Planning Our 2018-19 Charlotte Mason Year

We all love planning posts! They give us ideas and ideas give us a place to start. I've said it a million times, "Planning gives me purpose, and purpose gives me peace!"

In the 8 months since I last blogged we've finished Terms 2 and 3 of our 2017-18 school year, I completed a few of the CM Educator Courses offered by Charlotte Mason Soirée, have continued reading CM Volumes, even started reading a new CM book called "In Memoriam" and I started selling living books with my Mom in our FB group, "Media Moms Little Country Shop." Its been busy!

Well, now its time to start planning for 2018-19! It is our 4th year at home! My oldest moved up a form to Form III and my youngest moved up to Form IIb. Forms are groups that Miss Mason used to identify the ability (grade) of the student. The whole a/b thing used to confuse me until I realized b is for beginner and a is for advanced!

Pre-Planning Prep

My planning starts with review. A Delectable Education has created a handy tool that organizes all subjects for a particular Form into an outline. I added the particular episodes onto my printed copy and then check them off as I work my way through each subject, taking notes. I also reference the correlating chapters in Miss Mason's Volumes to ensure I'm getting my info "straight from the horse's mouth."

Last year I planned everything in accordance to my consult with A Delectable Education. My goal in learning to implement a Charlotte Mason education in our home is to be independent in doing so. Although, I did receive a consult this year, it was to mainly double check myself against what I had already planned. Moving up into new forms can present a challenge and I wanted reassurance before I just jumped in with both feet. Next year I hope to plan our entire year on my own, but we will see.

So, after I realized I was on the right track, I went ahead and filled in my Scope & Sequence outline with our plans. 

1. Scope & Sequence

I have found that having a S&S outline keeps me from forgetting subjects. I think it was last year or the year before that I completely left off history! I was only working with scheduling cards and I missed transferring history to our daily lesson plan. Thank goodness we were only 3 weeks in when I found my mistake. Plus, its just nice having an individual form for each child. It provides that "proof" you might need if a day ever comes when you're asked what you taught. 

Of course this form will vary with your own chosen subjects for your children but I will share what I'm doing this year. 

Bible

· Old Testament

· New Testament

History

· American

· spine

· biographies

· British

· spine

· biographies

· Ancient (only for my oldest)

· spine 

· biographies

· Book of Centuries

· Timeline

Geography

· Mid-West to Northwest USA

· reader

· map skills

· physical

Citizenship

· Plutarch's Lives 

· youngest is starting with Emily Beesly's

               Stories from the History of Rome  

Current Events

Literature

· Mythology

· Classics/Tales

· Poetry

· Shakespeare

Language Arts

· Copywork

· Narration

· Dictation

· Recitation

· Grammar

Foreign Language

Natural History/Sciences

· Nature Lore

· Science

· Nature Study

· Biographies

Maths

· Arithmetic

· Sloyd

· Geometry

· Pre-Algebra

Enrichment Studies

· Artist

· Composer

· Singing

· Drawing

· Handicrafts

· Instrument

Physical Education

Drill

2. Pulling Books

This step and the previous step work together. Who we cover in history in part depends on book availability. I have a general idea who and what we are covering and pencil that in first. I pull that from an old United States History text that provides a topical outline in the back. I will have to change that approach next year since it stops at 1900!

Then I start hunting books and if I can find a book I will permanently add it to our outline. I use a variety of resources to find books. I always pull from our own library first. This is why my history section is in chronological order, it makes it a lot easier to pull. Then I will check out online resources. 

A Few Book Finder Resources:

Ambleside Online 

SCM bookfinder app

Michelle Miller's TruthQuest books

Living Books Lady

Valerie's Living Library

3. Daily Schedule

Before I start work on our homeschool planner I hash out our daily schedule. I have found the easiest way to do this is with the scheduling cards from A Delectable Education. I print out the 2 different Forms on 2 separate colors. When the students share a subject I print that in white. 

I just work my way through the days of the week. It reminds me a lot of the game of Tetris. Each card is marked so you know how to alternate the subjects and to let you know how much teacher involvement is required. That's helpful when you're having to play round robin between multiple students. You really just have to move things around until you find what works for your family. Well worth the price!! Once I have them all laid out I snap a pic so they don't get blown away by someone opening the door, or stomped on by a playful dog! 

4. Planners

Now that the daily schedule is laid out, I use those pics to assemble my planner pages. I like to have a "weekly dashboard" in my planner so I can see what needs to be done for the week. 

Each week starts with an overview. Since our books change constantly I wanted a place to keep up with those. I also needed a spot to add in what to cover during the week's geography walk, a place for our nature study object lesson and our handicrafts for the week. This is just another accountability factor for me. These are the things I skipped most often because I hadn't prepared. Now, at the beginning of the week I fill this in and in doing so plan and prepare for what needs to be done.  

Each day is organized exactly like my scheduling cards. White sections are family subjects, darker shaded area is my Form 2 and lighter shaded area is my Form 3.  I add the length of time the subject requires, a bubble for checking off (which always makes my heart happy), and the afternoon occupations that need to be accomplished. I want them reading in the afternoon so I designate "subjects" for them. These are "free" reads so who/what they pick is entirely up to them but it has to be within that subject. I will write in what we actually read/completed on the lines below. This way I can keep up with page counts from week to week. Especially helpful for bookmarks that lose their spot! 

I tried adding anything that I tended to skip most. At the end of the week you will find spots for making sure we complete the timeline, book of centuries and calendar of firsts. There's plenty of space to add notes as we move through the week for supplies we might need next week or areas I need to focus on a little longer. 

I use Publisher and convert it all into a pdf that I will send off for printing and binding. But planner planning is enough for its own blog post. 

Charlotte Mason Grammar & Composition

Most times, when something isn't working in our home its because the directions weren't followed. The same holds true for following Charlotte Mason. I'm constantly fighting my tendencies to return to and follow a system. Most recently I caught myself panicking about my daughters lack of composition skills. Her lack wasn't because of Charlotte's method though! It was my misunderstanding, my lack of knowledge, in how to implement language arts according to her method.

After digging in I've realized not only have I not been consistent in some important areas, I've also not been doing them correctly!! Here's my plan to correctly implement Miss Mason's method.  

As my daughter is in Form II, we will continue with her copywork, oral narrations after every reading, short grammar lessons, and more frequent written narrations. 

Oral narration teaches her to order her thoughts. It's basically a retelling of what she has read. She does this after all her readings. 

Copywork and dictation teaches spelling in context and sentence structure. We haven't done well in either of these areas. For copywork, I've always handed her the book and told her to copy a particular passage. She would look back and forth copying the passage down. That is not Charlotte Mason's idea of copywork! 

We are to train our children to look at the whole word or passage (depending on age and skill) and then practice viewing it with the minds eye (eyes shut). Once the child can visualize the word or passage, they write it in their copywork notebook from memory. This takes practice and should progress slowly beginning with words and building up to phrases. 

Dictation is the next step and usually started in Form II. I usually let my daughter pick the passage from one of her current lesson books, study it for punctuation and words she might misspell. When she felt ready I would select a sentence from the passage and dictate it. Again, not exactly what Charlotte had in mind. 

Liz, in the ADE podcast, suggested choosing a book that is below the child's ability to read for dictation. We will choose one that she is familiar with from a previous year. We will start over and begin with sentences, moving on to small paragraphs. Then multiple paragraphs and eventually selecting pages for dictation will happen in later years. 

We haven't been practicing visualization so we will start that training and I will have my daughter study the passage for punctuation and spelling issues. When she is ready, all study helps are put away and I will dictate the selection phrase by phrase, a few words at a time. We mustn't repeat and if there are three errors we will stop the dictation. Charlotte tells us not to allow the child to see the misspelled words. So I will turn the paper over and provide the correct spellings. Most importantly, I will let her know that dictation is not a test. 

Written narration is supposed to start around the same time as dictation. I recently found out that its in written narration she finds her own voice and learns the mechanics of composition. More on written narration in an upcoming post!

This entire process is a relaxed and natural progression. It has an end in sight. This is a part of Charlotte Mason's method of education.

Here, is a great visual video chart from Sonya Schafer that sums up and walks you through the way Charlotte Mason taught language arts as a natural progression.

I have found A Delectable Education's advice to be very true to Charlotte Mason's writings. They have a few podcasts that address Language Arts and I've found this one most helpful  Episode 48, "Writing: Copywork, Dictation & Written Narration". 

Charlotte Mason Planner

After my consult with A Delectable Education I started working on a new planner for our homeschool. I enjoyed the convenience of my BUJO, but there just wasn't enough space to record what we needed. I decided to make a spiral bound planner that I could just store at the end of the year. My youngest is in 3rd grade, so I will have 9 planners to store. Not a big loss of space and everything will be right at my fingerstips if I ever need it. 

I used a variety of resources in creating our school planner. Emily's printables at Tablelife Blog, free and paid for planner pages from Diana at My Humble Kitchen,  a few freebies scattered around the net, and a few I created.

I edited the cover to include our school name and Emily's free printable from TLB. Using cardstock to stiffen the front and back covers, I laminated them in 5 mil pouches.  

I trimmed the front and back cover's binding side, the top and bottom close to the cardstock without breaking the laminating seal. I left the other side as it was because it provides extra coverage over my tabs. 


The first section includes our personal schedule of our terms, academic calendar, attendance records, field trip log for the year, and monthly calendars. In between the sections I added a piece of cardstock and later added tab dividers to make it easier to locate our terms. 

Each term is laid out the same. They start with the Term Sheets and Book List pages (for each child) from My Humble Kitchen. 

Following are 11 copies of the weekly lesson plan I created. We work on 12 week terms but our 12th week is for exams. 

Each weekly plan includes a cover sheet. This is a place where I can record what we need for the week and what we are working on. 

I wanted to print these in color but 33 copies printed at Staples was crazy expensive, so I just went with black and white. I like color so I will add color through highlighters and colored ink. 

We use A Delectable Education scheduling cards and I added the minutes to my planner to keep up with time. Those minutes are what you see all scratched out. I highly recommend their cards for laying out your schedule. It makes planning so much easier, especially, when you're planning for more than one child. 

The main thing about ADE is that they plan according to time vs. page counts. When you review Charlotte Mason's PNEU schedules you will see her lessons are short and the times for each grade/subject are pretty consistent. When I followed a page count type schedule I found myself "pushing" the children to get their readings in. Which pretty much sucks the joy out of lessons. This works much better for us. I can write down notes for needed changes, and still keep track of what we've completed. Closing out each term is a page for exam questions for each child.

In the back of the planner is a section for each child's scope and sequence. I basically used my consult from ADE as an outline. Then behind those is my actual consult, it includes our suggested book lists.  

Well, that's it in a nutshell! We are 3 weeks into our first term and right now the planner is perfect for our homeschool. Hope you find what works for you! Happy planning!

A Delectable Education Consult!

I had my consult yesterday evening! A Delectable Education offers consulting services to help families with their Charlotte Mason Education. I so enjoyed talking with Liz. She has 32 years of homeschool experience under her belt and has a good feel for what moms are going through.

I had my list of questions ready to go, I was so worried I would forget to ask something vital. Liz had it covered though. We opened with general conversation and her asking questions about the kids and where we were at in our journey. Then she got right into the nuts and bolts of things. She apparently had an outline to follow and we discussed all things Charlotte Mason.

I learned a lot in that hour and a half. I realized I make things harder than they need be, that I'm not alone in my journey, and that I need to really work on my own habits!

Liz then passes her notes on to Emily. Emily pulls books and brings all suggestions together into a document, which in turn, is emailed to me. I am so excited! I have no idea how long it will take to get that email, maybe a couple of weeks.

Oh, and another suggestion came in way of scheduling. Liz suggested that we don't school year round. Even Charlotte Mason took breaks. She suggested we school in three 12 week terms and take 4 weeks off between each term! It seems like alot, but it really works out well if you think about it. 36 weeks of school, 12 weeks of breaks and an extra 4 weeks to use during holidays. Brilliant!

www.adelectableeducation.com/consulting/

Whole Hog!

Here we are! Our third year of home educating the children! We almost didn't make it. I'm so thankful to our merciful Lord who graciously kept us with in His will for our family.

After much prayer we decided to make some changes this year. Until now, we've only felt a need to  incorporate bits and pieces of Charlotte Mason's ideas into our home education program. Her ideas about living books, nature study and narrations were a good fit. But as I've started reading more of Miss Mason's words for myself I've come to realize there's no room, or time, for just sticking my toe in the water. We are going whole hog!

Whole hog is more a mind set or a journey than a destination. As I continue to learn the why, we are also working at implementing the how, in all subjects. It takes time, the learning curve is steep, but with God all things are possible.

Resources

Websites
Charlotte Mason Soiree
A Delectable Education

Facebook
Charlotte Mason Soiree
Charlotte Mason Math Together

BUJO with Charlotte Mason

We are moving into our second term of our second year with Ambleside Online. We are so blessed to have such an amazing curriculum provided for free! Thank you, Ambleside Advisory!!

In this short time, I have tweaked the schedules so many different ways to suit our family. All of which were completely unnecessary. Over time, I've made scheduling sheets for each child, I've added readers, science curriculum, geography books, a Bible curriculum, and who knows what else, making it so much harder than it really needs to be.

I have prayed and prayed that the Good Lord would cover our homeschool journey and fill in the gaps that I couldn't see. I have a terrible time seeing the big picture of things. I am so focused on the now that the end result tends to escape me. I know it's there, I have an idea of what I want but I fail in seeing how it's accomplished.

That is until I started working on my "Birds Eye View" chart. I created a matrix of AO years 1-12 using excel. I've only completed years 1-4 so far and I'm already discovering how the Advisory has intricately woven this curriculum together. I will trust that AO is enough. As a result of this leap of faith, our days have grown simpler.

In the spirit of simplicity, I've done away with the long detailed sheets, the check boxes, the extra readers, and the external curriculum supplements. I now have one page in my BUJO dedicated to the weekly overview of what needs to be accomplished!

Buying the heavy-weight paper required for my disc planner is more expensive than washi tape, so I just print on regular paper and then tape it in place.

I love this format, for my weekly dashboard. I can see at a glance what needs to be accomplished. If I miss something it's easily traveled to the next day. This works for me. In between each week (the back side of these pages) are my bullet lists for the day. I had a downloaded and shrunk version of the 36-week schedule in the back of my journal but I now work directly from the AO site. I've found I had been missing some great tidbits and helps in the weekly lists making things unnecessarily harder.

Next will be a simple list for the kids to work through. My youngest is reading now, which makes it easier. This will also point them in the direction of being independent learners and self-starters, I hope!

Stretching

In an effort to dig deeper I joined a study of CM's Principles in the Ambleside Online forums. As life would have it, things kept creeping in that prevented me from staying caught up. This was so frustrating. I decided to set it aside for awhile and take a different approach.

I started reading Sarah Mackenzie's book, Teaching From Rest. I also had her companion guide which was just as thought provoking. Her gentle words are a comforting reminder to this homeschooling mama that the "burden" isn't mine to bear alone. This will definitely be an annual read for me.

Immediately after Sarah's book, I started Cindy Rollin's, Mere Motherhood. I truly enjoyed her memoirs. Toward the end of her book, she included some real gems that I want to fold into our home life. Again she reminded me that it is grace that covers my children during these years of enlightenment. This, too, is one of those books that I will frequent over the years.

"We are not those who shrink back at long odds. We are those who press towards the mark, knowing that while our own efforts could never 'save' our children, our faithfulness is a means of grace."

-Mere Motherhood, Cindy Rollins

My soul refreshed I felt better able to tackle the deeper studies of Charlotte Mason once more. I pulled out my copy of Brandy Vencel's Start Right Here ebook and started gathering my resources. Her ebook is a study guide which uses Susan Schaeffer Macauley's For The Children's Sake as a spine.  Brandy guides us through the text and adds hyperlinks to optional readings such as blog posts and articles to further clarify our understanding. She also poses questions for us to mull over at the end of each principle covered.

In the guide, originally meant for group study, Brandy gives suggestions on starting a CM Study Group. I had the tiniest twinkling of a thought that I might want to start a group and it continued to grow. Wouldn't it be so much better to have like-minded friends with which to study these deep thoughts?

As homeschooling mothers, as badly as we might want to or even need to, it's hard to find time to pursue interests. There are seasons of a mother's life that limits what we can do. To lessen the strain a few friends of mine have decided to journey together online. We are a small facebook community and beginning our first book study together on January 30.

Endeavoring Together.

Helen Allingham, 1903

"Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying or meditating or endeavoring something for the public good."

- Thomas a Kempis

Digging Deeper

We love Ambleside Online. The curriculum itself is amazing. AO offers a well-rounded education with beautiful book lists. Their website is amazing, the forums offer great support, and it's all free! But they will be the first to tell you, all of that does not a Charlotte Mason education make.

I've read a few books here and there concerning Miss Mason's philosophies but I haven't really studied them. So now that I'm pretty comfortable with the scheduling aspect of Ambleside I'm going to dig a little deeper.

In the Ambleside Online forums, there is an ongoing study of Charlotte Mason's principles. I started the study but as life would have it, I have gotten behind. The way the study is set up you can start at any time, so I'm going to restart that one.

I've also discovered podcasts! These are so easy to listen to while completing chores. They definitely make folding laundry more bearable! Here's a few I've listened to as of late!

Cindy Rollins blogs at the Circe Institute and has a series of podcasts called The Mason Jar. As she states on her blog, "All Charlotte Mason, all the time." Thirty years and nine children make her an excellent mentor.



"A Delectable Education" is managed by Emily Kiser, Liz Cottrill, and Nicole Williams. They have a great ongoing series of podcasts but I'm particularly partial to their "Charlotte Mason 101" series.

The (Skoh-lay) Sisters include Pam Barnhill, Brandy Vencel, and Mystie Winkler. These ladies are seasoned homeschoolers, however, they tend to center their home education on a blend between CM and classical approach to education. Wondering the difference? Simply put, a classical education focuses more on presenting and memorizing facts whereas, CM focuses more on presenting the ideas. Still, there's lots of interesting stuff at Schole Sisters.

Pam Barnhill also has a blog with a few different podcasts. One of them being Your Morning Basket. I love these! As I'm trying to incorporate a morning time this next term, these podcasts really speak to me. Different topics are covered through interviews with some amazing people!

Pam's next set of podcasts at The Homeschool Snapshots Podcast offer a glimpse into other homeschooler's lives. It covers things we all worry about, and the things they are doing in their homes.




So those are the podcasts I've been frequenting as of late. As I find more I will add them! Happy listening!