Name: Spreading the Feast Gathering
Start: 2025-07-11T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-07-12T23:59:59-05:00
Location: LaGrange, KY

Tagged: goals, goals for a 6 yr old

This topic has 16 replies, 14 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 8 months ago by Kristen.

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September 29, 2012 at 11:52 pm
mccormickmomma
Member
I was browsing Charlotte Mason info and on the Ambleside website I ran across this list. I am very new both to homeschooling and Charlotte Mason. My boys are 7 and 8 and since they just came out of school, obviously they can’t do all of these things. They can probably do half, maybe a few more. I am just curious how many people’s children can do these things at age 6 and when they start working towards these goals?

“A Formidable List of Attainments for a Child of Six”, a reprint of a curriculum outline from a CM school in the 1890’s.
1. To recite, beautifully, 6 easy poems and hymns
2. to recite, perfectly and beautifully, a parable and a psalm
3. to add and subtract numbers up to 10, with dominoes or counters
4. to read–what and how much, will depend on what we are told of the child
5. to copy in print-hand from a book
6. to know the points of the compass with relation to their own home, where the sun rises and sets, and the way the wind blows
7. to describe the boundaries of their own home
8. to describe any lake, river, pond, island etc. within easy reach
9. to tell quite accurately (however shortly) 3 stories from Bible history, 3 from early English, and 3 from early Roman history (my note here, we may want to substitute early American for early English!)
10. to be able to describe 3 walks and 3 views
11. to mount in a scrap book a dozen common wildflowers, with leaves (one every week); to name these, describe them in their own words, and say where they found them.
12. to do the same with leaves and flowers of 6 forest trees
13. to know 6 birds by song, colour and shape
14. to send in certain Kindergarten or other handiwork, as directed
15. to tell three stories about their own “pets”–rabbit, dog or cat.
16. to name 20 common objects in French, and say a dozen little sentences
17. to sing one hymn, one French song, and one English song
18. to keep a caterpillar and tell the life-story of a butterfly from his own observations.
September 30, 2012 at 1:18 am
LindseyD
Participant
My 7yo can do numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 15 and parts of numbers 2, 9, 13, and 17. She is newly 7, as of July. This gives me some ideas of some things we can work on though.
September 30, 2012 at 1:29 am
ServingwithJoy
Participant
Well, I would say the word ‘formidable’ in the title is accurate!
However, my six year old can read, sing several hymns, do adding and subtracting up to ten, do simple copywork, recite a couple of poems from memory, use some French phrases, and tell Bible stories.
I can see from this that we have a few areas that he could use work in – like History stories, further work in French vocabulary, and nature study. I found it interesting that she was concerned with what they could describe about the world around them…need to work on drawing that out of my kids. What a great starting point for narration that is!
I should point out that this particular 6 year old is a quick study. His older brother probably couldn’t do all of this until he was 8.
It is really interesting to reflect on what the ‘norm’ was for an educated child of Charlotte’s day! Thanks for sharing this list :).
September 30, 2012 at 1:48 am
Tristan
Participant
My 6 year old can do 15 of the 18, though her language things would be Spanish or American Sign Language, not French. Her older brother (7) can do the same, and the oldest (11) could have done all 18 at 6. (The stumbling block for the other two is the trees and flowers identification mostly).
My younger four kids are all under age 5 so not there yet, though my precocious 4 yo son can do 12 or 13 of them.
September 30, 2012 at 3:46 am
chocodog
Participant
I can honestly say my child can’t do these. She can do the counting. She knows all of her alphabet and the sounds. She is starting to read on her own, she could tell stories and sing and dictate back to me a history story but I am not sure if what is on this list she can do…
With that in hand I will now have to see if she can do it and I don’t know. LOL
I guess we have our work cut out for us this year.
maybe we should checkout what the 4th , 5th , and 6th graders need to know how to do…. UGH more work!!!
September 30, 2012 at 5:24 am
JSpring
Participant
McCormickmomma thank you for posting this. I can say I have a reference point and will work on these things with my dd who is 7. So eye opening to me…knowing theses things are truly important…of value…I have had such a difficult start to our year, not feeling like I am doing “enough,” so this will help;-))))
September 30, 2012 at 5:34 am
JSpring
Participant
Btw, my daughter can do about half of them…she can most of the academic things, however naming the birds, knowing objects in a foreign language, psalm and hymn songs…etc are all things we will be working on
September 30, 2012 at 3:10 pm
nash_mom
Participant
My understanding is that these are things that they should be working on as a 4 and 5 year old. We deffinatly need to pull this out and start being more intentional about some of them. Some of these things I can not even do!
September 30, 2012 at 6:28 pm
ruth
Participant
nash_mom, that was one of the things I was uncertain about when I first saw this list. Is this something they should be able to do when they turn 6 or by the end of thier first year of schooling at 6? Now I see it says kindergarten work, so I guess that answers that question. My 7 yr old ds can do 3,4,and 5. Looks like we have our work cut our for us working on these.
September 30, 2012 at 7:06 pm
Sara B.
Participant
I was under the impression that these are things that the child should be able to do before they set foot in a CM “classroom” at age 6. If I am correct, I think perhaps some of us are overthinking these (and I used to, too!). For example, #1 can be simply Mother Goose rhymes and something like “Jesus Loves Me.” My children learn to recite the following (don’t know who wrote it or where I learned it, but I love it, and so do they):
I see the moon,
And the moon sees me.
God made the moon,
And God made me.
Poem #1. Mary Had a Little Lamb, Hickory Dickory Dock, Jesus Loves Me, Pat-a-Cake, I Am Jesus’ Little Lamb, Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, Simple Simon… All of these are simple, quick, easy poems/hymns for a small child to learn. I don’t think of these as like Sara Teasdale/Walt Whitman short poems, or even Robert Louis Stevenson’s children’s poems (though they could be) or something like that. I think of these as specifically children’s poems. Am I wrong in assuming this?
For #2, I haven’t done this with my olders, but will be working on it with my 3yo for the next few years. But most parables are very short, just a few verses or so. If they are memorizing Scripture, they easily can memorize a short parable and psalm.
My 3yo is learning to add and subtract with his fingers. All we do is say, “Here are 3 M&Ms. Here are 2 more M&Ms. How many M&Ms do we have?” He says 5 and gives me 5 fingers. Same with subtracting. Now granted, 3 may be a little young for some kids. My 3yo seems to have a knack for that kind of thing. But I don’t think she means to be memorizing facts, I think just the concept of using objects to fiddle with groups of numbers, kwim?
For my 8yo, I substitute insects for flowers. She is a bug girl, and she can tell you tons about just about any bug you come across. My 9yo is great with the flowers. I don’t know if it’s so much the “what” as the “what can you tell me about God’s world,” if that makes any sense. To be paying attention to the world around you, as a beginning to narration.
For birds, around here it’s common to have crows, robins, and cardinals. Those are very, very easy to tell apart from other birds. So that’s 3 right there.
I hope this helps simplify this list for some of you! BTW, we are learning most of this on our own, just being out in nature, just doing what we do, not as part of “formal school,” if you will. Granted, I didn’t find CM until my oldest was nearing 2nd grade, but she still could do a good majority of this list even without that. And the others as they’ve followed have steadily increased the number they can do by the time they’re 6 or 7, depending on how much time they’ve had since I found the list. I have no doubt my 3yo will have this list down, perhaps even plus some, because he has 3 years to get it all down. We are already working on a few, and I had forgotten about this list! 🙂
September 30, 2012 at 7:21 pm
LDIMom
Participant
While I think the list and goals are great, I just don’t like saying that a child needs to do this or that by a certain age. I think this goes against what I’m trying to do with them. I may be in the minority, but not all 5-year-olds will be mature enough for this. I mean, some children do well with numbers at an early age and some don’t. I wouldn’t get caught up in this list by a certain age, but rather here is a good list to consider and use as a guide.
As someone said, their 3YO is able to do a lot of it, and that is great. Why hold a 3YO back who is ready? By the same token, why push a 5YO who is not yet ready? It could backfire and cause a child to not want to learn.
I have a 7YO DS and 6YO DD. They can do many things on here, but not near all of it. They were both born with cl/cp and have speech delays (one also has hearing loss in one ear) so I’m not worried. They follow their own curve so to speak, and this can be said of any child. I can see that our 2YO might be able to do all of this by 5. She loves to tag along with 7YO DS and 6YO DD, so she picks up a lot and she is also very verbal by nature.
If anyone reading has a child(ren) who can’t do all of this and they are past 5, I wouldn’t worry. As long as they are learning and growing, that is what is most important not marking checks on a list that someone said is what they should know. That is one reason we are NOT in public school now.
September 30, 2012 at 7:23 pm
LDIMom
Participant
I meant to add that I think it is worth noting that in the 1890s children with any type of learning difference or deafness or blindness or any cognitive differences wouldn’t have even been allowed an education. With that said, I take this with a huge grain of salt. But that is just me.
September 30, 2012 at 10:26 pm
sheraz
Participant
I am agreeing with LDIMom. While this list is interesting and a place to help me evaluate our goals, I want and need to keep in mind that I am teaching children – not a list – (that starts sounding very much like teaching to the test!)
For those who are just starting a homeschooling journey or whose children are not able to do all of this by 6 – it is okay. I am learning that as we set our goals, and my children progress towards them, then we are okay. With that knowledge these kind of lists become an interesting way of looking at where we are and how we are doing on our goals.
With that in mind, this list is kind of fun. It has taken me 18 months to get my now 5 year old to not stress and cry over leaving our yard for a nature walk! She can tell me where we go the leaf or something now and not cry the whole walk. See, we are progressing in our goals for her! LOL I think that we are able to do a few of them, and like Sara said, if we break it down in to “reality” parts, then she is almost there with a couple more. 😉
October 1, 2012 at 12:26 am
ibkim2
Participant
I was wondering about whether or not CM meant for these to be obtained when the child turned 6 or during the year after the 6th birthday (before the 7th birthday). I asked on an AO board last year, and was told it was for during the year after the child turned 6, although I’m sure the people who answered weren’t experts either.
But, from looking at the list, I would think Charlotte means after the child has their 6th birthday, because many of the things are (like reading, memorizing a parable, make a scrapbook, and such seem more like formal education. Again, I’m not saying that to say I think that is so, just that’s how I take it.
While our children may not do everything on this list, and it is a good guideline to follow I wanted to mention that there are things our children are doing that aren’t on the list that perhaps the children that Charlotte was teaching couldn’t do. Maybe things like follow a simple recipe, identify the 50 states on the map, plant a small flower or herb garden. So, if your child can’t do everything on the list don’t concentrate on what they can’t yet do as much as something they can do that would be equally challenging. With that said, I hope to follow many of the guidelines on CM’s 6 yo list, just not stress if I don’t teach everything, since I know my dc will know other things that are equally challenging.
October 1, 2012 at 1:21 pm
eawerner
Participant
I wonder if this list wasn’t meant as a guide to help parents who wanted their children to go to her schools. Perhaps she wanted to encourage them to integrate these things into their family lives because CM education isn’t just what happens during school hours.
I don’t know how many my dd6 can do. I suppose I could check but I don’t think there is much point to teaching to a list.