.org/ElementaryGeography.shtml
32. An Extraordinary Realization
Have you ever been going about your day, minding your own business, when you were suddenly impacted with the significance of something you always took for granted, but never fully grasped before?
It happened to Charlotte Mason. She was looking at a piece of art, a flat medieval painting in a church that showed the Holy Spirit descending over a group of legendary saints and intellects, when she had an "aha!" moment. The concept that God is in all and over all suddenly struck her in all the fullness of what that means, and it had such an impact on her that she couldn't stop talking about it.
You see, those saints and intellects that the Holy Spirit was descending on were being depicted as receiving inspiration from God -- and they weren't all Christians! One of them became the father of geometry, another wrote the first grammar, another developed calculations for astronomy. God gave His good gifts through people who weren't even seeking Him! Good, godly inspired ideas can come from the most unlikely people. It's quite a surprising thing to realize -- a stunning discovery.
Charlotte Mason called it her Great Recognition, and it sometimes comes up in Charlotte Mason circles. It means we don't have to limit our source of information to Christians; just as God sends rain on the just and the unjust, he also gives knowledge and insights to sinners and unbelievers as well as His own people. Lots of people outside the Christian world have wonderful, virtuous truths to teach us, and we don't have to shy away from learning from them.
So now, when you hear that term -- the Great Recognition -- come up at your next Charlotte Mason support group meeting, you can nod astutely because you're in the know. ;-)
If you're curious about the picture that brought this awareness to Charlotte Mason, you can see it and read more about it here:
http://www.amblesideonline.org/triumph.shtml
33. Don't Trust This!
Did you know that your human reasoning can't always be trusted? Have you ever thought, "I really shouldn't . . . " but then been able to come up with a couple of convincing reasons why you could justify it, and in the end, you had yourself completely talked into doing what you already knew you shouldn't? That's human reasoning at work.
Human reasoning has been used to justify all kinds of questionable and even evil things, from short-sighted worker strikes to the assassination of world leaders, even to the crucifixion of Jesus. You just can't rely on human reasoning alone to steer you in the right direction.
How can we nip this kind of slippery-slope reasoning in the bud? By making the decision to do the right thing in the first place, and letting our human reasoning justify us in THAT direction.
What does this have to do with a CM education? Everything! This is one of Charlotte Mason's end goals -- to keep children from the error of justifying wrong actions. It takes time because it's a long-range goal, but good, clear habits of thinking, a habit of doing the right thing in general, and some years of experience will keep your child on the right path.
[Today's patio chat comes from Principle 19]
34. The Earth is the Lord's
Psalm 24 says, "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it." It's all His, created by Him, sustained by Him, and by His proclamation it is good.
What does this have to do with school? Think about it -- the history of the world is part of "the earth and everything in it." The little snail your child drew in his nature notebook. The wonderful hymn you sang this week. The pond you talked about as your geography lesson. This morning's math lesson . . .
Math lesson? Yes, even math is part of God's creation. Does it feel like you enter God's Holy sanctuary when it's time to sing a hymn, or during Bible reading? And then, conversely, does it feel like you're leaving God's sanctuary when you step into the "real world" to tackle math? Don't believe it! God created the laws of mathematics as surely as He created the snail, and your child is no less a child of God when he does his math lesson than he is while praying or wondering about God's handiwork in nature.
God's Holy Spirit is your Guide and Help as you parent, as you discipline, as you sing hymns with your child -- and even when you teach him his math lesson. The Holy Spirit, Who is ultimately the One in charge of your child's education, can be counted on to help just as much with math and chemistry as with Bible time. Depend on God in every aspect of your school. It wouldn't be accurate to say "depend on Him in the holy and the secular" because it's ALL holy. So just depend on Him. Period. And we'll leave it at that. :-)
[Today's patio chat comes from Principle 20]
35. Personhood, One More Time
Many weeks ago, we said, "Your child is neither a lump of clay to be molded, nor a plant in a greenhouse, nor an empty mind to fill with whatever you want." We're going to revisit that thought.
There are some schools of thought in the educational world that treat children like an empty mind to fill with whatever they want. Perhaps what they want to fill the mind with is good stuff, and for the child's own good -- it doesn't matter, it's a wrong way of looking at a child. His mind is not empty and waiting for someone to come along and fill it up with a load of stuff, no matter how worthy the stuff might be.
Your child was born with a mind of his own. He was checking things out, and testing the limits, and seeing what he was capable of way before he reached school age. He was expressing himself, forming opinions about his surroundings, and showing a decided preference for some things way before starting school. Doesn't it seem arrogant to proclaim, "the child's mind is just an empty place to fill with stuff" or "the child's mind is like a blank slate to write on"?
Your child was born with a mind of his own, thank you very much. His mind is active and growing and working on its own, and would continue to be that way even if no educator ever interfered to try to teach him. Perhaps he's not memorizing the capital cities of the world, but what he IS learning may be even more important -- how to treat his sister, how to be brave in the night, how to be a good neighbor.
What does your child's mind really need? Something really interesting to think about. So . . . fill his mind with great ideas, and then get out of the way of the learner! ;-)
Are you enjoying this trip through Charlotte Mason's 20 Principles? Do you want to hear more? AO Auxiliary member Brandy Vencel of "Afterthoughts" did an hour-long podcast on Circe's Mason Jar with Cindy Rollins. Listen to it at https://www.circeinstitute.org/podcast/mason-jar-18-brandy-vencel-charlotte-masons-20-principles.
[Today's patio chat comes from Principle 9]
36. Curriculum
Let's talk about curriculum. You're using AmblesideOnline, but do you have any idea what it is about AO that makes it so effective, so engaging, and so well suited to a CM education?
We've mentioned CM's 20 principles before. One of those principles says this: "In devising a curriculum, we provide a vast amount of ideas to ensure that the mind has enough brain food, knowledge about a variety of things to prevent boredom, and subjects are taught with high-quality literary language since that is what a child's attention responds to best."
AmblesideOnline provides that to a tee. Our books are specially selected to gently develop your child's language skills (in other words, to improve vocabulary, syntax, grammar) and to hold his interest. They introduce him to concepts in history, geography, nature, personalities, dramatic scenes, survival situations. There are plenty of ideas there for his mind to "chew on!"
Besides books, there are songs to sing, classical music to hear, great works of art to look at, all of nature to marvel at, useful handicrafts to learn. Does any of this sound boring? If a Charlotte Mason education education is what you want for your child, rest assured -- we've got you covered!
If you're worried about whether AO is enough and feeling pressured to supplement with additional activities, word lists, or study guides, you will love Donna-Jean's message for you on the AO Advisory's blog. http://archipelago7.blogspot.com/2017/09/enough.html
If you find yourself feeling guilty for not personalizing a unique course of study for each of your children, you might enjoy Brandy Vencel's blog post at https://afterthoughtsblog.net/2014/04/why-i-dont-design-my-own-cm-curriculum.html
[Today's patio chat comes from Principle 13]
37. The Way of the Will and The Way of Reason
"The way of the will" and "the way of reason." Do those sound like mystical eastern pathways to guide you peace? No, Grasshopper, they're not. But they ARE guides, and they can be very effective if they stay in the correct order.
Does your child have a strong will? No, I don't mean a stubborn streak that makes him hold his breath until he gets his way. I'm talking about a determined, set purpose that makes him stick to his guns because he has already determined what he's going to do and he's not going to let anything deter him. A strong will, paired with good ethics and solid reasonings that help to bolster him in his determination, can keep a child (or adult) on the right path. A strong will should enable a person to choose to do the right thing, even when it would be easier not to.
What happens when temptation comes and makes him waver? His will might only take him so far. But there's one more secret weapon at his disposal: he can distract himself long enough to let the temptation dissipate, and come back to it later, when his resolve is rested and ready for mental battle again. He can mentally plan his next birthday party, or decide which Lego to add to his collection next, or whether he'd rather be more like Alexander the Great or Napoleon -- something interesting enough to put the temptation completely out of his mind for a while.
If you've ever seen a preschooler fall and get hurt, and be thoroughly distracted from his skinned knee by a lollipop, then you know distraction works! Here's a tip: distraction doesn't just work for toddlers with skinned knees, or children facing mental battles. Distraction can work for you, too, in your own mental battles.
[Today's patio chat comes from Principle 16, 17]
38. Who's in Charge?
Who's in charge at your house during school? Do you have someone in a position of authority over you? Who's in authority over you when you're driving on the road to enforce traffic speeds?
Whether we like it or not, authority is a fact of life, and for every authority figure, there's someone underneath to be in authority over. Is that confusing? Or is it more confusing to try to figure out what this has to do with school?
For any organization or group of people (even your family at home), there is a designated order: someone is in charge, and everyone else is submitted to their authority. There is nowhere in the world you can get away from this fact. Even chickens have a pecking order and dog packs have an alpha dog.
This fact of authority and submission is so important to education (and to life!) that Charlotte Mason made it her third Principle, shortly after "children are born persons." Responsible leading, and dutiful compliance make the world go round.
The sooner your child realizes this and accepts it, the smoother his life will be. If he is under authority, he has to learn to be a good sport about it. If he's the one in authority, he has to learn that he is in a position of trust, and if he abuses the privilege, he can be replaced! Your child should know how to be a good leader, but he should also know how to be a good follower. He can't always be the one in charge.
[Today's patio chat comes from Principle 3]
39. You Made It!
Congratulations! You're at the end of the school year, and the final installment of our little chats. You should now have a very basic idea of what a Charlotte Mason education looks like. In these short snippets, we've only been able to show you the tip of the iceburg. There's more to discover as you continue your journey of educating the Charlotte Mason way.
This is a vastly different way of learning than what most of us grew up with. Don't be discouraged at any stumbles, gaps, or oversights -- they're all a part of learning this new way to live!
We hope you will enjoy these resources:
Read the Charlotte Mason Series online
https://www.amblesideonline.org/CM/toc.html
Read the Charlotte Mason Series in modern English online
http://www.amblesideonline.org/CMM/ModernEnglish.html
Read a summarized version of the Series online
http://www.amblesideonline.org/CMM/Summaries.html
Go through Charlotte Mason's 20 Principles
http://www.amblesideonline.org/CM/20Principles.html
The CM Series, Arranged Topically
http://www.amblesideonline.org/CMM/Topical.html
Join the AO Forum
https://amblesideonline.org/forum/index.php
We pray that AmblesideOnline has been a blessing to your family this year.
Thanks to Laurie Duckworth for suggesting these short chats, and for providing her input.
