As we mentioned last week, Charlotte taught all the language arts skills in just a few power-packed subjects. One of Charlotte’s main strategies was to integrate language arts studies into other subjects, rather than pulling them out as separate skills. So as the students were doing History, for example, they were also practicing listening, reading, speaking, and writing, because Charlotte used the methods of Reading for Instruction and Narration for History.

Then Charlotte coupled that integrated approach with teaching some specific language arts lessons for a few particular subjects. Here’s the breakdown of her language arts program.

Integrated Methods

Good Literature
Vocabulary
Reading for Instruction
Narration
Composition
Reading Aloud

Specific Language Arts Lessons

Beginning Reading
Copywork and Transcription
Dictation
Poetry and Shakespeare
English Grammar

Each of those integrated methods and specific language arts lessons incorporated several language arts skills. So when CM moms feel like they’re not doing enough language arts, it is usually because they don’t realize how many of those skills are already integrated into Charlotte’s wonderful methods for all the subjects.

You don’t have to teach each language arts skill as a separate task. In fact, Charlotte’s approach of integrating those skills into several subjects reinforces them consistently, saves you time and money, and keeps your child’s interest level high. Plus, her commitment to good literature and living ideas infuses the specific language arts lessons with life.

Charlotte believed that children are much more capable of dealing with language than most adults give them credit for. And her methods communicated that idea to each child.

Next week we’ll start working through the practical how-to’s of these great methods.

Hearing and Reading, Telling and Writing

If you don’t want to wait for the upcoming posts, you can get all the details and more in our new book: Hearing and Reading, Telling and Writing: A Charlotte Mason Language Arts Handbook. The free sample contains the entire chapter on narration.