Every subject in a Charlotte Mason education starts out very gentle and natural, but starts to pick up the pace in Form 2. Geography is no different. So on today’s podcast we’re looking at the next step in this subject.
Listen Now:
Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)
ADE Season 12 Reading Schedule
Our Country and Its People by Monroe and Buckbee (Amazon) (Riverbend Press)
Outdoor Geography by Hatch
World Atlas – search by ISBN number to get the correct edition: 9780760793091
ADE’s Form 2 Map Questions (teacher and student versions)
ADE’s Physical Geography Guide (to accompany Outdoor Geography by Hatch)
ADE’s Form 2 Geography demo lesson
ADE’s Geography Across the Forms handout
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
And just as in other subjects, a student, as a student moves to a new form, there’s usually another layer or a deeper dive into their study in a particular area. So Nicole, will you tell us what Form 2 students focus on?
Nicole
Yes, in Form 2, the Geography settles into one big job, and that is coming to know the child’s own country deeply, region by region. This is the heart of the whole progression. And it really rests on the idea that if the child knows their own country well, then it becomes the key to understanding every other place in the world, whether by comparison or contrast. So the whole of Form 2 is spent working patiently across the home country region by region, until that student just really has a picture in their mind.
So as in Form 1, I’m going to follow the three streams that we look at when we talk about what we do for the scope and sequence of Geography. The first is pictorial Geography. In Form 2, this stream includes two books running side by side. The main one is what we call the Geography reader, and it’s a regional Geography. The book takes the child, again, to each part of its country and paints it really fully with the landforms, the rivers, the climates, its industries and histories, the way people there live and work. It’s much different than, you know, what’s the state capital?
Emily
Or even just like if we were gonna be tourists and travel there, right? Because they’re making that connection of, Well, why is this industry why is steel so important to Pittsburgh?
Nicole
Right, yes.
Emily
There’s a very good reason for that. And it has to do with where it’s situated.
Nicole
Right. Why do we grow most of our food in the Midwest?
Emily
Yeah. Exactly.
Nicole
…the Central Valley of California, places like that.
Emily
Exactly.
Nicole
So Miss Mason students spent this form in the counties of England, going county by county. For us that means going state by state or in Canada, province by province. But again, it’s the same regional approach. You know, we’re starting by aiming at our own country, our own ground rather than hers.
So alongside that regional study runs a second kind of book and its job was to link the home country to the wider world. And for this one for Miss Mason, her students read a story of their empire and their navy and how it connected to their own continent.
Emily
I love that because it’s like you’re so narrowly focused in. I think a lot of people object to well the world is much bigger than our own country. Yes. But at the same time we have touch points with places all around the world. And that was brought out.
Nicole
Yes. So while we don’t officially have an empire, for us the second book is usually going to be a book of exploration. It is looking at different parts of the world, ideally one that connects to the history.
Emily
Yeah that’s a nice touch.
Nicole
Yeah. The history study that the history period that they’re studying, to be clear there. Either way, the principal is the same. While the student is camped out deep in their own country, they are drawing lines out to the rest of the world through that second book.
Now the second category is physical Geography and in Form 1 the child got the overview from Elementary Geography and in Form 2 this stream kind of steps outside again and actually applies these ideas. So there’s not really a physical Geography book for the child to read in this form. Instead the parent or the teacher has a resource to learn on or their scouting test to draw out the ideas from out there.
Emily
Kind of like experimental science.
Nicole
Yeah, I was gonna say kind of that connection between object lessons or experimental science.
Liz
It’s field work.
Nicole
Yeah, yeah.
And then third is our map work.
Emily
Yeah.
Nicole
And the map work really kind of grows up in Form 2. Everything is now done with a map at hand. Nothing is studied in the abstract. Before the Geography reading, the student would answer some map questions about the region and then from memory too.
Emily
Yeah, they would answer them while looking at the map and then from memory.
Nicole
From memory, yes. So the map really becomes something that they just know inside and out. I think that’s so cool.
And then they also draw memory maps of a region they have come to know. So it’s not like a map that’s outlined that’s there for them. They’re really drawing the map from what they know of it. But they will have known it by this time, the time they’re asked to do that.
So really this just feels like the middle of the journey. They’ve kind of had this foundation laid and now they’re getting really deeply into their country and it’s just gonna go up from here afterwards.
Emily
For sure.
So the lesson format is still twice a week lessons for Geography, but they increase slightly to 20 minutes from Form 1’s 15 minutes. And then of course their afternoon field work is going to increase as well as they have a bit more, maybe something that they look at multiple times a day or multiple days in a row or something like that, or different times of the day, and with that teacher resource that you recommended.
So, as in Form 1, the map questions are asked before the Geography reader. It was specified in Form 1 that there were six, and it’s not specified any other form. So it doesn’t have to be six, it could be fewer, it could be more, you know, whatever makes sense for the reading for that day.
But once they’ve answered the whole set of questions while looking at the map they close the atlas and then they’re asked the questions again right then, not at the end of the lesson, but right then, because we’re… you know, kind of like delayed narration. We don’t do that until we have a skill very firmly developed. So you’re gonna ask the questions again and they’re gonna just tell you what they remember the names of or whatever.
And that I think helps even more to fix that picture of the map into their mind, right? It’s like Picture Study, you know, where you look at it and you describe it, well then we’re going to actually have to narrate what it looks like while we’re not looking at it.
Liz
And you never forget that Rembrandt again.
Emily
Yeah. And so then they read and narrate as usual. So it’s not highly different. We’re just adding another layer to those map questions. And again you can always after that’s done, as time allows, have a discussion, maybe look at some pictures or a globe or describe your own travels to a place, you know, as you wish and have connection with that.
So as far as teacher prep, you may need to make map questions, and you may need to find maps. If my student is going to be reading their lesson independently, I like to pre-read what they’re going to, so I have familiarity. So that means I can think about, I have traveled there, or we’re coming to the end of the section; now would be a good time for me to assign a sketch map or something like that. So I like to just keep up with anything that my kids are gonna read, not with me present on a daily basis.
So as far as resources, again, we have have a book that we recommend in place of Charlotte Mason’s because we do not live in England. This is called Our Country and Its People. It’s quite a bit shorter and so we do recommend some additional resources to kind of flesh out and give a better picture of our country.
And I only do this over two years, and then have a third year which really does cover our empire, which we may or may not deny that we have, but we do have holdings of land all around the globe and more historically that we’ve had. And so just giving a picture of all of the parts of America.
And then we do have, just like Form 1, we have Form 2 map questions, teacher help that’s available on our site and will be linked in the show notes. And again, that breaks that down. It adds in those extra books that are going to help flesh that out and gives map questions beforehand.
We also have this formatted as a student version. So I have a teacher version with the answers, and I have a student version that doesn’t have the answers. So if they’re working on their map questions independently, they can do that themselves without having to have you present. Because a lot of us, when we have a Form 2 student, it means we also have a lot more younger students coming up.
And again, an atlas. And I talked extensively about this in our last episode. I’m not going to go over all of the details of this atlas, but just to tell you that there is a particular out-of-print atlas that I love and think works really well. And it is the one that we used for our map questions. And if you search in like bookfinder.com on the ISBN, you will come up with the right edition. So that will be in the show notes as well. And if you are interested in seeing more inside you can go watch to our last episode on youtube.
Outdoor Geography by Herbert Hatch is the teacher resource that Charlotte Mason recommended. Now, some of this is outdated language or it’s British, so they use different words for things that we might have no idea what it is. Oh, that’s a very common thing here. We just call it something different. And it does not need to be worked through consecutively. There are different sections and then within each section working, you know, chronologically through the ideas.
And to make that more accessible and helpful, I have created a teacher resource. This is my object lesson book. And I just have it printed here because I usually use this with my nature club. So all the time we’re doing object lessons or physical Geography, we actually have two years of this or terms, however you can adjust the frequency that you want. And just to help you work through which ones are important, what materials do I need, when is the time of day that I need to do that, some of those things that you don’t really get intuitively until you’re like in it and you realize, we should have been doing this at 8 a.m. this morning or something like that. So we have those available.
Liz
I think those are things you don’t do during the lesson time.
Emily
Correct.
Liz
That’s the field work.
Emily
Or you might need to go out during play break and check something that you set up in the morning. Like I there’s one that where you have to do–
Liz
Or you could do a Saturday morning.
Emily
Yeah, you can do it on a Saturday when you don’t have the constraints of lessons, but there’s one where you measure the different lengths and directions of shadows, and from that you can calculate, you know, various other things. So it’s helpful to have that laid out. And we have those available for you.
Liz
I think one of the big challenges that I have moms come to me with is how to fit all this in the map questions and the reader. And I’m just saying they’re tied together. You absolutely have to do them in the same 20 minute lesson block. So you can always cut them back if you need to. It may mean you don’t get to all the questions.
And that leads to another common question which is what if we don’t get to all the questions or what if we cannot find that place the atlas? And I would still say that all is not lost, because in searching for a certain location your child’s brain is making that mental map and that is the whole point of that exercise anyway. And then maybe they’ll pick up on the answer in the reading that goes with it because they do need to be connected.
If there are supplemental books that you read on other days besides the Geography reader, do you need map questions for those? And the answer is no.
Emily
No. I just call that other category of books the second Geography reader.
Liz
So you only need them for the actual reader is the point.
And then a lot of people really struggle with the fact that some of these Geography readers are old books and they’re out of date and things have changed. I would just suggest that the land has not really changed. If I go to where I was raised in Michigan in January, I am going to still be cold. And it is still hot and sticky here in Tennessee in the summer. So anyway, the land hasn’t changed and it’s still…so much of what goes on in any region is reflected by the geography of that region.
Emily
And one tip I often make is just read it in past tense, you know, because it’s still the history of the region and that is a big part of the geography.
Liz
Right, it’s still true. It’s the way it was in the 50s or 40s or whatever.
Emily
So if I don’t have time to completely revise it for my student who’s reading it or I’m reading on the fly, I will just change it to past tense.
Liz
And there is nothing that says you cannot include some updated information in your conversation with your child about it.
Emily
And please do do that.
Liz
Yes, that would make those end moments of the lesson after the narration, you know, valuable.
Emily
Maybe after we’re all done teaching all of our kids and recording all these podcasts, we might have time to update…? I just don’t want to promise that I think.
Nicole
I don’t know…
Liz
Another common question is how often should they do these map sketches? I would just say what Emily always says, which is as it fits the lesson. There isn’t enough time to do one every single lesson. And usually I personally waited until the child was more familiar with the region that we were studying because you may be in New England for several weeks and so you know, once or twice during that time.
Emily
And you should if you follow some of our recommendations or the forecasting that we lay out, there are always some open lessons, maybe not on your reader day, but definitely on the second book day. Especially if you get to the end of the term, don’t write us and say, What should I do now? Be like, this is the time we can do a sketch map.
Liz
And let’s just also emphasize that these are sketches. That they do not have to be to scale. They do not have to be in super detail or anything. It’s just really a way of the child in a way narrating to himself what he has learned about the map.
Emily
Yeah, and just like when you are trying to narrate a picture for your Picture Study and you just see in your mind’s eye a big black hole because you didn’t look closely at that. Sometimes doing a sketch map will help you–
Liz
Help them know what they don’t know.
Emily
And we did a demo lesson with my Form 2 son several years ago.
Liz
It’s on the website still.
Emily
Yes it is, you can find the demo lesson if you’d like to purchase it there for five dollars, you can see. And I had him do a sketch map because it was the end of the New England region.
Liz
Yeah.
Emily
And he had Vermont and New Hampshire to the west of Massachusetts instead of North, and he kept getting to the part of the map and going, What’s there? What’s there? And I thought that was even more instructive for him. And now we know Vermont and New Hampshire are located to the north of Massachusetts. Which, he’s never been to that region. And probably if you asked all of us to do a map of the region, we’d be pretty fluffy if we didn’t live in that area, you know. So it can be really instructive and help them at the same time.
We’re only halfway through our Geography series. Next week, we will look at the next stage, Forms 3 and 4, which is grades or years seven through nine.