Characteristics of a Living Book

At the Simply Charlotte Mason that I attended earlier this month Sonya Shafer helped us to understand the characteristics of a living book. This was eye opening to me as I've always found myself wondering how to determine if a book is worthy of the children or not. Here's what she said:

1. Make the subject come alive. A living book allows the child to live in personalities that he finds in the books. A living book entices the child's emotions. It helps you form an emotion with the event. She said that if you open the book and look over a portion of it, and you want to keep reading then you've probably found a living book. It's not a book full of dates, statistics, etc. Basically, as far away from a text book as you can get.

2. Get in touch with great ideas from great men. A mind feeds on ideas. We need to feed the children's minds with good ideas, what is beautiful, noble, and bright.

3. Well-written. CM says the books must have:
-literary power
-worthy thoughts well put
-inspiring tales well told
-good simple English with a certain charm of style

4. Not childish twaddle. Twaddle is described by Miss Mason as "not diluted". Books should not talk down to the child. Look at the length of sentences. Check out the very first sentence on the first page and that should be an indicator. A lot of the "reading made easy" books are twaddle says Sonya.

5. Give the child the idea that knowledge is supremely attractive and that reading is delightful.

6. The best you can find. CM admitted for some subjects it is hard to find a good living book. Do the best you can.

7. Can they narrate it? This was a major test that CM gave as to whether a book was a living book or not.

8. Meets your personal standards. Just because a book is on a certain book list doesn't mean you have to use it. Does it have a Biblical worldview? What attitudes are endorsed? Magic or not? Note: CM used fairy tales with kids. It helps to spur on the imagination. But again, it's a personal decision.

Basically, choose your books before God- you have to answer only to Him! CM education is not child directed, but the child should enjoy the books.

I hope this helps us all to be able to discern a good living book from twaddle. I personally don't have a problem with my dd7 reading a little twaddle every now and then. I grew up loving to read and mom let me read anything I wanted. If I had to read only more difficult and tiring books I doubt I'd have the love of reading that I have now. For school and bed time we make sure we have good living books. But in spare time I'm not going to stop her from reading a little twaddle if I have approved the book first.

Well, we're leaving tomorrow for a much needed and much anticipated family vacation. The best part?? The kids don't know yet! We're going to my in-laws for Thanksgiving and then we're leaving on Friday for Disney World! I'll post a couple of pics when I return. I hope you all have a very Happy Thanksgiving!!! Even those of you not in the US...let's all remember to be thankful to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! We have so many blessings!!! God bless!

Jill

Simply Charlotte Mason Conference

A couple of weeks ago I was blessed to be able to attend a SCM conference by Sonya Shafer. What a sweet, precious woman who is such a wonderful resource in learning about the CM style of education. She has many different seminars, however I attended the Books &Things Seminar (which is the one I would have chosen, given the chance)!

She started out with a quote from Miss Mason herself.

"Education is the Science of Relations; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we must train him upon physical exercises, nature, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books; for we know that our business is, not to teach him all about anything, but to help him to make valid, as many as may be of 'Those first-born affinities, that fit our new existence to existing things' " (Preface to the Home Education series).

I love the part of the quote that stated "our business is not to teach him all about anything...". Doesn't that relieve a lot of the pressure that we, as homeschooling mothers, put on ourselves? Our role is to show them a little about a lot, in my opinion. We are to teach them how to teach themselves to become lifelong learners. Let's tickle their fancy about a lot of subjects and see what comes of it. I really liked that quote.

Sonya placed the three types of relations that we, as humans, have onto a chart:

Relation to God
Relation to Man
Relation to Universe

Then under each of those three she placed the school subjects that we study:

God: Bible
Man (past and present men): History, Literature, Morals and Economics, Citizenship,
Composition, Languages, Art
Universe (God's creation): Science, Geography, Math, Physical Development/Handicrafts

I love seeing these laid out in this way. Each subject is taught as a relation to one of the three things. I've just never thought of that in this way. This was the conclusion of her introduction (haha!). I'll post Session 1 in another post. Hope you're enjoying it!

Jill

Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival!

Yay! It's CM blog carnival time again and I have two articles in this carnival! (I think I accidently sent two in, oops...my mistake.) But what fun to see your blog entries on someone else's site. I've really started liking this! haha! I hope you'll take a look at Richele's blog "Under the Golden Apple Tree". It's full of wonderful CM articles. And yes, I know I'm so very late in updating everyone on my wonderful CM conference. It's been a very busy time in our household and I hope to get to it soon! Meanwhile, look over the other articles on the CM blog carnival. Happy reading!

Fall Wonders- CM style!

"It would be well if all we persons in authority, parents and all who act for parents, could make up our minds that there is no sort of knowledge to be got in these early years so valuable to children as that which they get for themselves of the world they live in. Let them once get touch with Nature, and a habit is formed which will be a source of delight through life. We were all meant to be naturalists, each in his degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of pant and animal life and to care for none of these things" (Vol. 1, p. 61).

As we were waving goodbye to Daddy this morning Man-Man looked up at me with an excited grin on his face, eyes wide with anticipation. "Mommy, when can we go into the back-back and study our nature study?" The "back-back" as the kids have so named it, is the large free space that exists behind our back gate. Daddy put a gate into the fence so that we could go into the wonderful wooded area behind our house and explore all that God has for us. There is even a little creek back there.

I told Man-Man to go get his shoes on and tell his sisters we're going to do our nature study. The sleepy house was suddenly alive and jumping! In no time we were out of the doors, with Gidgi (my mom) and Lucy (our dog) in tow.

"Wow, Mom! The leaves are all gone! And our favorite hiding tree has no leaves on it either!" Man-Man was the first to notice the drastic change in our trees from two weeks ago. No longer are the beautiful yellow, red, orange, and brown leaves hanging from the trees. Instead they are piled up in a mound under the trees from which they fell. The kids love one tree in particular. It has large limbs which bend under the weight of the leaves to form a canopy of sorts. It's a club house, or secret hiding place for them. But now, it's bare and empty. We found a wonderful treasure on their tree though. Large, green, oval shaped things hung from the branches. Some of these green things were split open to reveal a pecan hanging inside. What a fun discovery! They ran around the tree finding other green capsules to open up and even began gathering the pecans they found on the ground.

I asked if they could tell which leaves used to be on the tree. There were many many different types of leaves on the ground under this tree. The wind had been working it's magic and all of the leaves were mixed up. Tink found one little lone stalk still hanging onto the special tree though. She ran and picked it, proudly proclaiming that THIS must be the leaf since it came from the tree itself. We matched it with some of the leaves on the ground.

"The child has truly a great deal to do before he is in a condition to 'believe his own eyes'; but Nature teaches so gently, so gradually, so persistently, that he is never overdone, but goes on gathering little stores of knowledge about whatever comes before him" (Vol. 1, p. 66).

Man-Man made another discovery. Over in the distance was a tree that still had many green leaves on it. As a matter of fact, though some leaves had fallen, most were still as green as ever. I picked up a leaf from our Pecan tree off of the ground and took it over to the new mystery tree. I picked a "leaf" from this tree and held the two together. We discussed the fact that this new tree was actually a pine tree and noted the differences in the leaves' shape and color. We also found other evergreen trees in our back-back and compared those leaves. Now, the children made these connections on their own. All I did was guide their discovery. How proud I was that they noticed and wanted to know more about these spiky pine needles I held in my hand.

"That the child should be taken daily, if possible, to scenes-moor or meadow, park, common, or shore-where he may find new things to examine, and so add to his store of real knowledge. That the child's observation should be directed to flower or boulder, bird or tree; that, in fact, he should be employed in gathering the common information which is the basis of scientific knowledge" (Vol. 1, p. 177).

After spending over an hour in the beautiful Fall weather we returned to the indoors to put together all that we'd discovered. Tink drew a picture of the new evergreen needles she and Man-man had discovered. She also wrote a wonderful "essay" detailing many of our facts and adventures outside. This has been one of the most surprising benefits of our Nature studies. Tink really loves to write about what she's seen or done. She writes it once and we go through it together correcting spelling and punctuation. She then recopies it onto a clean sheet to put into her nature journal. There we go...science, spelling, grammar, copywork all rolled into one!

"Of the teaching of Natural Philosophy, I will only remind the reader of what was said in an earlier chapter- that there is no part of a child's education more important than that he should lay, by his own observation, a wide basis of facts torwards scientific knowledge in the future. he must live hours in the open air, and as far as possible, in the country; must look and touch and listen; must be quick to note, consciously, ever peculiarity of habit or structure, in beast, bird, or insect; the manner of growth and fructification of every plant" (Vol. 1, p. 264).

"And this is the process the child shoudl continue for the first few years of his life. Now is the storing time which sould be spent in laying up images of things familiar" (Vol. 1, p. 66).

Jill

Simply Charlotte Mason

I had such an amazing time at the Simply Charlotte Mason conference this past weekend. Sonya Shafer was the speaker and it was wonderful to put a face to her name. I've always respected her and her work, now I was able to see and hear her. What a sweet and knowledgable lady! I have so much that I want to share, now I have to get my thoughts organized and figure out what to share first!

I want to thank my wonderful mother for first finding the conference and then driving 5 hours to attend it with me. Also, she bought all of my Christmas presents in the form of SCM books! Yay! Like I said, I have lots of resources and thoughts to share. But for now you'll have to settle for a few pictures. Until tomorrow...

Jill

Knitting knowledge!

For the past week my daughter (dd7) has been counting down the days until today. Anxiously, and impatiently she's been reminding me that we have a date to the library on Thursday at 10.

See, last week while Man-Man was in his Kindertot class I took the girls to the library. It's a favorite activity or ours and we try to do it as much as possible. We saw a few ladies from our church leaving around the same time we were. They'd previously asked me to join their "Bookworm Stitchers" group after I'd made the comment that I'd always wanted to learn. When they saw us, Mrs. Melanie again told me that I needed to come "learn the art" with them. I laughed, mostly at the thought that I could never get away from all three of my angels every Thursday from 10-12! lol! I told her that if anyone could learn to knit it would be Tink. She's very good with her hands. She loves making potholders with the looms, she loves sculpting out of clay, painting, drawing, and making "God's eye's" with the popsicle sticks and yarn. Tink has ALWAYS wanted to learn to knit. The ladies were delighted and told me to bring her next Thrusday (today) and they'd bring along some smaller needles and extra thread for Tink to learn on.

Oh, the excitment in Tink was almost unbearable. You'd have thought we had just told her we were going to DisneyWorld (which is exactly why our kids DO NOT KNOW of our impending trip to Disney the day after Thanksgiving...they'd never leave us alone! lol!). She's been talking about learning to knit all week and today she finally received her first lesson in knitting.

The group of ladies (all grandmothers or great-grandmothers) meet each week and sit around chatting while making beautiful quilts and other projects. I loved watching my daughter sit and learn from these beautiful and learned ladies. What talent, what a legacy they are! What a blessing for Tink to be taught by them. So, this next week we'll meet at the same place, same time.

Remember, as you're looking for handiworks for your children, that sometimes they can be found right in front of you. There are always ladies or men of an older generation who would be thrilled to teach their craft to a new generation. All too often we're just not interested or we don't take the time to learn. I pray Tink and the rest of my children learn all they can (and I'm hoping that Tink can eventually teach me)!

The family that prays together...

I was stunned the other day when Tink (dd7) looked at me from across the lunch table and said, "Mom, we don't pray enough in our school". Wow! I was stunned. Of course, she was right. We focus all of our school day around learning our Bible story, our Bible versus, our books of the Bible, even our science is Christian. Yet here my daughter hit the nail on the head. We don't actually pray enough. Don't your kids just amaze your sometimes?? It's like the Lord speaks directly through them! I am in awe of some of the spiritual statements or actions that my children have said or done! God truly uses them to teach me daily about His love and His mercy!

I set forth immediately to rectify our little "situation". We designed a "prayer jug" (so named by Tink herself) made from an oatmeal container. I cut out the construction paper and Tink and Man-Man decorated it together. We then taped it to the outside of the prayer jug and cut a slit in the lid. We cut little slips of paper so that at any time of the day the kids can go by and write a prayer request down (or ask someone to help them write a prayer request in the case of Man-man) and slip it into the prayer jug. Each day we have a family prayer time and someone volunteers to pray for each request. This has been amazing and a wonderful addition to our school and our family in general. After all, the main reason that I don't send my children to school is because my kids aren't going to go to a school where our Lord is not allowed. I want to make sure He's in our school each day! Thank you, Tink for reminding me to invite Him in!