More missions goodness!

we want YOU to learn the faith!

Suddenly, I am feeling so encouraged!!

After the missionary conversation I had with my children the other day, my kids wanted to talk about it more over lunch. They said they understood WHY the Church needs missionaries, but what they wanted to know was how to do it. So,  I asked them what they could do to be better at fulfilling the mission Pope Francis gave us all when he said:

 "We need to avoid the spiritual sickness of a church that is wrapped up in its own world: when a church becomes like this, it grows sick. It is true that going out on to the street implies the risk of accidents happening, as they would to any ordinary man or woman. But if the church stays wrapped up in itself, it will age. And if I had to choose between a wounded church that goes out on to the streets and a sick, withdrawn church, I would definitely choose the first one."

The kids went as far as to get a piece of paper and to write / draw down a plan for how we would fulfill the mission better. Many of the things they talked about we already do, but there were fresh and new and good ideas in there that encouraged me a great deal.

They determined we were called to be missionaries in four ways.

The first, they said, was that we were supposed to pray and study ourselves,  and teach people to pray and study. So they set a specific time each day for our prayer times so that we wouldn't skip over them anymore (we often don't get around to evening prayer, for example, because we just forget).

They planned a family dinner/rosary night like we have had before with loved ones, and a family-only night to restore us(!)

The plan they came up with looked like this:

1. We go to mass and confession every week and invite people to come with us.
2. We say morning prayer (they chose 7 am "because by then everyone is kind of awake"), evening prayer (5 pm "because it's before dinner") and their father and I say night prayer (10 pm "before you go to bed.")  If people are over, we agreed,  the more the merrier.
3. We have dinner-and-a-rosary parties on Wednesdays and Saturdays and invite friends to participate whenever we can.
4. We have our regular family shabbat night, reserved for our own family and close relations when possible, where we talk about family business, bless each other and enjoy each other and pray for each other.
5. We spend time studying the faith every day, alone and together, and with others whenever we can.

I was amazed at their insight, and how they outlined many of the same goals I have tried to set for our family. But then it got better!

The second part, they said, was to do acts of mercy in our neighborhood. I, of course, agreed. The Church recommends that when we do good works, we use the following guidelines:

The 7 Corporal Works of Mercy
To feed the hungry
To give drink to the thirsty
To clothe the naked
To shelter the homeless
To visit the sick
To visit the imprisoned
To bury the dead

7 Spiritual Works of Mercy
To counsel the doubtful
To instruct the ignorant
To admonish the sinner
To comfort the sorrowful
To forgive all injuries
To bear wrongs patiently
To pray for the living and the dead

 Parts two and three of their plan involved good works and discipleship. They decided that each of us would have an assigned job in the community and that we would serve in that way. As a homeschooling family, we take education very seriously, and create educational pathways for those in our community at every opportunity. Also, their daddy is a firefighter/EMT, their mommy a student-midwife, my oldest wants to babysit for people and teach art lessons, my five year old said he wanted to do yard work for people and paint, and my three year old said she would be a storyteller for the littlest people.  As if that wasn't amazing enough, they each then identified a "friend" in their lives that they could have over regularly to help them grow in their walk with Jesus. They told me their friends' names, and how often they felt they should see them and what they would do together. Then they told me that "daddy and mommy's job was to do that for us, first, and then for other people that come over."

The fourth part of their plan was to live simply.
We talked about how missionaries have to be ready to go wherever God calls them, so that just as when we had to pack to go to California, and to France, and brought nothing but God provided everything we needed, so we would have to live very simply and have only what we needed, and God would provide the rest. I asked them what they thought constituted our "needs."
Some clothes (they got as specific as to tell me what types and styles to keep and which ones to get rid of... hooray for our plan to dump stuff!!) some books for school and work, and some DVDs "that teach people things." They decided to get rid of all their toys except a few dolls and---- get this---- a box of costumes so they could teach bible stories and the lives of the saints. (BRILLIANT!) They also mentioned eating small meals regularly so that we would have enough money to buy great foods to serve the people that came over on feast days...something I've never discussed with them that is in my personal plan.

All in all, an amazing child-led conversation that ended up inspiring me. Surprise! From the mouths of babes...

Mission - a requirement of the Church's catholicity

849 The missionary mandate. "Having been divinely sent to the nations that she might be 'the universal sacrament of salvation,' the Church, in obedience to the command of her founder and because it is demanded by her own essential universality, strives to preach the Gospel to all men":[339] "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and Lo, I am with you always, until the close of the age."[340]

850 The origin and purpose of mission. The Lord's missionary mandate is ultimately grounded in the eternal love of the Most Holy Trinity: "The Church on earth is by her nature missionary since, according to the plan of the Father, she has as her origin the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit."[341] The ultimate purpose of mission is none other than to make men share in the communion between the Father and the Son in their Spirit of love.[342]

851 Missionary motivation. It is from God's love for all men that the Church in every age receives both the obligation and the vigor of her missionary dynamism, "for the love of Christ urges us on."[343] Indeed, God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth";[344] that is, God wills the salvation of everyone through the knowledge of the truth. Salvation is found in the truth. Those who obey the prompting of the Spirit of truth are already on the way of salvation. But the Church, to whom this truth has been entrusted, must go out to meet their desire, so as to bring them the truth. Because she believes in God's universal plan of salvation, the Church must be missionary.

852 Missionary paths. The Holy Spirit is the protagonist, "the principal agent of the whole of the Church's mission."[345] It is he who leads the Church on her missionary paths. "This mission continues and, in the course of history, unfolds the mission of Christ, who was sent to evangelize the poor; so the Church, urged on by the Spirit of Christ, must walk the road Christ himself walked, a way of poverty and obedience, of service and self-sacrifice even to death, a death from which he emerged victorious by his resurrection."[346] So it is that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians."[347]

853 On her pilgrimage, the Church has also experienced the "discrepancy existing between the message she proclaims and the human weakness of those to whom the Gospel has been entrusted."[348] Only by taking the "way of penance and renewal," the "narrow way of the cross," can the People of God extend Christ's reign.[349] For "just as Christ carried out the work of redemption in poverty and oppression, so the Church is called to follow the same path if she is to communicate the fruits of salvation to men."[350]

854 By her very mission, "the Church . . . travels the same journey as all humanity and shares the same earthly lot with the world: she is to be a leaven and, as it were, the soul of human society in its renewal by Christ and transformation into the family of God."[351] Missionary endeavor requires patience. It begins with the proclamation of the Gospel to peoples and groups who do not yet believe in Christ,[352] continues with the establishment of Christian communities that are "a sign of God's presence in the world,"[353] and leads to the foundation of local churches.[354] It must involve a process of inculturation if the Gospel is to take flesh in each people's culture.[355] There will be times of defeat. "With regard to individuals, groups, and peoples it is only by degrees that [the Church] touches and penetrates them and so receives them into a fullness which is Catholic."[356]

855 The Church's mission stimulates efforts towards Christian unity.[357] Indeed, "divisions among Christians prevent the Church from realizing in practice the fullness of catholicity proper to her in those of her sons who, though joined to her by Baptism, are yet separated from full communion with her. Furthermore, the Church herself finds it more difficult to express in actual life her full catholicity in all its aspects."[358]

856 The missionary task implies a respectful dialogue with those who do not yet accept the Gospel.[359] Believers can profit from this dialogue by learning to appreciate better "those elements of truth and grace which are found among peoples, and which are, as it were, a secret presence of God."[360] They proclaim the Good News to those who do not know it, in order to consolidate, complete, and raise up the truth and the goodness that God has distributed among men and nations, and to purify them from error and evil "for the glory of God, the confusion of the demon, and the happiness of man."[361]
-- Catechism of the Catholic Church

All is vanity...

God's been working on me about my vanity and pride lately.

Earlier this morning, I posted a blog explaining our book of centuries, a book I am quite proud of.
Several minutes later, I walked in to find that my three year old, who NEVER does this kind of thing, had decided to completely dismantle, draw on, rip up, and otherwise destroy my Book of Centuries. She is normally so well-behaved and I can trust her around almost anything.... so  I could not have been more surprised to find this. 

Instantly, my inner spirit-person came to life. And I was flooded with the sense that God was speaking directly to my pride.
Holy Spirit spanking! Sigh.
All is vanity..... lest we forget. ;)
Just wanted to share.

Book of Centuries

There is a wonderful PNEU article about how to set up a book of centuries which I fully intend to use with a simple composition book once my children are older. I have often had to fight the urge to scrap this one and make one of those, but I'm going to wait a few years.

Since they are young right now, we are using a family Book of Centuries, which is primarily my responsibility to fill in because I'm super type-A and like things to be pretty and orderly... and if my children had charge of it I can only imagine the number of hobbits and butterflies and things I'd find drawn in the margins, which would drive me nuts. Charlotte wanted the child to make the book of centuries HIS OWN, and I assure you that when my kids are old enough, they will. But for now, in the young stages, I keep this family version, and they have their own composition books we call books of centuries but which are actually just books in which they record their narrations or narration maps for every history book they read.
This one stays out and on the table as long as it's a school day, and sometimes even when it's not. On Thursdays (our history day) at tea-time I take it out and we drink tea and eat cookies and go through it, talking about things they like.

As of now, there is not much filled in because we have only covered creation and early civilization alone in a formal way. But I've been asked how I do it, so here are some pictures and an explanation of our own book.

I used a three ring binder with a pattern that spoke to me about history (kinda greek), and printed out the free book of centuries template from Simply Charlotte Mason, not using facing pages and not printing on both sides of the sheets.
I made a nice cover for it and ghetto-laminated it using packing tape (my specialty!), and instead of dividers I use a printed page in papyrus font (my go-to history font!) in sheet protectors for separating the four eras that correspond with the four volumes/years of the Connecting With History  Program that we use for studying world history as a family. We make an entry for each of our lessons if appropriate, and it takes less than five minutes to do each time, if that.

On the inside cover, I pasted a key to the codes we use on each main century overview page.:

These include things like wars and conflicts, massacres, rise and fall of a nation, important events in church history, etc.

There are two main sections. One is World Chronology and the other is Geography.

I placed a world map (modern) at the very front for quick access, and then began placing dividers and centuries for each volume of Connecting with History, century by century.

World Chronology has three pages per century, plus some additional pages in the front.

The additional pages start with the story of before the world began. I made these, although one of the pages contains an idea I snatched up about the beginning of time from my favorite Fisher Academy blog.

Then the centuries really begin. There are three pages per century. The first is a grid with 100 squares representing years in each century. We use the codes from above to mark up the overview grid so that we can see it in a kind of at-a-glance way. (bear in mind that ours are not very full yet because we haven't even reached Christ's birth in our family study.)

After that is a written overview page with categories and dates we can fill in that I made based on a template I saw and liked on Simply Charlotte Mason's site.

Last, I placed the page from the download of SCM's basic timeline book, on which we will be drawing artifacts we see throughout the year in museums on field trips  (prehistory doesn't have a lot of representation here in our local museums, so these are-- for now-- blank for the most part at the moment.) The dates are written at the top and the rest of the page is blank for drawing. (sorry about the fuzzy picture.)

Behind the centuries, I have a geography section which includes historical maps we have used, either printed out from the Map Trek program we use for Connecting with History or from random places around the internet for whatever purpose we have used them for, organized in chronological order. These are in plastic sleeves also so that my kids can take them out and use a dry erase to trace a route or whatever if need be. (Doesn't happen much since I hate dry erase, but in theory, it seemed like a good idea. They mostly just use their fingers. I am full of good ideas that hardly ever end up getting used, haha.)

That's it! Let me know if you have questions, and I hope it helps someone.
And if perchance you find this post to be discouraging rather than helpful, you might enjoy this.

Habit building

I wanted to share this wonderful resource. It's a blog written by a friend of mine, and while the entire thing is a priceless treasure, this particular post will be of interest to so many Charlotte Mason educators. It talks about the spiritual side of habit training, and I think you will be blessed.

Supposedly it takes 21 days to form a new habit, although I believe this is a myth.  However long it takes, we all know it takes repetition.  We all have bad habits, and hopefully we all have some good ones, too, like brushing our teeth.
It’s been brought to my attention through various sources that I have a tendency to be critical and opinionated.  I tell myself, “don’t be critical, don’t be critical, don’t be critical.”  It seems the more I try to NOT be critical and opinionated, the more I find myself slipping into that place.  Why is that?  The Bible gives us the answer in the book of Romans (ch. 7).... Read more.

Catholic Family World History plans-- Middle Ages-- for next year

I think I finally have sorted out what books I will be using for next year's Connecting With History, Volume II. I'll be doing things a little differently this year-- following along in each unit but still slowing down the pace of our reading because last year we tried to read everything on the list. Although I enjoyed it, I think the kids felt a bit rushed and also.... I think it wasn't as CM as it could have been, since she advocated building a long, slow relationship with only the BEST books. I really want us to stay as faithful to CM's methods as we can.

This year I have one kid in Grade 2, one in Grade 1, one in Prep, and one in Awakening. ;)

I plan to include tales from each unit in our term's literature/tales reading, and saints in each term's catechism/church history reading, just as we did last year in our study of the Ancient World.

History readings will include work from the spine (Our Island Story), Catholic supplementation (Founders of Freedom for the littles and Old World's Gifts to the New for the oldest), and one historical literature book per term that I felt encompasses the era.

We will still be doing age appropriate copywork and memory work from CWH, bible reading, as well as narration topics for testing understanding, activities (one per unit), a book of centuries, mapwork,  and presenting (usually a play) at the end.

I know I've been asked a few times which way I'm going to go, so here are the final choices I've made.
The family read-aloud is Our Island Story, Founders of Freedom,  and also the reading from the lives of the saints each unit, and the rest are individual assignments.

For MA users Prep Level/ AO users Y0/ Grade Prek/ K:

Core:  Founders of Freedom and Our Island Story
Saints: Once Upon  a Time Saints
Tales: D'Aulaire's Norse Gods and Giants

Term 1: Spend the day in Ancient Rome, Mary my Mother, Good St Joseph, The Apostles of Jesus, Pompeii: Buried alive
Term 2: St Valentine, St George and the Dragon, St Brigid, and Hodges' King Arthur
Term 3: Usborne time traveler: Vikings

For MA users Level 1B/ AO Y1/ Grade 1:
Core: Founders of Freedom and Our Island Story

Saints: Once upon a time saints and More once upon a time saints
Tales: D'Aulaire's Norse Gods and Giants

Term 1:  St Paul the Apostle by Windeatt
Term 2:King Arthur Tales from the Round Table
Term 3: Leif the Lucky by D'Aulaire

For MA users Level 1A (1) / AOY2 / Grade 2:

Core: The Old World's Gifts to the New and Our Island Story
Saints: 57 Stories of Saints
Tales: D'Aulaire's Norse Gods and Giants

Term 1: Augustus Caesar's World
Term 2: King Arthur and His Knights
Term 3: Viking Tales

Geographic and Historic Dreaming

For the past several years, my family has been enthusiastically studying Australia, in particular Aboriginal culture which we find fascinating. The highlight of our study, reflecting back, was learning about songlines (sometimes called dreaming tracks.) We have spent endless hours out-of-doors, in ceremonies of our own making, practicing bushcraft and indigenous survivalism. We have clustered together round beautiful pieces of aboriginal art and told-stories (a most sacred occupation) from the billabong. We have learned to play the digeridoo, and practiced bush-medicine.

In aboriginal mythology, the creation story is called The Dreaming, and involves ancestral spirits roaming the earth and creating it's geography in detailed stories which are told, sung, and ritualized.
The one thing we have retained most from this study has been our responsibility to care for and interact with our natural environment, as stewards of the sacred spaces we have been given to live and love in.

Here, the text from a "Visit Aboriginal Australia" brochure, explains:

Aboriginal Australians have developed and are bound by highly complex belief systems that interconnect the land, spirituality, law, social life and care of the environment. The terms Dreamtime, Dreaming and Songlines are regularly used and interchanged to describe these important elements of Aboriginal cultures.

The Dreamtime is the period of creation when the world was a featureless void where ancestral spirits in human and other life forms emerged from the earth and the sky creating all living things and the landscape we see today.

All Aboriginal people have a common belief in the creation or Dreaming, which is a time when the ancestral beings traveled across the country creating the natural world and making laws and customs for Aboriginal people to live by. The Dreaming ancestors take the form of humans, animals or natural features in the landscape.

Creation beliefs and customary practices vary greatly across Australia, however they are all based on the journeys of ancestral beings and events which took place during the creation time.

"My people believe that our ancestors were responsible for the creation of our country and it was they who handed down to us our rules for living… We have ceremonies to look after the well-being and products of our land. These things penetrate our culture.
Dreamtime ancestors made the Songlines as part of the creation story – we still use these today."

Tiwi Elder, NTTC Experience Aboriginal Culture in Australia’s Northern Territory, 1997

Ceremony incorporating dance, art and song is an important part of both individual and family obligations to practice their culture.

Many of the Dreaming stories are presented as elaborate song cycles (Songlines) that relate to a specific place, group and individual.

They provide a map recording details of the landscape and express the relationship between the land, sea and the people.

The stories and Songlines encompass law, culture and spirituality to ensure the continuity of all things living.

"The ancestor is responsible for the law and country, a responsibility which is carried by the traditional owner of the song today. The owner of the song is responsible for the country and particular sacred places, and when the song travels over these sacred places it is sung by the traditional owner of song or country."

Bill Harney, Wardaman Elder, 2009

"Kaltjiti artist sing country, dance country and paint the song of their lands. The epic song cycles of the Western Desert peoples have resounded for thousands of years across these sand dunes of central Australia, echoed back from the orange rock faces of the granite hills and eddied around the deep blue rock holes where precious water hides from the scorching sun.
The creation ancestors first sang these songs at the dawn of time. These giant beings strode the land changing their shape from human to beast or plant, to water, earth or wind. The landscape still holds their resting forms in rounded hills, the fury of their flight was caught in twisted bloodwood trees and their flesh – know transformed – wraps the marble gums as dappled bark.
Songs sung down the generations have kept the land alive and spirit of her people strong."

Dr Diana James, Author, Painting the Song Kaltjiti artists of the sand dune country, 2009

"Today many Aboriginal communities are wanting to explain their heritage and show visitors around their country.
Firsthand knowledge gained in this way may help to understand Aboriginal Australia, as a living legacy of spiritual knowledge shared through rituals, dance, stories and journeys touching on aspects of the Dreamtime.

"Dr Irene Watson, Tanganekald & Meintangk woman, Lonely Planet Aboriginal Australia & Torres Strait Islands, Sydney, 2001

We custodians of this place are really happy for you to come and look around our country. Look around and learn so that you can know something about Aboriginal people and understand that Aboriginal culture is strong and really important.

Tony Tjamiwa, Uluru elder, NTTC Experience Aboriginal Culture in Australia’s Northern Territory, 1997

 So what does this have to do with us? While we don't believe the Dreamtime story exactly as told in most aboriginal communities, we have our own version, and we understand it's critical role in the salvation of the precious Aboriginal people, many of whom today have become very active Catholics in active Australian Catholic communities.

How can this be? The Catechism of the Catholic Church holds the answer, when it says:

“From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times  of their  existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God  and perhaps grope for him and find him – though indeed he is not far from each of us.”        Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 28 

Indeed, this has been the experience of those aboriginal people who have turned to Jesus:

Richard Campbell from the Gumbaingirr/Dhungutti people recalls the moment when he realised how close Christian and Aboriginal stories can be:

“A Catholic priest once asked me to connect Aboriginal spirituality with Bible stories through a painting.
“When I started to paint, I felt my own spirituality come flooding back and I started to remember the stories of my people. That’s when I became aware of the similarity between Aboriginal and Christian stories.
“We all have a spiritual connection…, we all belong to one big God—call it Christ, we call it Birrigun, we are all one in God.”

 You see, my children at this time in their young lives view history in terms of a four-part timeline:

The Dreamtime
The Back Then
The Nowtimes
The Time After This Day 

And in this way, by learning all of the intricate connections between the mythology of the aborigines, the ancient means of describing and learning geographic structures, the awakening sense of their own selves as dots on a lengthy timeline of the events of salvation history, and by placing before them a rich tapestry of beautiful ideas with which they can form relations, they learn geography and history -- even arts and music and science-- in a way that totally transcends the fact-based learning that so many people associate with those subjects. To me, this is the wisdom of Charlotte Mason's method in action, and what I love is that it has a unique twist that is -- from what I observe around me--- only happening in my family. Other families I know who faithfully use CM's ideas are learning geography in similar ways, and yet are making it "their own" in ways that directly speak to their own personalities and interests.

Charlotte Mason said this about outdoor time and natural philosophy:

"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 towards scientific knowledge in the future. He must live hours daily in the open air, and, as far as possible, in the country; must look and touch and listen; must be quick to note, consciously, every peculiarity of habit or structure, in beast, bird, or insect; the manner of growth and fructification of every plant. He must be accustomed to ask why––Why does the wind blow? Why does the river flow? Why is a leaf-bud sticky? And do not hurry to answer his questions for him; let him think his difficulties out so far as his small experience will carry him. Above all, when you come to the rescue, let it not be in the 'cut and dried' formula of some miserable little text-book; let him have all the insight available and you will find that on many scientific questions the child may be brought at once to the level of modern thought. Do not embarrass him with too much scientific nomenclature. If he discover for himself (helped, perhaps, by a leading question or two), by comparing an oyster and his cat, that some animals have backbones and some have not, it is less important that he should learn the terms vertebrate and invertebrate than that he should class the animals he meets with according to this difference.The method of this sort of instruction is shown in Evenings at Home, where 'Eyes and No-eyes' go for a walk. No-eyes come home bored; he has seen nothing, been interested in nothing: while Eyes is all agog to discuss a hundred things that have interested him. As I have already tried to point out, to get this sort of instruction for himself is simply the nature of a child: the business of the parent is to afford him abundant and varied opportunities, and to direct his observations, so that, knowing little of the principles of scientific classification, he is, unconsciously, furnishing himself with the materials for such classification. It is needless to repeat what has already been said on this subject; but, indeed, the future of the man or woman depends very largely on the store of real knowledge gathered, and the habits of intelligent observation acquired, by the child. "Think you," says Mr. Herbert Spencer, "that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of the geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid a million of years ago? The truth is, that those who have never entered on scientific pursuits are blind to most of the poetry by which they are surrounded. Whoever has not in youth collected plants and insects, knows not half the halo of interest which lanes and hedgerows can assume." (Volume I)

Our time outdoors in geography, filled with tracking and observing and leaf-collecting and stone-overturning and pace-counting, record-keeping and timing and touching, squinting at and listening to.... this is time best spent for young people. This is what enables my children to walk down a busy suburban street and find three birds nests and a new kind of ant in the time it takes for another child joining us that day to say "I'm bored," or "I'm hot." This is what enables my three year old to step outside and gleefully exclaim: "A daddy cardinal!" and what enables my children to step outdoors, then turn around and come rushing back in to jump on me and exclaim: "The Cicadas!! We hear them!! They're finally here!!!" Whereas visiting children to our yard have often asked for toys, a trampoline or swimming pool to keep them entertained. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, but just that it's marvelous to know that our children will be content and learning no matter their location.)

"All natural phenomena are orderly; they are governed by law; they are not magical. They are comprehended by someone; why not by the child himself?"

Further, Miss Mason had this to say about Geography:

Geography As commonly Taught.––Now, how is the subject commonly taught? The child learns the names of the capital cities of Europe, or of the rivers of England, or of the mountain-summits of Scotland, from some miserable text-book, with length in miles, and height in feet, and population, finding the names on his map or not, according as his teacher is more or less up to her work. Poor little fellow! the lesson is hard work to him; but as far as education goes––that is, the developing of power, the furnishing of the mind––he would be better employed in watching the progress of a fly across the window-pane. But, you will say, geography has a further use than this strictly educative one; everybody wants the sort of information which the geography lesson should afford. That is true, and is to be borne in mind in the schoolroom; the child's geography lesson should furnish just the sort of information which grown-up people care to possess. Now, do think how unreasonable we are in this matter; nothing will persuade us to read a book of travel unless it be interesting, graphic, with a spice of personal adventure. Even when we are going about with Murray in hand, we skip the dry facts and figures, and read the suggestive pictorial scraps; these are the sorts of things we like to know, and remember
with ease. But none of this pleasant padding for the poor child, if you please; do not let him have little pictorial sentences that he may dream over; facts and names and figures––these are the pabulum for him!
Geography should be Interesting.––But, you say, this sort of knowledge, though it may be a labour to the child to acquire it, is useful in after life. Not a bit of it; and for this reason––it has never been really received by the brain at all; has never got further than the floating nebulae of mere verbal memory of which I have already had occasion to speak. Most of us have gone through a good deal of drudgery in the way of 'geography' lessons, but how much do we remember? Just the pleasant bits we heard from travelled friends, about the Rhine, or Paris, or Venice, or bits from The Voyages of Captain Cook, or other pleasant tales of travel and adventure. We begin to see the lines we must go upon in teaching geography: for educative purposes, the child must learn such geography, and in such a way, that his mind shall thereby be stored with ideas, his imagination with images; for practical purposes he must learn such geography only as, the nature of his mind considered, he will be able to remember; in other words, he must learn what interests him. The educative and the practical run in one groove, and the geography lesson becomes the most charming occupation of the child's day. (Volume I)

She gives tips in Volume I for beginning geography lessons in this way:

1. Spending long hours out of doors noticing things.
2. Showing them rude sketch-maps of geographical information.
3. Telling them stories of travel and geography in a natural manner, as it comes up.



To round out this type of teaching, she recommends two things: Reading to the children to familiarize themselves with one geographical area and learning about and using maps.  I find it particularly fascinating that she insinuates in this next quote that a child can be "at home" in a geographical location utterly outside of his own sphere / realm in this manner.... it has certainly been our experience this past year that Australia has become a kind of "home" to us although we have never been there to visit and explore in person!

Give him next intimate knowledge, with the fullest details, of any country or region of the world, any county or district of his own country. It is not necessary that he should learn at this stage what is called the 'geography' of the countries of Europe, the continents of the world––mere strings of names for the most part: he may learn these, but it is tolerably certain that he will not remember them. But let him be at home in any single region; let him see, with the mind's eye, the people at their work and at their play, the flowers and fruits in their seasons, the beasts, each in its habitat; and let him see all sympathetically, that is, let him follow the adventures of a traveller; and he knows more, is better furnished with ideas, than if he had learnt all the names on all the maps. The 'way' of this kind of teaching is very simple and obvious; read to him, or read for him, that is, read bit by bit, and tell as you read, Hartwig's Tropical World, the same author's Polar World, Livingstone's missionary travels, Mrs. Bishop's Unbeaten Tracks in Japan––in fact, any interesting, well-written book of travel. It may be necessary to leave out a good deal, but every illustrative anecdote, every bit of description, is so much towards the child's education. Here, as elsewhere, the question is, not how many things does he know, but how much does he know about each thing.

and on maps:

Maps must be carefully used in this type of work,––a sketch-map following the traveller's progress, to be compared finally with a complete map of the region; and the teacher will exact a description of such and such a town, and such and such a district, marked on the map, by way of testing and confirming the child's exact knowledge. In this way, too, he gets intelligent notions of physical geography; in the course of his readings he falls in with a description of a volcano, a glacier, a cañon, a hurricane; he hears all about, and asks and learns the how and the why, of such phenomena at the moment when his interest is excited. In other words, he learns as his elders elect to learn for themselves, though they rarely allow the children to tread in paths so pleasant.

Then, again, geography should be learned chiefly from maps. Pictorial readings and talks introduce him to the subject, but so soon as his geography lessons become definite they are to be learned, in the first place, from the map. This is an important principle to bear in mind. The child who gets no ideas from considering the map, say of Italy or of Russia, has no knowledge of geography, however many facts about places he may be able to produce. Therefore he should begin this study by learning the meaning of a map and how to use it. He must learn to draw a plan of his schoolroom, etc., according to scale, go on to the plan of a field, consider how to make the plan of his town, and be carried gradually from the idea of a plan to that of a map; always beginning with the notion of an explorer who finds the land and measures it, and by means of sun and stars, is able to record just where it is on the earth's surface, east or west, north or south.
Now he will arrive at the meaning of the lines of latitude and longitude. He will learn how sea and land are shown on a map, how rivers and mountains are represented; and having learned his points of direction and the use of his compass, and knowing that maps are always made as if the beholder were
looking to the north, he will be able to tell a good deal about situation, direction, and the like, in very early days. The fundamental ideas of geography and the meaning of a map are subjects well fitted to form an attractive introduction to the study. Some of them should awaken the delightful interest which attaches in a child's mind to that which is wonderful, incomprehensible, while the map lessons should lead to mechanical efforts equally delightful. It is only when presented to the child for the first time in the form of stale knowledge and foregone conclusions that the facts taught in such lessons appear dry and repulsive to him. An effort should be made to treat the subject with the sort of sympathetic interest and freshness which attracts children to a new study.

In practical terms, this means: select living books about travel, become familiar in an "expert" sense with one or two locations, and then conduct quick but careful map drills in a natural way-- as the result of these stories being read.

History, she says, is "caught" much in a similar manner, and I'll write on that next, but I just wanted to share some of these ideas about Geography, time outdoors, and how they have related to our study of a particular culture.


Lest you think this sounds too complicated to format, organize and teach, I would remind you that Charlotte advocates a natural means of learning.
Our successful study of geography in this house has come not from memorizing place names and definitions of geographical features, nor even from intently studying Charlotte's thoughts on geography -- which I recommend doing, but which I just now discovered!--  but instead happened in this way:

We have an Australian uncle who is a famous scientist in the field of ants. We live in the Carolinas, and have a lot of ants, so we have contacted him a great deal just to answer questions about ants and geography. We watched the film "Australia" and it became an immediate family favorite, mostly because my husband and I have always been very interested in Australian culture. We began to play Aboriginal dress up games and watch more movies about the culture. I looked for a booklist and called my uncle, and began reading to them from aboriginal folk tales. My six year old decided she wanted to be an excellent tracker, so we deepened our tracking skills. We hiked quite a bit and became familiar with the landscape. We became aware of others' ability to track US, and started being more careful with how we moved through the woods. We sang songs and told stories, and read poems, about Australia. We looked at a map and my two year old shouted: "Australia!" and pointed.
We grew in our intimacy with the natural world around us. When we began to study ancient history, we compared and contrasted what we knew about traditional aboriginal culture with the developments of farming, settling, city-state building, etc. We interacted on facebook with my Australian friends and family and looked at pictures of the nature around them. We listened to stories of their visits to natural areas. We looked at maps and traveled them with our fingers. We wrote our own songlines for our Carolina woods. We watched youtube videos of Dreamtime stories and the kids acted them out. We developed a deep longing for the land of Australia and a desire to touch the sacred ground which we had studied. We began to hope we could move there, and to look for jobs we could do and ways we could get there. We realized we didn't have the money or ability for such a plan to be a real possibility, and became very sad. One day, driving over the bridge into Wilmington, our local beach community, our then-two year old exclaimed with great wonder and excitement: "Australia!!!" We realized, with awe and gratitude, seeing the land around us through her eyes, that the shape of the geographic formations around us, the way the entryway into the city was formed, and the big boats in the water reminded her of the opening scene of the movie Australia where we are introduced to the Darwin harbor. She was right!! The view outside our car windows was almost identical!
This brought me to reflect on the large red ant-hills we had seen and walked around in our woods. It also reminded me of the days I had, as a young child, walked hand-in-hand with my Australian uncle through the eucalyptus groves of my youth in Southern California, talking about snugglepot and cuddlepie and watching the Monarch butterflies migrate, dreaming of Kangaroos. Australia was a far-off island, yes, but also a eucalyptus grove in my backyard by the beach on Butterfly lane in Santa Barbara, CA, and a red dirt road in Fayetteville, NC. And a harbor in Wilmington, NC. I began to see Australia as a home in my heart, and less as the name of a place on a map I would never set foot in. And so do my children, now, as they make their own connections between the history of empire building and colonization, of the human roots we share hunting and gathering, of the geography they study in our secret woods, of the paths they have traced on a map, and of the God who has made them for heaven.

Reflecting on this idea a bit more, I can see how God has placed similar moments in my heart when I have reflected on "home." Well-traveled though I was growing up, I have not been so fortunate in my adult years. And yet I can "feel" the Provence of my youth in the thick heat of the Carolina summers, with the pine and sycamore scents bursting from the woods, and cicadas chirping away. Provence is a part of me when I make a mustard plaster for a coughing kid or whip up an aioli. I can see and feel the Swedish Christmas of my youth in the crunch of snow underfoot and the flickering candles and scent of apple cider bubbling away on the stove when we come in. I can feel Scotland in me rising up when we scramble from rock to rock through the wilderness, kilted and blue, ready for anything in games we play with the kids. This is our earth. And it is alive to us..... not because we have studied, so much as because we have made natural connections in our hearts and minds between maps, stories, saints, heroes, battles, love affairs, weather, herbs, miracles, heartbreaks and hillsides, mountains and rivers, rocks and  revolutions, laws and landscapes...

This is a living education.

Using Our Island Story with Connecting with History

For those of you using Ambleside Online or Mater Amabilis and who want to use the amazing book Our Island Story in conjunction with the Connecting With History program, I've separated the chapters of the book down into CWH's Units using a timeline for the chapters I found on Ambleside's website as well as the list of England's rulers in the index of the book. I have gone over it twice, but I haven't been sleeping much so I may have to come back and edit this again. For now, anyways, it looks accurate to me. If you find an error, please let me know!

Hopefully this helps someone else out there who was feeling as conflicted as I have been about dropping OIS in order to use Connecting With History because it was just "too much reading." ;)

CWH Volume I
Unit 1: Chapter 1
Unit 10: Chapter 2

CWH Volume II
Unit 1: Chapter 3
Unit 3: Chapters 4-5
Unit 4: Chapter 6
Unit 5: Chapters 7-11
Unit 6: Chapters 12-14
Unit 7: Chapters 15-20

CWH Volume III
Unit 2: Chapters 21-36
Unit 3: Chapters 37-42
Unit 4: Chapters 43-51
Unit 5: Chapters 52-61
Units 6 & 7: Chapters 62-73
Unit 8 parts 1 & 2 : Chapters 74-88

CWH Volume IV has not been released yet, and so I cannot do the rest of the book until it is.
Chapters 89-110 will be used in Volume IV, and those dates are from 1702-1952.
If I remember, I will update this when it comes out (help me to remember if I forget... otherwise you will have to wait two years til I am thinking about how we are going to use Volume IV in our own homeschool.)

Below is a PDF of the above schedule, and also a PDF chronological list of saints to use in your History study (for biographies, saint study during catechism, etc.)

   Our Island Story in CWH

and

   Chronological List of the Saints

On changing my major and naming a journey.

This is a bit of a personal blog, but I am feeling a bit... well.. bursting at the seams lately, so I just wanted to share what God has been doing in me. For years I have had this sort of blurry vision of how I believed God was calling me to minister to His people, both personally and as a family. I have always kind of hoped that I would end up a missionary in a foreign country. Or homesteading and teaching survivalism with my husband to families. Or running a little herboristerie (herbal shop) on the beach with a nurse friend where we could offer holistic, simple solutions to all of life's problems.... solutions like sin less and love more. 

First, I have been so conflicted-- because finding a balance between helping/ caring for my own family and finding/ caring for those I felt called to minister to (primarily other Christian women) has been quite challenging. Then finding ways to bring in income without feeling like I was taking money from those I wanted to serve most has been a real challenge.
Occasionally, I have found a good balance-- lately I've been home more often but making good headway in service to others by taking the time to help women who needed someone to walk them through switching over to a CM-style of homeschooling. It has been really enjoyable.

But  I have also been so confused.... wondering all the time what God could possibly be doing with me and preparing me for. I have been all over the place--- learning one trade, then another, moving from one place, then going to another, then right back where I started. What was God doing with me?? At first, I focused on that. But then I realized, I was being so selfish! God was preparing me for an ordinary life, for doing my duty, for simple things! Only in fully embracing that did I really begin to make an progress, spiritually or otherwise.

And yet even as I embraced that and rejected any form of "ministry" outside my own home, God has constantly brought people literally to my door in great spiritual need.
Out of a sense of need to DO SOMETHING about it, once and for all, and laboring under the idea that it would probably help my family, I undertook to return to college so that I could study psychology and maybe work for a parish and get paid for doing what I normally do.... talking people through their problems.

But at the same time this thing has kept bothering me: I don't want to wear a suit, to leave my home and children, to sit in an office, etc. I don't want to waste my life on discussion boards covering topics that I don't care in the least about just for a paper degree that cost me an arm or a leg. I want to keep doing what I'm doing. I want to be a wife, and a mom, and to do it well. I want to help other women and make an impact. I want to have a "profession" that helps my family AND helps other families... a job that is a ministry.  But how can I?

At the close of this semester, since I couldn't take any more college courses til the fall, I decided to work over the summer on my goal of continuing education in childbirth to stay updated as a doula. By a totally random turn of events, one of the courses I enrolled in thinking it was a doula training was actually a midwifery course. A midwife. Hmmm.

I'd met midwives, been served by them in childbirth and during well-woman visits. I'd worked with them at births.I have friends who ARE midwives, and  I'd even called some with questions about this or that herbal supplement. But what WERE they, really, ,and what did they really do?? What was I going to be studying besides how to catch babies??

I began to read, to research, and to talk to the midwives I know.

Suddenly, it was like I could hear the click, click, click of puzzle pieces coming together in my mind. MIDWIVES!! They were here in cities, in doctor's offices,  and along country roads and they were far away in countries with no running water, serving women everywhere they went. They were into herbs and birth and fertility awareness and marriage and counseling and motherhood. They were educators and they were committed. They were hidden in the background, working hard but hardly noticed. So hardly noticed that though I had gone to them all my life, I didn't even really know what they were! They were wise, wise women, always learning. Many of them had children of their own, whom they had raised. And they were discipling others, especially their own. Honestly, it felt like my brain exploded.

A MIDWIFE!

Before I could understand why it felt so right...like the path I'd been on all along.... I had to think a little bit about my own heart.

I am called to be a wife and mother.
NOTHING in my life had prepared me for wifehood and motherhood. Even when I was married, I never for one moment thought that I was accepting the kinds of struggles and difficulties all wives and mothers experience.  It has been hard. It has been painful. It has been a pruning experience. And yet it has been the single greatest and most glorious undertaking of my entire life. I have a burning vision for future generations of faithful sons and daughters, beginning with my own. In order to see that vision through, I am called to tremendous sacrifice: a career focused on my own family, submitted to my husband's leadership, and in a meek, and quiet manner, serving "in the background" primarily in my home.

I am called to be a Christian wife and mother.
What distinguishes me from the rest of the wives and moms out there? A deep commitment to honoring the ways of God. In my home, my husband leads, and I follow (on a good day.)  In my home, my children are homeschooled, and their vocation is to their studies, for now. In my home, I am to accept suffering with great courage and perseverance. In my home, I must live an authentically Christian life--a sacramental life. We do not use contraceptives, even though it is often hard to trust God. My husband and I regularly abstain from sex and pray together instead. We go to confession, we go to liturgy, we bring our kids, they sit alongside us. We train them up in the faith. Childbirth, and reliance on God, and not knowing what the future holds is a way of life for us. Not so for most women and for many Christians, who decide and determine when they will start and when they will stop having babies. But for those of us who trust in the Lord with ALL of our lives.... things are different. And I want to encourage that in others, and nurture it in myself by remembering the value of human life.

I am called to be a missionary.
Whether I'm here at home or in a foreign land, and I've been to many, there is always this tug on my heart: SERVE THESE PEOPLE. BRING JESUS TO THEM. My life has been a long series of funny turns of events in which I've had to rely completely on God, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. Our call to missions is tangible-- we feel it inscribed in our hearts, and yet God has never made a way, despite our efforts, for us to "go." The larger our family gets, the less likely it seems we will ever "go," but strangely enough he is beginning to build in us this idea that wherever we are, THERE is our mission. And it has born fruit when we have been faithful to it.

I am called to help women.
Through this blog, and through my personal encounters with other women, my most fruitful times of ministry have been when deep in intimate dialogue with other women. Whether we are discussing faith formation, friendship, leadership, avenues of service, or faithful wifehood and motherhood, helping women has always been the area I have felt most useful. I never want to stop getting real with other women.

I am called to help women celebrate life.
Whether helping women through the decision to skip an abortion, to honor their husbands intstead of belittling them, teaching fertility awareness, serving alongside them as a doula during childbirth, or encouraging them to embrace the children they already have, I've always been grateful to be around women so that I can encourage them to choose life... and life abundant. There are voices for death all around us-- voices telling us to devalue our bodies, to be objectified, to objectify others, to murder our young. I want to advocate for life, all my life.

I am called to help women live simply and richly.
Having been raised in a very materialistic community, one of the greatest blessings I have learned in married life has been to embrace a simple, whole life. By eating natural foods and herbs, making my own beauty and medicine products, and learning the art of homesteading and bushcraft, of a life rooted in hard work and prayer,  I have found tremendous happiness. By enjoying the outdoors and "the simple things," I have seen so much improvement in my quality of life and in the satisfaction I have come to feel in just... being alive.

I am called to pray and to stay "in the background."
Nothing has been more evident in my life than the clear message God sends me over and over again that I am to PRAY, and pray hard.There was even a time when God completely removed my ability to GO to people who needed prayer, thus leaving me at home with nothing to do BUT pray, in the silence. Things haven't changed all that much since then, what with babies and fathers in law to watch over. And so I pray.

I am called to bring deliverance to people.
For the longest time I thought I was called to deliverance ministry-- to helping exorcists. Everything about this thought came about in random patterns I noticed in my personal life... the types of experiences I had and the types of people who I came into contact with or had an impact on. I met famous exorcists. I saw people delivered. Random possessed people often asked me for help. And I prayed, prayed, prayed. But despite all the apparent coincidences that pointed in that direction, in the secret places of my heart I knew that it was my pride and curiosity that called me to deliverance ministry, and not the Lord. This little thing is not insignificant, though-- because I have seen how active The Enemy is in promoting his culture of death all over the world. It is his domain, and his greatest work in the world. Because of that, amazingly, deliverance and healing often come through.... delivery! The willingness of women to accept who they are and what they-- should they be married-- are called to! The Bible says we women are saved through childbirth.... and I believe it. It is our strength against the devil's work.

I am called to counseling and discipleship.
There is a reason I selected first journalism, and then psychology as my major.... Something inside me comes to life when I am in a setting where two people are interacting. Both when I am being mentored or when I am mentoring someone, discipleship and catechesis flows through my veins. It's how I was raised up in the faith, and my greatest desire for the people around me. It is something I have seen bear fruit, but also something which has stretched me and forced me to rely on God alone. Again, this is an area which activated my pride quite a bit, and so an area I have had to step away from to re-evaluate. In midwifery, there is an aspect that cannot be more in tune with the vision I have received... first, because midwives are mentors to women and especially, ideally, to their own daughters, and second because midwives provide counsel to women in all walks of life, counsel in marriage and motherhood, and faith and in health.

I am called to be an educator.
I homeschool my children. I teach Bible Studies and lectures on home education.  I eat, sleep, and breathe booklists and methodology and lesson plans, and I regularly give classes and talks to people in my community. Speaking about various topics, about education in general, and passing out resources to make sure people ARE educated is something I cannot ever stop doing. It sets me on fire.

One thing I have often prayed is "Lord, make me meek and humble" (good luck!) and "Lord, help me to enlarge my husband's ministry."

As I reflect on the role of a midwife, I'm so moved to see that midwives truly "hide" in the midst of all the families they serve, primarily their own, in the background-- encouraging, leading by example.
Yes, there are noisy, loud, aggressive, intense, mouthy midwives. I see them everywhere these days.... but they are not following in the traditions of their mothers.

I know I am called instead to traditional midwifery because....

my first aid shelf looks like this...tinctures and salves and herbs, oh my!

...and because the bathroom shelf in my house looks like this....

and because my kids' room looks like this and will only get more crowded....

... and because my happy place looks like this

... and like this

... and like this

... and like this

... and like this

.... and like this.... and because none of these things are going to change.

Me, my Mamoune (My French Grandmother, from whom I have learned so much), and one of my daughters.

For the first time in my adult life I am not suffering conflict between the care of my OWN family and service to others.... I feel fully at rest having babies, caring for babies, being a long-term student / apprentice, and staying home with them, knowing it is preparing me for a rewarding vocation as a wife, mother, and midwife. ♥

All of my life, I have used herbal remedies and ideas to serve my family that I learned from my own Grandmother, and prayed along the way that I would one day be a grandmother to many who-- like her-- had a family legacy to hand down, a body of knowledge to pass on, and a beautiful, full, rich tapestry of family life and service to give to my own children and to the people all around me as a gift. As living proof that life is precious and God's ways work. My Grandmother is the perfect example of a woman whose life and ministry and career have all melted into one beautiful picture of a woman with a life fully lived according to her vocation.

Those of you who know me well know that St Josemaria Escriva is one of my favorite saints. The Catholic Church has written specifically on the topic of midwives and their apostolate, and St Josemaria's words on the topic of apostolate has been my heart's joy lately:

Christ has taught us in a definitive way how to make this love for God real. Apostolate is love for God that overflows and communicates itself to others. The interior life implies a growth in union with Christ, in the bread and in the word. And apostolate is the precise and necessary outward manifestation of interior life. When one tastes the love of God, one feels burdened with the weight of souls. There is no way to separate interior life from apostolate, just as there is no way to separate Christ, the God-man, from his role as redeemer. The Word chose to become flesh in order to save men, to make them one with him. This is why he came to the world; he came down from heaven ‘for us men and for our salvation,’ as we say in the Creed.
For a Christian, apostolate is something instinctive. It is not something added onto his daily activities and his professional work from the outside. I have repeated it constantly, since the day that our Lord chose for the foundation of Opus Dei! We have to sanctify our ordinary work, we have to sanctify others through the exercise of the particular profession that is proper to each of us, in our own particular state in life.
We have to act in such a way that others will be able to say, when they meet us: this man is a Christian, because he does not hate, because he is willing to understand, because he is not a fanatic, because he is willing to make sacrifices, because he shows that he is a man of peace, because he knows how to love.
St Josemaria Escriva, Christ Is Passing By, 122 

A midwife!! Glory to God.