What do high school history lessons look like in the Charlotte Mason Method? How do these lessons prepare the students for the rest of their lives? In today’s podcast we are discussing these questions and more to help you give your high schoolers a wide feast of history.

Listen Now:

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

ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List

History of the American People by Paul Johnson

Land of Hope by Wilfred McClay

From Dawn to Decadence by Jacques Barzun

Story of Mankind by Hendrik van Loon

Edith Hamilton’s Ancient History books:

• The Roman Way
• The Greek Way

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
And today we reach the upper end of history lessons. These are forms four through six or high school or ninth through 12th grade, the end of our education before we pursue secondary education. So Nicole, would you remind us of what the scope of lessons is at this age? 

Nicole
Sure. History continues to expand, becoming both broader and more deeply integrated with the rest of the curriculum at this stage. Students are reading a lot of history per term at this point, and they’re using more advanced texts described by Miss Mason as “somewhat stiffer” than those used in earlier forms. These books, they remain literary and engaging, but they now demand more of the students reasoning and interpretation skills. At this level, students are typically beginning to make mature connections across subjects.

Instead of studying just one neighboring country now, one change is that students in Form 4, so 9th grade, explore contemporary European history. So that marks the natural extension of what began in Form 2, offering a fuller picture of global events at this point. 

Liz
And when you say contemporary, you mean contemporary with the American stream. 

Nicole
Yeah, that runs parallel to their own study of their national history.

Liz
There’s just sometimes confusion about that. Thanks. 

Nicole
Yeah. The goal is to help students see that their own country’s history is just one thread in a greater fabric of world history. So now we have three established streams, that started earlier, the national, the neighboring, but that is now the broader European and ancient history. Ancient history continues in these upper forms, but it’s now more of a survey. There’s less time spent in the details, but students do still gain a solid grasp of the key movements, the cultures, and the figures that shape the ancient world.

So the current events that were introduced in Form 3 also continue in these years, but at this stage, the connection between the past and the present becomes even more important. And boy, I experienced this with my own kids. As Miss Mason wrote, “this course of historical reading is valued exceedingly by young people as affording a knowledge of the past that bears upon and illuminates the present.” The present matters deeply to the students at this age and this type of study prepares them to become thoughtful and informed citizens. In fact, more than ever, history becomes the organizing center of the curriculum. As Miss Mason observed, “any sketch of the history teaching in forms five and six”, that’s our grades 10 through 12, “in a given period depend upon a notice of the literature set for plays, novels, essays, lives, poems, are all pressed into service and where possible the architecture painting which the period produced”. Just a note, I mean we see that all the way through but it’s even more so now. I mean we just see it enhanced I guess you’d see in these later years. 

Emily
Well yeah they add surveys of architecture and art history and music history that they never had before and those are always contemporary with their streams. 

Liz
There’s an extra space in the timetable for it.

Nicole
Yes. So really they’re just getting immersed in a rich integrated study of the humanities at this point and history sets the stage and the rest of the feasts gathered around it. It is more demanding work at this level, but it is also very rewarding. And the students leave these forms not with just knowledge, but with insight and a habit of connecting past to present, which I think is very important and meaningful, very thoughtful ways.

Emily
Well, the lesson format for these streams or these forms is they still have the three streams that they have lessons for. Of course, we talked about current events being additional and daily habit, but they have three 40 minute lessons. So the time has increased by 10 minutes. And this is the longest lesson they ever have. 

Nicole
Right. 

Emily
So that now they have three of those a week. And also, students are generally working independently or with siblings within the same level. Even Charlotte Mason mentions that in her volumes that they’re doing most of their reading independently at this age. So they still begin even if they’re working independently. Hopefully it’s a habit by now. My husband does this actually. Every time he opens even a read aloud he’s always like remember what was happening last time. And this should be an ingrained habit in their life to recall what was going on in the last lesson, what they learned, and bring that forward to their current reading. 

And it’s still a single reading and at this age they’re doing mostly written narrations, again, it’s at least two written narrations per day. But also, their narrations are now deepening too, because they should be very naturally applying more of their thoughts and their opinions to their written narration, right? Bringing their own personality to the material. Whereas we don’t see that as much earlier. I think they’re really prepared for that now. 

And also that they’re making connections, not just with their own knowledge, but between their subjects that they’re reading. And again, what you were saying about all of those other adjunct subjects that really tie into the history that is so important. They should be making those connections between these different subjects. 

And then afterwards, after their lesson, after they’ve done the reading and narration, there should be some discussion. That can be with their siblings or their classmates if they’re doing these lessons in a group, but hopefully with parents and teachers as well. And we do need to make time to do that, even if it’s not at the end of that exact lesson. Students were even given the instruction, usually in literature, but to read a passage and then two days later write their narration. So they’re being able to be stretched to recall what they had previously been reading by a couple of days. So we can have these discussions at a later time.

The time tools that they’re using, they’re continuing their book of centuries, of course, because that is something that they’re supposed to be doing for the rest of their lives. And they’re including in there all of the streams of history that they’re studying, as well as their Bible history as well. And again, this is not a timeline in a book. It’s more like a nature notebook where the student has autonomy over deciding what they want to include in their notebook. Many drawings of artifacts that they’ve either seen in museums or read about or looked at a picture of. 

And they also continue to keep their calendar of events about the current events that are happening. That information is not going usually into the brick of centuries right now because we don’t have enough time, distant perspective, to know really what are the significant things, right? So they have a different thing for that. 

And then they make one to three century charts all through their last, so it started in form three, so the last half of their education, they’re doing one to three century charts per year, depending on the quantity of history, it coordinates with their modern history stream. 

So the objectives for their lessons are the same as in earlier forms, to develop a living interest with history and to establish relationships. Charlotte Mason sums up our goals. And I just want to read this quote, it says, “it is a great thing to possess a pageant of history in the background of one’s thoughts. We may not be able to recall this or that circumstance, but the imagination is warmed. We know that there is a great deal to be said on both sides of every question, and we are saved from crudities and opinion and rashness in action. The present becomes enriched for us with the wealth of all that has gone before.”

So our teacher prep at this level, we’re not doing the lessons entirely with our students anymore, but Charlotte Mason did admonish us to have an understanding sympathy with our students. And I would encourage you to read your students’ books. Maybe it’s not pre-reading exactly before the week, but to continue reading along even on your own time, because we need to have that ability to discuss these ideas with them as they are forming their opinions, and we’re not part of their daily lessons usually.

Okay, so stiffer books, guys. Here are some that we like to use. Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People. It is a definitely more in-depth book if you look at the quantity of text on these pages. And they are really not going to have a lot of time for any biography reading. This is, they’re pretty much only in the spine or the general overview type book.

We have another one that’s newer called Land of Hope. This one is a little harder to use in the earlier rotations of history because there’s just such a little bit written so you really would have to supplement it with hopefully a primary source or other biography at that level. 

And then for European history From Dawn to Decadence because of course the rotations are a little different and I would encourage you to go look and watch the video that I recorded about how the history rotations work and what quantity of time is studied each year. But forms four through six, their modern streams are only going back to 1500. So this book goes from 1500 to 2000. And it is a stiffer book, but really excellent. And I think, you know, there’s going to be a lot of things your kids aren’t familiar with, and that’s okay, but there are going to be a lot of things they are familiar with, and they’re going to get the big ideas. 

But sometimes that is too challenging. And so this is a book that Charlotte Mason actually reviewed herself right before she died, think the year before she died. And she used it in form three. So it’s a bit, it’s not as stiff, but it does work for students maybe who are new to the method, who have not been, you know, immersed in these types of– 

Liz
Especially if they don’t have the history of the music and art and poetry. 

Emily
And so this is The Story of Mankind by Hendrik van Loon. And this edition, I think was 2013, I want to say. And so it goes, it’s been added to – he passed away, he had revised it himself in the 60s and then a couple other editors continued to write the story of the history that had gone on after that in his style. 

And then for ancients, we do like Edith Hamilton’s, this is The Roman way, she has The Greek way as well, that give a survey of the ancient stream. So again, this is a smaller book than the other ones, but you’re only reading, you’re reading this over one year versus this over four.

And then their history tools are, I would encourage you to look at our history tool planner that we have for sale on our website. It covers all of these tools in great depth, has links and instructions in there. But briefly, here’s a look at the book of centuries. This is the one from River Bend Press. This is my own personal one. Here’s some pictures and some things in the chart that I have continued to do with my children. 

And then they also have a free download of a century chart template, but it’s just this very simple 10 by 10 squares with thicker lines dividing each decade and the century in half. And they write symbols in here so they can picture a whole century in one page.

And then a calendar of events. This is just what we have used in our house because my kids have Juniper Grove journals and it’s a way to keep it easy, accessible. They know where it is. It’s just their monthly planner. So it has space in each to just jot a couple of notes about events that are happening, but you can use any calendar. You could use notebook paper, et cetera. There’s no prescriptions on how to keep that.

Mom, do you have any other things that are commonly brought up about high school history lessons? 

Liz
Well, when you talk about the stiffer reading and the more time…yeah. This is the thing. Yes, the reading is a little more challenging, but they also have longer lessons. So that helps that to work out. And yes, the spines are usually a big step up reading level-wise and the complexity of the ideas that are in those books. And it is a bit of a stretch, but obviously learning harder things is always challenging, and they are gaining some intellectual abilities at this age as well. So they are able to cope with more difficult reading and it gives them a chance to see how much more they can accomplish, you know.

At any rate, I think it’s on our part as the parent to not worry about their possible whining and protest about these things, but encourage them when they feel overwhelmed. Because a lot of us have experienced this maybe when we went off to college, that books were a challenge at first until we got used to that. On occasion, I do think there are sometimes, don’t you, some ancient spines, if you have multiple students that you could combine, for example, a Form 3 child with a Form 5 child or Form 2 and Form 4 sometimes can deal with the same. 

Emily
Yeah, if they haven’t had that. 

Liz
Right, right. Obviously, we don’t reread books. And also if you have an older student that’s jumping in in the high school years to this whole idea of this kind of history, it’s sometimes worrisome like, they only have two years left, where should I start and things like that. I would just say whatever they have studied the least in the past, maybe is where you want to jump in and then just go right on forward from there for as many years as they have left. 

Emily
You know, I just think about the stiffer books, college will not be the challenge that it was for many of us who never were challenged in this way. And really it sets up their…these are adult books that weren’t written as textbooks for high school students. They were written for adults who wanted to continue their education. And so that’s–-

Liz
And they are young adults and they have a lot of energy that some of that could be put mentally as well as physically. 

Emily
I just think about moms always worrying that their children aren’t prepared for college or won’t be prepared for college and just looking at a course of this kind of reading. You will be well set.

A wide feast of history lessons is given to feed our students throughout their education. It is wide, but it is also deep with these three cycles through history with concurrent streams allowing us to cover much ground in a short amount of time. So next week we will conclude our history series as we answer the most common practical questions that we hear about this subject. Thank you for joining us as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method.

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.

In today’s podcast we are digging into what Charlotte Mason history lessons look like in early elementary school. We will cover the scope and sequence and show some helpful resources to make history come alive for our youngest students.

Listen Now:

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

ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List

America Begins by Alice Dalgliesh*

And There Was America by Roger Duvoisin

Meet the North American Indians by Elizabeth Payne*

Land of the Free by Enid La Monte Meadowcroft*

Stories of America, Volume One from Simply Charlotte Mason*

Stories of America, Volume Two from Simply Charlotte Mason

Heart & Soul by Kadir Nelson

America First by Lawton Evans

Wall Timeline at Riverbend Press

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

*For out of print (OOP) or hard-to-find books, try searching at BookFinder.com.

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
So last week we began our series on Charlotte Mason history lessons and we learned why Charlotte Mason considered history such an important part of the curriculum. So today we’re going to be focusing on specifically Form 1. So that’s grades 1 through 3 in America. Nicole, will you tell us more about the history that is covered at these ages?

Nicole
Yeah, so when it comes to history in Form 1, Miss Mason begins where every child should begin, and that is with their own country. And she also begins with something else, and that is story. Always. In the earliest year, what we would call, well, it’s Form 1B, but we would call it first grade in America, children are introduced to the heroic age of their own nation. And these are the tales that form a people’s early memories. They’re kind of half legend, half history, told in broad strokes. In Charlotte Mason schools, that meant the earliest British history tales like, see if I can do this, Boadicea? 

Emily
I think they call her Boudicca? I’ve worked on that. 

Nicole
Alfred Cnut, etc. All right, for us, that might mean Pocahontas, Columbus, and stories from the early settlers. 

Emily
Yes, except one important distinction I would just add to that is these are still chronological and consecutive. So we wouldn’t do Pocahontas and then go back to Columbus. 

Nicole
Right. Absolutely. And also important to note is these are not tall tales. 

Emily
Correct. 

Nicole
These are just, they are based in history as far as we know it and they’re told chronologically like you said so the child begins at this point to absorb a sense of that linear time already and even if at that point, well I think it’s funny, even if at that point they don’t grasp the dates, which I didn’t grasp the days by the time I graduated so it’s okay. 

Emily
There’s so much in Charlotte Mason that is just laid out there that is absorbed and not clearly defined. 

Nicole
Absolutely.

So then in Form 1A, and these are your like grade second and third grade students, things are going to change a little bit. They move into what Charlotte Mason called the Authentic History, which you explained in our last episode. It’s a more continuous written record. And for British students, that meant the rest of Our Island Story. And that was from around 1150 AD through the present day. Form 1 also lays a foundation for one of Miss Mason’s key practices, and that is combining students within the same form.

And at the end of each of the Form 1 program, there’s a note that says, “when children in both 1A and 1B are present in the homeschool room, they may do the work of either group”. And we had to talk through this a little bit because this is kind of odd because they have two very different history readers that they’re using at this time. But in practice, this means that the younger student jumps in wherever the older Form 1 student is in the history rotation. And it makes it far more manageable, I think, in the home for the mom and the children, especially because the Form 1 students are usually not independent readers. 

Liz
They also don’t usually care. 

Emily
The thing that I think moms miss is that they think because they don’t, if they’re doing what you’re saying and they’ve got a third grader and they have a new first grader, that their first grader is going to miss those heroic age tales, which are the earliest history. And as you said, which is the beginning part of the same history spine. It was not, you know…we might have to do a little bit different books, but it’s still, you know, that really is history. They think they’re going to miss that. And this is a beauty of the four year cycle. They’re going to get that again in form one before they leave the rotation. 

Nicole
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s so great. So in that way, the older child sets the pace and the younger one joins in. And like you said, they’re going to cycle back. And usually they’ve already absorbed quite, you told me this, they’ve absorbed quite a bit of history through listening to Big Brother or Big Sister, doing some of their schoolwork at that point. It’s just kind of part of the atmosphere of their home. 

So in Form 1A, biography is also introduced. Miss Mason said, “the life of a single man can give a picture of the whole age in which he lived”. And these stories help the children immensely in individualizing their heroes. And they begin to see historical figures as real people and not just names on a page.

And anyways, I just think there is a lot to be gained from this very, it’s a very thoughtful approach. I think she has a real plan in mind, but maybe most important is Charlotte Mason said that “the children learn at any rate to love history at this age”. 

Emily
Yeah, it’s so true. And what you’re saying about biographies is all of my children have people that any time there’s a reference to it, even if it’s a street name, they’re like, we read about__. And they have such a deep connection with them. 

Well, I’m going to talk a bit about how lessons are structured for Form 1 students. They’re twice a week for maximum of 20 minutes each time. So we’re talking a small portion of the overall program, but it is such a key part, right? And I will just add, because we are asked about this all the time, that those 20 minutes include everything that I’m about to tell you that goes on in a lesson, including changing to the next subject. There is no added time to this to get out the books for the next lesson. That comes out of the lesson. So pulling out your history books and everything that comes to the end of your history lesson is in that 20 minutes. 

So each lesson should begin by recalling the last. We don’t need to worry about defining all of the words that they’re going to encounter and all of that. But Charlotte Mason said children are not just learning history but how to deal with books. So we’re letting them deal with books. And the first thing they need to do is link this lesson to the last lesson. So they’re going to be able to visualize the scene, or this is what they’re learning to do to deal with books. They’re visualizing the scene as it is read to them, or maybe as they’re able they read it aloud to the group. And immediately after the reading, they narrate. We want them to narrate chronologically, but in their own words and include details that they feel important, not that we feel important. We don’t ask questions or try to get them to draw out the moral of the story. 

Nicole
Right. 

Emily
So as we might set up a lesson, we are not trying to preclude everything that they might not know. The book is there to do that for them. Okay. So that’s the basic history lesson. 

Now there are time tools that Charlotte Mason used. I call them time tools, they’re just things that go with history. Charlotte Mason education is about books and things. And the time tools best suited to these ages are history pictures for them to get images because then they can better visualize what they’re reading about. You know, if they’re picturing people in shorts and tank tops and flip-flops, you know, coming over on the Mayflower, they need to adjust that and we can trust that they will, but we can help them by pulling in some pictures of what people wore at these times or what the ships looked like, maybe even pictures of artifacts that they use. This is how they cooked over open fires in their hearth or whatever. Or even historical events, like I always think of Washington crossing the Delaware. It’s vividly described in our book, but here’s one artist’s picture of what that would have been like. So that can enhance a lesson. And usually these are after we’ve read. So we’re just giving them the pictures of that and they can then correct their visualizations in their imaginations with a better representation.

And then there is a stream of history chart or Charlotte Mason also refers to it as the Table of Centuries. She describes this in her first volume and it’s just columns for each century and we don’t put people in any specific order, but we’re just kind of starting to categorize people. There’s no dates written on it. Putting people into their representative centuries and this helps them to start making connections. Oh, they were living at the same time. You know, we often don’t think about that. I’ve even had revelations later like, that’s what was going on at the same time. And they do continue this on through Form 2. So that is basically all the tools of your lesson. 

Our objectives, though, are to make history come alive for the students. We want it to be more real to them so that they take a living interest in, as you said, to love history. We want to give them mental pictures of time and places and people from the past and to furnish their mind with living ideas. So all of these things help them see themselves as vital actors in history. This is going to be a gradually unfolding idea. So that’s kind of an objective of what our whole history program through all of our years does. We’re setting that up, the foundation of that right now. 

So as far as teacher prep, what’s required of us, I think at this level, it’s important to skim, at least be familiar with the topic that we’re going to be reading. You don’t have to pre-read every word, but just in order to find some picture, this might be something that they would like to see a picture of afterwards. If I am reading with or to my child, I don’t pre-read. I’m right there in the lesson and I got it. But I do want to show personal interest, even if I thought it was kind of not that stimulating, they might have. And so I need to be ready to be as interested as they are. And it shouldn’t be hard because we’re using really good books. 

Liz
And they are so often not interested in the things we are and vice versa. 

Emily
And sometimes it seems like they want to be not interested in what we are. But the other important thing that we need to do as teachers is not to prod them, not to question or nag them, but to let the child do the work of his lesson.

So as far as resources, Charlotte Mason used what we call now – I don’t think this is a term she ever used – a spine book. And we get this question a lot. What is a spine? A spine, we just call like a backbone of history. It tells us–

Liz
It’s a shorthand word for us. 

Emily
It’s the kind of book that instead of talking about one specific instance, event, or person, it is giving us a broader look at a whole span of history of either one nation or you know, a whole region. And so in Britain, Charlotte Mason had a great one. It was written after she wrote Home Education, so you don’t hear this kind of thing described at all, but once she got it, they used it and they continued to use it. And I know it was well used in British schools, like through the 20th century. And that was Our Island Story. And so that, this is how we can really discern what that heroic age is. It’s just the first third of that book.

It’s just these earlier simpler stories. We might have gaps in time. Some of these kings are maybe a little more legendary like Arthur than others. We don’t have all the written records, but they’re simpler. And then they would just keep reading that book. So in America, we don’t really have a lot of spine books that do that early period as well as the rest. So we don’t have all the explorers coming and making contact in different parts of the country and then that same book continuing on. They might do a passing glance. It’s just not as thorough. 

So we usually do use a specific book for that age. One I do love, but it is sadly out of print and hard to come by is America Begins by Alice Dalgliesh. I think it’s available though on archive.org, so you can read it online if you have no other option. And another one instead is And There Was America by Richard, Roger, excuse me, Duvoisin and this one has been reprinted. So you can get that. 

So those two cover the scope of explorers coming, you know, different places to America. And it is chronological. There’s just gaps between and it’s not all connected. Added to this, I love to do some books about the indigenous people that lived in America beforehand, Meet the North American Indians is one that gives a lot, not their history, but much more their culture.

And then as they move on into form one, my very favorite, and I tend to combine this because it is short. is, you know, it starts with Columbus and very quickly in the first chapter moves into–

Liz
Do you mean 1A? 

Emily
I’m sorry, did I say that? Form 1A. So this is called Land of the Free by Enid La Monte Meadowcroft. It also is hard to come by, but it’s just very vividly told. And I like to do this because she gives a whole it’s kind of like a spine for a specific time period. So she gives a whole overview of the area and then I will read more specifically. 

One that I have really enjoyed is now out of print, so also hard to come by, is Stories of America volume one, but Stories of America volume two is still in print. And I like to combine these two even when I do have access to that. Simply Charlotte Mason has reissued a book of this called America, Our Stories and it is not the same. It’s not bad, it’s just not a good spine for, I believe, Form 1 kids. It’s just too much more abstract. The ideas behind it would make a better Form 2 spine. So those are not synonymous. 

And then to add to that, I love to put in this book, it’s beautiful, by Kadir Nelson – Heart and Soul. And it’s the story of America and African Americans. And it just gives a different perspective that we don’t have in some of these older books that we’re not really telling the story of a huge swath of our population very well. 

And then if you can’t find any of those, another good option is America First. This one is a revised and updated edition that has taken out a lot of the what we would call questionable language and derogatory names for people. And so it’s just a hundred stories from American history. It’s by Lawton Evans and you’ll find links to all of these things in the show notes.

But then I need to show you some time tools. When a child is eight or nine years old…

Before I get to that, we supplement all of these with biographies, because you look at the size of any of these and you see they are nowhere near as good as Our Island Story. Charlotte Mason used one set of books that was many biographies of famous people who were buried in a specific abbey or cathedral. And so they got all different glimpses into those people. But I like to assign, some of our favorite biography series for this age are the Step Up books or Gerard Discovery biographies, and then just isolated other ones. And there’s so many new picture book biographies that are really, really well done for children at this age. So I usually just pick one or two per term, depending on the length that fit into the time period that we get to really connect with one person. And that just helps throw more light onto that time. 

Liz
What about historical fiction? 

Emily
That doesn’t come into the history lesson. But definitely, yeah, we don’t read historical fiction for lessons, but we absolutely enjoy them outside of it. 

Okay, so time tools for pictures. I just often do a Google image search. You can do a Google search and click on the images up at the top and it will just bring up pictures. I’m familiar as an art history student or you know, I’m maybe more familiar than others that there is, oh, there’s a famous painting of William Penn making the treaty for Pennsylvania with the native tribes that were there. Or like I said, Washington crossing the Delaware or whatever it may be, I might just Google that. But you could also just say “an event” + “fine art” in your Google search and you can come up with actual paintings of that. 

Liz
So cool. 

Emily
Or you can, they’re talking about, you know, the Mayflower. Let’s find a picture of, you know, even the replica that they have made that we can see what it looks like in pictures.

And then as they move into their eighth year, eight or nine, they make a personal history chart. This is simply one lesson in the afternoon. It does not, it’s not something they keep up. Although I will say, as I have done this with more of my children, the ones who’ve already done it, remember that they have one and want to pull it out and add things to it. But this is starting to get their history and seeing themselves in history. And really that the flow of time is definite and we can break things into years and months, et cetera. 

And once they have done that, then they start the stream of history chart. Now this is one that is published by Riverbend Press and we’ll have a link in the show notes. And you can see it’s actually three of these big pieces of paper. And we just simply add names to the different centuries. As it gets full, I’ve found that our children have moved on to the next stage of history and they’re moving on to other tools and we can start a new one if you have other kids coming on up. 

And all of this, if you’re just left wanting to know more, you can find very detailed instructions in our history tools planner that we have on our website. And you’ll find links to that in the show notes as well.

So now, mom, what are some other questions that people commonly have about history lessons at this age? 

Liz
Well, I think it would be helpful just to define the word tale because when most of us hear that word, we think of make believe, right? All right. But the actual definition of the word tale is a story or narrative often told in imaginative ways, but it can be either truth or invention.

So Charlotte Mason knew children responded to story and this is how we can really bring children into a subject like history at a very young age because they love the story. But they’re beginning to digest information from the past by engaging in these narratives of real events that happened. Tales are appealing to children. And they acquaint a child with real times and people and events. 

And I think it’s also really helpful to remember that this is just the beginning, a start at a 12 year long study of history. So think how little you know about a person when you’re first introduced to them, right? But this is what we’re doing with our history. We’re just introducing our children a little bit, giving them a taste and whetting their appetite. And they will like their biographies and stories, as Emily was saying. The stories of people are what are their favorite because events are less familiar to them. But they’ve had a lot of experience with people, right? 

And the pictures really do help them, I think. It builds their own imagination when they have those to think about when they’ve heard stories about events that might not have otherwise interested them. 

Emily
And one other thing that occurs to me is we never talked about why they start with their own history. You know, I think that’s a common question. And it’s that very same principle that we get in many, many other short ways and subjects is we start with what the child knows. He can’t go on to abstract and he can’t understand that people live differently in different cultures until he really understands…I mean, it’s different enough to think about the pilgrims living in his own country, but he happens to know they landed in Massachusetts and he can find that on the map. So it is because we’re moving from the known to the unknown that we do that. 

Nicole
And we see that too with the personal timetable. 

Emily
Yes, exactly. 

Nicole
Their known life, that’s their introduction to the concept of time on a paper.

Emily
Yeah, and when we get to other subjects, you’re going to see that they get a lot of other very unfamiliar cultures. I’m thinking specifically in literature at the same time, but it’s not the history yet. They’re going to get there, but it’s not yet.

Form 1 lays a solid framework for the history of the child’s own country, and this foundation is built upon in subsequent forms. So next time we’re going to be talking about how additional streams are added to the child’s history rotation in Form 2, and how they engage more deeply with their history lessons as they grow older. In the meantime, please check out the show notes for links to the resources we mentioned in this episode, including our history books episode, with our favorite history books and links to all of those that we showed today. We’ll be back next week as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason method.

What made Charlotte Mason craft her curriculum around the subject of history? Why is the subject important for today’s students? Join us on the podcast for our discussion today as we begin our series on Charlotte Mason history lessons.

Listen Now:

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

ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List

History Rotation Diagrams

Video Explaining History Rotations

Episode 11: Why Study History

Episode 12: The Chronology of History

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
Well, Charlotte Mason said, “next in order to religious knowledge, history is the pivot upon which our curriculum turns.” And so we turn from Bible lessons to the subject of history, which informs so much of the rest of the curriculum. 

Nicole
Absolutely. 

Emily
So, Nicole, would you start by telling us why Charlotte Mason thought that history was so important, this mainstay pivot of the curriculum? And that’s a very striking claim.

Nicole
It is. You know, next to religious knowledge. But once you understand how she approached it, I think it really makes sense. History in a Charlotte Mason education isn’t about memorizing names and dates. It’s about knowing people. It’s about understanding ideas. It’s about helping a child find their place in the world. I think it’s so cool. It’s not in an abstract way or a theoretical way, but seeing themselves as part of a long and living story. 

Emily
Yes. 

Nicole
Through history, our children are introduced to the full scope of human experience. They come to see the choices people have made, their courage, their failures, their faithfulness. And over time, they develop principles they can apply to their own lives. That’s the beauty of history. It quietly shapes the way we think and the kind of people we are becoming. 

Our children also live in a global world now, but that doesn’t guarantee understanding. And Miss Mason believed that every child should be given the opportunity to form relationships with people, she said, of all sorts and conditions, of all countries and climes, of all times past and present. This kind of history study doesn’t create pride. It creates humility, compassion, reverence, and a deeper sense of the duties and the joys of a full human life.

Charlotte Mason did call it the pageant of history. It’s a rich, colorful backdrop filled with the drama of real lives lived. A pageant isn’t a dry timeline. It’s just not. It’s color, it’s story. It captures the imagination. And when our children are given the right kind of books, rich with story and truth, they begin to picture themselves in those scenes. They connect to the characters and they grow in empathy. And this widens their understanding of the world. And as they grow, the scope of history grows with them, beginning with simple stories and expanding to layered global narratives, and that develops their understanding over time. As a pivot, history provides a natural rhythm for the rest of the curriculum. The literature, geography, art, and music can all be informed by the time period that the child is studying.

And that doesn’t mean that we’re building unit studies, just to note, or trying to force connections. We don’t have to do that. It simply reflects what Miss Mason called the natural and inevitable coordination of certain subjects. When a child reads a poem written during the same era they’re studying in history, they start to hear the voices that time more clearly.

We do have some hints in this section we’ve been reading in volume six about when things came in. But you have done so much research in this area and really had many things come to light. 

Emily
Yes, I still remember when I was poring over all the programs. I mean, it’s been 10, 11, 12 years ago now, and literally feeling like I audibly heard the Hallelujah Chorus. I could see her big picture.

Here, especially, I think we see the lack of details in volume six. I remember struggling for years and it wasn’t until we had the digital collection that we had that whole scope of programs of her curriculum, what she did, that we could really put it all together. We were all kind of fumbling in the dark trying to make sense of these little clues and hints. And we had a couple of programs here and there, but we didn’t see that whole big progression of a child’s education. So once we did, that just helped narrow it down. Yeah, we got all of those details and then we’re like she’s not told us anything wrong, it just was lacking the whole picture. 

Nicole
Right exactly. 

Emily
So as we began our podcast, actually it was right at the same time, we set out to answer what does Charlotte Mason history look like? We kept hearing conflicting things and people have very strong opinions because we know this is such an important subject. We had just those little glimpses but we were still left with how is this applied? What do we do?, especially as Americans or any other context other than her British children. What do we do? 

So in order to develop an understanding of one’s own place in history and to begin having an informed patriotism, which she talks about, Charlotte Mason students continually study the history of their own country. That may seem odd, like what? We don’t want to have this narrow scope. But that helps put our country into perspective. And when we have a deeper view, we don’t just get the glorified simple stories, right? Of the heroic times. We get the good, the bad and the ugly. And we can really see the trajectory of men’s thoughts. I’m using men in the human term here, men and women. 

So Form 1B, that is the first year of school. We call it first grade here in America. They start with the earliest history of their country. Mason called this the heroic age because she said it was best suited to the children because the story moves on broad, simple lines. This is the time before we have a continuous chronological written record of everything that’s going on in our country. We have maybe some isolated stories, there’s periods of darkness, we don’t know what’s happening everywhere in the country at the same time. 

But this is the thing I think is most misunderstood. This is not just a collection of hero stories, right? Charlotte Mason was adamant that this is a consecutive chronological study. We’re not jumping around here and there. We are talking about the earliest history of our nation and that it is read in a consecutive way.

So she called the heroic age the time before “authentic history” began. So we have the Heroic Age and we have Authentic History. And so these stories include maybe some more mythical or legendary details. We have those in our own country, even though those are a lot nearer the present time than the ones that they were telling in Britain for her students. But it is that time before the continuous written record. 

So what this looks like in America is the time as Europeans were making contact. We have anthropological studies of the people who lived here before Europeans made contact but we didn’t have any written record from them, so we can only make anthropological assumptions about what was happening in the country. And we have a little bit. So we include those as we can, but really the records that we have that are going to give us that consecutive chronological narrative are from the contact with Europeans who came to explore and then settle. So that’s the first year of school.

And then form 1A, which students were in for two years, second to third grade. They’re continuing a chronological study and that goes up to the present time. So, it’s Charlotte Mason, that was the same book. We don’t have a great option for that. I’ll talk more about that in subsequent episodes. But in her school, that was just the first part of the same, we would call it a history spine, or the same book that looked at the whole history of the nation. So it’s not isolated tales.

Okay, so that’s form one. Then as they move into form two, so this is the upper elementary years, they’re in form two for three years. The first of those years, they’re going to have a deeper look at their country’s history starting again from the earliest recorded history through the present. They’re going to cycle through that in four years. And they’re going to add a second stream of history. Now we’ve come up with the same stream because it’s just something we see that’s descriptive of what Charlotte Mason did. She had multiple…

Liz
It’s the flow.

Emily
Yeah, it is. And that there’s three streams ultimately moving side by side. So they’re going to start their second stream and that is to add the history of a neighboring country. And this, she said, should be contemporary, be the same time period as what they’re studying in their own country so that they get a bigger perspective. We have a very different perspective of the events leading up to the Revolutionary War than British people do, right? Particularly those living at that time. 

And so we’re going to talk later in our form two episode about how to choose that neighboring country. But in a nutshell, it is a country that has strong cultural and political significance. So in England, that was France, even though there were much closer countries, even on the same island, there were some distinct countries at the time. And I would argue that for us in America, despite where we live, because of our, not only the founding documents, our governmental structure, and who controlled us when we gained our independence, but also because of our shared language and a lot of cultural things and continuing alliances…and those all match up with what England and France have. 

Liz
It just has the most influence on our lives. 

Emily
Yes, so I would argue that is England for us. It’s not our closest neighbor like Canada or Mexico. They have a very similar history of exploration and exploitation by people coming here. But all of those things go into making our Neighboring Country. 

And they can start that first year with the earliest history of that country and that’s the only departure from studying those things hand in hand at the same time. So that’s an option, you don’t have to, but it’s a good option. 

So then in Form 2a, which is fifth and sixth grade (the upper two years of that form) through Form 3, they’re continuing that four-year cycle through their own country’s history, and then they’re definitely lockstep, contemporary chronological history of their close neighbor’s country. But they add in a third stream, and that is the study of ancient history, which of course cannot be contemporary with our modern stream. And it’s a cultural look. So she would look at different cultures in the ancient Near East and then the culture of Greece and then the culture of Rome, for example, instead of trying to cut a sliver of time across all of those cultures. So we get a bigger picture of their scope. 

And then as they move into Form 3, they’re even adding current events. So not only are they getting their modern time, which could be as long ago as a thousand years, and their ancient time, they’re also getting the very current present-day history that is being made right now. 

So then as they move into high school, as we call it in America, Forms 4 through 6, they’re going through their last rotation of history. And Form 4 is what we would say 9th grade, Form 5 is 10th and 11th, Form 6 is 12th grade. They advance onto more stiffer books, which with Charlotte Mason, we look at the easier books that she used and think they’re pretty stiff. But for her students, they were even stiffer, a look at their own country. So now we’re getting into motives and ideas and really wrestling through those things that make the events happen.

The neighboring country instead of just one country, it’s going to expand to all of Western civilization. If you’re in the West, I guess that would be different if you’re in a different context. And then they go through another look at ancient history. And she said there was actually less time for that, so they just got a broader overview of it. And then they continue their current events. So really, it’s four streams of history going hand in hand.

Yeah, so overall I’ve hinted at it, but there were three four-year rotations overall, but it’s a total of an eight-year history cycle. And I think this is something that’s not recognized broadly. We get questions about this all the time, but that ancient stream is four years and it’s stacked on top of the four years for the modern stream. And they have to go in lockstep because when you get to the end of your modern stream, you’re at the beginning of where your modern stream picks up. And so you’re ready to cycle back and they all it’s a seamless chronological flow over eight years, but we covered every four. So the ancient ends up where the modern begins the following year. 

So again, Charlotte Mason lays this huge emphasis on chronologically progressive work. That is the underlying fundamental principle of history studies. So we aren’t picking and choosing what time period our kids are most interested in. If we’re jumping into this, we might want to start at the beginning, but if we have just studied maybe the 19th century we need to move forward. We need to continue the 20th century into the present because that chronology, until we get to the end of the current time and then we cycle back, that helps give them that vibrant understanding of the pageant of history. If we’re jumping all around you’re gonna be like me when I started organizing the library and going did that happen in the 1800s? When was the Middle Ages? You know, we just don’t have those things. 

So I know this is probably as clear as mud from this very general thing that I have and we have diagrams on our website that we’ve had for the last 10 years. But I have just recently made a video showing how your one child and then subsequent children move through the forms and that will be linked in the show notes. So from this wide feast of history, Charlotte Mason says, “we may not be able to recall this or that circumstance, but the imagination is warmed. We know that there is a great deal to be said on both sides of every question and we are saved from crudities in opinion and rashness in action. The present becomes enriched for us with the wealth of all that has gone before….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)

Liz
Wow, that’s so wonderful. 

Nicole
It is. 

Liz
You know, and it’s really common for us to not have ourselves had a chronological approach to history in our own education. It was often really piecemeal at best and inconsistent and scanty which is why Emily got lost. You know we just also had very superficial you know knowledge about anything.

So in our desire to improve this understanding for our own children and give them a better sense of the sequence of the centuries, we naturally think we should always start at the very beginning, right? And that is fine if you only have one child to consider, but suppose you’re starting with older and younger children altogether. Charlotte Mason said it was okay to start, as Emily’s pointed out, at any time as long as you’re always moving forward and when you arrive at the present, you return to the beginning. So it’s kind of like a merry-go-round. It doesn’t matter where you hop on, you’re going around full circle, right? So each child joins in where the older students are, all ages are kept together and they’ll arrive at the beginning, maybe at a different age, but they will receive the whole picture. In Charlotte Mason’s day, her whole school moved together every year forward. 

Emily
And by whole school, we’re talking 40,000 children across the British Empire. 

Liz
You know, another thing that sometimes concerns us is if your country of origin was a different one from where your children are growing up. And this focus in history should be of the child’s own, the country where he lives. But other nations’ histories can be studied a bit as they come into the geography lesson or they’re going to be encountered when that country has events that involve the country that was being studied in school. 

So it can also be studied, another country’s stream of history perhaps…as a family you could do it outside of regular lessons if you want to or when a student is older and has a lot more interest in the parents’ country of origin, they could study it. But Charlotte Mason really thought that a superficial glimpse, and I think you touched on this, of everything left us to make unfair judgments when a better grasp of the history of our own culture can give us more appreciation of the scope and the complexity of other cultures. So to learn one thing well now prepares us to want to know other things well and not be satisfied with little tidbits. And when we value our own rich history, we can comprehend how much other people groups in the world, other cultures, value their own struggles and accomplishments and heroes. 

Emily
Yeah, and I think that and that is another benefit of these streams. It’s not just even the one neighboring country that expands to Western civilization. We get the ancients, which are generally living very differently than we are today. And I think that helps expand our purview.

Liz
Full picture.

Emily

Thank you for joining our discussion today. You may like to go back and listen to our earlier episodes on history, particularly episodes 11 and 12. You can find links to those as well as all of our resources for the Charlotte Mason history rotation in the show notes. As we continue to discuss Charlotte Mason curriculum this season, we invite you to read along with us in chapter 10 of volume six. We have created a reading schedule so you can keep up with us.

Next week, we will be looking at the specifics of history lessons in Form 1, Grades 1 through 3, or early Elementary School. We hope you’ll join us as we continue to spread the feast with the Charlotte Mason Method.

If you’ve been following along with our series on Charlotte Mason Bible lessons, you likely have some lingering questions. Where should I place my students in the progression if they’ve not been doing Charlotte Mason from the beginning? Or where can I, and where ought I not, combine my children? What about specific translations or how to assess my child’s progress? We’ll do our best to answer these and more in today’s podcast.

Listen Now:

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

ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List

Episode 224: Combining Multiple Students

Episode 290: Bringing Older Children into the Charlotte Mason Method

Episode 17: Bible 2.0

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
And today we are concluding our series on Bible lessons in a Charlotte Mason curriculum. This subject, Charlotte Mason believed, was the most important of a child’s education. In fact, she said a child might, in fact, receive a liberal education from the Bible alone, for the book contains within itself a great literature.

There are still some common questions and concerns that we often hear about Bible lessons and we’re going to be addressing those today. So Nicole, why don’t you start us off? 

Nicole
Yeah. So one of the big questions is can I combine my children for Bible lessons? And this is a question we often hear, and with some subjects there’s some flexibility in that. But in this one, I hope that you’ve seen with the big picture that it’s not really possible. It’s not advisable. Forms one and two are already combined, so that is a blessing to you and those students where you’re going to need to read aloud, you have everybody together. So that is good. But once the student moves to form three and beyond, the Bible lessons shift. They begin reading independently at that time and the readings increase in complexity and depth, both spiritually and intellectually. And at that point, it’s important that that student work at their own level.

Over the course of 12 years, the Bible curriculum offers a truly sweeping and comprehensive exposure to scripture, covering the overarching story of both the Old Testament and the New Testament and the exhortation to Christian living. All of the New Testament is read and all but three and maybe four ones touched on of the Old Testament are read.

That kind of depth and progression won’t be accomplished if you hold back your older students so that they can be working with you. And it’s not appropriate, developmentally if nothing else, for those younger students to be pulled ahead for you to go on and do that with the older kids so that you’re keeping everybody together. The beauty of this curriculum lies in its gradual unfolding designed for the student to grow in maturity and understanding as they go year by year through this course of study. 

So no, the Bible lessons aren’t a subject to combine any more than she has already done there with form one and two and three and four together. It’s really essential. 

Emily
And anywhere from three through six can be combined for Saviour of the World.

Nicole
Right. So we’ve got a little bit of that built in, but other than that, you need to stick to where your child is form-wise. 

Emily
We do have an episode on combining multiple students that might be of interest to people who are asking this question, number 224, and we’ll put a link in the show notes. 

Well, placement is another question. Like well I am bringing in a high schooler so shouldn’t we go back to form one and two? They don’t have that foundation. And I think we have a whole episode on the topic of bringing older students in that might also help, so that’s Episode 290. But this is a question of like, what level should they be at? How much is necessary? What is a prerequisite for coming in? And we’ve seen that unfolding. We’ve seen the robustness. 

But there was a note on Charlotte Mason’s programs that answers it for us. It asked members to remember that an average pupil should cover the whole program suitable for their age. So that means if you have a high schooler they should be covering the high school program right, forms five and six.  Other than math or grammar, which were always spelled out, the student is given the work of their age appropriate form. Yes, they might have missed some of that foundation, but they can still do the work. And I think using the commentaries, that is developmentally, as you were saying, the kind of questions that they’re going to be wrestling with and will prepare them. So it would maybe be insulting to them to keep them in just the “read and narrate”, even to go through the earlier books of the Old Testament. 

Nicole
That makes a lot of sense. Like even quantity-wise if they’re reading the amount that you know like a lower form student was and not reading that commentary…yeah I think you make a really good point there.

Emily
And they of course will have the same wonderful foundation in the gospels because they always have that going through. 

Liz
I was gonna say, yeah that’s kind of the root and they’re still getting that. 

Emily
And so but note in the program note it said “the average pupil,” so I think the exception would be severe learning challenges. We would make accommodations for that. But again, that is a per child decision and not just a sweeping, I have an older child, they’ve missed this and they have to go back. 

So of course, the caliber of work that we will expect from them will be different. If we’re bringing older students in and they haven’t had that groundwork, they haven’t been narrating for six, eight years, they’re going to give less robust narrations and that is okay, right? But they’re going to still be attempting the material that would be appropriate for their age. We need to make sure that they have an opportunity to do more oral narration than probably we would expect a student who’d been in Charlotte Mason for that whole time because they’re learning that skill of narration. So as always in Charlotte Mason, we’re looking at the child in front of us and then we just want to help him or her make steady progress from wherever they are at. 

But Bible, this isn’t a skill. Material isn’t a skill, right? It’s more their own mind and development that’s helping them, maturity, helping them tackle that material. 

Liz
Another common question I think we get is which version of the Bible should we read? And I will say that she did not use children’s picture Bibles or, you know, various retellings of the Bible for the Bible lessons. So all I would say is to read whatever is the version that you already currently use or are happy with. Just make sure that it’s not a paraphrase because there’s a lot of those out there too. We’d like it to be a good English translation. 

Emily
I did find a note when I was re-looking through the programs that for the New Testament epistles they were told to read them in the Revised Version, which is not the King James, they call that the Authorized Version. 

Liz
It was new in her day. 

Emily
It was very new in her day. I thought it was interesting. That’s the only other time I’ve seen an edition specified. The Costley-White commentaries they use in Forms 3 and 4 are the text of what we call the King James, what they call the Authorized Version. But so it was really interesting I think just because that was a good resource and that was the translation they used.

Liz
It was a new translation at the time. So many of the common ones that we have in use today, we have many good translations, but those weren’t available in her day. But we’ve seen over and over in every subject that she always used the best current book that was there that met the standards of what was needed for the subject. So yeah.

Another one I get a lot of times is moms that talk about children being confused by alternating from the Old Testament one day and the New Testament the next day. They say the kids request, you know, to not be going back and forth. Have you had that question before too? 

Emily
I’ve heard it, but I’ve never had it from my children. I mean, we’ve always done it. 

Liz
Yeah. Well, part of it for me that I think about is that they’re used to this in a Charlotte Mason education. They read multiple history books. They even sometimes have a couple of different geography books, and they’re used to every day being presented with different books. So that should not really be confusing, especially if you just say today we’re reading from Matthew. And if you do that moment or two, minute or two at the beginning of a lesson to review the last lesson, they should be able to pick up and carry that thread. 

Another thing I think that a lot of moms find really interesting, and I probably should have brought this up when we were talking about form one and two, is that younger children tend to narrate the Old Testament better than the New Testament, which is always surprising to adults because I think we have greater familiarity with the New Testament as a whole, as a rule.

But children find the stories in the Old Testament to be just fascinating and maybe because it’s more familiar or maybe just because there’s a lot more didactic information in the New Testament. They aren’t as naturally attracted to that. 

Emily
It’s more abstract than it is a narrative. Even the life of Jesus, there’s long passages in there of his teaching that does seem more abstract. 

Liz
It’s very difficult, which is another reason they only do those synoptic gospels because the gospel of John is far more abstract and a six-year-old has a rough time narrating “I am the vine and you are the branches.” 

Emily
I do want to say before we move on from the alternating that I think the strength of it is that they make connections… 

Liz
I was just gonna say that. 

Emily
I’m sorry to preempt you! 

Liz
No, go for it!

Emily
I just have seen it over and over with my kids. They say “that reminds me of…” and it’s whatever Bible Old Testament we’re reading when they read it in the New and then they see and make those connections between the whole story of scripture and I think that as an adult is one of the most amazing things about the Bible is how unified it is after being compiled and written over such a long period of time. 

Liz
Yes and I remember first graders also having amazing connections between the Old Testament and other subjects that they were studying, and it’s just exciting. You know, that they would see a connection between a greedy king in the Old Testament and one of the kings in ancient Greece or something like that.

And then I do find that a lot of moms are a little bit nervous about teaching the Bible because they know it is an authoritative book and it’s a very in-depth book. I just want to remind us all that it was given to people of every level of life and that is what is so amazing about the Bible is that it speaks to scholars and it speaks to the unlearned person equally.

But many mothers I think, are intimidated a little bit too because what if I don’t know the Bible very well myself? Moms have told me, you know, I’ve never read it through myself. I don’t know a lot about it. And I just want to encourage you because especially with your Form 1 and 2 students, lessons are really short and you’re just taking it one little bite at a time. And if a six-year-old can handle it, you can handle learning along with them. And that is actually one of the joyful things about this lesson. I think a lot of us feel that we are much more informed from having taught this lesson, do you not? 

Emily
Absolutely. 

Liz
And you know…were you going to say something? 

Nicole
I was going to say, especially with the use of the commentary that we have to work with, it’s really a help. 

Liz
That Paterson Smyth, yeah. 

Nicole
Yeah. 

Liz
And there is nothing wrong if your children ask. I think this is the other fear that goes alongside of that is my children are going to ask me things I don’t know and that’s okay. It is perfectly fine to say I don’t know.

But like Nicole said, the Paterson Smyth often answers some of those most basic questions. But I think it’s wonderful even in nature study or any other subject. If we don’t know, our children realize adults don’t know everything. I can keep learning even when I’m an adult. And we are leading the way, so to speak, and showing them how to do that. And I just would encourage you to use the Bible passage right in front of you that has just been read and has just been narrated and discussed to the best of your ability. It may answer some of their questions, just point them back to it. This is why we’re teaching our children, because knowledge is delectable, right? 

And I think that we all just need to realize this is one book that contains many books, but they are all tied together in some way. And that over 12 full years of school, how many days is that? I didn’t do the math, but it’s just a slow cumulative building of understanding of this one amazing book that is actually there to be studied for a lifetime. 

Emily
We also want to consider how to assess our students. I think this is a common question that we have. How do we know they’re doing okay in this subject? And maybe this one particularly? So I would just encourage you to go back to the lesson objectives for each form level that we laid out in these last three episodes and ask yourself at the end of the term or the end of the year, has my child grown in his knowledge of the Bible? Has he gained new thoughts of God? Has my child grown in his or her ability to narrate the Bible? And I think that is the baseline for assessing their progress. 

It also can help to look back at their exam questions from term to term or year to year. Remember, they don’t need to include everything that we felt was important from the Bible text or specific lesson. But do the answers show that they have built relationships with the ideas and stories in their Bible lessons? And I think that will give you a good idea if they’ve made progress or not. 

Liz
Just yesterday, a mom told me that at the beginning of the school year her six-year-old could hardly say anything at all about every Bible lesson and after two or three weeks of this she began to be quite nervous about it. But she said I just kept encouraging him to listen and say what he could and we had little conversations in the last you know five to ten minutes of the lesson. She said yesterday was his exam and she said “I could not even write down all the things he could remember” and she said he still knew whole sections almost verbatim.

Emily
Well, do you have any closing thoughts to share with us? 

Liz
I think that story kind of sums up a lot, doesn’t it?

And I think with all of our subjects, we have no idea the true value of what is happening here. We are serving the feast, presenting the subjects, and the students deal with it in whatever way they need. And who knows at what point in their life they will reach back and draw from these lessons in the future.

Emily

Thank you for joining the conversation today. Please check the show notes for links to the resources that we mentioned in this episode and to explore these discussions further. You might enjoy listening to our previous episode, Bible 2.0 is our last name because we’ve already redone it one time. 

But next time we will be turning our attention to the pivotal subject of history. And we think you’ll find Charlotte Mason’s method to be a brilliant design. We’d love it if you would read along with us. And so we have a reading schedule for Chapter 10 of Volume 6 linked in the show notes. We hope you’ll tune in as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method.