Add Variety with Four Interesting Subjects

If you look over Charlotte Mason’s lists of subjects and books, you will see a handful of subjects that might not have been included in your own school experience. Charlotte included a wide range of subjects because she believed that children should be introduced to a variety of ideas and encouraged to form relations with the ones that resonated with them as individuals.

You know that not all of your children have the same interests. Joey might be interested in all things mechanical, while Suzy is happiest outside in nature. They probably have some common interests, but they also have personal passions—things that just resonate with them as individuals. You can’t predict or dictate those personal connections, but one thing is certain: your child will never form a relation with something he has never heard or seen or experienced. For example, Shauntay will never discover a love of poetry if she has never heard or read a poem. 

Our job as educators is to introduce good and appropriate ideas to our children in as many areas of life as we can. That’s one reason a Charlotte Mason education includes listening to music and singing and looking at good art and all the other subjects we’ve talked about.

Today we want to take a look at a final handful of subjects. They may be new to you, but they heartily deserve to be introduced to your students.

Over the past few weeks we have been walking through how you can make a transition to the Charlotte Mason approach in your home school in stages, getting comfortable at each stage before you move on to the next one. If you haven’t read the posts for Stages 1–4, I encourage you to do that first. Today let’s talk about Stage 5.

This stage is all about four final subjects that you can add to your schedule. Doing so will add wonderful variety to your week and to your children’s education.

If you’ve worked through the first four stages and completed their assignments, you’re already doing a lot of Charlotte Mason in your home school. And your students will be getting a wonderful education with just those subjects done a Charlotte Mason way.

These final four subjects are like icing on the cake. They are subjects that Charlotte included in her curriculum, and they bring a lot of good ideas to the feast, so I encourage you to add them in as you are ready.

Shakespeare

The first subject you can add is Shakespeare. Some of you may start to hyperventilate at the very thought, but hang on. So much of our attitudes toward Shakespeare is based on our past experiences with him. I’m going to guess that the way you were taught Shakespeare is not the way Charlotte Mason approached it. The way that Charlotte Mason approached Shakespeare is very doable and very accessible.

You can teach Shakespeare in three steps: The first step is to read the story form of the play, so you get a feel for the plot and the characters and you know what’s happening. 

The second step is to read the script. Go through it in small portions; take no more than twenty minutes for each portion. Review what happened last time, set up what’s going to happen in the script this time, and then read that portion.

I would highly encourage you to use professional audio dramatizations. Those recordings help you hear the lines delivered correctly the first time. It was always hard when I was reading Shakespeare aloud with my children. I would assign them different parts to read, but we were never sure of the details: “Okay, is this person supposed to be shouting or whispering? And to whom are they speaking? Is it to everyone or to some particular character?” Such confusion would distract us from the lines themselves, because we were trying to figure out the delivery of them. So listening to the professional dramatizations can really help, and the students can just follow along in the script.

Step 3 is to watch the play. You can go see a live version, but be sure to do your homework first. Make sure that it is true to Shakespeare’s original script, and make sure that the director is not modernizing it in a way that would not be appropriate for your children. I recommend that you call the company first. Make sure the play is going to be a good experience for your kids. A great alternative is to watch a video version. But again, preview it to make sure that it’s going to be appropriate for your children.

We have a resource called Shakespeare in Three Steps that should be very helpful to you. It gives you the story version of the play, it breaks up the script into short portions, and it includes reviews of as many video versions as I could get my hands on.

Charlotte started Shakespeare with her students around fourth grade. I like to add in  one just play a year. It usually takes only about three months, doing just one little 20-minute lesson per week, to get through the whole play. So add in Shakespeare as you feel ready and as you feel comfortable. If you follow those three simple steps, you’re going to find it very easy to do.

Charlotte included Shakespeare because of his insight into people’s natures and characters. And she included another subject for that same reason. That subject is Plutarch. 

Plutarch

Plutarch was an ancient Greek man who wrote biographies of famous Greeks and Romans. His biographies are unique because they focus on the person’s character and decisions, not just his list of achievements. You can approach them in short segments, getting to know these people as fellow human beings, not just names in history, and from those readings you can have valuable discussions about character issues.

This is another once-a-week-for-20-minutes subject. In fact, I like to switch it in the same time slot as I did Shakespeare. So if you do a Shakespeare play, let’s say, on Thursday morning for one term, and then do your Plutarch biography in that same time slot for the other two terms during the year. 

The Conversations on Character series makes Plutarch very simple. Each one include the biography divided into short sections, along with discussion questions. But here’s the best part: a video comes with each and features a Plutarch expert who reads the biography aloud and leads you and your students through the discussion. It’s so easy to do and leads to such valuable conversations. 

Foreign Language

The third subject that you can add in, as you’re ready, is foreign language. The method that Charlotte used for foreign language is brilliant and, I think, very accessible. First, let’s talk for just a minute about why we add a foreign language.

Charlotte Mason firmly believed that people in each country—in her country of England and every other country—needed to be good citizens of the world. It befits us to learn the languages of our neighbors, so that we can communicate well with them, be a help to them, and understand them better. That’s why we do foreign language.

Now for how we do foreign language. Charlotte taught foreign language with something called a “series approach.” It was invented by a Frenchman, François Gouin, and I want to walk you through a lesson using this series approach.

A series approach is basically narrating an everyday activity. You’re going to learn this series in English first (or whatever your mother tongue is), then we’ll narrow it down and fill it out in the new language. We will do Spanish for the new language (because that’s the one I’ve practiced).

Grab a book. You’re going to need some kind of book for this series; it doesn’t matter which one. You need it to do the actions as we speak them.

Listen first to the series in English: “I take the book. I open the book. I close the book.”

Now join in and say the series with me, doing the actions along with it: “I take the book. I open the book. I close the book.” Good.

Next, we narrow it down to just the three key words, the verbs: “Take, open, close.”

Do that much with the actions, just those three key words. “Take, open, close.”

Now, we’re going to learn those words in Spanish: “Tomo.”

Say it with me as you take the book: “Tomo.” Yes.

“Abro.”

Say that word as you open the book: “Abro.”

Let’s say both of those with the actions: “Tomo, abro.” Good.

The last one is “Cierro.”

Say that word as you close the book: “Cierro.”

Now say all three with the actions: “Tomo, abro, cierro.”

Finally, all we need to learn is “the book” and we’ve got the whole series down: “El libro.”

Got it? Okay, let’s try the whole series with actions: “Tomo el libro. Abro el libro. Cierro el libro.”

Once we have learned the series, we can encourage our students to look around them as we ask, “What other kinds of things can we ‘abro’?”

One of the first things that comes to mind is “the door”: “La puerta.”

So practice that word with the actions of opening and closing a door: “Abro la puerta. Cierro la puerta.”

How about “la boca,” your mouth?

Try it with actions: “Abro la boca. Cierro la boca.”

And so your children start to think in the foreign language, and it becomes a part of their everyday conversations.

The curriculum that follows this “series approach” is from Cherrydale Press.

It’s good to do your foreign language lesson about twice a week. Plus, of course, you’re going to practice it and use the language throughout the week as much as you can.

That’s foreign language the Charlotte Mason way.

Handicrafts and Art

The final add-in subject is handicrafts, and I like to pair that with art instruction. This is another one that I alternate between, doing one or the other of them each term. So I might do handicrafts for the first twelve weeks, and then do art instruction during the second twelve-week term. In the third term I could do either another handicraft or instruction in another type of art media. That’s how I like to approach it. Do a handicrafts lesson or an art instruction lesson once a week.

It’s good for the children to have regular opportunities to work with their hands, using a variety of materials. In art, it’s important to give your children an opportunity to try out different media, not just drawing with a pencil. A child who isn’t very good at drawing might excel at watercolor or pastels or sculpture. As we talked about, introduce your students to a wide variety.

I am not an art person, myself, and so I needed to find a good resource. The one that I really like is Creating a Masterpiece. They have a video library that is full of different media to try and different levels of projects, from beginner all the way up through advanced. You can subscribe to that library and you will have access to all of their videos, which you can use for all of your children.

So your assignment for Stage 5, the last stage is to add in Shakespeare or Plutarch, foreign language, and handicrafts or art instruction as you’re ready for more.

You know, we’ve talked a lot in this series about making the transition with the methods—what you do during school time; but I think it would be good to also take a little time and discuss making the transition in your thinking. Most of us were not brought up with a Charlotte Mason education, so it might be helpful to take a look at some “mental transitions” that will keep you on track and headed in the right direction. We’ll talk about those next time.

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