Weekly School Subjects You’ll Love

One of the hallmarks of a Charlotte Mason education is the wide variety of subjects that are included. Your student will be studying about 19 or 20 different subjects. But that wide variety does not weigh down your day, because several of the subjects are done just once a week. They are a great way to include a little change of pace into your daily schedule and, at the same time, to expand your student’s horizons and help them form relations with good ideas that they might not normally seek out or even know about.

So today let’s explore those once-a-week subjects that will add a lot of variety and are simple to do.

We’ve been talking about how to make the transition to the Charlotte Mason method in five stages. Last time we talked about Stage 1: The Basics. Today we’re moving on to Stage 2: Once a Week. We’re going to walk through five subjects that are simple to do and you’ll do each one only one day a week. Since there are five, you can easily spread them out and pick one to do each day of the school week. However it works best for you. They take about five or ten minutes, so this stage shouldn’t be hard at all. In fact, I think you and your kids will enjoy it!

Picture STudy

The first of the Once-a-Week subjects is picture study. This is a great way to give your children art appreciation and to add variety to your week. Pick an artist, let’s say Vermeer, and show your children a picture by that artist. Have them look at the picture until they’ve got it in their minds’ eye. If they close their eyes, they can see all the details in their imaginations. When they’re ready, hide the picture and have them describe it to you. After they’ve described it, look at it together again to clarify or confirm what they told you. Then put the picture on display for the rest of the week.

Next week, pick a different picture, but stick with the same artist. You’re going to stay with Vermeer, or whatever artist you choose, for twelve weeks. So choose a different picture by the same artist and repeat the process: look at it, hide it and describe it, look again, and then put it on display for the rest of the week. After you’ve gone through about six or eight of that artist’s pictures, your children are going to have a really good feel for your selected artist’s style. Sometime during those twelve weeks you can read a living biography of that artist, as well, and have your students narrate it. (You already know about living books and narration; you’ve been doing that in Stage 1.) That’s picture study. It’s not hard to do; it takes about five minutes, maybe ten minutes, once a week.

Music Study

The second subject is pretty similar to picture study. It’s music study. Again, pick one composer and linger with that composer for twelve weeks. Play that composer’s music informally in the background throughout the week. Simply say the composer’s name—“Hey kids, let’s listen to Bach”—and then start playing Bach’s music. You can play the music during lunch or while the children are cleaning up or getting ready for bed. Then once a week, gather together and have a focused time of listening to that composer’s music. Choose one of his pieces and listen to it carefully. Give the children silk scarves and let them move the way the music makes them want to move, or let them draw what the music sounds like to them. If the music makes them want to create a story, they could do that. You can say, “Listen for the loud parts and the soft parts” or “Listen for one specific musical instrument.” Any of those ideas will help them do focused listening once a week. Then, just like picture study, sometime during those twelve weeks, read a living biography about the composer and have the students narrate it. Those are foundational methods that you will see over and over again, because they work!

Poetry

On another day of the week, do poetry. If you are not really comfortable with poetry, it might be because of the way you were taught poetry in school. If you were taught poetry like I was, it was dissected and pulled to bits. Any joy that you might have had in the words from the poet was sucked out of them by all of that analyzing. That’s not how Charlotte Mason taught poetry. She wanted us to enjoy the poet’s use of words. So pick one poet and linger with that poet for the whole year, if you want to. Once a week, simply read a poem by that poet and enjoy it with your children. If the poem lends itself well to illustrating, you could have the children illustrate it. Or you could have them act it out, if the poem lends itself to that approach. If you want to, you can assign some poetry for the children to memorize. (Schedule a second day of the week for them to work on memorizing and reciting their selected poems.) Mainly, all you need to do is read a poem once a week and enjoy it together.

Book of Centuries

Now, let me give you a tip: A Book of Centuries will help you to organize all of the poets, artists, and composers, plus the history and Bible that we talked about last time. A Book of Centuries is basically a timeline in a book. Every two-page spread covers a hundred years, a century. That’s why it’s called a Book of Centuries. Whenever you read about a certain event in history or a certain person, flip open to the century in which he lived and write his name in there. If you are studying a certain poet, flip open to the century in which he lived and enter his name. The same with your artists and your composers, your Bible events, and characters from the Bible—all of those should be entered in your Book of Centuries. As the students enter new people into that Book of Centuries, they are seeing all of the other entries that they’ve already made, and they start to form connections: “Oh, ____ lived at the same time as ____. I didn’t know that.” And when the student makes that connection for himself, that’s when it sticks.

You can download a free printable basic Book of Centuries template from our website that has the timeline across the top and blank pages. I recommend that you start with a family Book of Centuries, especially with younger students, so you can show them how it works. You can also get a more deluxe version in our bookstore that is designed for older students. Check the Description for links to both styles of a Book of Centuries and to resources for all of the subjects that we’re exploring today.

Here’s another tip: The first thing to do when you have your Book of Centuries is to put your child’s birthday in it. That entry will give him a reference point. You might also put in your birthday or Grandpa and Grandma’s birthdays. Then flip the pages to go back further and put in when Vermeer lived (or whoever you are studying).

Nature Study

Let’s talk about the fourth subject you will do once a week: nature study. Nature study is simply getting outdoors and recording what you observe about God’s creation around you. Take your children outside—go with them. Each of you should have a sketchbook or a blank journal. As you observe different things, write down those observations or draw pictures of them. Your nature notebook should be a reflection of your own personality; so don’t grade them. Don’t put pressure on the kids that their notebooks have to look a certain way. Just guide them in forming relations with nature outdoors. The nature notebook is simply a record of those observations.

You might want to get the children focused and give them some direction to begin with. Our book, Journaling a Year in Nature, gives you weekly ideas. You might go look at a tree and adopt that tree for the whole year: “This is our American Beech tree.” And every few weeks go visit that tree again and see what’s happening in its world during that day. Or you might say, “Let’s go look for birds today” or “Let’s go look for spiderwebs today.” Journaling a Year in Nature will give you those types of prompts and help you to know what kinds of things to look for during the different seasons of the year. But the main thing is to get outside once a week and let your children interact with nature up-close and personal, and then encourage them to record their observations in their nature notebooks.

Geography

The last subject to do just once a week is geography. In a Charlotte Mason approach, geography is explored through a combination of living books and map work.

A living geography book should help the student feel as if he is there in that region of the world using his senses, experiencing all that can be seen and heard and smelled and felt and tasted. It should give the student the feeling that he is meeting new neighbors on this earth, for geography is about people, not just about rainfall amounts and gross national products. Geography is much more than statistics, and living geography books convey that idea well.

Then you will want to combine the living books with map work: looking at maps and seeing how the countries around the world relate to each other, where they are in relation to the oceans, which ones are landlocked, which ones are in the northern hemisphere or the southern hemisphere. Map work is an important part of geography, but it must be combined with the living books to get the full impact.

So once a week, read and narrate from a living geography book and do a short map study. Then you can also tuck geography into your other once-a-week subjects very naturally. For example, as you read a living biography about your selected artist or composer or poet, watch for any mention of the places where they lived. Maybe your artist lived in France; then go find France on a globe or on a map. If you read that your poet lived in Illinois, go find Illinois on the map. Finding those locations as you read books together is another great way to make geography come alive to your children.

Variety All Week

So your assignment for Stage 2 is five subjects: picture study, music study, poetry, nature study, and geography. But you’re only doing one each day of the week, and it’s only going to take about five or ten minutes most days. Maybe you’ll do picture study every Monday. That’s great! And you’ll do the focused listening of music study on Tuesday (but you’ll play it during lunch on other days too). That’s fine! You could read your poem on Wednesday, and go outside for nature study on Thursday… You see how this works. Just assign one subject to each day of the week.

And if you want to, you can ease into this stage in smaller steps. Maybe you want to get only picture study up and running first. Then once that plate is spinning, add in music study. When you’re comfortable with those two, add in poetry; and so forth. You can take it as slowly as you need to in order to feel confident and comfortable with these parts of a Charlotte Mason education.

And remember, we have resources that make it simple for you to do each of these subjects.

Helpful Resources

• Subject by Subject the Charlotte Mason Way (free e-book)
• Picture Study Portfolios
• Music Study with the Masters
• Enjoy the Poems series
• Visits to… series
• Journaling a Year in Nature

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