How do the history streams work? How do I choose which country’s history to add as my neighbor’s stream? Why can’t I study whichever ancient history I want this year? In today’s podcast, we’re going to be diving into these questions and more as we look at Charlotte Mason history lessons in upper elementary and middle school.

Listen Now:

Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)

ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List

Gerald Johnson’s A History for Peter series:

• America is Born
• America Grows Up
• America Moves Forward

Our Island Story by HE Marshall

The Story of Britain by Patrick Dillon

Dorothy Mills’ Ancient History series:

• Book of the Ancient World
• Book of the Ancient Greeks
• Book of the Ancient Romans
• Book of the Middle Ages

Wall Timeline at Riverbend Press

Book of Centuries at Riverbend Press

Century Charts at Riverbend Press (includes free download option)

Calendar of Events (monthly planner at Juniper Grover)

History Tools Planner

Episode 14: History Books

Episode 15: History Things

Episode 112: Notebooks and Paperwork, Part 2
(includes notes on History Tools and keeping track of the chronology rotation)

Video Explaining History Rotations

ADE on YouTube

Emily

Welcome to a Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I’m Emily Kiser and I’m here with…

Liz
…Liz Cottrill…

Nicole
…and Nicole Williams. 

Emily
Charlotte Mason said, “Form 2, ages 9 to 12, have a more considerable historical program, which they cover with ease and enjoyment”. Nicole, would you share with us what this considerable historical program looks like? 

Nicole
Yes, yeah, it does widen significantly, both in depth and in scope. So in Form 2, that’s grades 4 to 6, the amount of reading increases to around 50 pages per term, I wrote, do you agree with that? 

Emily
Yeah, sounds about right. And we should clarify that 50 pages a term in 1920 is very different than in 2020. 

Nicole
Yeah, very standard printing, smaller size books…

Emily
…more space between lines, bigger font, and more white space around the edges. 

Nicole
Exactly, for sure. So the students are also more likely to begin reading independently in these three years or co-reading with a sibling or a parent. And the material also becomes more demanding. Miss Mason assigned what she called a more difficult book, but still one that was interesting and very well written, as she said. The goal remained the same. 

Emily
And 900 pages long. 

Nicole
Yes, hahaha. The goal remained the same, to feed the mind with living ideas, not dry facts.

One major shift in Form 2 is the addition of a second stream of history alongside their continued study of their own nation’s history. Students now read from a neighboring country’s history.

This term, neighboring, often causes some confusion, so it’s helpful to clarify what Miss Mason meant. She didn’t choose France…France was her neighboring country that she chose, but she didn’t choose it because it was England’s nearest geographical neighbor. Actually, there were Scotland, Wales, Ireland, or closer, but instead she chose France because of its deep and intertwined relationship with British history.

Did I say that right? 

Emily
Yeah, I would say so. 

Nicole
Their royal families were connected. Their wars and treaties shaped each other’s and cultural exchanges ran deep between the two. 

Emily
French had a huge impact on the language even. 

Nicole
Yes. So France really shed light on England’s history. So that’s what we’re going for. So for American students, we believe Britain fits best in that same role. While Canada and Mexico are our nearest neighbors, they’re our closest geographic neighbors, we believe that their historical influence on the US development is relatively limited. We actually all come from a different place. 

Britain, on the other hand, shares foundational government structures with us, language, legal systems, and cultural roots. So when a student reads about British history in the same time period, because that’s what we’re doing, of their contemporary history that they’re studying in their American history, it broadens their understanding of the world, the history. As Miss Mason put it, this kind of comparison throws light on their own country. And it gives children the sense that history was progressing everywhere, much as was at home during the period they’re reading about.

So then in Form 2A, so that’s the grades 5 & 6, out of form 2 a third stream of history is introduced. It’s Ancient History. And this new– we always call it stream, but I was thinking thread makes sense, I like that.

Emily
Yeah, especially with weaving the tapestry of history.

Nicole
Exactly. Yes, it doesn’t replace others, it simply adds to the feast. And Ancient History is approached again through well-chosen narrative spines, the same as we would otherwise read, and that gives a big picture of ancient civilizations and their cultural contributions. These books are arranged by culture, then. They are not all of them together interweaving perfectly chronological. They are chronological, but we are taking a culture at a time. 

Liz
Because we don’t have libraries full of books of all the chronological wars and events of those days. It’s much more distant.

Emily
And so for example, you’re going to look at ancient Egypt and its whole cultural history, and then you’re going to move to ancient Mesopotamia or vice versa. Really, you can argue about which one of those you do first. But you’re going to be looking at each civilization that arose, you know, like we have the Chaldeans and the Assyrians and the Babylonians, right? Looking at each of those individually. 

Nicole
Yeah. So the student then reaches form three, because we’re covering that too here, that’s grades seven and eight, and a fourth component is added – current events. And though it’s not a separate stream exactly in the same sense, this regular habit of engaging with the news fosters the child’s growing awareness of the present moment and reinforces the idea that history is still being made. 

So together these additions make form two and three. So that’s five whole years that we’re covering in this just really a time of rich expansion. They’re reading more, they’re thinking more, they’re forming relationships with people across time and place. And yet the foundation is just always remaining the same. The history means connection. And that connection is what brings understanding. 

Emily
Yeah. And I love that. Just broadening really does affect the goal that Charlotte Mason wanted of children to have an informed patriotism, to have pride in their country, but it was a well-informed one. We were not going to over glamorize and romanticize and look at everything through rose-colored glasses, but we’re going to be informed about it and to have sympathetic understanding of other cultures and differences that they would have. Because for a significant part of her history, France and England were constantly at war, right? The fact that they became allies later…really, until the 1900s. 

Liz
They didn’t love each other.

Emily
Yes. Okay, so I’m going to talk about the lesson format at this level. They now have instead of two twice a week history lessons, they’re going to have three lessons a week in forms two and three. In form two, they had two 30 minute and one 20 minute. The 20 minute was for their neighboring stream. They don’t go as deep in that book.

But that kind of means that in 2B, before they add the ancient stream, they actually have two for their own country. And then they have one for their neighboring country. And then in 2A, that switches to one for each of the streams. 

Current events was never scheduled. They just had to be reading the news daily. They didn’t even have maybe just the beginning of radio broadcast news, but probably not even very much at that point. So we have definitely a different news cycle than they do now, but that’s just a habit that they need to do every day. 

And then form three, they have three 30 minutes. So one 30 minute lesson a week for each of the streams. 

And really their lesson format is very similar to form one. They always start by recalling the last lesson. We want to connect the new knowledge with what we learned last time. So you also might have some kind of lessons set up to inspire the reading for the day. And again, that’s not defining every word that they’re unfamiliar with or whatever, but it might be, you know, just piquing their interest in one thing. Or maybe there’s a map that we need to look at to, you know, get a foundation for what we’re going to read or something like that. 

And then they read the material, probably themselves, but not necessarily to themselves. They can be reading aloud to a group if you have more than one student, or reading aloud to you if they’re your only child or you have that opportunity. And they read it one time, there’s no going back and rereading. 

And then they narrate, but at this level they are starting to have written narrations. Charlotte Mason said that they were required to write one narration a day in form 2B and two narrations were to be written per day in form 2A and in three they were supposed to do at least two a day. And really they only had about two to three lessons that wouldn’t even have a written narration per day anyway if you look at the whole timetable for the week. So by 2A probably they’re writing their history narration every time. 

And then at the end of their narration, whether it is oral or if it’s written, there should be some kind of discussion. As they get older this can be more delayed. It doesn’t have to be right during that lesson time. But this is also a time when we can pull out pictures to look at artifacts or they’re making a note to look up an artifact later to include in their book of centuries, which we’ll talk about in just a second. So that all happened. And again, all of those components of the lesson happened in the total lesson time. 

So the time tools at this age, they’re continuing to add to their streams of history chart that they began in form one, that just simple column chart where they put names of people. Then Form 2A begins the Book of Centuries. And I really do think it’s significant that she started the Book of Centuries at 2A because they’re doing all three history streams at that point, right? And there always was a note that as well as all of their streams of history, they also were to include in the Book of Centuries their biblical history too, because we’re going through the historical chronological narrative of the Hebrew people. Which is why we always skip those in the ancient text if it’s included because they’re getting it in their Bible lessons. 

The Book of Centuries, I just want to go a little more in detail about what it is and what it’s not because there is always confusion about this. It is simply, well the goal of it is to keep a beautiful book that you keep for your whole life because your learning doesn’t stop when you get to the end of Form 6, right? We’re just beginning our education.

And so this is something that really became a treasure to the people who did it when they would have reunions of former students they would bring their book of centuries and all love to look at each others’ and what they decided to include. But it is not a timeline in a book. It is a way to organize and make connections with history, but it started being called a museum book. And it was primarily drawings that they would either see in the museum themselves or they would read about in a book and draw the artifacts and place them in their appropriate centuries. 

So again, all streams. I think that’s why they began in 2A. And the main idea of the book is to have one century for every two pages. So one page has a chart, a history chart that has very little room to write. So the goal is not to just fill it up, but just for the…it’s like a nature notebook. They have very specific individual ideas about what they want to include. And the other page was blank for drawing those artifacts.

And it was explicitly said that it was an absolute mistake and destroyed the whole concept of the book to give more pages to more recent history. Right. So they’re making judicious statements. But don’t freak out. There’s lots of other time tools that they get to use to include that. 

So this also was not done during lesson time. There is not time to make a wonderful drawing in your book of an artifact as well as read and narrate, etc. So this was what Charlotte Mason called a Sunday occupation. If Sundays don’t work for you, fine, do it one set time during the week outside of lesson time. 

So as they move into Form 3, their time tools continue with the Book of Centuries, but their streams of history chart that they’ve kept from Form 1 through Form 2 now becomes a compact streams of history chart. That’s different in a couple of ways. They’re supposed to make judicious choices about the most important events in history. It was also smaller so that they could see in one look the whole of it. A stream of history chart might be wider. You might have to move your head to take it all in, but the compact stream you can see. So it was a maximum of three feet, which I think is our field of vision, which we can read. 

And then also Form 3 students kept a calendar of events, and that was in connection with current events. There’s not really any guidance on what that looked like and so I have some ideas I can share with you in a minute. But they also did one to three century charts per year and that just depended on the amount of history that they were covering. So that’s what I mean, there are other tools besides the book of centuries in which they can include all the other details about a century. 

And then kind of as they end form three we’re supposed to give the children a map of centuries. It’s not something they make. And it’s just like a one or two words that are very descriptive of each of the centuries after Christ’s death. And just give them a bird’s eye view to kind of organize, like these are the general time chunks. 

So all of these show their ability to access history and to assess it as they have really coming, they’re coming to the end of their second full rotation, right? They have had so much history. Now they’re able to make decisions and have opinions and, really organize it to show all of their connections that they’ve had. 

So our objectives for history lessons in these ages is to increase their interest in history, to help them build relationships with the past. You see, these are not very different than our objectives for any other subject in Charlotte Mason. We want to help them develop ideas that feed their imagination and to deepen their thoughts and understanding of people in different times and their connection to today. Even if someone lived a long time ago, we still meet people who have similar characteristics or were in a time and we think we need to learn from the past. So all of that should be happening. 

So as our teacher prep, I do pre-read books that my child or group of children are going to read without me because I’m working with younger students. As a mom in a homeschool room with four kids, I cannot be in every lesson. I wish, but I can’t. So I do pre-read them and then I write my narrations based on my plan for what they’re going to cover in a time. So I can really look back at my own narration of that reading and get back to exactly what they had read about that time. While I’m doing that, I also will drop down notes about maps that might be helpful or some concept to discuss after the reading. And that helps me keep interest and be ready for those discussions that are really important, I think, as they’re developing these opinions, right? 

OK, so let’s look at some resources. Now, again, I talked about a spine last time, but I’m going to talk about it again. As you said, Nicole, a more difficult book than in form one, we are challenging children as we’re not just going over history to go over it, right? With the same material. We’re wanting to go deeper. So instead of simple stories of people and events, this spine or just a book that encompasses a broad scope of history of either one nation or maybe many nations as we get into later, it just covers the big thing. So it’s not a look at individual events, you know, in a 400 page book or 200 page book or whatever, we’re getting a book that covers a long span of history. 

So as they’re reading these, they also should include more of the why behind events. It’s not just getting the facts of things or here’s the story that we had in Form 1. There should be more, why did men act this way? Why was the American Revolution fought? That is very complex for a younger student, but now they’re getting to the age of starting to reason through those things themselves. And I think that does help them develop informed and judicious opinions about history. There is less time to read biography, we have better and deeper spines at this age, and they are difficult. So maybe only one to two a year instead of one to two a term. And I know that’s kind of sad because they are…

Liz
They love them. 

Emily
And there’s so many good biography series for this age the Landmark Books of American history the Signature Books and Messner biographies…those are some of our favorites and children love them, too. 

So let’s look at the spines that I love. These are Gerald Johnson’s “History for Peter” is how the series is called. It’s America is Born, America Grows Up, and America Moves Forward. And these have been reprinted, so those are a good option. I love it because he really does get into the why and in connecting events and giving the rationale what made men act in certain ways or decide certain things. 

Now for our neighboring history of Britain I love to use what Charlotte Mason used in form one. And we do see this we don’t have to have as deep of a spine because this is our first foray through and she is a simpler book for French history than she did for British history in her scope. This is just a favorite and it would be a shame to miss it. So our kids enjoy reading this. However, it was written at the beginning of the 1900s. So it does not cover the last 125 years. And so one that I have found for just the end part goes up to Brexit, I believe, is this book, Story of Britain by Patrick Dillon. Yep. So that can kind of help fill in the gap that we don’t have in Our Island Story. 

And then our favorite history, ancient history, spines are Dorothy Mills. And these are very similar to what Charlotte Mason used, but they are also in print still. These are just some of the originals. So the Book of the Ancient World, and it goes through just the same cultures that the book Charlotte Mason used did. And she has the Book of the Ancient Greeks and Romans and Middle Ages that fill out the history rotation. 

And then let’s talk about the time tools briefly. All of this information can be found in our history tools planner that we have available on our website. So this will give you links to resources and also very detailed instructions about how to use, when to do, and how to construct as needed. If your child has not done a personal history chart that they can do even in upper 1A, they can do that now. It was done when they were about eight or nine. So maybe as they’re beginning form two and all that. 

And then here is the Streams of History chart that I like to use. You can make one of these. This one is just available by Riverbend Press, but you just see there’s a column per century to add names to. And then this is actually three sheets long. It’s kind of hard to hold up here, but that stretches out nine feet. But as they move into Form 3, they would do one that is compact and instead of just columns, it would be an actual timeline and they would need to only include the most important events on that. So it’s just a different scope. 

And then here is the Book of Centuries. This is my favorite. There’s a couple readily available, but this one really is based on what it looks like in the parents’ education or union, parents’ union school. And this one is by Riverbend Press. And you can see some of my centuries have drawings and some of them have things, but I really love the bookmark that comes with this one that divides each line into five. So you know exactly which year it is. So this is my own personal one, but I’ve got now two kids keeping theirs. 

And then this also is from Riverbend Press. Erin Daly. She’s wonderful. She put this up for free and it’s a century chart template. So you can just download this template and print as many as you need. And so it’s just a chart of 100 squares and they design little symbols to represent the events which really gives them a good visual picture of a whole century. 

And then the calendar of events. This is what I have settled on for my student is just to get one of these monthly planner inserts from Juniper Grove because my students have a Juniper Grove journal and it’s just a whole month with squares so they could jot down just a couple of notes about the events. You could use any kind of planner, could use blank notebook paper and date it. So it really doesn’t have to be elaborate. This just helps them keep it. 

Liz
Any calendar, really. 

Emily
Yeah, exactly. So I think that’s all. Do you have any questions people commonly ask us at this time? 

Liz
Well, I think that one thing to keep in mind is a lot of moms kind of panic when they have to enter that form two. It seems formidable. But just bear in mind that that first year to be fourth grade is really kind of a transitional year between the younger grades and the older grades. And if you still have Form 1 students, they can often still be reading the same American history spine together. 

Emily
That first year. 

Liz
Just that year. They would definitely move up later. So you don’t have to panic that everything is going to be a huge difference. They still have two days for American history. So there generally, in that grade at least, is still time to read a good number of biographies. And if they’re a good reader, that might be helpful. They could be reading something on their own for a taste of independence while you are helping a younger child to learn to read his simpler biography, right? I often suggest this. If they don’t have the stamina to read themselves yet, and even Charlotte Mason acknowledged that in fourth grade there’s still a wide variety of readers, I do think that an audiobook and following along in the print copy is really helpful. Listening to someone else read it, carries them along and they gain a lot of autonomy that way. 

I just always want to stress, not that we ever hold a child back, but that we also allow them to read at the level that they’re comfortable with, that we don’t push them too quickly to move along with the older students. They should still have something that’s pretty appropriate for them, wouldn’t you say? 

Emily
Yeah, I think biographies are a perfect place to do that. 

Liz
And so the biography helps them to do that. So they could be reading a more difficult biography, even if they’re still in the simpler spine. 

And another thing you mentioned regarding a couple of students sharing together because when we’re talking about a span from fourth grade to eighth grade, you very well might have two or three students. If they’re sharing the same book and the same lesson, the teacher can be working with a younger student as Emily acknowledged, but they need to be doing those lessons together, not at two separate times. They can take turns reading to each other, and they can even narrate to one another so you don’t necessarily have to hear every narration. And I know the objection here is that, well, they don’t get along or they don’t like working with the other student. And I say, what a wonderful opportunity for character development here. This helps them work, learn to work with other people.

Emily
Something you’re going to have to do for the rest of your life. 

Liz
Because life is just not a solo act, right? And I think it’s really important for stronger readers to learn patience, to help the weaker reader along and show kindness. 

Emily
And encouragement. 

Liz
Yes. And I think this helps set the tone for them to model how to study for the younger student to step up a pace. And it gives them really good practice for the rest of their life because they’re not going to be the only person ever doing something on their own all the time. 

Emily
So true. 

We hope you can see the robustness of Charlotte Mason’s program for history lessons with multiple streams running side by side. So we have links in the show notes for all the resources we have discussed this week as well as some of our past episodes that go into history books and time tools more deeply as well as that video to show how children progress through the history rotations. We hope you’ll join us next week when we finish our look at history lessons in high school as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method.