Intro and a ton of questions….

Hi, Pam! Six boys, that is great! Twice as many as I have!

Let’s take a stab at those questions.

1. No, you are not crazy. You’ve already been successfully homeschooling all this time, and you already know about living books. You are just thinking of making some adjustments in approach. I have done both a classical approach and a CM one, and to me the CM one is more natural and actually EASIER to pull off, once you get in the swing of things. For starters, you will of course have your children doing different things for math and some language things, but you can combine a lot of things, such as history, nature reading, some science, and then make a few small adaptations for each child. What I usually do is pick a couple of things that I read aloud to everyone, and then the older children have a couple of things that they will read on their own and narrate to me. Perhaps if there is a “don’t miss” book for the younger children I’ll read a book to him, too, but these are usually small. That really helps make this much more do-able. Also, we do poetry, artist study and composer study all together as well. I think that CM as a method is much easier to adapt to a family-centered approach than many classical approaches.

2. Um, no. LOL Although I am careful and often at least thumb through a book if I am not familiar with the author. I read some things out loud to everyone, adn then read most things to my children who are too young to really read everything themselves, gradually increasing what they can read themselves until they are doing a good part of it, except of course our “family read-alouds”

3. However long it takes. LOL We have had books going we’ve been working on for two years. 🙂 The key thing to consider if you are using Charlotte’s methods is that you MUST keep the child’s attention. That will sometimes mean you read in some pretty short increments at first. 🙂 When I get that glazed look, the book goes up. Actually it’s best BEFORE you get the glazed look. If we have to take it out more frequently and only read five minutes, that’s what we do. But our basic goal is to spend about 15-20 minutes on a reading session for younger children; older children can do longer, about 30 to 40 minutes, as long as they are maintaining attention. It doesn’t matter to me as much what page we get to, as it does that the children paid attention and narrated well. We read about 15-20 minutes now, and then narration may take a few more on top of that once good narrating skills are established. We sometimes take turns, beginning with the youngest who narrates, then the next one adds, etc. Or sometimes I randomly call on a child. Sometimes my older ones write a narration and my youngest does it orally.

4. OK. “GAP” is a four-letter word. Figuratively speaking. 🙂 There has only ever been one man on earth who did not have gaps. We all have them. You’d be amazed at the “gaps” in the historical knowledge of the history professors at the local college. Really. Now, historical knowledge is good and to be sought for. But if your sons cannot list all the wives of Henry VIII, they’ll be OK. Really. I’m glad to see you reading some books on Charlotte Mason; I hope you’ll also consider reading some of her own writings. But what you will hear from Charlotte herself is that the point is not really for your children to “know” everything about history, but to make relationships, associations, connections, with as wide a variety of ideas as possible. Your children will be better served with having spent some time in a few historical periods, really soaking up the ideas and meeting the figures and imagining what it was like, than knowing a few surface facts about every half-century. That said, you want to offer as wide a variety of historical knowledge as possible given the time you have–some will “take” and some may not. I have read a lot of history books since I was a little girl, and I still have gaps. Lots of them. (I just read a book last summer about the Byzantine Empire and I was stunned at how very little I knew before I read the book! It was like a totally foreign planet to me–all I really knew was the Crusaders sacking Byzantium on the way to Acre . . .) But I also have formed many relationships with ideas and people in history, and these have enriched my life. If they learn only a few things a year, but those things are REAL–real ideas, real history, and they retain them and make them their own, you’ve accomplished much more than cramming facts on all of recorded history which are simply lost after the test.

You’ve found a good place to ask questions! I hope you hear from lots more people.

Hi again, Pam!

If you get to the “end” of your official, directed “school years” and are not “caught up” to the place in history you wanted to end–then you scout around and one of the things you send your son “off into the world/college/wherever” with is a nice box of good living books covering the middle of the 18th century till now! Plus a few good videos, some more book suggestions, etc. Don’t forget that just because your child graduates homeschool doesn’t mean his brain is forever fixed and he’ll never learn anything else. If that were the case I’d really be toast. 🙂 I’ve learned an awful lot of what I know since I was 18. Your son will be graduating with a sense of curiosity and connection to many things, and it will be a natural outgrowth to continue to learn. It’s OK! I am announcing that it is OFFICIALLY ALL RIGHT to “graduate” a child who has NOT cycled perfectly through history cycles, ending conveniently in the 21st century. If you are really worried, pick a simple book or two and let him breeze through it briefly, just so he is aware the Civil War occurred and knows who Napoleon is, and who won WWI. (He already knows that? Then don’t worry–he’s already ahead of about half the US population!)

“I am announcing that it is OFFICIALLY ALL RIGHT to “graduate” a child who has NOT cycled perfectly through history cycles, ending conveniently in the 21st century.”

Bookworm, thank you for writing this! I’ve really been wrestling with the whole history “thing”, trying to decide what I need to have my son do with the remainder of our homeschool time (only 3 years). We’ve actually done a lot of history already (used Oak Meadow for several years). And I do mean “we” as I’ve learned so much more history than I ever did in school. Goodness, my son is way ahead of me in that respect! I’ve been trying to decide if my son needs to go through it all again, or if we should focus in on a few time periods/people instead. You’ve helped settle that question in my mind…it’s time to FOCUS, lol!

Now if I can just figure out how much to do with science, considering I have a very non-sciency son, who wants to be an author!