I PREFER THE CHARLOTTE MASON METHOD, BUT I ALSO RECOMMEND WRITING TALES

In fact, my co-op may be using Writing Tales next year. I recommended it to the organizers.

They are looking at various curricula for next year’s writing program for elementary students for grades 3 through 5. The organizers picked up a copy of Writing With Ease, but since the upper levels weren’t available, they nixed that idea. Then I told them about Write from History. Well, the head gal loved it. They were going for it until someone realized that our co-op isn’t organized around history. Sometimes one history and geography are offered at co-op, and sometimes two history options and no geography. And then some of the students don’t take history at co-op at all. So to have students studying ancients at home and working on medieval history at school, just wouldn’t work out.

So I suggested Writing Tales, and I really hope they go for it. It’s a program we’ve used. It incorporates grammar. And it’s fun! I’d love it if my kids were doing Write from History next year and Writing Tales. Then they would be writing across the curriculum, with two programs that teach writing from different perspectives. What a blessing that would be!

I’m pulling for you Amy!!!!!!!!

CO-OP NOT WORKING OUT AS I HAD PLANNED.

At least not completely. My fifth grader is taking Apologia Zoology, Total Language Plus, and My Father’s World Geography. The Zoology is going great, but because it’s a co-op class the teacher is not assigning any writing. The Geography class is also multi-level, and once again–no writing assignments. For the Language Arts class, the teacher is trying to assign writing, but no one does them, including my daughter. I should feel bad about this, but I don’t.

Total Language Plus is set up to primarily focus on reading, comprehension, spelling, grammar, and vocabulary. The writing assignments are grouped with the enrichment activities and little to no guidance is provided. The writing assignments are all topic focused, not method focused. This doesn’t help children who don’t know how to write a paragraph. There’s no direction!

At home, we are using Write from History, which will help solidify her foundation, but she should be writing something in every subject. If we were covering all of these classes at home, I could extend the Charlotte Mason methods in Write from History across all of her content subject areas. But, by not being her main teacher for every subject, it’s extremely hard to assign more work on top of what she is already doing. And we have daily assignments in each co-op class! It’s not going as I expected.

My daughter is probably a little advanced in the area of writing. Before I created Write from History, we used Classical Writing Aesop A/B and Classical Writing Homer A. I quit half-way through Homer because I was not satisfied with the method of implementation. For me, the program was too cluttered. It was just too hard and time-consuming to implement. But, in addition to those programs, we also did copywork, narration, and some dictation from the pre-cursor to Write from History.

So she has been writing, but now it’s dropped to half of what she was doing.

Our co-op is a blessing, and I love it. My kids are doing excellent work for their co-op teachers. They are becoming more independent, and I am very pleased with that. They are doing great and thriving from the interaction with the other kids, and because I’m not their sole teacher, they are not expecting me to do everything, or anything for that matter, to help them. Co-op has been great for their confidence and independence; however, they’re not learning exactly what I want them to learn.:-(

Next year, I can fix this problem by either putting my daughter in a writing class and not a language arts class, although there should be writing in the language arts classes as well; or I can work with the co-op on incorporating more writing throughout the lower levels.

But what about this year? Well, I have a solution!

We are going to mix IEW and this wonderful little ebook I found on currclick to teach paragraph writing. I own two of the IEW programs: SWIC for teaching writing at the high school level, and TWSS that I purchased when I first began homeschooling, but I’ve never used.

So, I downloaded the free lesson share plans for SWIB for my daughter, but with that I’ll use the ebook called Paragraph Writing Made Easy. Both of these only cover 1 semester, which will be perfect for us. She’ll continue to do Write from History, even though she’s moving forward toward more advanced writing without models. Narration, I can easily incorporate with the co-op classes by requiring her to tell me what she just read. That only requires a little bit of time, but provides huge benefits. The homework from the classes just makes it impossible for me to add more work on top of what they are already doing.

I could have her write about Zoology, but if she’s spending 3 to 5 hours on the subject already, I think it would be demotivating to add more work on the same subject. She is still only 10 and spending more than 30 minutes on one subject can become tedious, and it completely goes against the principle of short lessons.

Next year, I’ll do a better job of picking co-op classes for her, until then I think we have a solution.
To check out Paragraph Writing Made Easy, check here. And of course to see Write from History for the Ancients check here.

And btw, just to be clear, once a child can write, they should be writing across most of their subjects. It is the best way for students to communicate what they’ve learned, and the best way for teachers to assess comprehension. I believe that elementary children need foundational programs such as Write from History, Writing Tales, Writing with Ease, Institute for Excellence in Writing, or Classical Writing. However, writing should not be limited to the writing curriculum. And in my daughter’s case, I’m having to add a more advanced writing curriculum that will meet her needs and will compensate for the lack of writing in her other classes. The combination of this curriculum plus Write from History should serve her well.

My 9 year old son, on the other hand, doesn’t need anything more than Write from History. And he may not for a few years. He isn’t as far along with writing. We’ll see how he progresses. His oral narrations and written summations from Write from History along with the oral narrations from his other classes are enough for him. He is doing copywork for his Zoology class, and writing answers to his Language Arts class. The combination, for him, from co-op is actually sufficient. He’s getting practice in writing sentences and oral narrating across the curriculum, as well as formal writing lessons from Write from History–narration, copywork, and dictation. He’s covered.

One of my daughter’s strong suits happens to be writing, and I don’t want to ignore that topic just because she is where she should be. I want to continue to challenge her even if she’s further ahead than she needs to be. Children should be challenged in every subject they take. They should not spend time spinning their wheels learning nothing new.

In fact, wheel spinning is my daughter’s weakness; she loves to coast, and being ahead can exacerbate this flaw. I can’t let that happen. She needs more; my son, who is a very bright young man, doesn’t. Every child is different. So, if you have a middle school student that needs more work on different kinds of paragraphs–just beyond what Write from History offers–check out Paragraph Writing Made Easy. It’s inexpensive and worth the risk. I have only just purchased it and printed it out. But I’m excited because I believe it has what my daughter needs. After using it for a couple of months, I’ll post a real review on it.

I’m so glad this is resolved. This issue has been plaguing me for weeks, maybe months.

READING THE ORIGINALS–HELPING ME GET BACK ON TRACK

I’m reading Vol. 6 of Charlotte Mason’s writings. And all I can say is, “Read the original.”

It’s so full of passion and knowledge. Also, it’s good to read about her journey in developing her philosophy of education rather than just reading “here’s how you do it.”

When you can understand the reasons behind what she did, it’s much easier to understand what to do in a modern world.

As I’ve mentioned before, I started out teaching my children somewhere between Charlotte Mason and Classical. And while I don’t think they’re exclusive at all, I think much of what Ms. Mason proposed was extremely classical, the point of origin, to me, seems to be different.

(And by the way, I’m not an expert at either. I’m figuring this stuff out as I go, and I am having a blast doing so. But I no way feel unqualified to talk about these ideas as a parent and teacher. I’ve come to learn that I’m not an expert, but then again, neither are the people than many of us call experts. Just look at the public school system.)

Ms. Mason’s methods really were focused on the whole child. And while much of the subject matter taught was the same as with classical education, the input and the output were different. From my interpretation of her writings, she believed that children should read books for themselves and interpret for themselves, guided by their teachers. I believe she knew the dangers of what a teacher-led education could do to a child. Some of which I addressed here.

Where input is concerned, the quantity, the quality, and the method are all important. Charlotte Mason piled on the quantity–not too much, but not too little either. She definitely piled on the quality–nothing but the best. Neither of these really differ that much from other methods of education. The method and the reasoning behind it, though, appear to be unique. She said that just like the body needs food, the mind needs ideas. I believe she recognized in children the hunger for information, knowledge, and understanding. She didn’t believe that these passions needed to be created, only cultivated. So the method of input was to give children the tools to read and then let them read. It seems so easy, but it contradicts most of what we do with education–even homeschooling.

How much time do your children spend reading every day? How much lecturing do you as a parent do? I know when I answer these questions, that we are not doing as much as we should, especially where my boys are concerned. My daughter sleeps on books and sucks the information in even as she sleeps.

A worksheet here, and a worksheet there, here a sheet, there a sheet, everywhere a worksheet. It’s just too much. And we use these because we want documentation on what they can do. We think it’s helping to accomplish output, but really it’s driving out the input.

This is where we are in our journey. I’m frustrated with myself and how I’ve gone astray. We’re not doing bad by any measure out there. But my children should have the best, and I think I’m crowding out the best with the good and easy.

So my goal for the rest of the school year is to find a way to get us back on track.

By the way, it’s not the curriculum so much as the implementation. It’s all about the method of the input. Some of it is co-op driven, which I don’t want to give up at all; we all love it. But some of it is because it’s been easier to do it the traditional way.

Anyway, reading Ms. Mason’s original volumes, as available and recommended through Amblesideonline, is what has me refocusing. There’s good stuff in those books.

LIFE OF FRED

Life of Fred isn’t the miracle math curriculum that most people think it is. I think so many people say it’s fantastic and that it has solved their math problems–it sounds like a miracle. And when others hear these comments, they think it will solve their children’s math problems as well.

But Life of Fred is just like other math books, but it takes a different approach. It is, in my opinion, better than most math books, but it is not perfect. To be perfect, it would have to have legs and a mouth.

Life of Fred sets up excellent word problems that make children think. In fact, the whole book is one word problem. So if your child has used Horizons or some other math curriculum that has mediocre other math problems then following up with Life of Fred will be really helpful.

The couple of weaknesses we’ve seen,

Life of Fred flies by. Sometimes the number of problems is just right. But when a child misunderstands the foundational information in the lesson being taught, it will make the following problems, not only challenging, but downright, frustrating.

This happened to my daughter with percents. She got decimals. And she got fractions. But she missed something with percents. (I know what that something is by the way.) So she is spending a little just working problems from a Spectrum workbook, only the problems she needs to reinforce what she’s missing. These problems will come from Spectrum 6 and 7.

After the Spectrum book, we’ll be going back to Life of Fred. ALso, to make the work meaningful to her, I’m incorporating math talk about percents in our everyday lives. It takes a little focus for me to do that, but I think that will make more of a difference than the workbooks. I’m doing this right now with my 5 year old and multiplication. He doesn’t understand multiplication at all. But yesterday, I introduced it with chocolate chips. So when he’s setting the table for 6 people and he has to get 2 glasses of water at a time, we’ll focus on how many times he has to get the glasses–3 times. Therefore 2×3=6.

Math has to be meaningful and in context. That is why Life of Fred is so good. It makes math meaningful and puts the problems in context. Most math books do not do this in a consistent way. They take individual word problems that aren’t related and throw them at the children. The child has not been drawn into the why of the problem and there seems to be no reason to do it. I totally get how frustrating that is and would be.

Anyway, I totally recommend Life of Fred for anyone frustrated with traditional math texts, or if you just want a challenge for your student.

WRITING WITH EASE by SUSAN WISE BAUER

I love this textbook.  It is really great. Dr. Bauer has done a great job in developing a writing program for the younger group.  It clearly explains how to use copywork and dictation in order to teach grammar and writing to 1-4 graders.

And while it’s simple, I think some of the skills are pretty tough–like memorizing a paragraph after hearing it a few times during dictation and then writing it down from memory.  I am not quite sure how I would do on that test myself.

Edited:

On this original post last year, I mentioned that I had planned to use WWE with my children. This was before I modified my Classical Reading and Writing Copybooks into Write from History.

The Write from History books are more complete and thorough in teaching writing than my original copybooks.

I posted about this elsewhere, but I decided to adapt my own copybooks to follow the Charlotte Mason method. They were very similar to begin with, and only needed slight modifications.

The Charlotte Mason method of teaching writing includes the following:

Oral narrations (immediately from the first reading)

Written summations (Written summations are a precursor to full written narrations. Over time they will write their narrations.)

Copywork

Studied Dictation (Studied dictation is different in that students are taught and encouraged to study the words they will be writing. Students are not expected to reproduce what they have not yet covered. This also helps spelling.)

Grammar study using the copywork models

Btw, if you opt to use Writing with Ease, I think you’ll be very pleased with your end results.

FINALLY, I AM FINISHED, FOR NOW

I just completed the Year 4 Modern History copybooks in the various fonts to put up on LULU for sell.  However, I have to proofread the final copies before I can do that.  And that wont be for a few weeks.  I have to first upload them and then wait for LULU to send the info back to me.  It’ll be weeks because my books are so big and new to their system.  I’ve noticed that the first order is usually the longest.

Anyway, I feel sort of dazed and cross-eyed.  I am so glad that is done.

Btw, I also did the ancient history books too.  But I only did them in ZB print for the lower grammar and print and cursive for the upper grammar.  These are the ones my kids need for school for the upcoming year, so these are the ones I did first.

Still to be done, The Fun Spanish Level 2.  I’ve started formatting, but it might take a few weeks.  We need these for school too, so I’ve got to get moving on them.

But first, I have got to catch up on laundry and clean my house and feed the kids some veggies.  All of these things have been seriously neglected over the past month.  Bad Mama! Bad Mama!

WHERE HAVE I BEEN?

I have been on vacation for 2 weeks and then had my nephew here visiting with us for a week.  Around that I’ve been working on the copybooks for Ancient History.  I’m thrilled to be almost done.  Year 1 lower grammar is finished for ZB manuscript.  and Year 1 upper grammar for ZB cursive is almost done.

After I finish these two–sometime Monday, I plan to update the year 4 for modern history books and put them in the various fonts and then place them on LULU.  My kids have actually used the modern books over the last year and I am really pleased with how they’ve turned out.

Once these are done, end of next week, I have to start formatting The Fun Spanish Level 2.  The Level 2 material has been translated and only has to be cut and pasted (that doesn’t sound right, but I’m in a hurry) into the new books.  The covers for all of these are done and ready.

Also, when I have taken a break, I’ve purchased all of our supplies for next year.  I need to come up with a schedule still.

5th grader

CW Homer B and GWG 5 (I still have to purchase GWG)

TLP (co-op)

MFW Geography (Co-op)

TOG (yr 1 redesigned)

Analytical Grammar

(I know this is too much stuff.  But I wanted it all.  So here is my plan:  Do TLP, MFW with co-op and AG at home for 10 weeks.  When AG is over, do CW Homer B with GWG spliced in their rather than Harveys.  Our literature will all come from TOG.  We’ll do TOG lite.  We’ll do TOG rather than Bible study, so I think it will work.  But if necessary, I’ll drop stuff–probably CW Homer.  Actually, I think my dd10 can handle it because she has already read the first semesters books for TOG and the TLP books covered at co-op.  So she’s already ahead.  Basically, she reads a book or more a day–an oddity in our family.   MFW Geography seems really lite, especially since it will be at a co-op.)

Lof Fred Decimals followed by

Dolciani pre-algebra for the remainder of the year

Latin Prep with the workbooks

Fun Spanish Level 2 (once I finish it)

Apologia Zoology (coop)

Piano lessons weekly

Drama coop

Art lessons weekly

3rd grader

Same as his sisters, but replace CW Homer with WT 2.  If it’s too much I’ll drop it as well as TOG ancients.  I dont require as much from him.

Rather Latin Prep, he’ll be doing Lively Latin.

1st grader

Various Readers

Shiller Math

Copywork

Writing with Ease (When he is ready using our copybooks for models.)

Geography pop up book

Punctuation pup up book

3 yo (Various assortment of mess prone projects.  He loves messes.)

WELL, HERE’S THE PLAN FOR DD10 FOR NEXT YEAR.

I’m purchasing items right now while I have a window of opportunity. Then we start school again, vacations, VBS, and my mad scramble to get prepared for the fall.

Co-op classes

Total Language Plus (5th and 6th graders)

Apologia Zoology 1 Flying creatures of the 5th day. (They’re beefing this class up for older kids, how I don’t know? But we have a backyard full of birds and the kids and my dh will absolutely love this.)

The other 4 classes at co-op will be p.e., math games, drama, and probably art.

Home classes

TOG Ancients Redesigned dialectic books

Classical Writing Homer B ( WDe finished homer A and rather than take off a year, I’d like to keep going. So we’ll probably do 2-3 weeks per lesson so as not to overwhelm her with the writing that she’ll be doing in TLP. If it’s too much for her, I’ll drop CW in a heart beat.)

Math Life of Fred, pre-algebra over the summer. Do a Dolciani’s New Math pre-algebra text for the next school year (1 or 2 years depending on what she needs). Then Dolciani’s algebra supplemented with Life of Fred Algebra to understand application.

Latin will probably be Latin Prep. I’ll order it in July. I do not like TV lessons outside of Spanish.

Spanish will, of course, be Fun Spanish 2. My dfil is translating it into Spanish as I type. It’ll take me a month to finalize the layout and get us a print out for school.

Geography We were going to do MFW ECC at co-op, but as of last week, I changed my mind. There were too many readers that would pull us from TOG. And I am really excited about using TOG and don’t want to water it down more than what we have to for us. So we’re using The Child’s Geography–not the one by Hillyer, but the new one by the lady whose name I can’t remember. The books look gorgeous.

Grammar We always do Growing with Grammar with Classical Writing. And that is what we’re going to do this year as well. However, I have come to realize that my kids need the big picture and that Analytical Grammar will be a nice way to introduce that to them. So for the summer we’re doing Analytical Grammar. But rather than purchase their maintenance books, I’m staying with GWG and CW for Language Arts.

I AM SOOOO BUSY :(

I’m trying to write The Fun Spanish Level 2. My father-in-law will once again do all of the translations for me. It’s much easier with him, a native of Cuba, doing that for me than me trying to do it on my own. The hard part of writing level 2 is trying to keep the grammar tight while at the same time preparing kids for reading in Spanish.

Basically, I’m trying to cover the past tense of the most frequently used irregular verbs–those that don’t follow a pattern. I’m also trying to cover direct and indirect object pronouns because those are frequent in children’s books and in everyday life.

This book is going to be laid out a little different than The Fun Spanish level 1 because only three days will have sentences to copy and illustrate. But there will be longer and more complex sentences to copy. On day four and five there will be memory work and reviewing. It should go well.

I started writing The Fun Spanish when my dd expressed a desire to be able to read in Spanish. I purchased a bunch of curriculum, but while many of them were quite good, very few of them focused on reading and writing in Spanish. By this I mean, they didn’t cover the past tense.

Now I know the important thing to learning a foreign language is the ability to hear and understand the separate words. But if you can’t understand the verbs in the past tense then you can’t read most children’s books. And if you can’t read in the target language then it’s even harder to acquire new vocabulary in the target language.

So The Fun Spanish books give children a background in the high frequency words and try to equip them to read and write in Spanish leading to more independent learning.

Eventually, my dh who is also a native speaker will make audio CD’s to accompany the books. But this will probably be a long time coming. He is just too busy working now.

DS 5 IS READING ALL BY HIMSELF!

We’ve been going through Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  It’s taken us a year to complete 75 lessons.  Initially, we skipped several weeks at a time.  But when we did the lessons, we often did 2 or 3 at a time.  After Christmas, we became more consistent with the lessons.  And finally, just after he turned 5, he is on his own.

Now he’s not completely ready for chapter books, but he’s reading without the 100 Easy Lessons’ markings.  Another big milestone is that he finally knows that he can read now.  He’s not afraid anymore.  He’s reading the level A Rookie Readers, the b level Bob books, and some PreK-1st readers (with a little help).

Other books that have really helped are the Dick and Jane books.  I know someone referenced them as twaddle before on TWTM boards.  But twaddle or not, they really work well to help solidify sight words.   The pictures don’t help the student reading guess at what the sight word is from the context or from the pictures.  At least this has been my experience with the few readers I have.  They are really good for teaching numbers and colors and a few other words in  a really painless way.  I’ve found with my other kids that once they could read the harder Dick and Jane books we have, they were ready for Frog and Toad, Cam Jansen and then the Littles.

But this was mostly with my daughter.  Her reading jumped levels.  My ds8 did NOT have the same experience.  But ds5 seems to be in line with his older sister.  If that is the case, maybe I won’t have to mandate that he reads and he’ll just read and read and read and read and …