Notes from the 2017 Newcastle Mum Heart Conference

This is a post to address some questions that came up during my Charlotte Mason Workshop and also in personal conversations over the weekend.

Scheduling

* Older children can start their work independently so you may spend time with the youngest ones.
The subjects that worked best for us with this were Maths, Copywork, Music Practice & regular jobs e.g. emptying the dishwasher or bringing down the washing.

* Keep lessons short but don't let them waste time.

* If I don't cover some things during a week, I schedule them first thing the next day/week. This way we get to cover everything & don't send the message that some areas are less important than others. It seems to be the more 'unpractical' things that miss out otherwise. Poetry, picture study etc are not extras that we tack on if we have enough time.

* Alternate the type of lessons so there is a natural 'rest' between lessons. 'When Children Love to Learn' edited by Elaine Cooper (see pg. 215) divides subjects into Inspirational and Disciplinary subjects. By alternating subjects between the two groups we provide this rest:

Inspirational Subjects  
             
Bible                                             
Plutarch
Composer Study
Literature
Shakespeare
Nature Study
Picture Study
Poetry
Read Aloud
Science
History   

Disciplinary Subjects

Drawing/Art
Composition
Dictation
French
Geography
Grammar
Handiwork
Handwriting
Mathematics
Recitation
Music
Physical Education

Narration

The question came up regarding finding the time to listen to multiple narrations.
Some ideas if you have a few children & they all have to narrate:

*   Combine some books & they take turns narrating

*   If you follow Ambleside Online there can be around 4 or 5 readings per day, depending on how you schedule your week.  If they’re older one of those re-tellings could be a written narration, another a science notebook entry (write up an experiment/draw what happened etc); an entry on their history timeline; an oral narration; a picture narration; a diagram. They could also record their own narration (Voxer is something I’ve heard others talk about but have never used myself).

*  I made out a weekly schedule for everyone & allowed them to choose what they wanted to do from that & checked during the week to see that they were getting through it. My older ones would often tell me before they were going to do a reading then I knew that around 15 or 20 mins later they would be ready to narrate. If I read aloud to them I got them to narrate as soon as I’d finished.

*  I found with my older children, that their oral narrations were usually short and to the point, so it didn't require a great deal of time to listen to them. My younger ones tended to be more verbose.

*  An older child could listen to a younger one's oral narration & write it out. You check it later. Multiple children could act out a scene from a book or a Shakespeare play. We had a few historical battles acted out...

*  I had them do most of their oral narrations in the morning when I had less distractions, then after lunch we had a time all together where we did devotions, read aloud, poetry & maybe something else I chose such as picture study or composer.

*  If you have a child who is a good writer & enjoys it, you can increase their written work & not have as many oral narrations. I’d only do this if they had spent a few years honing their oral narration.

*  Late readers – oral narrations will prepare them for written work when they do learn to read; read aloud good quality literature; use audio books & have them follow along with the book.

*  If you don’t get to hear an oral narration for some reason, before you read the next chapter in the book, ask them what happened in the previous chapter. I usually do this anyhow.

* Children need a rich & varied background of reading to be able to express themselves. If they can’t narrate a book it’s often a sign that the book isn’t ‘living.’

* Children don’t have to completely understand everything for a book to have done its work. My daughter has just finished reading The Mystery of the Periodic Table (AO Year 6). A couple of times when she came to narrate what she'd read she'd say, "I didn't really understand that." So I asked her to tell me something about what she had understood. There was always something she could tell me. Charlotte Mason used the analogy of a bountiful feast, a tantalizing smorgasborg, that we spread before our children - they won't be able to eat everything on the table but they will come away satisfied.

*  Written narration with boys - teach them how to touch type & let them use the computer if they are hampered by the physical act of writing. Some of our boy's narrations improved dramatically when we did this. Typing narrations was also helpful for my youngest daughter who had poor spelling but loved writing.

*  As they get more confident, make the requirements a bit higher. In the earlier years they start with a straight re-telling. Progress to different forms of writing e.g.creative narrations – write a poem, illustrate part of the story, draw a picture, write a newspaper article, write a letter.
Turn a poem into prose; re-write (paraphrase) a passage from a book in your own words – good for short essays; write a summary – eg a battle or historical event.
 

* In Volume 6 Charlotte Mason writes:  ‘Forms V and VI. (Grades 10-12) In these Forms some definite teaching in the art of composition is advisable, but not too much, lest the young scholars be saddled with a stilted style which may encumber them for life.’

I've used Wordsmith Craftman or Jensen's Format Writing at this stage to cover essay writing.
Try googling 'Expository writing' if you want some free resources to help with this. 
Transitioning from written narrations to essays:
I posted some ideas for written narrations here.

General 

There is a tension between requiring children to work hard versus not requiring enough of them. The temptation is to give children less work if they’re struggling, but often they don't need less but just different. They need a broad curriculum with enough of a challenge to give them a push without overwhelming them. One of my children was very advanced for her age & I was talking to an older lady I knew about how to work with this. She suggested to go broader rather than pushing her ahead. I did this and it certainly didn't hinder her in any way.

One thing is certain in homeschooling whether you have a large family family or not - the only constant is change! At least that's what I've experienced. Children grow and develop, the mix of ages and stages change. We change. Life changes.

Some things to remember:

'The Lord is my Shepherd' - Psalm 23. He doesn't drive me, He leads me.

'He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to His heart; He gently leads those that have young. - Isaiah 40:11

'Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.' Matthew 11:28



 

   

Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1966)

Russian author and Nobel Prize winner, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, completed his book Cancer Ward in 1966. English translations were published in 1968, and although book was banned in the Soviet Union, unauthorized Russian copies were distributed in samizdat.
The story takes place in a male cancer ward of a Soviet hospital in the mid-1950's and revolves around a number of characters, the central one being Oleg Kostoglotov. Kostoglotov's life mirrors that of Solzhenitsyn in that he was imprisoned for his criticism of Stalin, and after being diagnosed with stomach cancer, was transferred from the concentration camp to a cancer ward. And like Solzhenitsyn, he later recovered.
I was totally absorbed by this book's 570 pages and despite the fact that Russian literature is often notoriously hard to read, this book definitely wasn't.
The most fascinating aspect of Cancer Ward for me wasn't so much the allegorical links to the Communist regime and the descriptions of life in a dictatorship. As interesting as they were, there have been other books I've read that addressed this, one of them also written by Solzhenitsyn. (See One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich)
What was so interesting to me was the medical treatment of cancer and the attitude of the medical staff to patients and treatment.
Kostoglotov believed that he had the right to choose what form and how much treatment he should have. The medical profession believed that information should be withheld from patients, 'for their own good.' They didn't understand the technicalities and should leave the decisions to those who do. This is really no different to what used to happen in Australia, for instance. It wasn't uncommon to leave a patient ignorant of their impending doom. Relatives could make the call on whether to let a member of their family know that their disease was terminal. Even now, to question the standard method of treatment for something like cancer is to bring down the ire of the establishment upon yourself, as a friend of mine recently found out when she decided not to undergo chemotherapy after her cancer surgery.
The medical staff in that Russian hospital were conscientious and sincere and believed they were doing the right thing by Kostoglotov. They were tight-lipped about the hormonal therapy he was receiving and its long-term effect of impotency, but he didn't want to be saved 'at any price.'
Kostoglotov also did some of his own research and discovered that concern was beginning to surface in medical circles regarding the long term effects of radiotherapy.

The gist of it was that X-ray cures, which had been safely, successfully, even brilliantly accomplished ten or fifteen years ago through heavy doses of radiation, were now resulting in unexpected damage or mutilation of the irradiated parts.

...ten, fifteen or eighteen years ago when the term 'radiation sickness' did not exist, X-ray radiation had seemed such a straightforward, reliable and foolproof method, such a magnificent achievement of modern medical technique, that it was considered retrograde, almost sabotage of public health, to refuse to use it and to look for other, parallel or round-about methods.

Solzhenitsyn explores the relationship between doctors and patients and between fellow cancer sufferers as they go through their various forms of treatment.
There are numerous Translator's notes throughout the book that explain some of the historical background needed to understand the context of the author's writing, such as this:

Khrushchev had just become Party leader. He believed that wide cultivation of maize in the north of Russia would solve grain and fodder problems. He called upon Young Communists to fight those who didn't believe maize could be grown there. His scheme, however, was defeated by the climate.

Although Solzhenitsyn insisted that his book was simply about cancer, there are seemingly allegorical statements that contradict this:

A man dies from a tumour, so how can a country survive with growths like labour camps and exiles?

I highly recommend this book, especially if you have some sort of  medical background. Solzhenitsyn was perceptive and prophetic and his insights into human nature were superb.

Some favourite passages:

It is not our level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes lie within our power, so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him.

Nowadays we don't think much of a man's love for an animal; we laugh at people who are attached to cats. But if we stop loving animals, aren't we bound to stop loving humans too?

Soon it will be summer, and this summer I want to sleep on a camp-bed under the stars, to wake up at night and know by the positions of Cygnus and Pegasus what time it is, to live just this one summer and see the stars without their being blotted out by camp searchlights- then afterwards I would be quite content never to wake again.

As the two-thousand-year-old saying goes, you can have eyes and still not see.
But a hard life improves the vision. There were some in the wing who immediately recognized each other for what they were...It was as if they bore some luminous sign on their foreheads, or stigmata on their feet and palms...The Uzbeks and the Karakalpaks had no difficulty in recognising their own people in the clinic, nor did those who had once lived in the shadow of the barbed wire.


The Penguin translation I read was first published by The Bodley Head in 1968.





Linking to Back to the Classics 2017: Classic in Translation; The Classics Club and Books You Loved

History Timelines & Notebooks

We've used a few different ways to record history and I've included a few images of our history notebooks & timelines plus some (mostly) free resources we've used. I've updated this post to add all seven of my children's work they've done over the years. The ages represented are about 9 years to 16 years, both boys and girls.
For years we had a timeline along a wall that was a talking point with anyone who walked up the hallway but a couple of years ago we knocked the wall out to give us some more room in our kitchen area and that was the end of that.

I require them to keep a record of the history they are covering but pretty much leave it to them as to choice of how they do it. A couple have used a spiral notebook & my youngest has been using a simple composition book, but the preference seems to be for separate notebook pages. My older girls  enjoyed using scrapbooking bits and pieces on some of their work. Some liked to draw their own maps, some didn't.

Ambleside Online Year 3

Ambleside Online Year 5

Ambleside Online Year 6

Timeline figures for Famous King & Queens of England (872 AD - 1952) can be found here.

Ambleside Online Year 8

Free timeline figures are here also.

Helps for notebooking.

I used these with one or two of my boys just to give them a framework when they were first starting out with notebooking:

 

Outline maps

 Historical Maps of America


We've used some maps from Knowledge Quest:

http://www.juniorgeneral.org/ A great place for paper soldiers - as long as you don't mind hundreds of little men all over the house. We've used this site innumerable times.

http://www.papertoys.com/ Models of the Taj Mahal and Shakespeare's globe theatre.

Free Notebooking Pages here; here and here!

 Paper models of sphinx, pyramids, and other architecture.

Books and crafts for teaching history and making timelines.

Notebooking Fairy - geography, explorers etc

Make your own notebook pages

How to make paper look aged: Try this.

Reading the above (which I'd had cut out from somewhere years ago) makes me wonder about the teaching of history generally. I have a vague memory of 'learning' about the Eureka Stockade, and something about the 'Proletariat' and 'Assimilation' from my school days. Any historical knowledge I've gained has been in the process of teaching my own children so I'm not altogether surprised by some of the ridiculous answers in the snippet above.
This quote is from a Parents review article I read recently and from what I've seen in my own children it certainly rings true.

"Here we may notice the use of fiction in history. History should narrate truth. Can fiction, such as the historical novel, be in any sense an aid to truth? I think so, with proper selections and under proper guidance. Fiction kindles the imagination, awakens interest, and secures attention; it is the most pleasing form of narration and it need not sacrifice a truthful impression.

What children remember is the characters of the leading actors, their part in the movement, its issue, and the general picture of the period."

My kids love history and have read copious amounts of Sir Walter Scott, G.A, Henty, Rosemary Sutcliff, and other historical fiction writers and this has given them good background knowledge for works of historical non fiction. I noticed this when it came to them reading Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples which can be difficult unless you have some knowledge of English history.

The Day When GOD MADE CHURCH: A Child's First Book About Pentecost by Rebekah McLeod Hutto; Illustrated by Stephanie Haig

I've never seen a book about the Day of Pentecost for children so I was thrilled to see that Paraclete Press has published this one:
The Day When GOD MADE CHURCH: A Child's First Book About Pentecost by Rebekah McLeod Hutto; Illustrated by Stephanie Haig is a picture book for young children based on the second chapter of Acts in the New Testament.
The author of this book, Rebekah McLeod Hutto, is a gifted Christian educator and communicator, and Associate Pastor for Christian Education and Discipleship at Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City. She has written a simple but descriptive, joy-filled narrative that captures the significance of the Day of Pentecost and the effect it had on the followers of Jesus: men, women and children, who were waiting in Jerusalem for the promise He had given them to be fulfilled.
The vivid illustrations by Stephanie Haig are fitting and beautiful - a perfect match for the story.
I'd recommend this book for children around the ages of 3 to 8 years, for reading at home and/or children's ministry.
32 colourful and engaging pages.

The Day of Pentecost falls on Sunday the 4th of June this year, 50 days after Easter Sunday, and celebrates the descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus' disciples after His ascension. It also marks the birth of the Christian Church. 

Pentecost, the Church's birthday, is an often-overlooked holiday. This book celebrates the miraculous events that occurred on Pentecost and the ways in which the Holy Spirit shaped and continues to shape who we are as God's Church. Children will learn the story of Pentecost: the sights, the sounds, and the people that began the community of the Church. They will discover who the Holy Spirit is and how God calls each of us to follow Jesus. 

The book includes a note to parents, educators and pastors, offering ideas for observing and celebrating God's gift of the Holy Spirit and the birthday of the Church. The Paraclete Press website has a sample preview of the book you may view.

This is the second book from Paraclete Press on church traditions for young children that I've had the pleasure of reviewing this year and I hope the publication of books such as these will be a continuing trend. (See my review on Make Room: A Child's Guide to Lent and Easter)

Paraclete Press provided me with a complimentary copy of this book and they have generously offered some free copies to my readers. If you would like to win a copy of this book, please leave a comment here or on my Facebook page and let me know. Winners will be announced on the 25th of May.







Update 26/05/2017

Many thanks to Paraclete Press for the giveaway. The winners are Sharron & Lisa.