Just pick one of these five subjects to do each day of the week. They're only going to take about five or ten minutes, so it shouldn't be hard at all Welcome to the Simply Charlotte Mason podcast. I'm Sonya Shafer. We’ve been talking about how to make the
transition to the Charlotte Mason method and I’m going through five stages to help you
make that transition. We talked last time about Stage 1: The Basics. If you haven’t watched that video already,
you need to do that before you move on to Stage 2. Today is Stage 2 and it’s called “Once
a Week.” These are five subjects that are not hard
to do and I want you to do those once a week. We’ll just pick one of these five subjects
to do each day of the week. They are only going to take about five or
ten minutes, so it shouldn’t be hard at all. The first of the subjects is picture study. This is a great way to give your children
art appreciation and to add variety to your week. What you’re going to do is pick an artist,
let’s say Vermeer, and you’re going to show your children the picture. So all you have to do is hold it up, have
them look at the picture until they’ve got it in their mind’s eye, they can see it
clearly in detail. If they close their eyes, they’ve got all
the details right there in their minds. When they’re ready, then, you’re going
to hide the picture and have them describe it to you as much as they can. After they’ve described it, look at it again
to clarify or confirm what they have told you, what they have described. And then, just put this picture on display
for the rest of the week. Next week, pick a different picture, but stick
with the same artist. You’re going to want to stay with Vermeer,
or whatever artist you have chosen, for twelve weeks. So, all you have to do is choose a different
picture by the same artist, have them look, hide it and describe it, look again, and then
put it on display for the rest of the week. After you’ve gone through about six or eight
of that artist’s pictures, your children are going to have a really good feel for that
artist’s style. And then, you can read a living biography
of that artist sometime during those twelve weeks, as well. That’s picture study. Not hard to do. Takes about five minutes, maybe ten minutes,
once a week. The second subject is pretty similar to it
and it’s music study. You’re going to pick one composer. You’re going to linger with that composer
for the twelve weeks. Play that composer’s music in the background,
just informally, maybe during lunch. You’ll say the composer’s name, “Hey
kids, let’s listen to Bach,” and then start playing Bach’s music during lunch
or maybe while they’re cleaning up or while they’re getting ready for bed. But then, once a week, gather together and
have a focused time of listening to that composer’s music. Choose one of his pieces and listen to it
carefully. Maybe you could give the children silk scarves
and they could move the way the music makes them want to move, or let them draw what the
music sounds like to them. If the music makes them want to come up with
a story, they could do that. Any of these ideas will help them with focused
listening. You can also say, “Okay, listen for the loud
parts and the soft parts,” or “Listen for one specific musical instrument.” Anything like that. Again, it will only take about five or ten
minutes once a week, but that’s music study. So, picture study, music study, and then another
day of the week, do poetry. If you are not really comfortable with poetry,
it might be because of the way you were taught it in school. If you were taught poetry like I was, it was
dissected and pulled to bits, and any joy that you might have had in those words from
the poet was just sucked out of them by all of that analyzing. That’s not how Charlotte taught poetry. She wanted us to enjoy the poet’s words,
how he used words, how she put the words together. Enjoy that with your children. So, just pick one poet, and you can linger
with that poet the whole year if you want to. Once a week, read a poem by that poet and
just enjoy it with your children. If the poem lends itself well to illustrating,
you could sometimes have the children illustrate the poem. Or, you could have them act it out, if it
lends itself to that. And then, if you wanted to, you could assign
some poetry for the children to memorize. And if you want to go that route, then, go
ahead an schedule a second day of the week for them to work on memorizing and reciting
that selected poem. But mainly all you need to do is read a poem
once a week and enjoy it together. Now there’s one more thing that I wanted
to mention, just a little tip here on the side. It’s something called a book of centuries
and it’s going to help you to organize all the poets, all the artists, all the composers,
and the history and Bible that we talked about last week. A book of centuries is basically a timeline
in a book. Every two-page spread covers a hundred years,
a century. That’s why it’s called a book of centuries. So, whenever you read about a certain event
in history, or a certain person, like we talked about Albert Einstein last time, flip open
to the century in which he lived and write his name in there. Whenever you are studying a certain poet,
if you’re reading poems by Longfellow, then flip open to the century in which he lived
and enter his name. The same with your artists and your composers,
your Bible events and characters from Bible. All of those should be entered in your book
of centuries, because as the children enter new people into that book of centuries, they
are seeing all of the other entries they’ve already made and they’re starting to make
those connections: “Oh, he lived at the same time as he did. I didn’t know that.” And when the child makes that connection for
himself, that’s when it sticks. You can download a free book of centuries
off of our website, just a basic one that has the timeline across the top and blank
pages. I recommend that you start with a family book
of centuries, especially with younger children, so that you can show them how this works. Here’s a tip also: First thing you do, when
you have your book of centuries, open it up and put in your child’s birthday. Now he has a reference. And then maybe put in your birthdays, and
maybe put in Grandpa and Grandma’s birthday. And now we’re going to go back and put in
where Vermeer lived. So your child will have a little bit of a
frame of reference if you do that. You can get that basic book of centuries as
a free download, or we have a more deluxe version that is for sale in our bookstore
on our website. So you'll find links to those in the show notes. All right, we’ve talked about the first
three subjects that we do just once a week: Picture study, music study, poetry. Let’s talk about a fourth subject, and that’s
nature study. Nature study is simply getting outdoors and
recording what you observe about God’s creation around you. Take your children outside, go with them,
and each of you can have a sketchbook or a blank journal, and as you observe different
things you can write down those or you can draw pictures of those. Your nature notebook should be a reflection
of your own personality, so don’t grade them, don’t put pressure on the kids that
it has to look a certain way, just guide them in forming those relations with nature outdoors. And the nature notebook is just a record of
those observations. You might want to get them all focused and
give them some direction to begin with. Our book “Journaling a Year in Nature”
is going to give you those weekly ideas. You might go look at a tree and adopt that
tree for the whole year: “This is our American Beech tree.” And every few weeks go visit that tree again
and see what’s happening in its world during that day. Or you might say “Let’s go look for birds
today,’ or “Let’s go look for spiderwebs today." “Journaling a Year in Nature” will give
you those prompts and help you know what kinds of things to look for during the different
seasons of the year. But the main things is: Get outside and let
your children interact with nature up close and personal and then record their observations
in that nature notebook. And then the last subject, that I want you
to do just once a week, is geography. Geography can be approached through a combination
of living books and map work. Now two great living books that I just love
to use for geography are “Material World” and “Hungry Planet”. In both of those books, a professional photographer
traveled the world and took pictures of typical families in different countries. In “Material World” you’ll see a picture
of that family outside their house with all their possessions on the front lawn. It’s amazing to look at those pictures. you learn so much about the different cultures
around the world. And that’s what geography should be. It’s about people, not just about land. So, “Material World” also shows some candid
shots. As the photographer spent time with that family,
he wrote about his time with them. So, it’s like a travelog with shots of that
family besides the big picture. And then in “Hungry Planet” it’s the
same thing, same photographer, but it is a picture of a typical family with one week’s
worth of groceries in their kitchen or wherever they might happen to cook their food. And there’s also some favorite recipes in
there that you can look at, maybe try out if you want to. But those are great living books for geography. And then, combine living books with map work. Looking at maps and seeing how these countries
relate to each other, where they are in relation to the oceans, where they are in relation
to each other, which ones are landlocked, which ones are in the northern hemisphere,
and the southern hemisphere. All of those things are great. An easy way that you can do map work once
a week is to give your child a blank outline map. I like to focus on one region for the whole
year, so maybe we’ll do South America and Central America this year. Give them a blank outline map so that the
countries are outlined, but are not labeled. Tell them, “Label the countries you know.” And after they’ve done that, give them a
labeled map and have them compare and check their work, make sure they’ve been spelling
the words correctly, as well. And then, have them fill in one or two new
countries from that labeled map. Set it aside. Next week, give them another blank outline
map, same region, South and Central America, say, “Fill in the countries that you know”,
and then, give them the labeled map so they can compare and make sure and fill in one
or two new countries. Just keep that up every week and by the end
of the year, your children will have a really good feel for that area of the world as it
is on a map. But be sure to combine it with those living
books. One other thing you can do with living books
is, as you read about your artists, as you read about your poets, maybe your artist lived
in France, well go find France on a globe or on a map. When you read about your poet and you see
he lived in Illinois, go find Illinois on the map. Just finding those countries as you read books
together is a great way to make geography come alive to your children. And by the way, now that you know how to do
history, Bible, and geography, you might want to take a look at the ready-to-go lesson plans
that we have for those subjects. We have them available in six different time
periods to choose from and they might save you some time because the living books are
already selected and divided out day by day. If that would be of help to you, feel free
to take a look. We'll add those links in the show notes. So, your assignment for Stage 2: Five subjects. Picture study, music study, poetry, nature
study, and geography. But you’re just doing one each day and it’s
only going to take about five or ten minutes. Maybe, you’re going to do picture study
every Monday, that’s great. And do music study on Tuesday, your focused
listening, but you're going play it during lunch on Thursday and Friday, too. Maybe you’re going to read your poem on
Wednesday. You see how this works. Just assign one subject to each day of the
week. And if you want to, you can ease into this
stage in different steps. Maybe you just want to get picture study up
and running. That’s fine. Then once that plate is spinning, add in music
study. You see how this works? You can take it as slowly as you need to in
order to feel confident and comfortable with these parts of the Charlotte Mason approach. Next time, we’ll talk about Stage 3. If you haven't subscribed already, be sure to subscribe to our channel. We upload new videos regularly. And if you click that little bell, you'll receive a notification whenever a new episode is posted. You can also subscribe to the audio version of our podcast or you can read the blog post version on our website at simplycharlottemason.com. All of those links will be in the show notes, along with the links to the free basic book of centuries and where you could purchase the more deluxe version and a link to those history, geography, and Bible lesson plan guides. Be sure to take a look at those free samples of those guides. See if they will help you. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next time.
