Morning Walk

It didn't begin as a new habit, really. Instead, it was a bit of serendipity. A wave of hot, sticky days--too hot and sticky to play out of doors. A mother who was ready to add more exercise to her day and was eager, too, to be outside, instead of only pedaling away on a bike that goes nowhere. I needed to bike alone, but I needed, also, to breathe in fresh air and laughter of children. And, so, early one morning, while looking at the forecast, I made a decision: if the temperature was going to soar into the 90s and above for ten days (and beyond?), we'd have to get out early or none of us would ever get out at all.

Right after breakfast, I made the announcement. Everyone was to get walking shoes; everyone was required to come along; everyone was to be cheerful. Karoline and Sarah Annie each had a stroller. Off we went!

We traveled a neighborhood trail, roughly two miles along wooded areas, grassy areas and a lake. We talked the whole way and watched for wildlife.  When we returned home, we settled into the living room, lit a candle and had some morning prayer time. The day was off to a great beginning. The time? 9:00.

It occurred to me, after the third day of this "routine," that I rather liked beginning the day with my children this way. I'm three months into my personal morning habits. The rhythm is well-established: exercise, prayer, shower, dress, tea, Bible. All before 7:30. Even if the day unravels from there, I can still take comfort in the fact that I got to those things. When I considered my personal routine in light of the new habit that was unfolding, it dawned on me that the acquisition of habits could be a layering. Habit upon habit, I could build into each segment of the day the rhythm I desired. This morning walk was the next layer.

The walk suited all of us.

I loved that we were all together. it was just the right amount of physical exertion to wake us, help us focus, and energize the day. The out-of-doors time gave birth to all sorts of conversations and observations. Nature study happened, well, naturally:-). There were questions to ask and answer. There were rocks to throw, flowers to sniff, and ducks who begged us to quack back--all in our own backyard. This was the world waiting to be explored. These were the plants and animals my children should be able to name.

This habit found us and we are eager to embrace it. Our nature study time is set now. A walk to get things started, home for Morning Prayer, and then nature notebooks to record what we saw along the way (cameras tend to come with us on walks:-). This will be the way we begin our days--from now on, well into the school year, and until it's absolutely too cold to venture forth even if bundled. And why not?

Our first thought with regard to Nature-knowledge is that the child should have a living acquaintance with the things he sees.

Let them once get touch with Nature, and a habit is formed which will be a source of delight through life.

She will point to some lovely flower or gracious tree, not only as a beautiful work, but a beautiful thought of God, in which we may believe He finds continual pleasure, and which He is pleased to see his human children rejoice in.

Let us, before all things, be Nature-lovers; intimate acquaintance with every natural object within his reach is the first, and, possibly, the best, part of a child's education.

Beauty is everywhere--in white clouds against the blue, in the gray bole of the beech, the play of a kitten, the lovely flight and beautiful colouring of birds, in the hills and the valleys and the streams, in the wind-flower and the blossom of the broom.

What circumstances strike you in a walk in summer?

By-and-by he passes from acquaintance, the pleasant recognition of friendly faces, to knowledge, the sort of knowledge we call science.

 He begins to notice that there are resemblances between wild-rose and apple blossom, between buttercup and wood-anemone, between the large rhododendron blossom and the tiny heath floret.

He must be accustomed to ask "why?"--Why does the wind blow? Why does the river flow? Why is the leaf bud sticky?

Every child has a natural interest in the living things about him which it is the business of his parents to encourage.

It is infinitely well worth the mother's while to take some pains every day to secure, in the first place, that her children spend hours daily amongst the rural and natural objects; and, in the second place, to infuse them, or rather to cherish in them, the love of investigation.

The boy who is in the habit of doing sensory daily gymnastics will learn a great deal more about the beetle than he who is not so trained.

We are awaking to the use of nature-knowledge, but how we spoil things by teaching them!

The child who learns his science from a text-book, though he go to Nature for illustrations, and he who gets his information from object lessons, has no chance of forming relations with things as they are, because his kindly obtrusive teacher makes him believe that to know about things is the same as knowing them personally.

All quotes are Charlotte Mason, taken from the excellent book Hours in the Out-of-Doors: A Charlotte Mason Nature Study Handbook, available at Simply Charlotte Mason.

In Real Life...

We rarely follow the plans as written. In real life, my days look nothing like my iCal pages. Oh, I love the plans. They are like good recipes. I gather the ingredients, tinkering a bit to take advantage of what looks freshest and best at the grocery store. I glance through the directions and do what seems best at the time. And usually, whatever we're cooking comes out well. Cooking is an art, you know, with a little science sprinkled in with love. So, too, raising and educating children is an art. When it comes to our homeschooling days, I write the plans, but I don't become attached to them.

Because I do become attached to the children.

On Monday, iCal called for Outdoor Hour. Have you tried these? What absolutely wonderful gifts they are! We're on a roll with them this fall. Barb makes the Handbook of Nature Study come alive for us and graciously offers free guidance that is priceless. Everyone is enthusiastic.

We headed out to our new favorite, very local spot (we walked) and spent a pleasant time drawing. I had to drag the boys away because of an urgent girl potty issue. On  the walk home, the littlest girls each fell asleep in a stroller. We wheeled both strollers into the house and let them snooze. I seized the quiet opportunity to read William Shakespeare and the Globe to all children still awake. [Note to those who have followed my iCal plans previously: "School" didn't happen in any meaningful way on Friday of Birthday Week and I slid last Friday's plans to Monday. ]

My plans called for children to create a diorama of the Globe Theatre. Somehow, in my keeping room, those plans morphed. Big boys became team captains; teams were picked; cardboard, duct tape,  craft paint and glue guns were sequestered to opposite corners of the house. Daddy was named Judge. A deadline of three weeks hence was set. One child was frantically researching on his iPod Touch. Another was printing madly from the computer upstairs. A hush fell. And then the man arrived to deliver the dishwasher.

The man barely stepped from his truck before competing teams of children were begging for appliance boxes. Wise man, he gave them the box from our dishwasher and then stripped the box from another. More quiet.

Big boys left for soccer. I slipped out with a lone ballerina. I left her at dance and spent 33 minutes alone, in the quiet, at Adoration. Not that I was counting minutes or anything. What a beautiful gift quiet with Jesus is!

After I gathered my dancer and a week's worth of groceries for a family of eleven, I returned home. Globe Theatre construction resumed after dinner and continued well into the night. I went to sleep thinking what a perfect day it was: nature, Shakespeare, Adoration, soccer and dance. A good meal. A quiet night. What more could I have wanted?

Don't answer that. I know there was no math, no Latin, no grammar, no time whatsoever at a desk. But really, truly, it was perfect in my book. A day when seven children from 3-17 are meaningfully engaged and working together all day long? How often does that happen?

The next day, while I hustled three sick children to the doctor, the children at home ignored my plans and kept right on working on those Theatre dioramas. There was a brief skirmish over toothpicks that resulted in my emergency trip to the grocery store, but mostly, work was steady. I thought about the iCal plans. Tuesday is our heavy geography block day.  This Tuesday was about scale drawings, popsicle stick construction standards, and wee felt actors.

Truth is, my days rarely look like the pages of Serendipity. They are not that neat. They are not that beautiful. They are not that full. Well, maybe they are that full but not in the way they look there. We pick and choose from the plans and the books. I hope you do, too, as I think it would be near impossible to do them as written. We change things out and abandon things that don't work and add things that work better. We abandon the plans altogether to binge on a great project.

"Simplicity" seems to be a goaland a virtue in pockets of  the blogosphere. For some people, simplicity is next to godliness from what I can tell. Things aren't simple here. At least, when I put my head on the pillow at night, in the three seconds before I fall asleep, they don't seem simple. There's is a lot going on.

A few weeks ago I read an authoritative email that declared that the secret to homeschooling success was to never, ever deviate from the curriculum as written. This seems foolish advice to me. If you are using my curriculum, please, please consider it in light of your children and your home and your energy level. Please use your common sense and your mama-wisdom. Please don't attempt to do it all. And please, if you find a better way to do it, write and let me know. I might just do it that way, too. 

Along those lines, here are some tweaks I've not yet had time to tell you about:

• Mary Beth abandoned Botany in a Day for Apologia Botany. The new notebooks offered by Apologia are just amazing! She is creating a beautiful notebook and doing all the activities and experiments and thoroughly enjoying Jeannie Fulbright's style. With the addition of the other living books in the Young Ladies' Curriculum and nature study, this is a very full botany course. And yes, Jen has the Ivy Basket all written and ready for you. She's waiting on me to finish my pages before we  post. I'm getting to it, I promise. Pray I get the gift of writing time with Mary Beth.
• Patrick, Stephen, and Nicholas are using Apologia Astronomy. Patrick is reading from MacBeth's astronomy suggestions. And we will also add this very full Teaching Company course to the study. I hadn't planned on Astronomy at all. The boys asked for it when they were unable to answer a trivia question Mike posed at the dinner table just after the school year began.  
• We haven't forgotten about the Writer's Workshop. Esther Hershenhorn, the author of S is for Story, contacted me when she learned of our plans to use her book. She was very interested in our ideas to create workshops using S is for Story. The book arrived just a couple of days after Bryce died. The author, who is just lovely, suggested that I might find these mini-workshops (click on Young Writer Extras) helpful while I wait for Colleen to join me again in writing on Serendipity. I do! Maybe you will like them, too? It's really nice when people who believe in sharing the joy of teaching reach out to each other and help in a time of need. Colleen was touched by the kindness of this stranger and so was I.
• Our Alphabet Path travels this year are mainly focused upon the Author Studies and the Science Trails, since Katie has already traveled the Path twice. However, we are truly enjoying the inspiration of gifted teachers like Jessica and Blair this time around. It's fun to see how beautifully the plans come to life in the talented hands of those ladies. I find myself having to refrain from wanting to do it all;-).
• Speaking of Jessica, we're loving the Little Flowers notebook pages! We use Little Flowers here at home and these pages are just wonderful. We aren't such good Little Flowers crafters and I don't always get to the edible goodies, but I'm sure glad to have Jessica's ideas to add to our days.
• The big boys are doing our geography studies along with us. I can't handle three different high school programs to supervise. I need to keep my boys close. Works better that way. I'm way out of writing time now. Maybe another day, I'll share how it all looks. Basically, we're taking books from the Sonlight high school lists and matching them with the geographical regions we're studying. All the plans are there; it's a pretty simple thing to pull what works for each kid.

And now, I truly must go. Gosh, it was nice to blog again. I had no intention of writing so long this morning. God's good; it's happy to be here.  Thanks for listening.

Blessings on your day!

Charlotte Mason Summer Book Study: About Habits

With this installment, we begin to ponder Laying Down the Rails. This book is so well named. As I reflect on the past year and look ahead to the next, it is so easy to fall into the lingo of the railroad.

"Ah, that's where we got off track."
"See, we were really chugging along in that term!
"Thankfully, we can begin again when we get derailed."

This particular  book resonates with me. I see where habits have stood us in good stead over time. In particular, our bedtime habits have ensured that I know that all of my children got significant amounts of focused attention from me every day. Bedtime was (and is) assuredly a time of quality literature, of prayer, and of confidences shared as we snuggle in the still and the dark. I remember how hard this habit was to cultivate when my older boys were little. After a warm bath and books, I'd lie with them in the dark and one of two things would happen: (1) I'd internally squirm and fidget, thinking of the things I'd still to do: dishes, laundry, projects or (2) I'd fall asleep, thereby neglecting and annoying my husband.

Oh, it'd be so much easier to do this another way!But I was committed to an intentional habit, one that I knew would be beneficial over the long haul. I had no way of knowing just how beneficial. And I don't regret a single squirmy, sleepy moment.  And somehow, over time, I've overcome both the squirminess and the sleepiness. I guess a "habit is ten natures:-)"

We read that habits produce character.That makes sense, doesn't it? A child's character is the sum of his habits to some degree.

The habits of the child produce the character of the man, because certain mental habitudes once set up, their nature is to go on forever unless they should be displaced by other habis. Here is an end to the easy philosophy of, 'It doesn't matter,' 'Oh, he'll grow out of it,' "He'll know better by and by,' 'He's so young, what can we expect?' and so on. Every day, every hour, the parents are either passively or actively forming those habits in their children upon which, more than upon anything else, future character and conduct depend (Vol.I, p.118).

They won't outgrow it. When my husband and I watch our toddler doing something a bit naughty but awfully cute in someone so young, we have to remind ourselves that it won't be so cute when she is five. if we don't want her to behave a certain way when she's no longer a cherubic tot in diapers, the time to stop the behavior is now, before it is a habit.

Educate the child in right habits and the man's life will run in them, without the constant wear and tear of the moral effort of decision. once, twice, three times in a day, he will still, no doubt, have to choose between the highest and the less high, the best and the less good course. But all the minor moralities of life may be made habitual to him. He has been brought up to be courteous, prompt, punctual, neat, considerate; and he practises these virtues without conscious effort. It is much easier to behave in the way he is used to, than to originate a new line of conduct (Vol. 2, p.124)

So, the character is not just a series of rote behaviors. He is still in a position to decide again and again. We don't train the will out of him. We strengthen the will by instilling good patterns of behavior. Much the way we can teach a child to be a discerning reader, to help him learn how to read and comprehend a book, we teach him how to behave. The tools for comprehension don't do the work for him, but they give him particular patterns of thinking that come automatically, leaving him the freedom to actively engage his brain in higher level thinking as he reads. The "minor moralities of life" are no-brainers. And the barin is primed to choose good when faced with the big decisions.

The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days.

Consider how laborious life would be were its wheels not greased by habits of cleanliness, neatness, order courtesy; had we to make the effort of decision about every detail of dressing and eating, coming and going, life would not be worth living.Every cottaeg mother knows that she must train her child in habits of decency, and a whole code of habit causes a shock to others which few children have courage to face. Physical fitness, morals and manners, are very largely the outcome of habit; and not only so, but the habits of the religious life also become fixed and delightful and give us dues support in the effort to live a godly, righteous and sober life (Vol 6, p. 103)

This is "pay now or pay later" parenting philosophy. I can assign a task and then motivate myself to teach patiently how it is done properly and to inspect to see that it has been completed properly--over and over again until it is a habit--or I can take the easy road now and not follow through, only to be faced with that same poorly done task, or task not done at all forever more. This goes way beyond the habit of doing household chores cheerfully and well.It means addressing every small lie and insisting upon the truth. It means stopping in my tracks to correct a whining child and insist on a pleasant voice (or a nap) every single time. It means ensuring first time obedience. It's work. but it's going to be work either way. An untrained child or a poorly trained child will be much, much more work as an unruly teenager or young adult. Much more work, much more worry, much more grief. Invest now or pay later.

Before I close with some parting words from Miss Mason, let me encourage you to leave a link in the comments when you share your thoughts on habits or join the conversation the ladies are having at the message board.

In conclusion, let me say that the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions--a running fire of Do and Don't; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way, and grow to fruitful purpose. The gardener, it is true, 'digs about and dungs,' prunes and trains, his peach tree; but that occupies a small fraction of the tree's life: all the rest of the time the sweet airs and sunshine, the rains and dews, play about it and breathe upon it, get into its substance, and the result is --peaches. But let the gardener neglect his part, and the peaches will be no better than sloes (Vol 1, p 134)

The Daily Details

Katy and Becky both wrote to ask what the days look like inside my plan. Here's the daily detail (at least theoretically):
Monday: Download monday_rhythm.pdf
Tuesday:Download tuesday_detail.pdf
Wednesday: Download wednesday_detail.pdf
Thursday:Download thursday_detail.pdf
Friday: Download friday_detail.pdf
Hope this is a help as you plan!

Charlotte Mason Summer Study: Education is a Life

Education is a life! Isn't that the truth?
    I think I'm most aware of this truth when I consider how much I've been educated since leaving formal education. First, there was a "unit study" on marriage, with a little rabbit trail on weddings. Running along at the same time was a study of real estate. These studies were followed quickly by an intensive study of pregnancy and childbirth. Then, there was the all night cramming as I learned about breastfeeding and launched a lifelong study of child development. All too soon, we were knee deep in books about surviving cancer. That's a lot of learning in the first three years after college!
    The common thread throughout these studies was my own intense interest. I wanted to know. Instinctively, I searched out the best resources: books written by people who cared about the subject at hand and long talks with experts in the field. And there was prayer. My husband and I prayed incessantly through that time of intense education.
    When I consider the education of my children since then, there are certainly similarities. I have tried to provide for them in our home and in our adventures together away from home an education that is infused with living ideas. I've tried to bear in mind always the admonition of St. Edith Stein: "The children in school do not need merely what we have but rather what we are." And so I have hoped and prayed and worked to give them the best of what I am.
    In Education Is...we read "that children should be fed a great intellectual and moral ideas through a generous curriculum." As we plan, let us plan for the banquet. Let them feast on great ideas, because "only those nourishing ideas become part of the child; mere knowledge does not." We know this to be true when we look over our own education, both in school and out. We know that what we have retained, what has become a part of us are the the good, the beautiful, and the holy--the things that mattered to us. We plan a curriculum with the intention of bringing the best of what the world has to offer into our homes and the hearts of our children. In Catholic Education: Homeward Bound, Mary Hasson and Kimberly Hahn encourage us not to be afraid:

Authentic Catholic education relies on and includes all that is true, good, and beautiful---in short, everything that points the way to God, the source of all truth, goodness and beauty.

It's a big world, full of God's endless bounty; why limit ourselves to only those resources in the boxed curriculum? Let's look at some of the particular methods of a Charlotte Mason-inspired education:

~Living Books

My favorite "definition" of living books comes from Educating the WholeHearted Child.

• A living book is written by a single author, a real and knowable person
• A living book is a literary expression of the author's own ideas and love of the subject
• The author of a living book addresses the reader as an intelligent and capable thinker
• In a living book, ideas are presented creatively in a way that stimulates the imagination.

I stop now and consider my plans for next year. Are living books the backbone of the studies? Am I choosing and presenting to my children the best of what passionate authors and illustrators have to offer?

~Narration:

I admit that writing seems to come as naturally as breathing in my household. My children write almost as readily as they play soccer. And the similarities do not escape me. My husbands writes sports television shows. His area of expertise is soccer. I write a little too;-).(I do not play soccer.) Narration is natural in our verbal household and even my student who struggles most is able to write well. What exactly is narration?

The cornerstone of a real life, real books education is narration. When a child is read story or reads it himself, he is required to retell it, with as much detail as possible, after paying attention to the first and only reading. After a trip to an historical site or a day in an apple orchard, the same method is employed, encouraging the child to use rich, descriptive language to tell about what he knows and cares about. young children narrate orally, with Mom occasionally transcribing what is said. Some young children will naturally use drawings to express themselves and these, too are narrations, either with or without captions.

The benefits to this approach are numerous.Because they are required to narrate after hearing a story or passage read only once, children learn quickly to pay close attention to that reading.They also learn to pay the same attention to the many facets of a field trip. The more details they notice, the more detailed their narrations.Children as young as four can be trained to be very observant and to retell stories and events with amazingly complex, textured language and sentence structure. It is the ideas in the stories or the experiences that fuel the narrations. These products, child-produced oral histories or essays, are a far cry from fill-in-the-blank workbook pages or the questions at the end of a textbook chapter.

Narrations require that a child engage his heart. He must be personally connected with the idea being presented in order to recount it.  ~ Real Learning

~Copywork:

For small children, copy work is a handwriting practice: First a letter, then a word, then a phrase, then a verse. All are done to the very best of the child's ability and saved in the notebook. Excellence is expected.

As a child matures, copy work is the careful study of literature. It is a child's chance to become familiar with the test of great writers, word by word and phrase by phrase. A child copies the work and in doing so learns the intricacies of it on an intimate level. ~Real Learning

~Dictation:

Of dictation, Laura Berquist writes,

Studied dictation is a useful tool in the development of children's writing ability. First, the children are working from models of good writing. They see and study correct usage, punctuation, and spelling, as well as excellent writing of various styles. In the old days of Catholic education, schools were financially poorer, but they turned out excellent scholars as well as faithful Catholics. One reason for this was that neither the children nor the schools could afford books, so lessons were copied and then worked on. This meant that the children were continuously exposed to models of correctly written material. This is another example of the truth that children learn by imitation.~ The Harp and the Laurel Wreath (an excellent source of dictation material)

So, how, exactly does this work?

For the very young child, I simply dictate the words and sentences from the phonics patterns and storybooks we are studying. Our phonics lessons are extracted from rhyming books primarily. As the student becomes a capable reader, dictation passages are taken from copy work material. First, we read and discuss material, noting grammatical patterns or spelling of note, The next day , the child copies it (this may take two days). The third day, he studies it. Then I dictate to him as he writes it. The copy work and final dictation go in the the notebook.

The older child's spelling comes from his dictation work and his own writing. I pull misspelled words from his writing, write them correctly and have him copy them ten times. If I notice a pattern to his mistakes, I will have him copy several words that have the same pattern [the AVKO books are a great resource for pattern lists].~Real Learning

~Picture Study:

The study of pictures should not be left to chance, but they should take one artist after another, term by term, and study quietly some half-dozen reproductions of his work in the course of a term...We cannot measure the influence that one or another artist has upon the child's sense of beauty,  upon his power of seeing, as in a picture, the common sight of life; he is enriched more than we know in having really looked at even a single picture. ~Home Education

~Music Study:

Music appreciation follows a similar pattern. I choose one composer every six weeks. We read a little about his life and listen to a Music Masters CD which intersperses his music with an interesting biography.Once a week, we repeat the cassette. Then we play the music often--very often--for six weeks. At the end of the six week period, the children offer narrations of the composer's life ~ Real Learning.

In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art. Art must make perceptible, and as far as possible attractive, the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of God. It must therefore translate into meaningful terms that which is in itself ineffable. Art has the unique capacity to take one or other facet of the message and translate it into colors, shapes, and sounds which nourish the intuition of those who look or listen. ~John Paul II, Letter to Artists

~Book of Centuries:

From the time they are very little, I teach my children to keep notebooks, journaling what they have learned in history. These notebooks become the Book of Centuries . At least once a week, I type their oral narrations for them to illustrate and to place in the
notebook. The notebook is organized chronologically, in order to facilitate the child physically placing an event into the proper time period. Simply insert a tabbed divider for each century into  the notebook. The child files narrations, maps, and other drawings behind the tabs. The organization will help them develop a concept of time.~Real Learning

Do take advantage of the free Book of Centuries download at Simply Charlotte Mason.

~Hands on Math:
Well, all I can say here is that those gnomes sure are hands-on(look for more adventures in the fall)! And we like Math-U-See, too.

~Nature Study:

If you are a nature study novice or if you are in need of a reminder with regard to hows and whys of nature study, start with MacBeth's Opinion. Little else is necessary to get you started.MacBeth is the the master of outdoor education and an inspiration to everyone who is blessed to hear or read her wisdom.

In Charlotte's words:

We must assist the child to educate himself on Nature’s lines, and we must take care not to supplant and crowd out Nature and her methods with that which we call education. Object-lessons should be incidental; and this is where the family enjoys a great advantage over the school. The child who finds that wonderful and beautiful object, a “paper” wasp’s nest…has his lesson on the spot from father or mother~Parents and Children.

The plan is to discuss Hours in the Out-of-Doors: A Charlotte Mason Nature Study Handbook right after we finish Laying Down the Rails. And Laying Down the Rails starts next week!

Tell us all about how education is a life in your home and and how you implement Charlotte Mason's methods as you and your children pursue an authentic education. Be sure to leave a link to your post. If you don't have a blog (or even if you do), feel free to join the conversation at the message board. The rest of the series is here.