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Living Books. These two words are almost synonymous with a Charlotte Mason education. In today’s episode we begin our discussion of Literature in a Charlotte Mason curriculum and try to get to the heart of how she used living books in literature lessons.
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 turning our attention to the subject of literature as we work our way through volume six, chapter 10 and discuss a Charlotte Mason curriculum this season. We have prepared a season 11 reading schedule for you that you can find linked in our show notes if you’d like to read along with us and stay up to date with us. We invite you to do that because it is so important to read Charlotte Mason’s words for yourself.
So today we are talking about literature. And when I think of what a Charlotte Mason education is, I usually first think of living books. I think that’s the case for many, many people. It was a common refrain that we used to see. What are we? What’s the answer? Living books. Yes, oh yes. Just like “Jesus” is the Sunday school answer, “living books” is the Charlotte Mason answer. So literature is a subject, of course, that is entirely made up of books and Charlotte Mason was very particular about what books children read for their literature or as they’re called in the very earliest years, “tales” or “reading” lessons. These books she said must furnish the mind with ideas because children take hold of beautiful images clothed in beautiful words. Living books give them a real sense of other times, places and others’ lives that give scope to their imagination. It entertains and delights them all the days of their lives. So she’s talking to us too.
Liz Yeah. Thank goodness.
Emily And books help us all as persons form fair judgments and opinions. Charlotte Mason said, we probably read Shakespeare in the first place for his stories. Afterwards for his characters, as we go on reading this world teacher, lines of insight and beauty take possession of us and unconsciously mold our judgments of men and things and of the great issues of life. Probably not a lot of us would include Shakespeare in what we think of as living books, but it definitely is what Charlotte Mason thought of. So we’re trying to orient ourselves to what she was after.
In a nutshell, literature is the means by which people are educated. So we could say it is the core of the curriculum, but that seems like what we’ve been saying about every subject we’ve gotten to so far.
In volume one, Charlotte Mason admonishes teachers that we have two duties. We are to see that every child acquires the habit of reading and two, that he does not fall into slipshod habits of reading. So we fail in the first of these duties when we underestimate what the child is capable of and we give him twaddle or books that talk down to him. But when given excellent books, children learn that knowledge is supremely attractive and reading is delightful.
I would say slipshod habits include inattention, and also careless enunciation. So our mind working on the book can be a slipshod habit, but also how we read. As with all lessons, we read materials once and we ask the children to narrate and that helps strengthen their attention. So that’s how we accomplish this duty. But they also learn to read beautifully. The words are beautiful in and of themselves.
And for these reasons, Charlotte Mason said that he should have no book which is not a child’s classic in the early forms, and his literature throughout his education are classics suitable for reading at any age.
Nicole I’m just thinking it’s such a lofty thing compared to what I grew up with. So I want to share this whole progression, what it looks like when a student begins at the very beginning in form one, first grade, and then goes through high school. And really, we read living books for all subjects, right? But we really are talking about literature, which has kind of very specific things. These are not just any old book, right?
Okay, so in Form 1, so that’s grades 1 through 3, everything begins with a story. First comes the fairy tales and the fables, all read aloud. And the second and third year of that Form 1, grades 2 and 3, Pilgrim’s Progress is added and the first heroic myths appear, all of them taken slowly, all of them narrated. The aim is really delight, even though some of those books, I just already listed a book you might think is little hard.
Okay. Then we go to form two. So grades four to six. And now the timeline or our timetable is granting a little bit more space. And the menu expands – Shakespeare arrives this point. One play every term. And Shakespeare stays for the rest of their school life.
A friendly English literature survey and a mythology spine run alongside Sir Walter Scott already here. And a steady diet of ballads and narrative poems. Children begin to read in character and they handle more of their books on their own at this point.
Okay, then they get to Form 3, so grades 7 and 8. And the same pillars hold, we’ve got Shakespeare, a literature spine, and we have Age of Fable, but the supporting works grow stiffer now. There is an occasional essay that shows up at this point for the first time. We have travel and historical novels that help widen perspective. The students now narrate most readings in writing as well as some oral narrations. I think at that point we almost have to remember to get those in.
Then form four, grade nine, we’re just gonna start high school and still every strand in this is rising a notch. Some of the Shakespeare shifts to tragedies and late histories at this point. Scott is gonna yield to the longer Waverly novels. Essays are added and poetry selections move from the narrative ballads of earlier years to later Victorian pieces. With the start of high school work, the students add a commonplace book. So they’re kind of collecting some of their favorite striking passages and things like that.
Okay, form five, that’s grades 10 and 11. The list of assigned books, as I saw it, actually shortens just a little bit.
Emily Because the books are longer.
Nicole Because the books are much longer. And much denser, we would say. One verse drama. Notice I didn’t say Shakespeare. One verse drama still anchors a term, yet only in the programs that we have only one in three is Shakespeare now and the rest are Greek tragedies or renaissance plays like Edward the second. A modern verse, a modern verse, anthology sticks with them as part of their daily poetry and Scott now only appears once a year making room for Dickens, Eliot, Gaskell and other authors and essays now show up every single term.
And then in Form 6, so this is grade 12, their final year, their expectations even peak more, the drama still anchors every term, but now the Greek tragedy really dominates and Shakespeare drops to what we could see from the programs one in every four…this is where Shakespeare shows up. Essays or reflective prose are assigned every term and poetry anthologies appear almost always. There’s also now once a year an epic classic such as Paradise Lost, Dante, Chaucer. And I think at this time students are doing a little bit more silent narrations and things like that. The idea is that all of this has become a habit for their life.
So they’ve really gone over these 12 years from listening to reading to reading it all, from fairy tales to world classics. But really, we see over all those years that verse drama, every term, daily poetry, literature chosen to shadow the period of history except in Form 1. We talked about that in our last series. And what Charlotte Mason said, the steady assurance that each small guest assimilates what he can. And by graduation the student has lived with the best authors of the past and present and has practiced attentive reading and thoughtful response. And Miss Mason would say, he’s begun to think like a true citizen and a statesman in the best sense. I love that part.
It really is so wild to watch the progression she had in mind. That she actually, we take this from the programs. We know what she was assigning and what she had in mind for the scope of a child’s whole education. It’s just, it’s massive. It’s just wild.
Liz Which was actually, when I was thinking about this topic, the very words that came to mind were the world of literature is vast, it is immense. And just that Charlotte Mason concentrates on the most outstanding works and authors and poets and plays. And the tying together of the literature and the history, I think. It just enhances both of those subjects tremendously. In literature, we find the thoughts and the ideas expressed by men in different times and places. And we discover they also have a lot in common with us.
Basically, in literature, a child’s world explodes or expands to include a lot more than he would have ever considered or met with in his own home or his own town or his own country. I think it introduces them to not just what people have done, but how they thought and how they felt and what motivated them and basically who other people were. And I don’t think there’s any area or pursuit in life that would not benefit from a rich lifelong love affair with literature.
And I just love the way she carefully constructs things. You might think your second grader is dealing with some tough things, but it will toughen him up for the next level until what Nicole was amazed at in high school is not any harder for them to bear at that age than it was when they were seven.
Emily Yeah. And all of that, I think, shows why Charlotte Mason thought that literature was our great teacher and that we have much to learn from books.
If you want to know what these principles for literature look like and actual lessons for your children, please join us the next few weeks as we explore each level of literature lessons. You might also like to listen to our older episodes on literature and poetry, numbers 36 and 236. You can find links to those episodes and the reading schedule that I mentioned today in the show notes. Thank you for listening today as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method.
Are you wondering where to place your kids in Charlotte Mason’s streams of history? Are you struggling to teach multiple students in multiple form levels? In today’s podcast we are addressing these things and other practical concerns and questions about Charlotte Mason’s history lessons.
Welcome to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I’m Emily Kiser and I’m here with…
Liz …Liz Cottrill…
Nicole …and Nicole Williams.
Emily Today we are wrapping up our series on history. We like to use this closing episode to address practical considerations and questions that we hear frequently. So Nicole, why don’t you get us started by talking about the most common question of homeschooling moms everywhere: Where can I combine my children to make it easier on myself?
Nicole One of the most practical and beautiful aspects of Charlotte Mason’s history approach is how naturally it does allow for combining students. In fact history is one of the most unifying subjects of the curriculum. I think it can be. All of form one, so that’s grade one through three, can be combined with students either working in the one B or one A as we’ve talked about before on wherever the older sibling is. And then in forms two and three, that is grades four through eight, five years, those children can all be combined.
Emily Yeah. For the ones that they have.
Nicole For the ones that they have.
Emily The streams that they have, right.
Nicole Because some of them aren’t yet…
Emily That first 2B.
Nicole The 2B isn’t doing Ancient History yet. But yes, where they can, they can all be, that’s five years of students that can be combined there. That’s huge.
And then forms four through six, so high school, they share the same stream, moving through the final years of that rotation together. So at no point should a family really have more than three groups going at the same time. Maybe more importantly, all students, regardless of form, are studying the same time period.
Emily Right.
Nicole And whether they’re reading stories from, you know, American settlements in Form 1 or tracing events across France and Britain, you know, later on, or even the contemporary European history, everyone’s anchored in the same place and time.
Emily Yes.
Nicole And that goes a long way. It creates a sense of shared learning and your whole family can be immersed in the same historical moment or the same historical field trip like you guys took recently.
Emily Yes, we went to Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown because that was the period that we were all in this year.
Nicole Right, everybody can have the same conversations over the dinner table or build the same forts for the same war in the backyard. The kids are playing around these things. So just remember that children don’t need to start at the beginning of history. They just need to jump in where the rest of the family is and over time they will cycle back around.
Emily I hear the objection though, but three is still like way too many. But I think like what is lost if we don’t do that, right? We’re going to be shortchanging people at every level because we won’t be able to give them what is appropriate for them, right?
Liz And it’s not three hands on.
Emily Yes, that was my second part is yes, for all but that first form, they’re doing a lot of their lesson independently or with each other, right? Without you, the mom.
Nicole Right. And I, you know, I get chill bumps when we do the first episode of these series of a subject.
Emily Yeah.
Nicole Because you see that progression of what is happening, and part of that progression is that student getting independence and being able to start doing some of this stuff by themselves and so I think that’s a really important factor to keep in mind like you said there Liz.
Emily Well another question that we hear a lot is where do I put my kid? Like I mean we get this…clearly it’s not a problem if you come with your six year old, you just dive right in. And that’s so nice and easy, but that is not the reality of so many people who find Charlotte Mason later or maybe they were doing a Charlotte Mason inspired or some other type of curriculum and they know the history is the pivot, but how do I get there?
Well, there was a note on the programs for kids to do, or students I should say, to do the whole program that was appropriate for their age. Like this is not a new thing. People were coming into the PUS at all ages too. So we do need to look at the child before us and we can do a lot as a teacher to remove obstacles to help them succeed in that program of work. We may need to make accommodations for severe learning disabilities or something like that.
That note that I read did specify for the normal child, which is their word for neurotypical, right? So when we have neuro-atypical, we might need to make accommodations, but I think we can still give them the whole feast. If they’re in Form 2, we might need to assign simpler books, but they can do all of the streams, right? So we’re helping them step into that, but we’re not taking away the richness or the breadth of the program for their age.
The work of the forms must be chronologically progressive. Those are not A.D.E.’s words. Those are not Emily Kiser’s words. Those are Charlotte Mason’s words. And so we have to move forward from the last period of history. And I know this can become a jumbled mess depending on what we have done before and different people’s ideas. Every curriculum out there, Charlotte Mason or not, has an idea about the history progression. So it can make it really jumbled if we were in a specific ancient history in a different time in American history. And then we move forward. We need to go past our modern, I think that the modern is the benchmark that we go by because that is the one that is specifically chronological…
Nicole Meaning, versus ancient.
Emily Right, versus Ancient because with the ancient history there is some overlap since we’re looking at culture by culture, right? Generally the Greeks happen, but Greece was still around, guys, when Rome was in more or less degree of power, but they did war against each other…you know, a Greek came and invaded Italy and wanted to…you know, anyway, that’s a whole thing. All that I’ve learned from reading Charlotte Mason history.
But I think we need to look at where were we in our modern stream? and go forward from there. And then again, as I mentioned before, the ancient history is tied to those specific years of the modern. So we have to do the ancient again. And sometimes that does get messy, but that would be my best advice.
Liz So this is kind of what I was about to say too, because I’ve encountered many families where their children have only been studying ancient. So then they want to know where should they start with the American or whatever. So I would just say that if last year you studied ancient Egypt, then you would begin at 1650 to 1800, right?
Emily Right. Because ancient Egypt is in the first European rotation.
Liz Right. And that would be the Greek history that year.
Emily So you’re moving forward in the ancient if they had not done any American history. And if they’d just done the Middle Ages and Renaissance…because I find this a really common thing, the family has just been only in that time period. So then I just say, well, then you’re perfectly set up to jump into, you know, 1000 to 1650 and you’ll be studying ancient Egypt during that time. So I just thought that.
Emily Yeah, exactly. I think the thing to just calm our nerves about all the messy jumps into history is history is not a skill subject. There are going to be gaps and we need to not worry about them. There were only supposed to be no gaps for math and grammar, foreign and English. So all other subjects, it is okay. There’s always going to be gaps.
Liz And she even says it’s okay to skip a century or two. The big thing is you’ve got to keep going forward.
Nicole I think your video too, just as a reminder that…
Emily …The video that describes all of the rotations.
Nicole I think that would help people to be able to approach it with whatever their specific situation is and watch that.
Emily Yeah. And just remember they’re going to get it all again because we cycle through history like three total times, you know, over the course of 12 years. So even if your child is coming in in that middle rotation, they’re still going to get it again. And they can get a whole one if they’re doing this in high school. So if they feel a lack of knowledge, you know, from something they read, that is all the better because that is what spurs anybody on, like I don’t know about that and I want to and they’re going to pick up books.
Liz Curiosity!
Emily Even beyond their 12 years in your home. What other questions do we have?
Liz Well, I was just thinking if you’re bringing several students into this method and maybe they’ve all been in different places…I run into this a lot. What I usually recommend is that you work with the oldest student because they have less time ahead of them to do what maybe has been lacking. And it just makes more sense if they’ve only got three or four years left, let’s go with where that child is and the others can fall into line.
And I do find that a lot of times moms are concerned that their kids are gonna be confused studying three different time periods in history, but that is not my experience with actually teaching children. They relish it and they love the changes and the differences and they love making the connections between the different countries like oh my goodness this was happening in Italy at the same time as… so I think that’s a good thing.
And then you did mention about combining children and having them read together, older children and younger children together. And I think that it is always a temptation for us as moms to do what’s easier for us. We would love to have all our kids in the same book or something like that. But they each need what is going to be important for where they’re at in life.
The older children maybe will be able to read the same book as a little bit younger children, but on the timetable they’re going to have different lengths of lessons. And so just keep in mind that the older child is going to get to write his narrations, whereas a younger child will not be doing that necessarily. So that kind of helps you balance your whole timetable. Like, you know, maybe the book is used together, but the older child has the challenge of having to write the narration, I guess is what I’m trying to say.
Emily Yeah, that note about combining both levels in the same form in a home school room always also had the note that the children in the upper part of the form had more requirements, more expectations on their work. They were to do more.
Liz And then the other thing about combining kids that is a frequent thing is that the kids would rather study independently. They don’t want to study with their siblings, right?
And actually related to this is that moms often don’t want to give up reading to all the children together. They love that camaraderie thing and I get it, I do. But you know, there is a whole day when you can read other books, right? So go ahead and read them yourself before your kids do so you know what to talk about with them, and there are other things we can read about outside of school together and still have that camaraderie. But it does help our children so much to have combined lessons.
And maybe the younger student can’t really read a whole lot yet and the older one is gonna have to carry more of the weight. But they have to learn to get along at home if they’re gonna get along with people in life in general. And just to remind them that throughout life they’re going to be encountering people everywhere they work and study and live who are annoying just like their siblings are. And they have less skills than they do or are more inefficient and all of those exact same problems. And that this is an opportunity to strengthen their character for what they’re inevitably gonna be dealing with in their life ahead of them.
Emily Well, one other thing I wanted to touch on is how parents or teachers can assess the progress their students are making. I think that’s just always, especially for homeschoolers, at the back of our mind, like, is my child doing enough? So I would just have some questions that you could ask yourselves to reflect on that.
As they move up in the forms, are they showing their own thoughts? Are they developing their own opinions? Are your students making connections between people and events throughout history or in between their different streams or even their different subjects? This character in our literature book reminds me of this person that we read about in history or vice versa, something like that.
And ultimately, do they care? Have they made a connection with a person from history? It doesn’t have to be with every single person, every single lesson. Are they making relationships?
Do they get riled up at injustice that they read about? My kids do. Man, some of our best conversations have been after reading hard things in books. Or do they rejoice with a person’s success that they write about? I think that is really the highest mark of progress because that’s meeting our objectives of interesting them in history and helping them develop relationships with the past.
Liz And getting outside of themselves.
Emily Yeah. So did you have anything else to share with us, Mom, before we…?
Liz I’m sure I’ll think of something after we quit. But that’s all I had in my mind at the moment.
Emily Charlotte Mason said, “We can not live sanely unless we know that other peoples are as we are with a difference, that their history is as ours, with a difference….we may not delay to offer such a liberal and generous diet of History to every child in the country as shall give weight to his decisions, consideration to his actions and stability to his conduct.” (6/178-179)
We hope that you have been inspired to give such a diet of history to your students. Next, we turn our attention to literature, a subject that goes hand in hand with history.
So please join us next time as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method.
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.
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.
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.
*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.
