Are you wondering where to place your kids in Charlotte Mason’s streams of history? Are you struggling to teach multiple students in multiple form levels? In today’s podcast we are addressing these things and other practical concerns and questions about Charlotte Mason’s history lessons.

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Video Explaining History Rotations

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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
Today we are wrapping up our series on history. We like to use this closing episode to address practical considerations and questions that we hear frequently. So Nicole, why don’t you get us started by talking about the most common question of homeschooling moms everywhere: Where can I combine my children to make it easier on myself? 

Nicole
One of the most practical and beautiful aspects of Charlotte Mason’s history approach is how naturally it does allow for combining students. In fact history is one of the most unifying subjects of the curriculum. I think it can be. All of form one, so that’s grade one through three, can be combined with students either working in the one B or one A as we’ve talked about before on wherever the older sibling is. And then in forms two and three, that is grades four through eight, five years, those children can all be combined. 

Emily
Yeah. For the ones that they have. 

Nicole
For the ones that they have. 

Emily
The streams that they have, right. 

Nicole
Because some of them aren’t yet… 

Emily
That first 2B. 

Nicole
The 2B isn’t doing Ancient History yet. But yes, where they can, they can all be, that’s five years of students that can be combined there. That’s huge. 

And then forms four through six, so high school, they share the same stream, moving through the final years of that rotation together. So at no point should a family really have more than three groups going at the same time. Maybe more importantly, all students, regardless of form, are studying the same time period.

Emily
Right. 

Nicole
And whether they’re reading stories from, you know, American settlements in Form 1 or tracing events across France and Britain, you know, later on, or even the contemporary European history, everyone’s anchored in the same place and time. 

Emily
Yes. 

Nicole
And that goes a long way. It creates a sense of shared learning and your whole family can be immersed in the same historical moment or the same historical field trip like you guys took recently.

Emily
Yes, we went to Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown because that was the period that we were all in this year. 

Nicole
Right, everybody can have the same conversations over the dinner table or build the same forts for the same war in the backyard. The kids are playing around these things. So just remember that children don’t need to start at the beginning of history. They just need to jump in where the rest of the family is and over time they will cycle back around. 

Emily
I hear the objection though, but three is still like way too many. But I think like what is lost if we don’t do that, right? We’re going to be shortchanging people at every level because we won’t be able to give them what is appropriate for them, right? 

Liz
And it’s not three hands on.

Emily
Yes, that was my second part is yes, for all but that first form, they’re doing a lot of their lesson independently or with each other, right? Without you, the mom. 

Nicole
Right. And I, you know, I get chill bumps when we do the first episode of these series of a subject. 

Emily
Yeah. 

Nicole
Because you see that progression of what is happening, and part of that progression is that student getting independence and being able to start doing some of this stuff by themselves and so I think that’s a really important factor to keep in mind like you said there Liz. 

Emily
Well another question that we hear a lot is where do I put my kid? Like I mean we get this…clearly it’s not a problem if you come with your six year old, you just dive right in. And that’s so nice and easy, but that is not the reality of so many people who find Charlotte Mason later or maybe they were doing a Charlotte Mason inspired or some other type of curriculum and they know the history is the pivot, but how do I get there? 

Well, there was a note on the programs for kids to do, or students I should say, to do the whole program that was appropriate for their age. Like this is not a new thing. People were coming into the PUS at all ages too. So we do need to look at the child before us and we can do a lot as a teacher to remove obstacles to help them succeed in that program of work. We may need to make accommodations for severe learning disabilities or something like that. 

That note that I read did specify for the normal child, which is their word for neurotypical, right? So when we have neuro-atypical, we might need to make accommodations, but I think we can still give them the whole feast. If they’re in Form 2, we might need to assign simpler books, but they can do all of the streams, right? So we’re helping them step into that, but we’re not taking away the richness or the breadth of the program for their age.

The work of the forms must be chronologically progressive. Those are not A.D.E.’s words. Those are not Emily Kiser’s words. Those are Charlotte Mason’s words. And so we have to move forward from the last period of history. And I know this can become a jumbled mess depending on what we have done before and different people’s ideas. Every curriculum out there, Charlotte Mason or not, has an idea about the history progression. So it can make it really jumbled if we were in a specific ancient history in a different time in American history. And then we move forward. We need to go past our modern, I think that the modern is the benchmark that we go by because that is the one that is specifically chronological…

Nicole
Meaning, versus ancient.

Emily
Right, versus Ancient because with the ancient history there is some overlap since we’re looking at culture by culture, right? Generally the Greeks happen, but Greece was still around, guys, when Rome was in more or less degree of power, but they did war against each other…you know, a Greek came and invaded Italy and wanted to…you know, anyway, that’s a whole thing.  All that I’ve learned from reading Charlotte Mason history. 

But I think we need to look at where were we in our modern stream? and go forward from there. And then again, as I mentioned before, the ancient history is tied to those specific years of the modern. So we have to do the ancient again. And sometimes that does get messy, but that would be my best advice. 

Liz
So this is kind of what I was about to say too, because I’ve encountered many families where their children have only been studying ancient. So then they want to know where should they start with the American or whatever. So I would just say that if last year you studied ancient Egypt, then you would begin at 1650 to 1800, right? 

Emily
Right. Because ancient Egypt is in the first European rotation. 

Liz
Right. And that would be the Greek history that year. 

Emily
So you’re moving forward in the ancient if they had not done any American history. And if they’d just done the Middle Ages and Renaissance…because I find this a really common thing, the family has just been only in that time period. So then I just say, well, then you’re perfectly set up to jump into, you know, 1000 to 1650 and you’ll be studying ancient Egypt during that time. So I just thought that. 

Emily
Yeah, exactly. I think the thing to just calm our nerves about all the messy jumps into history is history is not a skill subject.  There are going to be gaps and we need to not worry about them. There were only supposed to be no gaps for math and grammar, foreign and English. So all other subjects, it is okay. There’s always going to be gaps. 

Liz
And she even says it’s okay to skip a century or two. The big thing is you’ve got to keep going forward. 

Nicole
I think your video too, just as a reminder that…

Emily
…The video that describes all of the rotations. 

Nicole
I think that would help people to be able to approach it with whatever their specific situation is and watch that. 

Emily
Yeah. And just remember they’re going to get it all again because we cycle through history like three total times, you know, over the course of 12 years. So even if your child is coming in in that middle rotation, they’re still going to get it again. And they can get a whole one if they’re doing this in high school. So if they feel a lack of knowledge, you know, from something they read, that is all the better because that is what spurs anybody on, like I don’t know about that and I want to and they’re going to pick up books. 

Liz
Curiosity! 

Emily
Even beyond their 12 years in your home. What other questions do we have? 

Liz
Well, I was just thinking if you’re bringing several students into this method and maybe they’ve all been in different places…I run into this a lot. What I usually recommend is that you work with the oldest student because they have less time ahead of them to do what maybe has been lacking. And it just makes more sense if they’ve only got three or four years left, let’s go with where that child is and the others can fall into line. 

And I do find that a lot of times moms are concerned that their kids are gonna be confused studying three different time periods in history, but that is not my experience with actually teaching children. They relish it and they love the changes and the differences and they love making the connections between the different countries like oh my goodness this was happening in Italy at the same time as… so I think that’s a good thing. 

And then you did mention about combining children and having them read together, older children and younger children together. And I think that it is always a temptation for us as moms to do what’s easier for us. We would love to have all our kids in the same book or something like that. But they each need what is going to be important for where they’re at in life. 

The older children maybe will be able to read the same book as a little bit younger children, but on the timetable they’re going to have different lengths of lessons. And so just keep in mind that the older child is going to get to write his narrations, whereas a younger child will not be doing that necessarily. So that kind of helps you balance your whole timetable. Like, you know, maybe the book is used together, but the older child has the challenge of having to write the narration, I guess is what I’m trying to say.

Emily
Yeah, that note about combining both levels in the same form in a home school room always also had the note that the children in the upper part of the form had more requirements, more expectations on their work. They were to do more. 

Liz
And then the other thing about combining kids that is a frequent thing is that the kids would rather study independently. They don’t want to study with their siblings, right?

And actually related to this is that moms often don’t want to give up reading to all the children together. They love that camaraderie thing and I get it, I do. But you know, there is a whole day when you can read other books, right? So go ahead and read them yourself before your kids do so you know what to talk about with them, and there are other things we can read about outside of school together and still have that camaraderie. But it does help our children so much to have combined lessons. 

And maybe the younger student can’t really read a whole lot yet and the older one is gonna have to carry more of the weight. But they have to learn to get along at home if they’re gonna get along with people in life in general. And just to remind them that throughout life they’re going to be encountering people everywhere they work and study and live who are annoying just like their siblings are. And they have less skills than they do or are more inefficient and all of those exact same problems. And that this is an opportunity to strengthen their character for what they’re inevitably gonna be dealing with in their life ahead of them. 

Emily
Well, one other thing I wanted to touch on is how parents or teachers can assess the progress their students are making. I think that’s just always, especially for homeschoolers, at the back of our mind, like, is my child doing enough? So I would just have some questions that you could ask yourselves to reflect on that. 

As they move up in the forms, are they showing their own thoughts? Are they developing their own opinions?  Are your students making connections between people and events throughout history or in between their different streams or even their different subjects? This character in our literature book reminds me of this person that we read about in history or vice versa, something like that. 

And ultimately, do they care? Have they made a connection with a person from history? It doesn’t have to be with every single person, every single lesson. Are they making relationships?

Do they get riled up at injustice that they read about? My kids do. Man, some of our best conversations have been after reading hard things in books. Or do they rejoice with a person’s success that they write about? I think that is really the highest mark of progress because that’s meeting our objectives of interesting them in history and helping them develop relationships with the past. 

Liz
And getting outside of themselves.

Emily
Yeah. So did you have anything else to share with us, Mom, before we…? 

Liz
I’m sure I’ll think of something after we quit. But that’s all I had in my mind at the moment.

Emily
Charlotte Mason said, “We can not live sanely unless we know that other peoples are as we are with a difference, that their history is as ours, with a difference….we may not delay to offer such a liberal and generous diet of History to every child in the country as shall give weight to his decisions, consideration to his actions and stability to his conduct.” (6/178-179)

We hope that you have been inspired to give such a diet of history to your students. Next, we turn our attention to literature, a subject that goes hand in hand with history.

So please join us next time as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method.