The Curriculum Question

A common question I get is, "What curriculum do you use?"  There is no way to answer this in one word.  I wish I had at least an hour with those who ask, because I am a follower of the Charlotte Mason method.  Throughout my posts there will be references to Miss Mason, but I can attempt to capture her style in a few sentences: 

Charlotte Mason was a British teacher over a century ago.  She believed in the formation of habits, and that children were small people whose minds should be fed with ideas, mainly from a steady diet of books.  Miss Mason spoke sharply against children being read "twaddle," or or silly items that do nothing to provide enrichment.  She promoted the teaching of many subjects, each for ten or fifteen minutes at the most.  As a child matures, he or she should be assessed in the form of narration, or repeating back in his or her own words any and all information gleaned from the presented reading.  Children should be exposed to the best in literature, even if this means stretching a certain book out for a year or more because just one or two pages (or even paragraphs) are read each day.  Miss Mason believed in teaching her pupils to identify works of art, poetry, and music through daily study in these areas.  She also encouraged her students to keep nature journals in which they drew and recorded facts about what they saw in nature.

There is no one curriculum for those of us who enjoy the methods of Charlotte Mason.  The thrill is in piecing together one's own curriculum, and moving and shaping the instruction to best suit the individual.  I admire the writings of Karen Andreola and Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, and obviously have spent much time poring over the works of Mason herself.  I share all of this because I'm asked all the time, but also to give anyone who is interested a peek into how homeschooling works for us.

Our schooling is divided into table work, which starts around 8:45, followed by work we perform in the schoolroom.  Table work is done while my girls are still in their pajamas, after breakfast and a few minutes of playtime.  We memorize a Bible verse every week, which we read and recite, then do a reading from a supplemental Christian storybook.  Our math book is from Horizons, a fabulous program.  Colorful pages and various activities per page make work challenging yet fun.  Each child completes a page every day, and sometimes we do addition and subtraction flash cards to keep them on their toes.

Reading is also part of our table work time.  Each girl has part (or whole) of a story to read aloud to me, just so I can check progress.  I love using the reading program on which I learned to read: Open Court's Headway Program, no longer in publication, but worth paying a few bucks for on Amazon.  There is also a phenomenal web site put together by a former teacher; this is more valuable than gold for reinforcing and teaching phonics.  Other phonics resources we enjoy are Pathway's Climbing to Good English, as well as a gem I ordered from Amazon called Word Mastery by Florence Akin.

Poetry is easy to incorporate and takes literally two minutes.  Mason recommends choosing one poet and staying with him or her for a year, enjoying and learning different works by this individual.  My girls and I love Robert Louis Stevenson, and spend a few minutes on his poems three or four days a week.  We do one poem a week; one or two days, I read it to them; another day, they copy it or maybe only a verse if it's too long.  By the final day, they're ready to recite it along with me.  

Because I am a believer in teaching children cursive, we practice every day.  There is a Pentime book, but we also do random words and letters on paper or in the girls' notebooks.  Cursive is a form of art that will leave a terrible void in our culture if we allow it to slip away; it's a travesty that many educators find it acceptable to let it die.  

Once table work is completed, there is a break in schoolwork during which the girls get dressed and make their own beds.  If we have housework and are good on time, I may have them complete a chore before picking school back up again.  Today, for instance, their job was to vacuum and mop their bedroom floors.  Again, Mason was a believer in the formation of habits.  My girls are old enough to do their own floors, fold their own clothes, put dishes away, dust, clean up after our pet, and many other things that we moms exhaust ourselves doing for them.

Our school room is really a bright sunroom that is a perfect spot for our many books, games, Legos, desks, paper, drawing supplies, chalkboard, puzzles, and other creative treasures.  Here, we work on spelling, which I didn't think I had to teach at first, because reading came so easily.  However, I was informed that a good reader might still need help with spelling, and honestly, who is exempt from learning the spelling rules of our confusing English language?!  So I discovered All About Spelling and haven't looked back.  I admit, it's a tad regimented for my Charlotte Mason mind, but I'd be hard pressed to find anything better to teach the rules of spelling.  I divide each lesson into short, ten-minute exercises, as we don't enjoy camping out on any one task for too long.  I also take my own spelling words from the girls' reading or sight words that they need to learn, and make a list of 6-8 words per week that we spend time writing out, spelling aloud, and creating sentences with. (I know...preposition at the end of a sentence...what's one to do??)

I tried a real science curriculum that will be ideal in the future, but we have so much fun with animal books and nature study, why do anything else?  We go outside for a nature walk (as our science lesson) every Wednesday.  Each child has a nature notebook, or art sketchbook, and we decide what we will observe.  It may be a maple leaf, dandelion, certain bird, or simply the dew on a blade of grass.  In her notebook, each girl draws the object, writes the date, and we label it somehow:

                                                 "Sweet roses are treats for our noses."

Two days a week, we read a selection from a "living" science book.  Living books are non-textbooks, rich in description and ideas.  I have fallen in love with anything by Thornton Burgess, and so have my children.  His animal characters, with their funny comments and quirks, are delightful, and provide robust insight into the world of God's creatures, their habitats, instincts, and characteristics.  We are taking time to linger over The Burgess Bird Book for Children, reading a short chapter at a time, and taking in more than we thought we would ever know about any type of bird under the sun.  Burgess's books can be found at the local library or for pennies on Amazon, and cover every animal, from skunks to chipmunks to foxes to rabbits.  We have begun using Mason's assessment of narration, usually a paragraph at a time.

We cover history formally about three times a week, and I do use a curriculum, Beautiful Feet books.  Students read living books, and the teacher has the help of a guide to know what pages to read, and what to do with them.  I like to use the guide as just that, a guide, but will tweak things now and then.  There are verses and questions to go along with lessons, and we often color pages from the books and write sentences under them.  This year we have covered Leif Ericsson and just finished Christopher Columbus in time for Columbus Day.  The girls prepared an oral report in which they alternated telling facts from their book, as well as pointing out Spain, Italy, China, India, and Columbus's route to the New World on our well-worn globe.  Our principal (my dear husband), was the audience.

Charlotte Mason urged teachers to introduce 5-10 new foreign-language words to students per day.  Don't be alarmed by this.  I'm a Spanish-speaker, and even I bend this a little.  We incorporate a formal Spanish lesson three times a week.  Some days we sing a song, others we do some writing or read a short book.  My girls have learned Spanish phonics, which are much easier than English, and I will often choose five or six words to dictate and see if they can spell them based on their knowledge of sounds.  We are currently working on an oral dialogue in which they will take turns being doctor and patient, asking about and expressing what "hurts."  The principal looks forward to being the audience here, too. 

Copywork is a big deal among Charlotte Mason fans.  This involves copying a passage carefully several times a week in a notebook, reinforcing spelling, punctuation, and memorization.  We may do this with a poem, Bible verse, maxim from Poor Richard's Almanack, or any saying at all.  

As for art and music study, I confess my music study has been more stellar than the exposure I've given my kids to good art.  Rome wasn't built in a day!  I'm learning how to piece all of this together so we are finished by lunchtime and I don't feel totally overwhelmed.  We own a record player, but for music study, a cd player or even a YouTube clip works fine.  The idea, as with poetry, is to choose one composer and learn to appreciate his works.  My girls can identify some works of Tchaikovsky simply by my playing them while they do copywork or while we walk outside for fresh air.  I will select one piece, such as "Swan Lake," and play it over and over as we do another activity.  That's all; nothing more to it.  I imagine the art study is just as simple, as I will choose one artist, and merely have the girls observe the work of art.  I need not force my own opinions on them about it, as Mason says they will form their own in these short observations.  Children will learn to tell a Van Gogh from a Vermeer when this is done several times a week.

So, this is my school week in a nutshell:

 Now you have some understanding as to why, as a fan of Charlotte Mason, I need time to answer questions about curriculum and the flow of our day.  I'm crazy about Mason and her methods because they work and are delightful to boot.  Planning is work, but the execution of my plans brings fulfillment.  I will talk off the ear of anyone who wants to spend time on this topic, because I believe in it.