does anybody mesh classical with CM?

[crystalinnc]

I would love to know your approach. I love the big picture of classical, and we pretty much follow the WTM with changes for the 3 year history cycle we do with classical conversations. I've been looking at the CM method a bit lately especially since I'm struggling with specifics when planning for reading and language.

 

It seems like the AO site kind of promotes and all or nothing approach when it comes to CM, so I was hoping some of you all might be able to share how you mesh CM with classical successfully.

[Caribbean Queen]

Charlotte Mason is classical.

 

From Susan Wise Bauer:

"Miss Mason was a classical educator herself, and although some of her recommendations differ from our recommendations, you should always remember that everyone who does classical education (including Charlotte Mason, the Bluedorns, Doug Wilson, Christine Miller, and ourselves) is adapting an old model to a modern context. In effect, we’re all “neoclassical†educators, modifying, improving (we hope) and changing the ancient ways of learning so that they make sense for students today. None of these adaptations are “straight from Plato’s mouth,†which makes arguments about the “genuine classical†method somewhat pointless."

 

Here is a link to the article. It sompares CM with WTM and may be helpful to you.

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/charlotte-mason-education/

[Amie]

SWB's article above is great. Also, here are some previous threads that discussed this (I know there are more...):

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27355&highlight=classical+cm

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29652&highlight=classical+cm

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=83269&highlight=classical+cm

[King Alfred Academy]

I mesh them together...:001_smile:

 

We're doing history in 3 4yr. cycles.

 

Copywork/dictation

 

Narration...I do CM's way. I have the boys tell back to me ALL they remember from our readings. This is going really well.

 

I try to keep our lessons short in order to help with the Habit of Attention.

 

Grammar, phonics, writing, and spelling...I pretty much follow the classical route, but add in "living books" to teach about some of the grammar rules while gently introducing grammar in the early years. We'll use JAG and AG starting in 4th.

 

We do artist and composer studies.

 

We're studying Latin...well, I have very good intentions...hasn't really happened yet this year.

 

We're following SCM schedule of Shakespeare study...one play every other year. This is our "off" year.

 

We do nature study.

 

We get our "seat work" done in the morning allowing our afternoons for free time.

 

 

Here are some other articles about similarities/differences between the two...

http://simplycharlottemason.com/2009/06/17/charlotte-mason-method-vs-classical-approach/

 

http://simplycharlottemason.com/basics/started/cmclassical/

[Testimony]

Charlotte Mason is classical.

 

From Susan Wise Bauer:

"Miss Mason was a classical educator herself, and although some of her recommendations differ from our recommendations, you should always remember that everyone who does classical education (including Charlotte Mason, the Bluedorns, Doug Wilson, Christine Miller, and ourselves) is adapting an old model to a modern context. In effect, we’re all “neoclassical†educators, modifying, improving (we hope) and changing the ancient ways of learning so that they make sense for students today. None of these adaptations are “straight from Plato’s mouth,†which makes arguments about the “genuine classical†method somewhat pointless."

 

Here is a link to the article. It sompares CM with WTM and may be helpful to you.

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/charlotte-mason-education/

 

:iagree:

 

CM is classical. Yes, I definitely combine the two.

 

I use Ambleside Online. Since I started using it, my sons do not complain about curriculae anymore. I do a 4 year history cycle though. I do Latin. I use Building Thinking Skills books. I do character training. I do nature walks. I do copywork, dictations, and narrations with my children.

 

I consider myself the Well Trained Mind-Ambleside Online.

 

Blessings,

Karen

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/testimony

[crystalinnc]

Thank you for the links!! And I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who thinks CM is classical. I guess I just came to look at things from a different starting point beginning with CC and TWTM. I love a lot of the CM methods of teaching v. working more with curriculum that is all written out (if that makes sense).

 

And I definitely thank you all for sharing what you do. I've been looking at AO, and so much of it looks like what we are already doing with TWTM that I mostly wondered if I was missing something.

[Another Lynn]

I agree with the others: CM is classical.

 

I like to consider CM sites (like AO) as I think about content subjects, but I have not felt like I had enough understanding to implement CM well for skill subjects (reading, writing, math) - so that's where I tend to consider WTM recommendations more. (Even those are not that far away from a CM approach, though there are some differences in the way they do narration, dictation, etc.) We do stick to a 4 year cycle.

 

Honestly, I don't consider myself a true CM-er - I don't even put nature study on my to-do list anymore, LOL. Sometimes I consider WTM recommendations for content subjects if it helps us accomplish our goals for skill areas (writing!).

 

But, I would rather choose terrific, challenging, children's literature than have my primary kids reading easy versions of classical literature they will encounter later. Though Usborne books may be fun for leisure reading, I don't like them as a main spine. Though I see the sense of the three stages of learning, I also like to remember CM's "Children are born persons" and can make their own connections with living books without our spoon feeding dry facts into them. (We participate in CC mostly for the social, the presentations, and the science projects - we do a minimal amount of memory drill at home).

 

I know what you mean about the "all or nothing" point of view on the AO site. I cannot argue for or against it, I can only say it was not enough for me when I couldn't figure out how to teach my firstborn how to read or spell, etc. But this same ds loves reading and especially loves history - both of which I credit to the great stuff I read to him from AO Years 1 and 2!

[pageta]

We pick and choose with Ambleside Online. We are following the 4-year cycle with the WTM for both history and science, doing SOTW and biology for year 1. Everything else fits with Ambleside Online. We started with WTM but I have fit AO Year 1 into our schedule. We are doing all of the readings, even if they are history. I just do one set of readings a day (one thing from the list of readings for the week). We are not as strong in areas of nature study and art and composer study (and narrations!), but I am getting much stronger, thanks to AO and CM.

 

Ambleside Online is really intimidating when you first look at it, but once you get familiar with it, it is actually quite simple. I love CM book selections - I've found some of the best books with CM recommendations.

 

I really like the 4-year cycle with the grammar stage, logic stage and rhetoric stage with WTM. We are approaching our studies with that framework in mind. Right now I want to expose ds6 to as many things as possible so he becomes familiar with his world. Once we get to logic, we'll do more analyzing and such.

 

So we are blending both and it is working very well for us.

[dhudson]

My Father's World blends classical with CM as well.

[angelmorris]

We do both as well and I find the booklists for the years in CM and WTM are almost identical and it's very easy to mesh the 2 :)

[crunchycons]

 

CM is classical. Yes, I definitely combine the two.

 

I use Ambleside Online. Since I started using it, my sons do not complain about curriculae anymore. I do a 4 year history cycle though. I do Latin. I use Building Thinking Skills books. I do character training. I do nature walks. I do copywork, dictations, and narrations with my children.

 

I consider myself the Well Trained Mind-Ambleside Online.

 

Blessings,

Karen

www.homeschoolblogger.com/testimony

 

 

 

 

Karen (or others),

I love AO book list but do want to do SOTW and start with ancients in 1st grade, how do you follow AO schedule using your own history or do you ignore the AO schuedule on only use AO booklists?

 

thanks!

[pageta]

Karen (or others),

I love AO book list but do want to do SOTW and start with ancients in 1st grade, how do you follow AO schedule using your own history or do you ignore the AO schuedule on only use AO booklists?

 

thanks!

 

I thought long and hard about this. At first I was going to just ignore the AO list selections for history, but then I decided to use them. We were already doing Bible and poetry and such when we integrated AO into our curriculum. Now I have just changed our opening story to the AO selections - for year 1, they aren't very long - and doing school five days a week, we get through all of them.

 

Our routine goes like this:

 

Bible

Story time (AO selections)

Reading aloud

Spelling

Handwriting

Math

Poetry

History

Science

Music, art, etc.

 

Then the chapter books we were reading for fun are done either at bedtime or at tea time (I want to add tea time to our schedule and those stories would be perfect for such a thing - the elective readings for AO and others).

 

Tana

[woolybear]

There are two social groups on this board connected to CM. One is called Following Charlotte and the other is Classically Flavored Charlotte. If you don't know how to get to the social groups, click above on Community, then on Social Groups.

 

I'm not sure how active either group is at this point. There are also many Yahoo groups dedicated to a variety of hs approach blends. CMwithatwist is one that comes to mind.

 

Hth,Wooly

[shukriyya]

I agree with the others: CM is classical.

 

But, I would rather choose terrific, challenging, children's literature than have my primary kids reading easy versions of classical literature they will encounter later. Though Usborne books may be fun for leisure reading, I don't like them as a main spine. Though I see the sense of the three stages of learning, I also like to remember CM's "Children are born persons" and can make their own connections with living books without our spoon feeding dry facts into them.

 

Yes, this is where I am ambivalent wrt TWTM's approach to the classics. I don't see much value in introducing Shakespeare to my little one through a children's adaptation since so much of Shakespeare's brilliance us in the language itself. I do see that by introducing the story there is a familiarity with the unfolding of events and characters but whether that benefits later study of the works I can't say. That said, I have found a good Penguin Classics book of Greek Myths that looks very promising for a read aloud for elementary children. The language is alive yet uncluttered and the clear writing assumes a respect for the young reader.

 

Wrt the op's question I find myself drawing from the living waters where the streams of both TWTM and CM intermingle.

[8filltheheart]

I tend to be more CM in the younger yrs and more classical in the upper grades.

[stripe]

I think the Ambleside Online website suggests (or says outright) that you must do it all their way and that includes all aspects of the kids' life (discipline, etc). They emphasize that they are not a booklist but a way of life. Not everyone may be that style. I have never gotten the impression that SWB/WTM takes such an all-encompassing view (in fact SWB says in that article about CM that things like "mother culture" are not things she [sWB] deals with), but there are more ways of doing a CM-style education than Ambleside, and more ways of a classical style education than WTM, so that's worth keeping in mind.

 

When Children Love to Learn: A Practical Application of Charlotte Mason's Philosophy for Today by Elaine Cooper, Eve Anderson, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, and Jack Beckman, has some well-articulated descriptions as well.

[Testimony]

Karen (or others),

I love AO book list but do want to do SOTW and start with ancients in 1st grade, how do you follow AO schedule using your own history or do you ignore the AO schuedule on only use AO booklists?

 

thanks!

 

You can do SOTW in AO order because if you notice in year 6 they recommend SOTW Volume 4. A lot of programs I have notice have said that SOTW Vol. 4 is one of the best modern history programs for elementary. You can do the SOTW volumes in 2 years instead of one or only one volume and break it into 2 years to get to 6 years.

 

I know that Ambleside's Schedule starts with British history which is more from Volume 2 of SOTW. This is what I am doing. The Bible and SOTW vol. 1 is ancients. For SOTW vol. 2, we are reading Trial and Triumph and Our Island Story. My sons are older so Trial and Triumph is not too bad for them, but people have complained about it on these boards. My husband feels that our children need to know what the Christian walk is truly about. So, he says that they need to hear what is martyrdom. You can decide. I did a lot of read alouds at that level. So, I could skip. Oh, you have to get 50 Famous Stories Retold! You know why? A lot of those stories are in Writing Tales 1. It is an awesome spring board to that writing program. You have your child narrating these stories. Then they are rewriting them in Writing Tales. It is a great set. That is what I did.

 

Blessings,

Karen

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/testimony

[stripe]

Yes, this is where I am ambivalent wrt TWTM's approach to the classics. I don't see much value in introducing Shakespeare to my little one through a children's adaptation since so much of Shakespeare's brilliance us in the language itself. I do see that by introducing the story there is a familiarity with the unfolding of events and characters but whether that benefits later study of the works I can't say.

I have the same feeling BUT I know for me, if I have an idea of the plot, it's easy for me to follow the complicated language. I think it probably is good to have an idea of where it's going so that one doesn't focus on the minutiae of some turn of phrase at age 7.

[sagira]

I do combine both, and I'm using SOTW as our history studies. My approach is mostly based on Tanglewoodeducation.com. It's not an active site, but I use the ideas and booklists to create my own curriculum. I also bought and use the inexpensive corebook and Book of Centuries.

[Caribbean Queen]

I have the same feeling BUT I know for me, if I have an idea of the plot, it's easy for me to follow the complicated language. I think it probably is good to have an idea of where it's going so that one doesn't focus on the minutiae of some turn of phrase at age 7.

 

 

I am not preparing my children to be able to read a selection of adult classic literature by reviewing the books for years. By the time my children are 18, I expect them to understand the language (and plot) of any literature they read. I got a mediocre education and I can read well, so I don't expect any less from my children. I am no genius, but I read the Odessey at 12 years old, just because I wanted to, and I didn't need to read any abridged versions beforehand.

 

We use children's literature and The King James Bible now. As my children get older we will use books that are more adult. Their reading and vocabulary is going to get so good they will be able to read Shakespeare when they are older.

[stripe]

Thanks -- I really appreciate both perspectives; it's something I think about a lot!