Our Bible Study: The Charlotte Mason Way

I love teaching in the Charlotte Mason style and respect her so much as an educator because she put a priority on the spiritual lives of the children she instructed as she herself was a follower of Christ.  She wanted parents (educators) to not just teach Bible, but lead the children to fall in love with the Word of God and that is what I want to create for my kids.

First off, we start our day off with breakfast and Bible.  We begin my going through our Scripture Memory Box.  All the elements in the box are available through Simply Charlotte Mason for free.  We downloaded the King James Version for our memory work.  As with living books, Charlotte Mason didn't want kids to have a diluted version of the Bible, nothing paraphrased or watered down.  Children can understand the Bible wholly by itself and the Word, undiluted,  is so much more interesting to them. We have since done away with our Bible "story" books and the kids enjoy navigating through the Bible on their own.

Download all the elements for this box at Simply Charlotte Mason

Since we are Christians that have been moved by the Holy Spirit to understand more fully our Hebrew Roots, we then move on to our Torah portion for the day.  It is just something that we felt moved to do as we try to make our walk with God as close to Christ's example for us.  We read through the passages posted for the week at TorahPortions.org.

Finally, we move on to our Ambleside schedule for the day.  I love that Ambleside incorporates both Old and New Testament for the kids to study.  Ambleside schedules whole parables, broken down over a few days of verses.  My 5th grader will read his passages on his own and I will read aloud to our 2nd grader and Kindergartner, then we narrate together what was read.  

The following are a passages from Charlotte Mason's Original Homeschooling series, Home Education:

Bible Recitations-  The learning by the heart of Bible passages should begin while the children are quite young, six or seven.  It is a delightful thing to have the memory stored with beautiful, comforting, and inspiring passages, and we cannot tell why and and how this manner of seed may spring up, grow, and bear fruit; but the learning of the parable of the Prodigal son, for example, should not be laid upon them as a burden.  the whole parable should be read to them in a way to bring its beauty and tenderness; and then, day by day, the teacher should recite a short passage, perhaps two or three verses, saying it over some three or four times until the children think they know it.  Then, but not before, let them recite the passage.  Next day the children will recite what they have already learned, and so on, until they area able to say the whole parable.  (Mason vol.1 pg 254)

Method of Bible Lessons- The method of such lessons is very simple.  Read aloud to the children a few verses covering if possible, an episode.  Read reverently, carefully, and with just expression.  Then require the children to narrate what they have listened to as nearly as possible in the words of the Bible.  It is curious how readily they catch the rhythm of the majestic and simple Bible English.  Then, talk the narrative over with them in the light of research and criticism.  Let the teaching, moral and spiritual, reach them without much personal application. (Mason vol.1 pg 252)

Ambleside Online has the whole Charlotte Mason series on there site here.  It is also available for Amazon Kindle for as low as 99 cents per volume.  I really love the first volume, Home Education and that is what I keep referring to as I plan out how to tackle each subject.

Here is a video from my YouTube Channel, just talking about our Bible Study!


Blessings,
Ann

Living Books and Narration: Charlotte Mason Basics

What I love about Charlotte Mason's style of teaching is that she understood that children are whole persons, and we should teach them full intellectual content without watering it down or dumbing it down for them. Their libraries should be filled with great literature and all that they are exposed to should be twaddle-free.  Living Books are the best way for children to learn information.

What is a Living Book?  

A Living Book is one that is basically an what I like to call an anti-textbook.  It is written by one author who poured their time, talent, research and passion into composing a timeless piece of work.

The biggest difference I have seen in utilizing Living Books instead of textbooks is in our history selection.  These historical figures are now vivid characters in the minds of my children and they understand not only the facts that happened throughout this persons life, but also the type of person they were; compassionate, brave, arrogant, noble, whatever it is, they get the characteristics of who that person was and how our history was affected by who they were.

Living Books and Narration are used throughout different subjects in the Charlotte Mason style and that is why it is a basis for a Charlotte Mason homeschool.

Where Do I Find Living Books?

We use Ambleside Online Curriculum for our schooling so, that is where we find all our book lists for the different grades we are in.  If you go to their website, the book lists by grade are on the left column, and when we first started to dabble in Charlotte Mason style we only got books from the Free Reading list.

Simply Charlotte Mason also has a great list of living books too.  If you use their Bookfinder you can search by subject, or by grade level.

Peace Hill Press' Story of the World is one our favorite history books and the also have other supplements that would coincide with CM style teaching.

Queen Homeschool Supplies also bases their products on a CM style.

What is Narration?

Narration is simply the telling back of a reading.  That reading can be something they read on their own or something that was read aloud to them.  In any case, if a child can read or listen to a reading, understand it enough to put it into their own words, then essentially teach back what they learned from that reading, that is the most genuine test of true knowledge.  They know it enough to teach it.

With my older son who does most of his reading on his own, when he narrates and the little ones are around they too get a mini lesson on what he just learned.  They will get pre-exposed to something they will learn about later on, and I just love that.

Charlotte Mason suggests that required narration doesn't begin until the child is 6 years old, but before that if they wish to narrate by all means let them.  Developing this oral narration is the basis of creating a great writer, but before we can learn to put sentences together while writing we need to develop their oral language.

The following is an excerpt from Charlotte Mason's Original Homeschooling series Volume 1: Home Education:

The Art of Narrating

Children Narrate by Nature - Narrating is an art, like poetry-making or painting, because it is there, in every child's mind, waiting to be discovered, and is not the result of any process of disciplinary education.  A creative fiat calls it forth.  'Let him narrate'; and the child narrates, fluently, copiously, in ordered sequence, with fit and graphic details, with a just choice of words, without verbosity or tautology, so soon as he can speak with ease.  This amazing gift with wich normal children are born is allowed to lie fallow in their education. (Mason Vol.1 pg 232) 

Here is the video from my YouTube Channel on Living Books and Narration.



Blessings,
Ann

Let Me Introduce Myself

Hi, my name is Ann and I am a homeschooling mom of 3 with one happy little blessing due this August.  This is our fourth year of homeschooling and for the very first time I feel like we finally got things running smoothly and I would like to share how we implement the Charlotte Mason style of homeschooling and also how we use Ambleside Online Curriculum.

I currently have a 5th and 2nd grader along with a Kindergartener.  For the 5th and 2nd grader, we follow Ambleside Online Years 5 and 2.  My little one in kindergarten does reading and math on her own, but then joins us in Year 2 for the rest of the subjects.  Ambleside Online is my very favorite resource and it's all free. A bit overwhelming at first but I hope to give a step-by-step of at least what we go through.

We live in California and homeschool through a Charter School.  Homeschooling through a charter has its up sides and down.  First of all, we go through this particular charter because it allows us to have instructional funds that we spend on curriculum, supplies, and services like tutoring and music classes. We meet with our ES (educational specialist) every 15 to 20 school days. She pretty much is the liason between the school and us. She will collect attendance and learning records each meeting, writing benchmarks every quarter, samples every semester, assess the kids in the beginning of the year and once towards the end. 

My kids are still required to take the state test, but this year we did exercise our right to opt out as I am not a fan of the whole Common Core movement. Our school stated that they would have to take a written alternative which would be on campus (45 mins away from us) and 4 days out of the week. I agreed and they ended up not administering the test at all this year. Bonus!

I really just wanted to share about our experience with the Charlotte Mason method and hope to help anyone interested in Charlotte Mason because the application of her methods are pretty vague and I hope to clear up some of that confusion and to simplify the seemingly overwhelming task of putting together a curriculum using Ambleside Online.  I understand this style is not going to be for every homeschool and for every student, it just works really well with our family and I understand how overwhelming the task may seem at first, but after implementing it more fully this year it has been the most enjoyable year of homeschooling and my kids have learned so much.  It really is a gentle art of teaching and I can't wait to share more with you!

First off, these are my favorite Charlotte Mason websites:

Ambleside Online

Simply Charlotte Mason

We follow the Ambleside program almost to a tee and I have found many enriching resources from Simply Charlotte Mason.

If you would like to read more about Charlotte Mason, she did publish a 6 volume Original Homeschooling series that I got for, like, 99 cents each on Amazon Kindle.  It is not an easy read so the following are kind of her ideas condensed and written in a way that is easier to understand.

My must have books!

A Charlotte Mason Companion: Personal Reflections on The Gentle Art of Learning
For the Children's Sake: Foundations of Education for Home and School

In my next post I will give a quick guide to how we implement the Charlotte Mason Method for each subject in our homeschool routine.

Here is my official vlog introduction as well! Enjoy!