Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival: Holidays, vol. 1

Our reading assignments came from Volume 5 and the Parents Review, but in contrarian fashion I'm drawing inspiration from the end of Volume 2:

"The old, old story has all its first freshness as we tell it to the eager listeners; as we listen to it ourselves with their vivid interest it becomes as real and fresh to us as it is to them. Hard thoughts drop away like scales from our eyes; we are young once more with the children's young life, which, we are mysteriously made aware, is the life eternal. What a mystery it is! Does not every mother, made wise unto salvation, who holds a babe in her arms, feel with tremulous awe that, that deep saying is true for her also, 'The same is my mother'?"    Volume 2, p. 281

Our piney woods, in a rare snowy moment.

Holidays provide an opportunity to rethink our treasured values and beliefs as we help our children experience them through family and community observances.  We also have the opportunity to encourage true humility as we focus on ideas larger than ourselves.

"Humility does not think much or little of itself; it does not think of itself at all. It is a negative rather than a positive quality, being an absence of self-consciousness rather than the presence of any distinctive virtue. The person who is unaware of himself is capable of all lowly service, of all suffering for others, of bright cheerfulness under all the small crosses and worries of everyday life. This is the quality that makes heroes, and this is the quality that makes saints."   Volume 2, p. 284

 May we all seek and receive God's grace in this endeavor!


Our topic today is holidays, and as a bevy of holidays approaches, we certainly benefit from wise inspiration.  So, onward!


Preparing

nak explains Time Value , helping us to see how we really *can* fit everything in to the time available.

Ritsumei, in Thought Breeds Thought, beautifully visualizes the wonder of great ideas.

amy in peru also reminds us to think about the ideas behind the holidays in Unwrapping the Holidays .

Laura reminds us They Would Sell Their Souls for Love; we must not lose sight of their needs in the busyness.

Penney Douglas includes ideas for celebrating in Holidays Charlotte Mason - Style , but she also reminds us to remember our children's needs as we prepare.

Celebrating

Friederike exhorts us:  "I love the Christmas time and advent when we get ready for it w/ baking cookies, singing and playing Christmas Carols, practicing Christmas play, decorating just to celebrate our saviors birth"

Alisha mulls gift giving in Three Gifts For Christmas.

Angie shares Holiday Activities for the Coming Months.

Adding to The Beauty shares a Poetry Study ~ November 2011 ~ Thanksgiving.

Blossom reminds us to focus On Holiday- the Charlotte Mason Way {maybe} .

Janelle Cole shares some Christmas Traditions.

Phyllis Hunsucker thinks about Advent already? .

Your lovely blog hostess (that's me) has last year's plan for Advent (which will be this year's plan as well) and also a look at the end result of our Jesse Tree observance from a prior year.

Coping

Lanaya advises on Staving Off Impishness During Time Off of School.

Gladys Schaeffer sends Greetings and Salutations with a reminder to keep our priorities in line.


Educating

Laura Grace Weldon presents Mentor: Fancy Name For Grown-Ups Kids Need.

Lisa presents How We Implemented the Charlotte Mason Method.

Barb presents Four Fabulous Fauvist Paintings to Study  .

Denise presents An Ancient Mathematical Crisis « Let's Play Math!

Nature study has our focus:

Bethany presents Chestnut Trees.

Pamela Jorrick presents Lassen, saying, "Living in Northern California, we have abundant resources for nature studies right out our back doors. This week, we visited a volcano to go along with our geology studies."


Next Time

A list of upcoming Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival topics is available here.

Next up:  Music Appreciation & Composer Study on December 6.

CM Series:
vol 4 pg 30-32 - Music, the Great Joy we owe to Hearing.
vol 6 pg 217-218 - Musical Appreciation

PR Articles:
Art and Literature in the Parents' Union School
Music and Art in PNEU Schools 


We want to read your post in the next edition of the charlotte mason blog carnival; submit it using our carnival submission form.

Schedule Example

I've posted an example of one of my edited chart-format schedules, where I took the generic chart-format schedule (new up-to-date copies soon to be available on the AmblesideOnline website) and edited them for our use.  The formatting didn't transfer particularly well, but I think you'll get the idea.

Update 7-Apr-2013:  To respect AO's copyright, I've edited the sample chart to include only two weeks and a handful of the scheduled selections.  You can still get the general idea.  I also edited this post to reflect the new source for the chart-format schedules.

Year 1 Bible Schedule

A recent blog post inspired me to think about our Bible curriculum for school.  Long ago, I had planned to have a Bible curriculum for school, separate from what we did for our family devotions.  But when my oldest entered Year 1, we had craziness going on and I didn't do much research--I just used Penny Gardner's list of readings for Old and New Testament because it had been recommended and it was easy.  We read one passage a day and just kept going until we finished.  When my 2nd child entered Year 0.5 (our made-up year between K and 1st), I no longer wanted to use Penny Gardner's list, so I used a list from Calvary Chapel instead, and used it in much the same way.  I've not been completely happy with this, but since it was working and other matters seemed more pressing, we just kept on.

I'd like to sit down now and read all the appropriate CM passages plus the relevant PR articles, but that's not going to happen just yet.  I'd like to look at all the PNEU schedules and map out a master plan for Bible for us for our whole school career, but that isn't going to happen either.

What I have done so far is to take the PNEU schedule for Bible for children age 6 and put it into my own Year 1 schedule. 

 =================================
 The call of Abraham (Gen. 12:1-5)
Esau and Jacob (Gen. 25:27-34; 27:1-45)
Jacob's dream (Gen. 28:10-22)
Joseph's dreams (Gen. 37:1, 3-35)
Joseph in Prison (Gen. 39:1-7, 10, 16, 17, 19-23)
Pharaoh's dream (Gen. 41:1-16, 25-31, 34-43, etc.)
Joseph and his brethren (Gen. 42-45)
The birth of Moses (Exod. 1:7-12, 22; 2:1-10)
The birth and call of Samuel (2 Sam. 1:1a-3a, 9b-11, 17, 20, 24; 2:18-19; 3:1-21)
David the shepherd boy (2 Sam. 16:1, 4-20, 23)
David and Goliath (2 Sam. 17:1-11, 13, 17-18, 20-46, 48-53)
Elijah and the ravens (2 Kings 16:30-32; 17:1-16)
Naaman the leper (2 Kings 5:1-19)
Daniel (Dan. 1:1-4, 6, 7, 17-21; 3:8-10c, 11-14, 16-30; 5:1-16, 13-17, 23-31; 6:1-23)
Psalm 23

The story of the shepherds (Luke 2:1-20)
The story of the Wise Men (Matt. 2:1-15)
The Child in the Temple (Luke 2:25-32)
The boy Jesus (Luke 2:40-52)
The baptism of Jesus (Matt. 3:13-17)
The call of the first disciples (Mark 1:16-20; John 1:43-51; Luke 5:27-32)
Early works of healing (Mark 1:21, 22, 29-45)
The daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:22-24, 35-43)
The stilling of the storm (Mark 4:35-41)
The feeding of the five thousand (John 6:1-21)
Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10)
Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52)
The Entry into Jerusalem (Mark 11:1-11)
Easter morning (Mark 16:1-8; John 20:11-18)
Jesus at the Sea of Tiberias (John 21:1-14)
The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)
The widow's mite (Mark 12:41-44)
The lost sheep and the lost coin (Luke 15:1-10)
The Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32)
The Good Shepherd (John 10:1-18)
The Ascension (Luke 24:50-53; Mark 16:20)

Memorization

Psalm 150
Psalm 19
Psalm 23
  =================================

It works out to one story to read a week (plus Psalm 23 one week) and one psalm to memorize each term.  This is a lot less than we had been doing, but I welcome that.  If it's important to go slowly and savor the books we read, is it not equally important to go slowly and savor scripture?  This is also only our "school" Bible, not our "home" Bible, so this will not be all we do.  Add in what we do at church, with which I am usually very pleased, and I think we'll have a well rounded approach.

I still want to work out a schedule for Proverbs, and I want to decide how to handle doctrinal studies.  CM's students would have read Proverbs once per year over the course of a few weeks, if I interpret the schedule in the Book of Common Prayer correctly.  They would have covered doctrine as they studied the catechism for their confirmation.  I know many people recommend reading one chapter of Proverbs per day so that the entire book is covered each month, but I have never been comfortable with that approach as it bites off too large a chunk at once and goes through it too fast.  As for doctrine, we cover the essentials with Leading Little Ones to God, which we go through again and again during family devotions, covering one concept a week.  I'm looking at some other options for my older students, but haven't settled on one yet.