Making sense out of history

I've been asked to elaborate on how I make Connecting With History work in our homeschool, since I combined it in the past with my Catholic Ambleside curriculum, and will continue next year to combine Ambleside Online, Mater Amabilis, and Connecting with History. (CWH)

First, I will say that each of these have their "history" strengths and weaknesses.

Ambleside is full of wonderful history selections, and I deeply admire the advisory's commitment to using original source and free material as much as possible. That being said, I firmly believe that their history is biased and whig-centered, anti-Catholic, and therefore (perhaps not purposely, but nonetheless substantially) dishonest. At the very least, it's incomplete. For those who are wondering what I'm talking about, I can give a simple example. In many of Ambleside's selected readings, when a Catholic person is doing something noble and heroic, he is called "a Christian" and his interest in the Bible, evangelism, etc. is played up, whereas his commitment to the Church, the Saints, etc is completely ignored, despite the historical facts of his faith and personality. However when a famous Catholic does something bad or questionable, he is called "a Catholic," and his commitment to the Church is played up... which is, quite frankly, diabolical. Another example is that there have been substantial Catholic contributions to Ambleside's body of work (curriculum, information, articles, personal information about Charlotte gathered in research, etc.) which have gone completely unacknowledged or unattributed, and every attempt by these contributors to provide an environment which is inclusive for both Protestants AND Catholics has been met with resistance. The reason, I'm beginning to discover, is that the majority of the movers and shakers who have worked hard to provide such a wonderful curriculum follow reformed theology, which essentially rejects Catholicism as a form of Christianity and also rejects philosophy and the use of logic/reason, which are a critical part of a liberal arts curriculum such as CM advocated.  This information has greatly saddened me as I have been discovering it, but I think we all already knew that Ambleside's selections provide a very Calvinsist-centric view of the Christianity and thus, the world just by looking at some of their selections for Church History. I'm by no means arguing against using Ambleside, so PLEASE don't misunderstand me. It is absolutely phenomenal as a curriculum and deserves many praises! But for us Catholics, who know better, we need to be very aware of Ambleside's limitations in the scope of teaching history.

Mater Amabilis' history selections are excellent. I like them so much I am using them! I like them so much I am using them despite the fact that I am also using something else! But I am modifying their use because I have several students of several different ages and I need things to be very simple in my homeschool. If I had only one or two students, I would leave Mater Amabilis exactly as it is and use it as recommended. And as a side note to Catholic readers, don't ever feel like you are settling for a second-rate, "Catholic version of Ambleside Online" when using it. Mater Amabilis is an original creation based entirely on the research of its creators, who have themselves spent time at Ambleside, England studying Charlotte Mason themselves from her own sources, and who have made great contributions to the Ambleside Online curriculum. So don't feel that you are settling. With Mater Amabilis, know that you are getting the very best of Charlotte Mason's original ideas and work, and often, in my opinion, a more honest example of what Charlotte would have said/done considering that her faith background, as a lifelong member of the Church of England with many close Catholic connections (like GK Chesterton's wife!! Squee!!), is much closer to Catholic than to the reformed tradition. Ultimately, Charlotte's theology isn't the "bigger picture" point, and I'm not arguing for one curriculum OVER the other in that I think both perspectives have value for people of either religious persuasion, but I do think that it bears mentioning so that people who use MA with a sigh of resignation can be encouraged.... Mater Amabilis is authentically Charlotte Mason, and is inspired directly from her own choices and sources, not by those of Ambleside Online, therefore remaining faithful to her method.

Connecting with History uses living books, is solidly Catholic in nature, and is very complete. It is chronological (yay) and can quite honestly be a spine for all the rest of your work... if you like unit studies (I don't, and CM didn't.) The only downside to this program, in my view, is that instead of savoring one book all the way through we stuff ourselves with like, twenty different history titles as quickly as possible (the program sometimes recommends reading 2-3 chapters PER DAY. Aint nobody got time fo dat!! Other down sides people often mention is the cost of books (not a problem over here, and I'll tell you why in a minute) and not having lesson plans (also, not a problem. Here we go!)

Most CM-folk agree that we need to be teaching history in two tracks: a national history and a world history simultaneously. Most CM-folk also agree that it's best if the child can keep his own history reading going at his own level.... and yet most large-family mamas will tell you they are terrified of keeping track of each individual child's reading or of the amount of time it will take to sit down with each kid individually until they are able to get their own thing going on.

That's why I've chosen to combine all  those solutions into an easy method: I use CWH for world history, working all together with personal assignments here and there and I use the AO/MA combined ideas to develop a national history track that is tailor made for each student.

Meanwhile, If you've ever heard an experienced CM parent say anything to other, new homeschooling moms I am sure it was this:

"Less is More."

And they swear it's true. ;)

Sooooo..... what to do? There really is just so much good stuff out there!

First, I think, the key is to keep  things simple, especially at the beginning, and to select QUALITY over QUANTITY. When in doubt, do less.

Because Connecting with History does such a great job of covering so much ground (poems and scripture to memorize, picture study, history, geography, copywork, dictation, saints, Bible) it forms the groundwork for much of the day...And we do something from it every day.

Connecting with history operates on a plan: The first part is an introduction, the second is an in-depth study portion, the third is a project/activity/telling/wrap up portion. They are slowly releasing lesson plans, but you don't need lesson plans to make it work.

I tend to do one time period (unit) per month, which gives me four weeks per unit. The first week is the introductory week. I do my background reading (if there is anything I'm not familiar with) and the first night around the dinner table, I introduce the discussion questions. Second night we might watch a movie from that time period and casually introduce the new poem and scripture to be memorized. In that first week, we will do all of the initial readings from the spine (I do Founders of Freedom for the really little kids and Old World's Gifts for the oldest. I do that because they requested it, and NOT because I have to... either one of those would work great for all of them.) I break down the reading from those into two days worth of readings because I have history scheduled for a short period on Monday and again on Thursday. If you have history scheduled every day you could read a smaller portion each day, but I find it is possible to get it all done on two days and focus on literature the other days.

Connecting with History has wonderful literature selections, but Charlotte Mason wasn't a fan of unit studies. If a literature selection is absolutely marvelous, I might opt to use it, but the majority of our literature comes from the AO/MA booklists and is not usually based on the history unit being read. There are enough living non-fiction history books to keep your kids learning and loving history, and my personal opinion is that many of  the historical lit selections available for young people are not well written, only "alive" in the sense that they are purposely descriptive. I want my kids to have THE BEST, so I avoid many of the historical literature selections that I find to be... living twaddle. (A perfect example is the highly acclaimed living math book from CWH Volume I called "What's your angle, Pythagoras?" Completely historically inaccurate, and poorly written, it was a huge waste of our time and money.)

I have a religion slot first thing in the morning, after breakfast. We tend to do Catechism and Saints in the morning and Bible at night, but sometimes I switch it up. In that slot we will do the CWH religious readings--- whichever bible and saints stories are scheduled for that unit. Because we are a CM homeschool, in addition to reading the selected story I have my children narrate it. Before I do it, I drill them on their catechism lessons, for about five minutes, so all together the religion period takes about twenty minutes. After we read and narrate, we might discuss one aspect of what we read, or just say a little prayer.

I have a history period scheduled on Mondays and again on Thursday, and it is for a family read aloud. So for twenty minutes I will do the read aloud. The first week, as I said, I will read from the spine. The second and third week I will read from the selected book. (I use their beginning level read alouds-- and one or two of the important grammar level ones.) When they get older and can read independently, we will use that time to do their independent reading. After I read I will ask for narration, and allow them to ask questions. During the fourth week, there is not any reading to do (or perhaps just a small amount) and so we use that time for activities and events and working on their presentation. Part of their history lesson is always to record (or right now, watch me record) the events and people they are reading about in their book of centuries. Because we are a CM family, we don't do endless notebooking pages, but we do for example, write down a narration and illustrate it, or make what I call a "narration map" as I read (the child draws the events as we read and then uses it to narrate to me) and include those in our notebooks. We also include pictures of our project/activity and presentation. I'm not into crafts, so we don't do anything crazy.

Wednesday is my geography day. On Wednesdays I have a geography period scheduled with twenty minutes of reading and ten minutes of map drills, so if there is appropriate geography reading that goes along with CWH I will use that and ask for narration, then do a map drill. If not, I will continue to read selections from that unit's book list-- an additional saint story, for example, although I do try to make it one that has helpful reading about geography. I might also use that time to watch a netflix documentary or something relating to the geography of the place we are studying if I'm out of reading.

As I said, the last week is the activity week, and we do one or two of the suggested activities (games, charts, etc.) and finally rounding it out with a play or a dinner party. In our homeschool daddy is very involved in all things schooling, so we don't take the time to tell him all about what we have learned, but in other families, that would be a great wrap-up activity.

Doing it this way DRASTICALLY reduces the book cost because I'm not reading every single book on the list. In fact, for most of the year (in fact, all the years!) all we really need is one of the saints stories compilations, a bible, our spine (founders of freedom, or the old world's gifts), and one family read aloud per unit (so about ten "new" books per unit. I also found a used copy of MB Synge's World History series and I use that to fill in when I don't have the budget for a new book that month or when I feel like my money could be better used elsewhere. It takes a little bit of legwork to find the spot in the Synge series where we need to be reading from, but I absolutely LOVE the series, my kids do too, and we are never bummed that we don't have a "new" book on the days we don't.
Also, it goes without saying that if you buy one book a month vs buying them all at once it's easier on the budget. I have found many of them used via ebay, amazon, etc. But yes, you can successfully teach the CWH program using just the saints, the bible, and whichever age-appropriate "core" book you will use.

On Thursdays, I also do a family read aloud from their national history track.  Last year, we did Our Island Story, this year we will continue to do Our Island Story but also add Guerber's 13 Colonies (or perhaps This Country of Ours, the jury is still still out on that one.) OIS will be for my first grader and 13 Colonies for my second grader, but naturally they will often overlap/ hear each other's readings, and that's just fine with me. :)

One other thing I have done to combine is to incorporate some of the AO/MA readings that I loved in the appropriate Connecting with History unit. So, for example, we will be reading The Little Duke, an AO selection from Y2,  all in one month and over the regular time period it covers (in Volume II of CWH), instead of over one year.

As they get older, they will continue to do many of the history readings that are original source material and just really good books from Ambleside and Mater Amabilis. I will be particularly cautious when it comes to Ambleside's selections because of the skewed view of history. For example, I do have and can't wait to use Churchill's History of the English Speaking People. However, I find him to be a bit of a pompous imperialist with very little regard for indigenous people, and I will make sure to counter balance their studies at that time with something that helps them see that.

Most of Mater Amabilis' religion suggestions (outside of the advent and lent selections) are found in CWH, so we aren't skipping those, just using them differently.

Ultimately, using Connecting With History this way has helped me to unite my entire family and make good use of our time while the children are so very young. I may discover that as they get older they can be freed from "family history" and switched over to JUST the AO/MA selections, but again, most of them are the same as those found in CWH, so... why not continue this way? I'll see how I feel about it when we get there.

Does that answer questions about how to combine a family history curriculum with AO or MA? If not, please feel free to comment and I'll do my best to answer!