The Power of Ideas

Every educational philosophy seems to have some sort of emphasis around which curriculum is built. For example, unit studies intentionally build all subjects around a theme: a specific topic, a character trait, a country, etc. Traditional textbooks focus narrowly on a subject with information organized and presented very tightly, factually, rigorously. Classical education gives children what fits in each stage (in the grammar stage, i.e., elementary age, the focus is memorization of facts, rules, data, details, etc.). Unschoolers pay attention to the interests of the child and provides what is needed to pursue those interests. So, what is the emphasis for a Charlotte Mason approach?

CM homeschoolers tend to think in broad principles rather than fixed rules. When unsure of what to do, I often fall back on her principles. For example, when Pamela was struggling with picture study taught in the manner Mason described, I realized Pamela, as a person with aphasia and autism (personhood being Mason's first principle), required more scaffolding by giving her visual cues to show what I understood, having a grand conversation, and turning it into a theory of mind game with five levels of scaffolding. Now, Pamela can do picture study in the way Mason described.

Some may point to history as the pivot of a Mason curriculum, which actually takes a backseat to the knowledge of God. "The knowledge of God ranks first in importance, is indispensable, and most happy-making" (Page 158) and "Next in order to religious knowledge, history is the pivot upon which our curriculum turns" (Page 273). While that may help us structure the books and things we choose, I think there is something more fundamental. While some subjects dovetail well into a chronological way of thinking (history, literature, picture study, composer study, architecture), others do not (second language, mathematics, science, handicrafts). Mason also added books completely out of the chronology she laid out for that school year! Why? I think the reason why has something to do with what we emphasize.

And, what do we emphasize you ask? Ideas. Mason touches on ideas in several of her many principles:

In saying that "education is a life," the need of intellectual and moral as well as of physical sustenance is implied. The mind feeds on ideas, and therefore children should have a generous curriculum.

We hold that the child's mind is no mere sac to hold ideas; but is rather, if the figure may be allowed, a spiritual organism, with an appetite for all knowledge. This is its proper diet, with which it is prepared to deal; and which it can digest and assimilate as the body does foodstuffs.

Such a doctrine as e.g. the Herbartian, that the mind is a receptacle, lays the stress of education (the preparation of knowledge in enticing morsels duly ordered) upon the teacher. Children taught on this principle are in danger of receiving much teaching with little knowledge; and the teacher's axiom is, "what a child learns matters less than how he learns it."

But we, believing that the normal child has powers of mind which fit him to deal with all knowledge proper to him, give him a full and generous curriculum; taking care only that all knowledge offered him is vital, that is, that facts are not presented without their informing ideas. Out of this conception comes our principle that,––

Therefore, children should be taught, as they become mature enough to understand such teaching, that the chief responsibility which rests on them as persons is the acceptance or rejection of ideas. To help them in this choice we give them principles of conduct, and a wide range of the knowledge fitted to them. These principles should save children from some of the loose thinking and heedless action which cause most of us to live at a lower level than we need.

The concept of ideas seemed very nebulous to me for a very long time, but the longer I work with Pamela, the more vivid it becomes. For example, last year, we read a book that absolutely captivated Pamela: The Tarantula in My Purse. Pamela fell in love with the idea of Jean Craighead George taking wild animals into her home, caring for them, and later releasing them. Then, we had an appointment from God the week we read the last chapter in the book: we helped a friend rescue two hawks! Since then, Pamela has talked off and on about rescuing animals. Last month, a praying mantis ended up in our house: I noticed it crawling on the ceiling while I was talking to a friend on the phone. A few days later, I snapped a picture of it hanging out on some furniture. All on her own initiative, Pamela dug out a mason jar and lid from the cabinet, carefully captured the misguided insect, and put it outside. I had my camera handy and caught her comments on video.





The most recent episode was concerning a walnut sphinx moth, whose identity Butterflies and Moths of North America kindly confirmed for us. (Oh, and as a result of our citizen science efforts, BMNA has added the walnut sphinx moth to the rolls for our county!) I have to admit: it wasn't a true rescue. I spied it on the back porch while setting the house alarm for the night. I found Pamela's butterfly garden netting and sneaked out to capture the poor thing, which we kept in captivity long enough to work through a few lessons from the Comstock book (Handbook of Nature Study) and make nature notebook entries. Tuesday night, we released the moth and Pamela easily saw why the moth is sometimes mistaken for hummingbirds. Its wings flutter quite rapidly.







But, this is not the end to the ideas. More are sprouting. We cannot do nature study on every animal such as those not native to our area or close enough to visit. So, our books inform us when real living things cannot. We are now reading a book about people moving to a location where a species of endangered animals lives and monitoring their health and well-being. These people became veterinarians and animal epidemiologists and moved to a jungle or forest in a far away just to work in this field. She is picking up all sorts of interesting ideas related to the original one that captured her attention: we can give diseases to animals, and they can give diseases to us. Sometimes, our diseases kill animals and vice versa. Rather than take them to a hospital like we did the hawks, these animal doctors work outdoors and shoot medicine and sleeping potions into dangerous animals that need treatment. I cannot wait to see where these newly sprouted ideas lead Pamela.

I will leave you with her final nature notebook entries of what she learned from our guest.

Flapping, Feathers, Sphinxes, and Other Fun Stuff

Yesterday, we wrapped up our second week of homeschooling, which flew by!

Language Arts - Pamela picked some interesting quotes for her common place book, one of which is a foreshadowing of Mark Anthony's speech and Caesar's funeral in the play by Shakespeare. One of the most memorable moments of the week ended up in the common place book. We have been reading a book about a girl from Boston living in Charleston at the beginning of the Civil War. Another girl insults her by calling her a Yankee, and her father smooths it over by explaining that the British call Americans that name. Then, we were reading an entirely different book in which one of our ships was visiting London and giving tours to people. The Brits remarked, "The Yankees were most civil" and, as Pamela read the line aloud, she added, "War. Just like 'Yankee girl'" and chuckled at her play on words. She laughs aloud during readings quite often when something strikes her fancy. Pamela did more copywork of Benjamin Franklin's wit and made only one spelling error in her studied dictation. I opted not to turn it into a lesson since the word was unfamiliar to her (erect).






Literature - Two weeks ago, I wasn't sure how Pamela would do with one particularly fanciful book that I'm enjoying because I can see threads that surely must have inspired Tolkien and Lewis. Pamela's narrations are wonderful, calming my concerns. I also worried about a mythology book I substituted for the one on the curriculum list which jumped from story to story too quickly. She had no problem shifting from one setting, Eustace Bright telling stories to his younger siblings and friends, to the myth. Her narration of the Gorgon's head tells me she remembers the action from day to day, which was not happening with the original book! Because the book retells six myths in great detail, she will glean the background knowledge needed to leap from one story to the next down the road. Sometimes, two steps forward requires one step backward!

Math - While I love our math curriculum, Pamela has a few issues with it. The program assumes Pamela has background knowledge that she lacks. I have continued to make sheets that blend word roots and concrete illustrations and practice activities that prepare her for the next exercise. She is doing really well and worked on things like classifying triangles (equilateral/isosceles/scalene and acute/right/obtuse), constructing her own triangles, finding the relationship between different sides and their opposite angles, etc. Last year, I took a break from the curriculum to nail down fractions, area, perimeter, etc. I gave her some review problems and she remembered what to do! She absolutely adored the "magical" moment when you are finding the median of a triangle, and all the lines cross at the same point. Not only that, all on her own, Pamela connected the word median to mediano (the Spanish word she learned for medium in last year's Ricitos de oro y los tres osos). If your math lessons lack magical "aha" moments, then you are missing out on one of the great joys of life.

Science - We have struck a great balance between reading, doing, drawing, and writing for science. The lessons are short and varied, keeping Pamela's attention. We finally shredded enough paper and cardboard for our worm composting bin, so this week we made holes in the rubber maid bin. Because the drill wasn't working, I ended up hammering nails into the bin. It proved to be great work for Pamela's fine motor skills because, once the nail was stable and no longer needed to be held, Pamela finished the job and then retrieved the nail with the claw end. This finagled approach worked well for the holes in the top and bottom, but the springiness of the sides of the bin rendered it ineffective. Eventually, I stumbled on Plan C: screw a hole into the bin, pound the nail until stable, and let Pamela finish the job. Borrowing a drill from my father would have saved us a lot of trouble but would not have given Pamela's hands a solid workout. Redworm composting is full of information for beginners: we chose the "deluxe rubbermaid bin" because I'm not willing to shell out the big bucks yet. Besides, the process of building the thing will make us both better and handiwork.


We made fewer nature study entries because we spent two days on the garden spider and two days on the sphinx moth, which I have submitted to Butterflies and Moths of North America for identification. I believe it is a walnut sphinx moth, but none are listed for our county. By the way, you know you are a homeschooler when you sneak out on the back porch in your jammies to capture a moth! I had an old swallowtail lying around the house, so we carefully observed the differences between moths and butterflies with our own eyes as Pamela wrote down details about the moth. We are collecting feathers and drawing them. Once we have enough, we will be sorting them by kind (the position on the bird). A feather is not simply a feather as you can see in the photograph.



Pamela easily distinguishes puffy versus blanket versus no clouds. She is still working on the scientific names: cumulus and stratus. We have had absolutely no rain for our rain gauges and no opportunity to paint nimbus or cirrus clouds this week. I find it hard to call these watercolor paintings science because they are so beautiful. Do you notice the little symbol Pamela invented to reflect "no clouds"?


Since we are studying clouds, we are doing experiments with evaporation. The water from last week's experiment finally evaporated below the rim lines of the jar. Pamela clearly saw that the lidless jar evaporated more quickly. We started another experiment to see which container shape will evaporate more quickly. The most fun experiment involved massive amounts of flapping, and Pamela loved it as you can see in the pictures of our flap-a-thon. We were trying to see the effect of wind on evaporation rates. You may notice that the science journal are entirely Pamela's effort: drawing and simple sentences (I guide her in the phrasing). I can spend less time on planning by letting her notebook reflect her thinking rather than represent the thinking of someone who created elaborate lapbooks. Kids really can think for themselves if given the chance.



Watercolor Class - Pamela painted the top and side views of an apple in watercolor class this week. As always, her colors make the subject seem alive.


Fine Arts - We were supposed to do a picture study this week. When it came time to open the ziplock bag of print cards, half were gone! I have no idea where they are. People think I'm organized, but I'm not. My ideas and plans are organized, but the concrete things in my life, i.e., stuff, have room for improvement. I'm still thinking through the back-up plan. Pamela has added to her collection of arches and columns in her drawing notebook.


Handwork - Pamela should finish this knitting needle case next week and get back to her finger knitting.


Foreign Language, Music, Geography, History - I have nothing much to add, except for a few morsels. Pamela and I learned some new things in Spanish: la manzana, está comiendo, and el lápiz. We are on track to finish the ten lessons (which are broken up into five-mini lessons each) by the end of the year! Pamela loves the songs we are learning. The other day, while we were walking, she was singing all the songs she knew and even making a couple of jumps for joy. While we were pounding holes in the composting bins, we sang just for fun. Pamela is still covering the same geographical places and just made the first entries into her book of centuries. It deserves a post until itself.

Physical Exercise and Community Service - I will close with pictures from the Prayer Walk for all of the schools (public and private) in our county. Hey, wait a minute! I just realized there were no signs for the homeschools. Hmmmm. Anyway, we walked three miles and prayed for schools along the way (or signs representing the schools). The organization had a great turnout: I felt so thrilled to be surrounded by so many people who care about education and are willing to pray for them. Pamela balked about a mile into it but managed to get a grip. After that, she was a champ. I took the walks off our schedule for Friday and Monday to provide rest. Oh, yes, I just had to take pictures of the yucca plant and swallowtail butterfly.

The Last Day of the Week... Monday!

We finished our first week of school yesterday. Yes, I know it was Monday. Since we started school on Tuesday due to Labor Day, our first week of school ended on the first day of the week. Years ago, I figured out the hard way that one cannot squash five days of school into four without losing one's mind! I learned so many neat things about Pamela thinks this week because we worked at a reasonable pace.

History - As always, she likes to tell me the day of the week if given the exact date (a savant ability). While most of our books are set in the industrial age, a Mason education doesn't mean unit studies, so we have books from different times in history. Keeping a timeline or book of centuries helps children sort out the chronology. We received a beautiful book of centuries, and Pamela will soon start making entries in it. All five days of school, she selected the order of reading based on chronology. The first three days of the week she went forward in history, from B.C. to A.D. The last two days, she reversed the order. She wasn't clear about the dating of a literature book, so she checked the copyright page. She asked "What year?" right before we read the book on Mississippi sharecroppers. Later, I looked up a couple of background details for her and informed her that it was set in the early 20th century. I read in a history paper on Mason's work that being able to place events in time sequence is a high school level skill!

Language Arts - Pamela started learning a new poem for recitation: Fog by Carl Sandburg. She did a lot of copywork, which she finds easy; the topic is a bit odd: Benjamin Franklin's advice on marriage. I had her try two studied dictations at a higher level of difficulty: study a whole paragraph, but only write the sentence that I choose and dictate. She adjusted well to the latest wrinkle. I was most intrigued by her selections for a commonplace book (the pages with pink lines) which she began for the first time this year. I scaffolded by paying attention to her reactions while reading and, at the end of the day, asking her for her favorite book. A commonplace book, a memento for the student, gives a glimpse into the literary development of their thinking. Clearly, Pamela favored Caesar in her quotes, choosing passages from a poem, a character study, and a play. She found humor in the wild party at the White House but turned around and quoted Jesus the next day. What tickles me the most is that Pamela quoted Shakespeare for one of her entries. Shakespeare!




Oral Narration - Readers unfamiliar with a Mason paradigm might fret over the lack of "creative" writing. Pamela is still learning English as a first language. She sees examples of beautiful writing in literary language in the books she reads every day. Through copywork and studied dictation, she learns mechanics like spelling and punctuation in context (and not dissected from the place where you would typically practice it--writing).  She sees examples of beautiful writing in literary language in the books she reads every day. Pamela orally narrates everything she reads, which teaches composition and organizing ideas. I have seen many improvements since last year: she is able to speak in fuller fragments or sentences, sequence her ideas (a few sentences at a time), and recall the reading from the previous day. Sometimes, she remembers a detail she didn't narrate the day before! As I reported last week, I see some critical thinking occurring in her narrations, too.

Not only that, I see her processing it during the day. Yesterday, she read about the Ice Age in her ancient history book. That night, Pamela found Antarctica in Google maps and was looking at the street view to see pictures. She asked me what season it was, and I told her that it was always like that. She said, "It never melts. Cold and miserable." I can tell one thing about the dating of the world confuses her. She has noticed that some books talk about millions of years (old earth ideas) and other books talk about thousands of years (young earth ideas). Today, when she was looking through the atlas, which has a graphic on prehistoric ages, she was trying to pronounce triceratops and told her the number of years. I explained to her that people have different ideas about when the earth came into being.

Literature - During the day, we read passages from seventeen different books of wide and varied genre:  historical, scientific, historical fiction, poetry, Shakespeare (yes, the real deal, unabridged and unadulterated), mythology, fantasy, biography, and the Bible. Avoiding textbooks gives us the freedom to read many lovely books during the day. The most beautiful thing is how integrated her learning becomes. While we are not reading a book on government right now, the two on inventions addressed the role of the President and Congress in building large pieces of infrastructure. Tongue-in-cheek realistic fiction illustrates politics. Not only that, ideas begin to emerge. This week, the overarching idea was how the North and South didn't agree on much during the Industrial Revolution.

Pamela shows much more emotion while reading than she did last year. Going through a passage about an inventor, Pamela gasped because the name of a street where he lived was West Newton Street. We used to live in a town called West Newton, and Pamela still drives through it on Google maps for old times sake. She also laughs out loud at things that strike her fancy and even shares little comments as we go.

Science (or Is It Art?) - We explored several things for science this week. Pamela painted cloud formations in water color to give her a chance to observe clouds and make their names more meaningful. We set up a simple experiment on evaporation that is ongoing. Like education, science cannot be rushed. Pamela filled the jars to the lid lines, and I  waited all weekend for the water level in the lidless one to drop below the confusing lines. Yesterday, they were not low enough. Hopefully, she can make her final entry later this week. We also shredded cardboard, newspaper, paper bags, and empty toilet paper and paper towel rolls for the worm composting bin. She made several nature notebook entries. The egg sac and feathers will be ongoing as we will make more observations down the road (on our walk, we found two other feathers that look completely different). We followed up on wisteria and camellia from last year. Pamela was surprised to learn that wisteria pods are green in the fall (not brown) and camellia fruit are fuzzy. We read several living books on inventions from the industrial era and a chapter about how related species share diseases.




Physical Exercise (or Is it Architecture? or Geography? or Math?) - Every day of school, we walk for thirty minutes. Along the way, I snap photographs of details we read about in art and architecture last year. To refresh her mind on them, Pamela is recording them in her drawing notebook after we get home. We also talk about which compass direction we are heading for geography. When Pamela asks how many minutes have elapsed, I tell her the time and when we started for mental math. If she wants to know the number of minutes left, I tell her to subtract it from 30 or give her the stop time and current time.

Many interesting things happen on our walks. Yesterday, we bumped into a family from our Charlotte Mason study group. The father owns a tree service business, and we noticed the load of tree debris in the back of the truck and watched the little bulldozer move up the ramp. Last week, Pamela aimed to walk to the old Walmart but an evil blister felled her along the way. She took off her shoes and walked the  neighborhood sidewalks barefoot, where she destroyed a small spider web with her toes, found a mockingbird feather, saw an expired mourning dove, and discovered a date on a water pipe cover patented on October 22, 1912--a Tuesday according to her. Google it. She's usually right.



Geography - Many of our books come from different places as well as times. One story is set in New Hampshire but takes readers back to ancient Greece. Through our reading, we have visited Charleston, SC, Mississippi, New York City, Boston, Washington, D.C., New York City, Boston, the Missouri River, Michigan, California, Canada, England, Africa, South America, ancient Israel, ancient Rome, and an imaginary planet in a galaxy far, far away.

Math - Pamela loves the math curriculum, but the vocabulary is intense. I created some concrete illustrations with word roots and charts to help Pamela learn them. We combined review and new material this week. Her strength (pattern-recognition) balances out her weakness (language). Math is her strongest area, and she continues to work on pre-algebra.

Foreign Language - With Steve in Kansas, we transitioned to a canned Spanish curriculum that focuses exclusively on audio and pictures for the first ten lessons (which may take us all year). Pamela and I learned some new words: la carne, el medico, and el avion. All the other words were review for us! We are also listening to two familiar fairy tales in Spanish.

Music - We sang a folk song from South Carolina, a hymn, and a Latin American nursery song. We also listened to some of Bach's harpsichord music, which soothed us after a hot walk.

Handwork - Pamela ought to be fingerknitting this term to pave the way for knitting with real needles in the next term. Since her knitting needle case is nearly finished, she has focused on sewing instead.