Secular Charlotte Mason

Sorry for the spam in the forums. Looks like someone slipped past when requesting to be a member. I have deleted the people I suspect of this activity. If I have accidently deleted a real-live CM person just email me a paragraph about your homeschooling so I can tell you are real and I'll gladly reinstate your membership. Use the site email. 

Living an Educational Life, as opposed to schooling or unschooling, has been at the forethought of my thoughts lately. I've come to realize *this* is really how my kids learn so much. Even when we aren't "schooling" we are doing things that enrich our lives and therefore teach us things. This weekend was a prime example. 

We had the opportunity to spend four days at the coast in our friend's beach house. As a family we all agreed that, for once, this would be a nonworking, noneducational, do only what we feel like, stricktly relaxing trip. Something we rarely do. Most of our trips are planned around activities. We had a fabulous time and all of us can't wait to do it again.  We feel so recharged and that feeling is what most of us focused on. Funny thing is, now that I have high schoolers I have to do a lot more documenting so as we do things I tend to catalog them in my head for later retrival. I have to say as I look back on this weekend, without even trying, we added hours of several transcriptable subjects. The ability to do this is because of our living an educational life. Our kids are able to transfer what they learn in our relaxed CM schooling to all their avtivities without even trying. They automatically see the relationships and act upon them. 

This weekend we truly were focused on just having an enjoyable time as a family. Yet, here is what we can document from the weekend. (This is great for those who do live in states requiring documentation.)

PE: We walked miles and miles and miles. Much of it along beaches. The rest uphill, or so it seemed. Probably totalled 3 hrs. of really working out.

Astronomy: Since there was no broadcast tv we watched 2 Nova videos on space. The kids asked a lot of really good questions and there were some lively debates. Definitely at the same level as my high school astronomy class discussions. Tide is studying astronomy right now so this was actually her request. 

Nature Studies: We seemed most drawn to watching the birds this trip. They were everywhere! All kinds. We spent hours watching them and commenting on their behaviors. We have a few things to look up now that we are home since some of the brids acted differently than we expected. I never realized birds play so much! I was also impressed with how many plants the kids could identify from our previous trips and research. Drakon noticed a field that nearly everything in it could be used to make a soup. Too bad we did miss out on the Wild Gourmet's workshop Saturday. That would have been interesting and counted toward a health credit. 

Chemistry: We watched a glass blowing session that included a full description of everything they were doing and how the glass was changing throughout the process and why. We've seen these demos before but this one was superior in the detail of explanation. We learned so much and some of us now want to try it ourselves. It's nice that this happened the year the girls are studying chemistry. We also have more research to do since some of the explanations went over our heads it was so indepth. 

All without trying! We just did what we felt at the moment while living the educational life.

You may be wondering, how is this different from unschooling. It is quite different really. Living the educational life marries the idea of schoolwork (to lay down a foundation of knowledge that the kids can later act upon) and enriching our lives in multiple ways. It's a lovely cycle that feeds upon itself. Doing nature studies for years has trained my kids to observe the natural world around them and observing the natural world fosters their interest in doing planned nature studies. Seeing the glass blowing demo got everyone thinking about chemistry again and has motivated Tide to, finally, do our basic chemistry course. Just thinking about chemistry has now gotten her thinking about the chemistry of our handicrafts and hairstyling (yes, she's a teen girl so the chemistry of hair dye is of interest) which means she now has to do that chemistry course so that she can understand the chemical formulas in the dyeing books we just ordered. She will then use what she learned about dyes to dye her own fabrics and to host a tie-dye party using indigo and natural dyes in addition to the traditional vat dyes.

Living the educational life....it is a beautiful thing!

As many of you know, Cori, helps out with this blog and we often toss ideas back and forth about how to secularize Charlotte Mason. I am now happy to announce that Cori's excellent blog has gone secular!  I absolutely love how she approaches educating and raising her children. So, esp. if you have preschoolers or primary grades, be sure to head on over to her blog and see what she and her family are up to. It's one of my favorites, and as far as we know, the only secularized CM blog. 

http://wonderinthewoods.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/bike-ride-and-giveaway/

Gina

Thanks to Christina for posting this one on Facebook. This is *exactly* what I need for my girls who are studying history via art history!!!  I'm posting it here so I don't lose it but also in case it is just the ticket for anyone else. 

http://picturingamerica.neh.gov/educators.php?subPage=edu_guide&lang=english

As much as I love CM, I am also a fan of John Taylor Gotto as is my husband. JTG's theories on life and education match up much better with my rightbrainer child than CM and better reflects the entrepreneural spirit I grew up around. One of my personal goals for my girls is to figure out a way of combining the two philosopies. 

This talk is long and somewhat rambly but there are such gems of thought it's well worth listening to all the way to the end. I do think Ms. Mason would agree with JTG about some things like having a relationship with your community and nature, relationships within what you are learning and experiencing and that well educated people are never bored.

I've noticed that whenever I listen to JTG within my kids' hearing my RB child usually starts looking through books or working on some project. I suspect that something he says strikes a subconcious cord within her. 

http://www.altruists.org/static/files/Mudsill%20Theory%20-%20Jamie%20Escalante%20and%20the%20Lancaster%20Amish%20(John%20Taylor%20Gatto).mp3

One of the fun things KodyGirl and I have tried is making our own worm bins and self watering bins. The self-watering bins work great. Unfortunately the worm bins were not nearly as successful and ended up in unhappy worms with very little compost. Very sad since we have a lot of kitchen waste that needs composting. Now for the good news. The multilayer Worm Facotry  that I really really want is currently being offered in a giveaway. You can read all about it here http://creativecarissa.blogspot.com/2011/04/worm-factory-review-and-giveaway.html?showComment=1302886268000#c8329098488075869592 .  

Winning or making your own worm bin is a great way to get your gardening season off to a good start!

I've been doing some personal research on the similarities and differences between he secular and Christian CM worlds. I'm starting to think that there are even more differences than I initially thought but need much more info to determine if I'm onto something or just seeing something that isn't really there.

***Answering the following questions would help me grately as there is precious little information on how and why people choose a secular CM education.***

1. What was your path to CM? Was it a friend, a particular book, website, etc.?

2. What, specifically, do you love about a CM education?

3. Do you consider your homeschooling purely CM or eclectically CM? If eclectic, what do you combine it with?

4. Do you consider your family purely secular, religious/spiritual but use only secular materials, secular but use a mix of secular and religious resources, religious/spiritual and use a mix of secular and religious resources? If none of these fit you, feel free to just state your personal preference. 

My husband recently started having our entire family use Google Calendar. I was highly resistant because it is online, but today I became a convert. 

I absolutely *love* how easy it is to move items around on the schedule and the format that it prints out in is great for my list oriented visual kids. I also like that I can list chores, schoolwork and outside activities all in one place and for repeating items I just enter it once and set it up to repeat. So easy for the kids to see what they are suppose to be doing when. My husband pointed out that I could use the calendar lists to keep a record of how many hours the kids are doing schoolwork for the few classes that we are counting Carnegie hours for. All I need to do is tuck the daily lists into each child's high school organizer and count up the hours at the end of the year. Think this, combined with One Note may be just the ticket for my middlest's high school years. Wonder if I should have my son switch completely over to this rather than use his paperbased planner for spring term. 

What methods do you use to communicate daily tasks/coursework to your kids; esp. your teens?

Interesting.  ~Cori

http://childlightusa.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/changing-the-paradigm-by-jennifer-spencer/

I've been thinking about this for quite a while now and even started a discussion on the topic over on the SecularCM yahoo group. At the time the general consensus was that it is best to not have secular CM yahoo groups for each of the three stages since that would divide an already small population of homeschoolers.

After doing high school for the last 2 years I am rethinking this because I do think there is a need for a specifically secular CM high school group. The issues we run into are so very different than the issues we ran into with our younger kids.  I am on CM high school groups like House of Education but their approach is based on Ambleside Online and it just isn't providing me with the resources, ideas and support that I need as a secular CMer. I tried starting conversations on my forum specifically for HS but we just don't have enough activity on the forum to make it worthwhile. I know there are bloggers who write about this topic, but honestly, I tend to follow blogs only of people I know in person or are online "penpals" with so that isn't the best option for me.

Even though I know this is not true, I sometimes feel like I am the only one trying to incorporate more secular CM into the high school years. Even researching Ms. Mason herself is not providing me with the support I need since she tended to write more for the younger years and what she did write about HS seems geared more for her schools than for her governesses which is harder to translate into a homeschool setting.

So, my question for you all is:

Do you see a need for a high school specific yahoo group for secular CMers? I would love to hear your comments here, on the Secular Charlotte Mason page or via email. 

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You can use WorldCat to look up books, CDs, DVDs, curriculum, etc.  and see which of your local libraries carry  the title you are looking for. Perfect for those who have access to multiple library systems. 

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I have been getting a lot of questions about timelines lately so I thought it quite timely to learn that the Classical Home Education online store has updated one of their timelines. I have the original version and I use it quite a bit when planning out our history units. They help me quickly see where civilizations overlap when trying to determine what historical sequencing I want to use with the kids. 

Looks like this new update is intended to line up with History Odyssey for those who use that history program. As far as I can tell CHE is no longer carrying any other timelines. 

I came across the following article via Facebook. javascript:mox(); . I found it to be quite interesting. The title is somewhat misleading as they aren't actually talking about multiple choice testing as done via No Child Left Behind. Nope, instead they are talking about the old fashioned essay tests of my youth which are really just narrations that are graded. So, when you read this article and they are talking about the essay test just substitute the word narration in your head. 

I find it particularly interesting that the researchers compared essay tests to concept mapping. Concept mapping is a technique that was taught in EVERY single one of my teaching methods classes and was used extensively by my children's public school teachers. I confess to using it extensively my first two years homeschooling---until I realized it wasn't really helping my kids learn. I will say that concept mapping was effective for my son since writing was such a struggle for him but it wasn't nearly as useful for my girls who love to write. 

Like Howard Gardner, I had to do some serious rethinking of my methods and their outcomes. I'll have to look around and see what else he has to say about this study but it has definitely motivated me to do narrations with my kids. 

Even though he is a reader, Drakon is finding that video based learning is working much better for him than textbook learning. Partly because it is faster to watch a video lecture than to read chapters in a textbook and partly because he is a visual learner. High Schoolers, I am finding, really do need to find ways to be more efficient with their time as they have so much more to do than they did in the earlier years. Thank goodness for technology at this educational level!

Drakon and I both love The Teaching Company lectures but they can be quite cost prohibitive.  That is where Learner.org comes in. This website has a wide variety of lectures and videos organized into courses. I discovered it while looking for a geography course via Haogiesgifted.com . Several of their courses link to Learner.org. Some of them are "talking heads" type lectures as my 10 yo calls them. Most are a bit flashier with videos and interactive slide shows and so on. Many of these videos look like they were originally made for PBS. Like anything, some courses are better than others. Drakon and I are currently comparing the Learner.org lecture on Gilgamesh to the Teaching Company lecture on Gilgamesh. So, far it does seem that the Learner.org course is a bit lighter than TTC course. In a nutshell we recommend TTC if you want an indepth and detail oriented course or your child has a high tolerance for lecture based learning.  We recommend Learner.org if you want something a bit lighter and faster to get through, your child does not like TTC "talking heads" or if you just plain old can't afford TTC.  I have decided that I will use TTC History of World Lit. course for Drakon since he prefers indepth learning but will use the Invitation to World Lit. course from Learners.org for my girls who prefer less indepth learning. 

Invitation to World Literature javascript:mox();

Learner.org homepage javascript:mox();

Drakon has decided that Trisms is not a good fit for him. I have to agree that it is only an ok fit and I am having to supplement a fair amount. So we are making a change that I think is a perfect match for Drakon's interests and learning preferences. He is going to keep using the same spines for world history (Roberts, Harman) since I had let him chose his own spines in place of the ones recommended in Trisms. He will keep doing Story of Art with the family, which is the girls' history spine. The main difference is that he wants to go with more of a pure literature based history so we are adding in History of World Literature from the Teaching Company. We will also be drawing readings from this list javascript:mox(); . Also from the Teaching Company, we will be adding in the Great Religions series as needed. As you can see my son really likes the Teaching Company lectures. Learning to take notes to these will be good practice for college. 

javascript:mox(); Roberts

javascript:mox(); Harman

 javascript:mox(); Story of Art

javascript:mox(); History of World Literature (I ended up getting the set as it was considerably cheaper than just the one course)

javascript:mox(); Great World Religions series ( I wanted the series but only Judaism and Buddhism were on sale)

And that is the new plan for High School World History

I came across this reading list and thought it would make a good  list for either personal or group reading. Unlike many great book lists this one seems manageable. Since it matches up fairly well with my kids' history/literature cycle I think I'm going to try to do Year 1 this coming year. Story of Art and Gilgamesh were already on our list for this year so that's two down. One of the girls has been wanting to do Lewis Carroll as an author study so that's three. Piece of cake, right?

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I regularly get requests for the reading list I created for a tween Medieval Legends class I taught a while back. Rather than rewriting it every time someone asks I have decided to post my response here for easy access by us all. The photos are of some of the projects completed by the students. Feel free to email me offblog if you need recommendations for specific versions.

I purposely chose classics that had a variety of versions available. This way families with multiple ages could read the stories together. Many of these have also been made into movies which could be fun to add in.  I think there is a page on my website that discusses family literature studies and gives some specific recommendations for picture books, middle schooler level and adult/teen levels for some of these topics. You can also find versions online; esp. for the Ballad of Mulan and The Hungarian Version of the White Stag legend. Unfortunately I no longer have my links for any of them. Try googling the titles or looking over at Archive.org. 

As part of the class we did related map work and did one project reflective of the times the story was "written" or popularized. Before starting the reading list we discussed the differences between myths, legends, folk tales,fairy tales and general historical fiction so that the class knew the difference before we started. As we read each book we discussed what common plot elements of the Hero's Journey could be found within the story. In the class we did 5 books per term. I do have to confess that this list was inspired by the reading list for HO Middle Ages level 2, only we focused on the classics rather than all the historical fiction she recommended.

This list is not in chronological order but we tried to read them in that order as much as possible.

Journey to the West from the Monkey King (China--made Chinese opera masks since that is how the story was originally told, this is an ancient story that was popularized during the middle ages and is still popular today)

Finn MacCool (Irish--illuminated manuscripts)

Hound of Ulster (Irish-made salmon torc or broaches)

Ballad of Mulan (Northern China--write a ballad of some modern event)

Beowulf (Norse & Anglo Saxon--dragon soap carving)

King Arthur & the Knights of the Round Table (Norman England--tried our hand at basic weaving)

Robin Hood (watched the animated Bayeoux Tapestry online and then drew our own retelling the Robin Hood story)

Sindbad the Sailor from the Arabian Knights (Middle East--painted a scene from the story in the Persian style)

Song of Roland (France--scene from the story in "stained glass")

El Cid (Moorish Spain--moorish tiles)

Tales of the Heike (Feudal Japan--U-kiyo style prints since this is the very first story that first used that style of art and U-kiyo is the ancestor of modern anime)

Sundiata (Mali--we studied griots and made shakeres)

The White Stag (Magyars & Huns--don't remember the project)

Story of Sigurd (Icelandic Sagas--we made runestones)

I would also recommend adding the following if you have time:

Mabinogion (Welsh myth cycle)

Kalevala (Finnish myth cycle)

Ivanhoe (crusades?)

I have yet to find a classic from S. America for this time period.

I have a feeling I've forgotten one or two but this should get your started. It really doesn't matter which versions you use as long as they are decently written and not dumbed down. I do NOT recommend Robert Nye's version of Beowulf (which is the one we read) as it is written overly simply and doesn't include any of the drama of the original. Howard Pyle, Rosemary Sutcliff, Padraic Colum and Geraldine McCaughrean are all good authors to look for when it comes to ancient or medieval readings for middle schoolers. Kevin Crossley-Holland tends to illustrate a lot of well written legends so that is another good name to look for. Most of the adult versions include more sex and violence than you would want for middle schoolers.

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Do you ever read homeschooling posts only to discover that everyone writes in acronyms that you do not understand? I got this nice list of curricula based acronyms from the Secular Homeschool Facebook page. 

Cindy at Desert Ramblings wrote this great post on using technology in her homeschool.  She has some clever suggestions for tech-narration and working parents.  ~Cori

http://desertramblings.wordpress.com/2010/09/21/how-technology-helps-me-homeschool-while-working-full-time/

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This came across my Facebook page last week. I no longer remember exactly who I got it from but I am putting it here so that *I* don't lose it.

I have been using some of the resources listed for years, others we just started using this year and most of them are yet unexplored by us. I will say that I absolutely love the Hoagie's website and some of you will recognize a site or two that belong to members of Becky's SecularCM yahoo group.