Term 1 Family Study Notes for 2014/15

Family Studies for Term 1 of this year:

Plutarch's Life of Crassus
Shakespeare's Hamlet Prince of Denmark
Artist: Fra Angelico (1395-1455; Italian Renaissance)
Hymns: Abide With Me, Lift High the Cross, O Worship the King, I Am Thine, O Lord / Draw Me Nearer, The Mysteries of the Rosary,
Composer: Hildegard von Bingen, 1098-1179
Folk Songs: Barbara Allen, Billy Bo, Lord Randall, Once in Royal David's City
Foreign songs: Heyr Himnasmithur, Meunier tu dors, Hava Nagila, Eschat Chayil, O Sanctissima, Agni Parthene
Books: Creighton's A First History of France, Little House on the Prairie,  Peter Pan, The Trumpet and the Swan, Children of Odin, The Sciences.
Poems: Whole Duty of Children, Foreign Lands, The Children's Hour, Our Brother Is Born,
Bible: Psalm 50(1), Magnificat

This year I have two Y0s, a Y2, and Y3, and I will be tutoring a Y12. Excited!

The drama of history.

Just a little of the way into Term 1 and already I'm re-evaluating everything. Who is with me?

A good reminder today for me from a friend yesterday to "stay the course" strengthened my resolve to do just that, and I think some of you might need it too.

I use Ambleside Online as my main curriculum, adding elements from Mater Amabilis and Connecting with History. I find that I love the Ambleside Curriculum more each day, except for the history, which stirs up in me many different emotions, both good and bad.

The advisory's background, mostly protestant and Calvinist, at that, necessarily presents a history outline that is -- to me-- worse than secular, because it is both incomplete and heretical in its explanation of the role of the Catholic Church in history.
By that I mean that (a) it presents history as this rolling set of events throughout time, not taking into account the things God Himself was doing through these events..... it gives us history, but not salvation history... because Ambleside students are not being made aware of the Church's activity throughout history,  and (b) it presents the Catholic Church as the enemy of the Christian spirit in the world. Which is just.... ugh. A secular history program might ignore the church and glorify a nation, which is annoying, but not devastating.
A protestant history program, though, usually lies about the church (and in a sneaky way! Often the great Catholic heroes of history are presented as protestant "Christians" while those Catholics who failed their fellow man are referred to as "Catholics!"). A protestant history program also usually glorifies a nation over others, and promotes heresy. No bueno.
The selection of books in AO's lineup definitely lean towards vilifying the Catholic Church, which I expected, but they also lack the depth of understanding I want for my kids in salvation history: that God was working through the events of world history, that each step in time is a step in the story of the Church. This is a paradigm shift that only ancient-creed Christians can understand as they work through history, and my children would miss that if I stuck to AO as written.

In addition, it's very English-centric, which some people take issue with (I don't, and actually like that) but at the same time it is incredibly American (for example, ascribing glory and honor to pilgrims and puritans and American founding fathers like any Calvinist American evangelical would be likely to do, but which Anglican Brits might not... really.) Protestantism and national patriotism tend to go hand in hand, and do so in a very unreasonable, over the top kind of  way, whereas Catholicism is truly universal and accepts the unique role of all nations in Kingdom building. 
In other words, it's a bit of a hodgepodge, with some ecclectic stuff, some silly, over-the-top patriotic stuff, and some outright heresy mixed in.

On the other hand, the history booklists are quite good. While there are some recommended books which need to go the way of the trashcan ("GOOD Queen Bess??!"), and quick, other choices are phenomenal and should be passed around to all children.

Ambleside's religion segments, as well, I have a love/hate relationship with. True to Miss Mason's vision, they recommend regular bible reading, devotional reading, and reading on the lives of the saints and martyrs. Unlike Miss Mason, who had a set liturgical year and a sense of Church time and Church teaching, including traditional catechesis, AO's is -again- a bit of a hodgepodge, clearly put together by Christians who don't have a liturgical sense or a common catechetical tradition.

This gives one pause, and at least in my case has often caused me to want to throw the whole thing out the window. But I can't! Ambleside was my first love as a potential homeschooling parent, and something about it keeps me coming back for more each time I start to plan and think.

I have asked many Catholics and Orthodox how they implement the Ambleside curriculum in their homes. Some tell me they don't change it at all, but only discuss everything with their children. This option is unacceptable in our household. We believe we are FORMING our children with what they read.

Others tell me they have removed the religion and history portions, often using Connecting with History instead, and retained the science and literature portions.

I find that hard--- because Ambleside's literature choices are very tied in to their history choices, and the time periods being studied. It truly frustrates me, and keeps me up at night... if I were to do this, I would have to throw out so much of the curriculum that I'd really be starting from scratch.

Ambleside is intense... and rigorous,  no doubt about it. I want that for my kids. I also want the huge variety that it brings to the table. I have chosen to make book substitutions, usually based on what I find suggested in Mater Amabilis or Connecting with History. And so far, it has worked beautifully.

I can say that I "use" Ambleside, all the while fully using Mater Amabilis because their booklists are very similar, often a book from AO that isn't used one year in MA is used in a later year.

Connecting with History, on the other hand, has booklists which are really good, but also which have some issues. The program as a whole does some things which are not CM in nature--- it reads voraciously, when CM advised "savoring" a book in small portions and over a long period of time. (for example, AO uses Augustus Caesar's World over two terms in Y6. CWH uses it over one two units, about the space of a month or two.)
It also recommends many books which are selected not for their literary quality but for their "living" nature... in other words, they are poorly written, or at least poorly edited.
Lastly, it presents history in a unit-study sort of way, often recommending science and the arts to be integrated into the historical time period being studied. This can have a place in a CM education, but we don't want to be making connections FOR the child, and we need to be aware of that.

Also, CWH promotes FAMILY history, whereas Ambleside uses individual history. And there are benefits to both. In my case, my children being young, individual reading means that they pay attention and are more present during reading. Nothing like reading aloud to a gaggle of children at the table to make you want to drink.
Even they agree: if you ask my children to choose between family read-alouds and one-on-one read-alouds, they pick one-on-one every time. That might change as they get older, but right now the only person who LOVES family read-alouds would be the toddler who talks through the whole thing about lions or giraffes while we strain to hear the words of the story and not to lose our tempers.

At the same time, it is a lot of work for me doing individual readings... I feel like I spend all my days running from child to child, since my kids are so young.
At the beginning of the planning period for this term, I thought I would use CWH and developed a plan to use their booklists over a term instead of a unit. I found that my kids still had individual reading to do, but that we shared a family read aloud, which really ended up in practice looking a lot like AO.

But I realized quickly that I had made unrealistic expectations for our family, for one thing because I REALLY wanted to keep using some parts of AO that involved historical reading, and for another because it really did NOT simplify our homeschool day the way I had hoped it would. The benefit of it, though, was that my younger kids had some GREAT reading that taught them quite a bit about history. And they truly enjoyed that. We have incredible memories built from our year in Ancient History using CWH. So much so that I've decided to keep going with that, and to pass the upcoming Year 0 kids through the same booklists on ancient history.

This year, after a test run of three weeks on my created AO / MA/ CWH mix, I went back to the peace and calm of AO. There everything always seems to click into place for me--- there is structure and order but also flexibility and freedom... like freedom to add things, or take them away, without totally disrupting the flow of the curriculum.

Still, though, sad that I had to leave CWH behind, I began to do some soul searching. And I realized something profound along the way-- AO works alongside CWH really well, if we remove the presumption that CWH is meant to be used (a) together only and (b) over the course of one year.

The idea of working as a family was very pleasing to me... but the reality was that even as a family, we basically enjoyed one read aloud and then I needed to read separately to each child from a book at their own level.

I had already worked out which chapters of Our Island Story, for example, fit into which units, and marked them in my CWH syllabus. So when I looked at it from my AO history perspective, all I had to do was line up which chapters of Our Island Story we were already reading in AO, and add a book or reading selection that helped bring Catholic perspective from that unit or time period! Duh. I have no idea why this didn't occur to me before, but it did, and it was wonderful. Suddenly, I found myself removing Synge from the AO history list (which I love, but have a real issue with on topics like the reformation-- sad!) and instead replacing it with Our Old World's Gifts to the New using the notes in the Connecting With History syllabus. And that was it! Just a couple, simple changes and I was done, and still using AO almost as-written, but not having to let go of CWH, which I really like. Yay!

I also added some books to the free reading list that added a Catholic perspective. For example, the Little Duke already does that wonderfully, but instead of reading something slightly dark and anti-establishment like Alice in Wonderland, why not read The Boy Knight of Rheims?

So, now I'm happy and my family is happy and my historian dad is happy and everyone is happy. Yay.

2013 Term I Daily Routine and Reading Schedule

   Appian Way Academy Term 1 2013

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.

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

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!

Some tips on scheduling AO in the early years

For those of you considering Ambleside Online or Mater Amabilis for the next school year, here are some suggestions for scheduling that have helped make things easier for us. Like us, many of you will have several small children to work with at once, and the idea can be daunting.

To give you an idea, this year, we combined AOY1/ MA 1B for my oldest with Connecting With History I for my "kindergardener."  I also have a "pre-school age" daughter, and an infant. Despite all this, keeping everybody happy was suprisingly simple because we followed Charlotte Mason's advice and simple biblical instruction about parenting.

My first piece of advice in scheduling is to begin habit training very early. Charlotte Mason suggested that it was possible-- and I believe this with all my heart-- to begin training a child in good habits even in infancy. Creating a culture of love, prayer, discipline, and hard work begins at the breast and continues throughout the child's life, and no where is it more evident to me that we can help children to learn good habits from the beginning than when I hear how many mothers out there struggle with keeping a two year old occupied while his or her siblings "do school." When a child is secure and payed attention to, and has been given clear boundaries in a loving but firm way, he grows to be an easy child to be around.

I have always had toddlers who would happily sit for 30 mins at a time with one activity and then happily switch to another half hour of another activity, entertaining themselves as we went, all the way until lunch time. My children have always been trained to play alone as well as with others and to happily occupy themselves and pay close attention to the things they are playing with. We rarely use the television as a babysitting tool because we don't have to. This works! And after this problem-- the "What To Do With The Little Ones" question-- is answered, scheduling becomes a breeze!

My second piece of advice is to closely adhere to what Charlotte herself says about scheduling: keep lessons short, leave the afternoons free for handicrafts, lifeskills, and play, send the mother out to play from time to time, and take lots of outdoor time when you are able.

That being said, you still need to get an idea of the logistics of using the Ambleside Curriculum. These will look different in EVERY family, but for some, here is how it will work. In AOY1-3, the mother (or father) is doing the majority of the reading, and aloud. As Y3 comes to a close, the goal is to have transitioned the child to reading their work on their own, but this doesn't happen overnight, and especially in years 1 and 2, the parent has a big job. I've been told it will get easier, but to be honest, I will probably miss these days--- I LOVE the one-on-one time I get with each child.

Other AO moms much more experienced than I have said that they enjoyed keeping their children in separate years, and that despite the large family aspect, their kids and homeschools have been in thriving mode doing so. In other words, don't panic and shove all your kids together in the same year just because you don't know how you will do it all. You will. And it will work.

I got my basic outline for our weekly schedule from one of my favorite blogs: The Fisher Academy (another missionary AO family) It works for us because we have the time. Other families do ALL the AO reading in a couple days and leave the rest of the week open, or spread it out over the seven days. It just depends. The way we do it is based on a five day work week.

It looks like this:

MONDAYS we do Science & Natural History
TUESDAYS we do Literature, Poetry & Shakespeare
WEDNESDAYS we do Geography & Travel
THURSDAYS we do Salvation History
FRIDAYS we do Fine Arts & Philosophy

In addition.... Saturdays, we do Torah Study and Plutarch, Sundays we emphasize Gospel Study and Good Works.

Also in addition, also this won't apply to many of you, we do Connecting With History. This means we do one unit every four weeks or so... and have different activities emphasized each of those weeks. To keep things straight, I assign my CWH units like this:

WEEK A: Consider & Overview
WEEK B: Notebook & Explore
WEEK C: Notebook & Explore
WEEK D: Wrap up & Present.

When I go through the AO booklist, all I have to keep straight is what is due to be read that particular week, any additional books I've assigned, and which week of which unit CWH we are in. Sounds like a lot, but as you'll see, it gets easier. In fact, one of my favorite things about AO is that I don't have to waste time thinking about things that don't matter all that much (like schedules) and instead can spend my time thinking about the great ideas presented, just like my kids.

As an example, let's work with AO first, and then I'll show you how I add in CWH.

let's take Week 18 of AOY1.

for Week 18
Bible: 1 Kings 18:20-39 (Elijah and the prophets of Baal)
An Island Story: chapter 11 "The Story of How the Giant's Dance was Brought to Britain"
Fifty Famous Stories Retold: "George Washington and his Hatchet"; and "Doctor Goldsmith" (1774)
Burgess's Bird Book: choose one chapter based on geographic region and season
Aesop's Fables: "The Lion, the Bear and the Fox" (pg. 37 in the Milo Winter version) and "The Hares and the Frogs" (pg. 39 in the Milo Winter version)
Trial and Triumph: chapter 5 "Ambrose Bishop of Milan" (339-397 AD)
A.A. Milne: a poem a day
Blue Fairy Book: "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp" (A wicked Magician and his wicked Brother are killed) OR "Why the Sea is Salt" (a greedy man tells his brother to go the Dead; a ship sinks and all perish)
Paddle to the Sea: chapter 14

If I were just doing AO, each child would be doing arithmetic, hearing a poem, doing phonics, reading, and writing (via copywork), foreign language, as well as some memory work and catechism first. Let's say that goes from 9-10:30. (Short lesson, remember?) Then from 10:30 to 12, we would do whatever was assigned from the AO schedule that day.

In other words, by the time 10:30 rolls around, it's time to do the following (and this is where the magic happens!)

MONDAY-- nature study and Burgess Bird Book
TUESDAY-- Aesop and Blue Fairy Book
WEDNESDAY-Paddle to the Sea and a map drill based on the next day's work, Bible
THURSDAY-An Island Story and Fifty Famous Stories retold, Trial and Triumph

In the beginning, you don't need to require a narration of EVERY story, but do require it of a few.

Now, if you want to add in some other readings, like a recommended free read, for example, you would assign those where you aren't too busy. Let's say I want to add Little House in the Big Woods and Little Therese to the mix--- I would assign Little Therese in the place of our regular catechism study twice a week (say tues and thurs) because it's a living book that teaches Catechism. Then I would add in Little House as a bedtime read aloud on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (where the read alouds are sparse)

There you go! Done by twelve.

Now, you'd still be missing some elements. Charlotte Mason did music study, taught an instrument and  did picture study, shakespeare, etc.

I do those on Fridays, and spread the instruments and songs out over the work week.
For example, we study music and art theory on Fridays, but we will study our month's hymn by just singing it every morning during devotions til it is memorized. I've added a geography course Mason herself wrote, and we do a lesson a week from it on wednesdays.

The most important thing we do is center our work day around two key periods: Morning and Evening Prayer.
In the mornings, we pray together and then study catechism (or read a living book about the saints or church history). In the evenings, we read a bible story together and then discuss it. Then we say night prayer before bed.

 In the end, I'm always amazed at how much we have accomplished in so short a time.
I do try to capitalize on mealtimes, when my kids are naturally more inclined to be attentive. At that time, I do read to them as much as possible, or take advantage of other thinking moments--like a drive in the car, to listen to a music selection or poem... even an audiobook. In theory, we can do AO from our vehicle, and don't need papers and pencils at all at this stage. :)
In practice, we don't do that much. I like holding books and reading them, and we don't get out of the house much except into nature. As you plan your CM education, you will find that you will be planning nature time as often as humanly possible. One other tip I have for scheduling is to carefully select your "other" non-AO curriculum carefully... using a complicated math program that takes an hour to complete each day isn't going to help you meet your goal of short lessons and being done by noon!

Now, for the adventurous, here is how I add CWH to our AO routine.

WEEK A: Introductory week.

I add the discussion questions to our dinner table conversation in a casual manner the first night. Then I add the introductory reading from the Bible or Spine (What CWH calls the Core) to the first week's Catechism or Bible reading time (we do Catechism study in the morning and bible study at night). I also use this time to do memory work with the suggested poems and bible passages from CWH. I take the vocabulary words from CWH and teach them in a casual manner during reading time.

WEEKS B and C: Notebook & Explore.

I usually continue with the poem and scripture memory, and add in the non-core CWH subjects. This usually involves some reading assignments for the kids, and making some entries into our book of centuries. It can also involve movies, projects etc. If so, there is always time to do the movies or projects at night on the weekends or in place of a handicraft one afternoon or something, and as far as the reading goes, we will often do the additional reading as naptime begins or at bedtime. If there is a LOT of reading to do, we don't do the AO free reads that week, instead reserving them for the summertime when CWH will not be in use. Also, we don't do CWH on thursdays, when AO's history is thick and takes up a lot of the day.
On Wednesdays, we do map drills out of CWH during these weeks. We also do any geography or travel reading from CWH on that day instead of paddle to the sea, which my oldest doesn't like much.

WEEK D: Wrap up & Presentation

If there is any reading left to do, I assign it as above til it is complete. Then I pick a day, usually a Saturday, to present in whatever way the kids decide to present the unit that month. One more thing: I don't combine AO history with CWH anymore. Charlotte herself said it was better for kids to make their own connections, and using the Book of Centuries helps them to place events in history. So I just go through one volume of CWH per year as a family, and then do individual AO readings for each kid. It works great!

That's it! Sounds really complicated and scary, I know, but when you have done it a few times you will be amazed-- as I was-- by the simplicity of this system. Of course, this is only what works for my family. Many of you will find innovative ways to use the AO curriculum without coming close to the style or structure we use here.

If this helped you, pass it around! And let me know if you find a way to improve on my combination AO/CWH scheduling. I'm always thinking about ways to simplify this process.