After a long hard review of our learning and curriculum
choices these last few years, I have decided that for this time in our learning
journey we need something with more structure than we are getting from
Charlotte Mason. I like many aspects of CM and was seduced by the thought of
sitting reading books of wonderful literature to my children whilst snuggled up
on the sofa, however in reality this is not what happened. We started out
following a pretty full liberal arts schedule with history, art appreciation,
music appreciation, geography, reading, maths etc.. I then realised pretty
early on that I could not keep up with all of the subjects or the additional
reading materials that were suggested on the Charlotte Mason Help site. So I modified
it to suit our needs, we mainly school at the table and have quite a strong
structure. So we dropped loads of the
additional history reading and only picked it up if Nuh showed a real interest
in a certain period, we also added a craft activity to each history session. I
found this really helped to make it stick in Nuh’s mind. We also had to use a
different Geography method I could never get my head around CM geography I
needed clearer guidance and a more structured plan (there’s that word again). I think part of the problem is that all of the
resources living books etc for Geography seem to be for USA geography, I have literally scoured the
Internet to find living book resources for the UK but could not find any. It just did not make sense to me to start
with a different country to the one we live in.
Nuh resisted the whole narration thing
massively and hated it, but we preserved on and even though he is not enamoured
with this method of learning I plan on keeping narration as I think it is an
invaluable skill. We also discovered
that you cannot teach spelling through copy work alone, you simply will not
absorb the myriad spelling rules that are used in the English language ( see
earlier post on ‘All About Spelling). I
also found that grammar which is a pretty important skill is also difficult to
teach through copy work alone unless you have a clear plan on how to extract
and exemplify the grammar rules as you work.
I know that CM does not recommend formal grammar lessons and does not
even concern itself with grammar at all really until yr 4, I just felt that if I
was to get really ill, which is a possibility given my current ailments then
how would my children cope in school. CM does not correlate at all to anything
that they do in UK primary schools; the history is way ahead as is the geography,
but language studies would probably be behind.
That is because language skills are taught in a very unique way using CM
and do not cover things such as plot analysis etc..
Owing to all this I felt that I would try another
methodology, still within the confines of a classical education sphere. Enter ‘A well trained Mind’ , this resource
is phenomenal, the book lays everything out clearly with recommendations on
which resources to buy and follow. As we
are in our Spring term, I thought that I would start out slow and transition
over to this so that we are using mainly resources from a ‘A well trained Mind’
by year 4. I have bought and have been using now for a couple of weeks ‘First
Language Lessons Level 2’ and ‘The
complete Writer Level 2: Writing with
ease’. First language lessons’ includes lesson relating to grammar from nouns,
pronouns verbs etc and the ‘Complete writer’
includes lessons that will help
your child develop essential writing skills such as how to dissect a story into
its component parts and identifying central ideas. Both books accomplish this
through dictation, copy work and discussion based on good literature, for
instance in the Complete Writing book a lot of Aesop’s Fables are utilised
these are printed in the book so you do not need to buy any additional books or
hunt around for stories. There is a
lesson for each day, based on a four day week. These books are totally amazing
and I feel will build such a strong foundation in both writing and grammar,
it’s incredible. I really cannot convey
how impressed I am with these two books they are working brilliantly for us and
I feel have really started to plug the gaps that Nuh had in these two subject
areas. I am so impressed that I have
already ordered level 3 of both books for next year.
