Charlotte Mason Highschool: Year 11

This is our Year 11 Australian/personalised adaption of Ambleside Online. We've finished Term 1 and are a couple of weeks into Term 2 so I'll update this post as we continue through the year. 

Bible/Devotions

*  **  * *** In The Steps of the Master by H.V. Morton - Bible History & Geography

* Knowing God by J.I. Packer - continued from last year

Family line of Herod the Great

History

*  **  *** A History of the Twentieth Century  by Martin Gilbert

* A Short History of Australia by Ernest Scott (1953 Edition) We've used this in Year 9 up to the end of the first term of Year 11. We're using this one for Term 2 and 3 this year:

**  *** A Short History of Australia by Manning Clark - starting at Ch 9: Radicals and Nationalists - 1883 - 1901

* World War I and World War II by Richard Maybury

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain - this is scheduled in Term 1 but it's been slow going so Miss 16 will be reading it this term as well.

Biographies

*  Stalin by Albert Marrin 

** Hitler by Albert Marrin 

Speeches

Speeches That Shaped the Modern World by Alan J. Whiticker is our primary resource for Year 11 as well as some from the AO list that aren't too focussed on the USA. This book includes a couple of speeches made by Australian Prime Ministers.

Australian Literature

* We of the Never-Never by Mrs Aeneas Gunn

** A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

*** Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington/Nugi Garimara

Literature

* Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton (see here for some details) - we used this instead of The Great Gatsby.

I'll be substituting another book in place of Brideshead Revisited but will include all the others.

* Shakespeare - Much Ado About Nothing

Short Stories & Essays

I've been cherry-picking titles from the AO list.

Current Affairs

Conversations - John Anderson (former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia) via Podcast or YouTube. 

The Plight and Polarisation of Mainstream Media 

Authoritarianism 

Archaeology

* Digging For Richard III, How Archaeology Found the King by Mike Pitts - a great book to read after Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time.

** Come, Tell me How You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowan

Geography

* Endurance by Alfred Lansing

** *** Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall - a combination of geography, history, current events and politics.

Science

*  **  ***  Novare General Biology by Heather Ayala and Katie Rogstad - this is a really in-depth biology book so we're not rushing through it. Lab work is included.

* The Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif

* Six Easy Pieces by Feynman - Miss 16 read four out of the six chapters and then I changed to this book:

** Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life by Helen Czerski - only 13 pages in but so far my daughter likes its conversational style. Thanks to Joy H on the AO Forum for mentioning this book. 

Plutarch

* Aristides

Art 

Reading a section of this each week - two to three pages on a wide range of artists; well illustrated, short biographies.

Free Reading

Pastoral by Nevil Shute

The Far Country by Nevil Shute (set in Australia)

The Black Orchids by Rex Stout

The Silent Speaker by Rex Stout

Shane by Jack Schaefer

The Lonesome Gods by Louis L'Amour

The Yellow Poppy by D.K. Broster

The Jacobite Trilogy by D. K. Broster

Son by Lois Lowry

Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie 

Books by Jackie French:

The Girl From Snowy River

Pharaoh

Pennies for Hitler

Tom Appleby, Convict Boy

Stay tuned for updates...

Charlotte Mason Highschool Update (May 2021)

 I tend to only do a year end exam but we're using this week as an exam week as we've finished Term 1 of Ambleside Online Year 11. Being Year 11 and covering the 20th century, there are a lot of things happening over short periods of time so having a break to reflect and look back over what we've covered so far seemed like a wise thing to do.

I've made a few changes to the AO schedule like I always do but we're following the general outline, adding in some Australian content, dropping some of the American focused titles, as well as using some books we already had in place of books that were scheduled and we didn't have. I generally post what we've used at the end of the year's work but I'll also highlight bits and pieces as the year progresses.

Nature and Science Notebooks

A simple experiment for illustrating osmosis that only uses a potato, salt and water.

Experiment with a homemade Calorimeter

We used the instructions here to make the calorimeter and do the experiment.

 

Enjoying the sunshine while drawing & listening to me read James Herriot and Charlotte Mason's 'Ourselves'

Current Events/Culture

I like to listen to John Anderson's Conversation Podcasts from time to time. This conversation with Matt Taibbi was very good so I played it on YouTube and we watched it today. I'd never heard of Taibbi before but he has a fascinating background - a journalist who has lived in Soviet Russia, played basketball in Mongolia and who is very articulate. I like John Anderson's style of interviewing - respectful and thoughtful. He interviews people with a wide range of views and is a good listener who asks intelligent questions. In this interview they discuss the state of journalism in the West & Taibbi gives some good advice to young people who want to pursue journalism. 

*Update: I shared this interview with one of my sons who's into politics etc. and he commented that Taibbi's had an odd journey to where he is now & he wouldn't exactly call him a role model. As I said I didn't know a thing about him and just took the interview at face value. I did a little searching and it looks like his former views have changed somewhat. Anyhow, I thought this interview was well done and very topical.

Some favourite free read books so far this year

Black Orchids by Rex Stout

The Silent Speaker by Rex Stout

The Virgin in the Ice by Ellis Peters

The Holy Thief by Ellis Peters

Green Dolphin Country by Elizabeth Goudge

Notebooks in a Charlotte Mason Education - Year 6

Moon Jelly Aurelia aurita - common ocean animal often washed up on beaches. There's a video about them here.

Science Notebook 

This year Moozle has recorded experiments from some of her science books e.g. Archimedes and the Door of Science; The Sea Around Us; The Elements and The Mystery of the Periodic Table. The experiment below was one she watched via video on the Periodic Table:

Archimedes and the Door of Science

 The Sea Around Us

We had a severe storm with large hailstones about a week ago so we did a study on what causes hail and watched the short video below which explains it reasonably well. The hailstones were the largest we've experienced and made a tremendous racket as they hit the roof. They were about the size of eggs and we ended up with a smashed skylight and damaged pergola.

Nature Notebook

We've been using this series of videos on basic water colour techniques by John Muir and also some by Alphonso Dunn on using ink & watercolours to get some direction and help in this area. Moozle has also been inspired by the watercolouring in A Country Diary of an Edwardian Woman. I wrote a little about that here.

The Portuguese Man O' War or Bluebottle was mentioned in the fourth chapter of The Sea Around Us and around the same time as we were reading through that chapter, we went to the beach and there were heaps of them washed up on the sand. Moozle managed to get stung twice but fortunately, the bluebottles we get here are not the tropical nasties. The stings hurt but what hurt more was the bull ant bite she got a few days later out the back! I know because I got one on the under part of my foot and it was awful!
For an introductory video on recognising bluebottles and treating their sting see here. A marine-stinger fact sheet is here.

The Portuguese Man O' War is an interesting creature. It's not a true jellyfish but a colony of four different types of animals. My nature journal entry:

Bull Ant

We started a tree study earlier this month. So, of course, the best way to do that is to get up in the tree and have a good look.

Poetry Notebook

Ambleside Online Year 7 Highlights

Year 7 has finished up for the seventh time in our home, although this was only the second time we've used Ambleside Online for Year 7.  As I usually do, I asked my daughter which books were her favourites from this year's work, but I gave her a limit of ten. These are the books she chose:

I read aloud The Brendan Voyage, The Daughter of Time, and All Creatures Great and Small (which we are only half way through. It’s an omnibus edition and isn't scheduled in AO year 7.) She read the others on her own. The Magna Carta was a book we had that I added in - she really enjoyed this. The Daughter of Time and Fallacy Detective sparked a lot of interest, conversation, and ‘that’s a red herring’ type of comment on a regular basis!

As I mentioned, this is the second time we've done AO Year 7, and when I asked my next child up, Benj, who did Year 7 in 2014, what books were highlights for him. These are the books he chose:

Whatever Happened to Penny Candy
Ivanhoe
Watership Down
The Age of Chivalry
Eric Sloane's Weather Book
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
The Talisman
Hereward the Wake
The Birth of Britain 

They almost have opposite tastes in reading. Ivanhoe, Watership Down, and Eric Sloane's Weather Book were not among Moozle's favourites and she still hasn't read The Talisman because she says she does not like Sir Walter Scott. Actually The Talisman was everyone else's favourite Scott novel.
Moozle loved the science selections but Eric Sloane's Weather Book went above her head at times - it was one of Benj's favourites. He didn't care for The Life of the Spider by Fabre (we have one of the world's deadliest spiders in our area so that probably didn't help) but Moozle got right into it and just about every reading was accompanied by a science journal entry.
However, they both loved The Lord of the Rings trilogy!

This verse from Ecclesiastes, that Charlotte Mason quotes in Volume 6, is very apt:

'In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.'

Ecclesiastes 11:6

One child may imbibe certain ideas from a book, while a different child won't, but we can't predict what ideas will inspire them. Our job is to provide a wide variety of books the same way we would provide food for a scrumptious smorgasbord. I've been quite surprised at some of the books that have been the trigger for ideas; books that I wouldn't have expected to charm them, but they have. Having children who've had almost opposite reactions to books has made this observation even more apparent to me:

Education is a life. That life is sustained on ideas. Ideas are of spiritual origin...we must sustain a child's inner life with ideas as we sustain his body with food. Probably he will reject nine-tenths of the ideas we offer, as he makes use of only a small proportion of his bodily food, rejecting the rest. He is an eclectic; he may choose this or that; our business is to supply him with due abundance and variety and his to take what he needs...out of a whole big book he may not get more than half a dozen of those ideas upon which his spirit thrives; and they come in unexpected places and unrecognised forms...

A Philosophy of Education, Pg. 109

I don't think a child has to love a book. They might find it difficult, and we may be tempted to drop it, but there needs to be some books that make them work a bit harder, build some more muscle, or they won't grow. It's not a cruel & unusual punishment to require them to persevere.

Many children are fussy eaters but we don't allow them to just eat junk because that's what they like & it will help avoid conflict for us if we just give them what they desire. If a child is sick or is convalescing, we make allowances by giving them the food they desire, within reason, but a well and healthy child doesn't get the same treatment.

A child may not be ready for some of the ideas presented in a book, but they will seize some of them while others may give them a foretaste that could develop at a later time. Smoked salmon, haloumi, and blue vein cheese might be passed over for other better known foods the first or second time around, but then one day they decide to try them and find they are very moreish. The other thing we need to consider is if overall the material is at a suitable level for them. If every book is difficult, perhaps we need to rethink our choice of books or grade level. 

Something I've made a point of doing this last year is to stretch Moozle's reading so that she's just not reading books with lots of action. She is a good reader but doesn't like slow books. A couple of those books I've mentioned towards the end of this post.

Other Highlights From This Year

In my original plans for Moozle's Year 7, I mentioned we were doing Apologia's Anatomy & Physiology. We finished that and then continued with The Way We Work by David Macaulay. Moozle loves Macaulay's illustrations in this book and I was surprised at how in depth the text is.

This section covered lipids and Macaulay used a number of technical terms that she wasn't familiar with. I found a video on lipids to help out. We'll be continuing with this book in Year 8.

A notebook page 

When my children get to about 15 or 16 years of age, I have them do a Senior First Aid course. In the past I've organised this and opened it up to some other families with older children & it's an intensive 2 day course. A few months ago, a homeschooling friend organised a course that ran over 4 weeks, one afternoon per week. Both Moozle and I did the course (a refresher for me) & I thought that spreading it out over a month was a good way to do it. There is so much information and doing it this way was much easier & left more time to let it all soak in.

Another focus this year was on Natural History Illustration which I wrote about here and here.

Handicrafts - the past few months have been devoted to patchwork and quilting. This is her major project.

Cello - this year she's preparing for the AMEB Grade 7 exam and has also had the opportunity to play in church a few times.

On the family front, the role of Aunty has come very naturally & she is a favourite with her little niece. We're all looking forward to the birth of our son and his wife's first child due in October and the wedding of our second daughter in September.

Some of Moozle's reading this year:

The Refugees by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - 'Quite a good book but the main character behaved stupidly at times. Conan Doyle tends to make the Frenchmen excitable little wimps, while in books like this the Frenchmen always think the English are calm cool and collected, with no emotions whatsoever.' 4 out of 5

Lorna Doone by R.D. Blackmore - scheduled in AO Year 8 as a free read. 'It took ages to get into the book, rambled on at times, but it was a good story.' 4 out of 5

An illustrated kindle version is here.

The Spy by James Fenimore Cooper - set during the American Revolutionary War and written by an author who lived around that time period. This was Moozle's first book by Cooper and she didn't mind it, but I think she'll appreciate some of his other books a bit more later on. 3 out of 5

Midwinter by John Buchan - a little different to his Richard Hannay series. Midwinter is a tale of the  Jacobite rising set in 1745. John Buchan always gets a good rap in our house. 4½ out of 5:

'The Jacobite army marches on into England and Alastair Maclean, close confident of Charles Edward Stewart, embarks on a secret mission to raise support for the cause in the west. He soon begins to suspect someone close to the Prince is passing information to the Government, but just as he closes in on the traitor his own life is put in danger.'

The Black Stallion series by Walter Farley - this is a series that Moozle has enjoyed for a few years now and she added a couple more to her collection recently. 4½ out of 5.  

I've been thinking about the next year's work and my plan is to cover AO Years 8 & 9 over eighteen months. I have a couple of reasons for this. One is that the school year here in Australia goes from February to December with a fairly long break over Christmas. We've never followed the school terms but I'm finding more and more that our outside activities do. Just about everything shuts down for the school holidays and the Christmas break and we often end up catching up with people during the official school holidays. There's also much less traffic at those times so it's easier to get out and about.

The other reason is so that Moozle isn't straddling two years - she started Year 7 in the middle of last year. At the end of next year she will have completed Year 9 and then she'll start Year 10 at the beginning of the next year...if that makes sense!  Anyhow, that's the plan & I'm looking at the AO schedule here - starting at Week 25, which will take us through to the end of the year and then continuing with this next year. So instead of doing AO Years 7, 8, & 9 in two years, we'll be doing Years 8 & 9 in one and a half years. Clear as mud?

Edited to add our weekly schedule. This is what I've done for many years - give the schedule out at the beginning of the week and let them decide which books to do each day. I check each day to see what's been done and if I find they've gotten a bit lax, I'll give them a list of things I'd like completed. Each of my children has had a preference for certain subjects so I make sure they haven't left things out and if they have, get them to attend to it the first thing the next day. 
They have all tended to like doing a book chapter in one hit & not spreading it out over a week - even the longer reads such as Churchill's Histories.

My original plan for Moozle's Year 7 - I made some modifications especially with Devotional reading and Science. 

Highlights from Term 1

Australian content

Apart from what I mentioned in my original plans, Moozle read & re-read some Australian titles this year. Many of the books I want to use I've either used in earlier years or plan to use later on when she's a little older. I picked up a couple of Nan Chauncy books we didn't have, Tiger in the Bush & Tangara and she read those but they were easy for her. 
The Silver Brumby series are some she re-read and enjoyed doing so. They are excellent reading.

I have a page at the top of this blog where I record some of the Australian titles we've read.

My Homeschool has some options for Australian families that includes assistance for those needing to register with the government.

In Defence of Old Science Books

A common charge against Charlotte Mason educators is that we use too many old books. When it comes to teaching science, this objection is even more vehement. How can you teach science using books that were written ten, twenty, thirty or worse still, over a hundred years ago?
Yes, we do tend to use older books but that's not because older books are intrinsically better than more modern titles. There are plenty of dud older books that we'd never use for the good reason that they aren't well-written. The reason we'd choose an older book over a more recent is because it has a literary approach, i.e. it presents facts that are clothed in literary language.
More and more, education has become utilitarian in its approach, and this is reflected in the teaching of science and the content of the books that are used. David Hicks made this observation:

'...as science took a technological turn and as education began preparing students for work rather than for leisure, for the factory rather than for the parlor, the school itself came to resemble the factory, losing its idiosyncratic, intimate, and moral character...
In its utilitarian haste, the state often peddles preparation for the practical life to our young as the glittering door to the life of pleasure; but by encouraging this selfish approach to learning, the state sows a bitter fruit against that day when the community depends on its younger members to perform charitable acts and to consider arguments above selfish interests.'

Norms & Nobility by David Hicks

When a book is too direct and factual there's the possibility that the student may not appropriate the material.
I've thought about this not only in relation to my children but also to my own reading. Some thoughts on uniting the literary & the scientific here.

Of course some things will have changed from when a science book was first written, but we could say that about a science text that was written a year ago. There are ways to bring the knowledge up to date without too much trouble while still giving your student the foundational concepts padded out in a literary medium. YouTube videos are one way that's worked well for us. The chapter from the book is read first and then an appropriate video is shown after that.
We take care that:

'...all knowledge offered him is vital, that is, that facts are not presented without their informing ideas.' 

Towards a Philosophy of Education, pg xxx

Some of the science books I've been using this year for my 13 year old daughter are in the 'old' category. Some are more modern, but they are all good. The first three book below are scheduled for Year 7 (Form III) at AmblesideOnline.


The Life of the Spider by Jean Henri Fabre (1823-1910)

Notebook page for The Life of the Spider 

The Wonder Book of Chemistry by Jean Henri Fabre - translated into English in 1922

These two books by Fabre are my daughter's favourites. Interestingly, Fabre was not only a scientist but a poet (see a short bio here). Charlotte Mason said of French scientists that,

'...they perceive that as there is an essence of history which is poetry so there is an essence of science to be expressed in exquisite prose.'

 Notebook page after reading Chapter 17 of The Wonder Book of Chemistry

 

I've used some of the University of Nottingham's Periodic Table of the Elements to not only bring some of the concepts in The Wonder Book of Chemistry (and other books we've used in the past couple of years) up to date but also to see demonstrations of science experiments that we wouldn't be able to perform safely at home.

Eric Sloane's Weather Book (1952)

The BBC's Wild Weather series narrated by Richard Hammond have been helpful with Sloane's book which on the surface looks simple enough but contains some difficult topics where a visual or simulated demonstration is helpful.

Architecture Shown to the Children by Gladys Wynne (1913)

This year we started Architectural Science and Gladys Wynne's book is our primary text. I've added in a couple of other books we have that relate to the science behind architecture such as String, Straightedge, & Shadow: The Story of Geometry by Julia E. Diggins (1965)
Although this would be classified as Mathematics and not Science, we're using it alongside the above book as it relates to Architecture in the Ancient World. The Grand Design DVD's are also an enjoyable addition from time to time.

Some examples from Moozle's Architecture Notebook

Secrets of the Universe by Paul Fleisher - this was originally published in 1987 and is out of print but it was re-issued as five separate books in 2002. Moozle is reading this one at present:

This is a series that a few of my children have enjoyed and learnt quite a lot from. Fleisher has explained the concepts well and included experiments that are do-able in the home situation. This was one Moozle did on light reflection last week:

Signs & Seasons by Jay Ryan (2007) is a more recent science publication but I'm supplementing with The Constellations & How to Find Them by Sir William Peck (1942) as he writes from a Southern Hemisphere perspective.

I managed to find a sundial in a local park

Natural Science

The older books really shine with this subject and just about every book I have related to this field is old. I have up to date field guides for studying birds and plants in our part of the world but reading the writing of earlier naturalists is very inspiring. An interesting article I found about this: What Early 20th Century Nature Study Can Teach Us.
Some of the books I use the most are:

Natural History in Australia by William Gillies & Robert Hall (1903)

Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock (1911)

Bush Calendar by Amy Mack (1909)

I posted a list of some of these that are available free online here. 

Mother Culture Science


These are some science titles I've read for my own education, or have used with my older children in the high school years. I've linked to reviews I've written on them or where we've used them in high school.

Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood by Oliver Sacks (2001) - my own reading and one of my sons read it around the age of 16 years.

Longitude by Dava Sobel (2011) - this was a book I read aloud about 5 years ago to multiple ages

Madame Curie by Eva Curie (1937)

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (2010)

The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA by James D. Watson (1968)

Understanding Physics by Isaac Asimov (1966) - we used this in Years 9-11

Mr. Tompkins Inside Himself by George Gamow & Martynas Ycas (1967)

The following books are medically related, inspirational/devotional & highly recommended:

Fearfully & Wonderfully Made by Philip Yancey & Dr. Paul Band (1980)

Ten Fingers for God by Dorothy Clarke Wilson (1965) - a biography of Dr. Paul Brand

Year 7 AmblesideOnline: highights from Term 1

We've finished the first term of Ambleside Online Year 7 and here are some highlights and thoughts about some of what we've done. To see my original plans and some book substitutes see this post.

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

This is the first time we've used Folger Theatre audios for Shakespeare. We've used Naxos and Arkangel recordings in the past which were very good, but as I buy most things like this from BookDepository and they didn't have the audios I usually order, I decided to try out Folger, which also happened to be discounted.
As you might expect, they are very well done, but it was weird hearing Shakespearean actors speaking with American accents! They also don't have an outline showing which scenes start when - so if you happen to stop half way through a scene, for example, you have to mess around fast forwarding until you get to the right spot. However, nothing I can't work with.

Nature Study

I haven't been as intentional about this as I usually am due to circumstances but Moozle likes to go outside and feed the birds and I have some herbs and cucumbers doing nicely up on our verandah.
We found this 'fiddler beetle' yesterday and if you look at its back you can make out the shape of a fiddle/violin.

We had a couple of packets of seeds and to check to see if they were still viable, we put them in ziploc bags with a damp paper towel. We also grew a couple of bean seeds to watch their growth.

African Daisy

Beowulf

We've been taking turns reading sections of this book aloud each week - much better than just reading it silently. This passage jumped out to me because it shows that the tendency to overlook a person of substance and character for another who perhaps has charisma, but is mostly bluff, is nothing new:

'He had been poorly regarded for a long time, was taken by the Geats for less than he was worth; and their lord too had never much esteemed him in the mead-hall. They firmly believed that he lacked force, that the prince was a weakling; but presently every affront to his deserving was reversed.'

Wonderbook of Chemistry - experiments with air. Going well with this book & it continues for the remainder of Year 7. I started off reading it aloud but after a few lessons Moozle continued on her own.

Ten Fingers for God - a wondefrul biography of Dr. Paul Brand that I scheduled in place of one of the AO devotional books. Moozle read this on her own and enjoyed it very much.

The Brendan Voyage - this book continues until the end of Term 2 and it's a great read. I'm reading it aloud (there are a few profanities scattered throughout the book) & it's one of Moozle's favourites.

Churchill's Birth of Britain - I've used Churchill's series on British history with all seven of my children and I think because they read so much historical fiction by authors such as Rosemary Sutcliff, G.A. Henty, Cynthia Harnett, Barbara Willard & Henry Treece prior to coming to his books, they had no trouble grasping the detail presented by Churchill, or at least they had a fair amount of background knowledge not to feel swamped.

The Weather Book - this has not been a favourite, which surprised me as Moozle enjoys science and her next brother up really liked this book. She has engaged much more with the Wonderbook of Chemistry & The Secrets of the Universe series but I'm pressing on with this as I think it's an excellent book. I've learnt not to discard a book if it seems too hard and have found that pushing through a difficult read does have its reward.

Latin

We started Latin Alive! 1 published by Classical Academic Press a couple of months ago and it's been timely and a great fit. I wrote about it here.

French

Continuing with French for Children B, also by Classical Academic Press. I'm hoping the next book in the series is printed by the time we've finished this one!

Architecture

I posted the books we're using in the AO Year 7 link at the top of this page. We're not rushing this and will probably extend this study into the next year or two but it's been going well and this little book that we're using is fantastic!

The Fallacy Detective - fun & interesting!

The Grammar of Poetry

We're sailing through this nicely at present. I remember it covers some more challenging concepts later on, but Moozle has always enjoyed composition and poetry so I'm not expecting any problems & can slow things down if I think we need to.

Other highlights from this term:

A Grade 6 Cello exam took place about two weeks ago and Moozle passed with an 'A' so she was super happy. It took a lot of work and that squeezed out some other things for a while.

Our eldest daughter & her husband had their first child, our first grandchild, and made two aunties and four uncles out of our other children. Christmas is going to be fun!