General Daily Schedule

Debi's Sample Schedule, Narration Tips and Shakespeare

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OVERVIEW OF OUR SCHEDULING Due to frequent requests from my regular web-page visitors, I'm going to write out a description of my daily home school schedule as best I can. I have our weekly schedule printed out as a chart for each child which I hang on the refrigerator at the beginning of each week. We mark off the subjects as we finish them and add notations of any specifics we need to remember (page numbers read, art viewed, etc.) on little lines next to the space on the chart. I wish I could visually show you the charts -- it's a bit difficult to explain. When reading through this day-by-day schedule, some people might think this is a lot to accomplish in any given day, but we're using Charlotte Mason's idea about short lessons (only fifteen to twenty minutes for each topic) so our academic part of the day comes out to around 3 1/2 hours per day. I've found my children enjoy having a set task to accomplish in a set period of time. Since I'm not a particularly rigid person (I tend to "go with the flow" of life), I first thought this type of schedule would crimp my "style" -- but I've actually found it to be incredibly freeing. What a surprise! With many school subjects, I find I can teach both of my older children at the same time by reading aloud to them together. My son isn't reading fluently enough to gather much information from reading independently (he's still working on fluency and isn't to the reading for knowledge stage). My 12-year-old daughter does a great deal of independent work, so she does additional reading on the various topics we've covered together. Her independent reading time is followed by oral narrations for each subject (and occassionally written narrations). THE GENERAL SCHEDULE I was inspired to put together my own daily schedule after reading the books, A Charlotte Mason Education and More Charlotte Mason Education. The author, Catherine Levison, printed out samples of her own weekly schedules and also included actual schedules used in the Charlotte Mason schools in the early 1900's (the schedules appeared in a December 1908 article in the Parent's Review). While my schedule was inspired by Levison and Charlotte Mason, it by no means is representative of their actual schedules. This is simply how we've adapted the idea to our own family situation. --MONDAY-- Bible, Memory Verse, Reading, Writing, Spelling, Math, Literature, Science, Poetry, P.E., Geography, Recorder, Crafts, Drawing --TUESDAY-- Bible, Memory Verse, Reading, Writing, Spelling, Math, Literature, Science, Poetry, P.E., History, Music Appreciation, Art Appreciation, Home Economics, Occupational Education --WEDNESDAY-- Bible, Memory Verse, Reading, Writing, Spelling, Math, Literature, Science, Poetry, P.E., Geography, Recorder, Crafts, Drawing --THURSDAY-- Bible, Memory Verse, Reading, Writing, Spelling, Math, Literature, Science, Poetry, P.E., History, Music Appreciation, Art Appreciation, Home Economics, Occupational Education --FRIDAY-- This is our less academic day: Moms Group/Homeschool Group, volunteer opportunities, field trips, social activities, and time to fill in any subjects that were skipped for whatever reason during the week. And then every night at bedtime, I read to my children from their just for fun books -- no narration with these books except for a question when we first sit down such as, "So, what was happening in Old Yeller last night?" Well, that's my schedule... such as it is. =============== NARRATION TIPS Since people ask frequently how to deal with children narrating the same passage at the same time when reading to the kids all together, I'll give a brief answer about how we've dealt with this issue. After each reading selection, I call on one of the children to narrate -- they don't know who it will be from one time to the next. Sometimes if I feel the first narration was sketchy, I'll call on the other to narrate any additional information he or she would like to add to the earlier narration. We do brief oral narrations after every subject each day -- whether the subject was covered together orally or studied independently. We only do written narrations a couple of times a week for just a few carefully chosen subjects. Many times people starting narration for the first time discover that their children are hesitant to narrate. When asked to tell about the story, the child responds, "I don't know" or "I don't remember." If you're hearing "I don't know" constantly, one of several things could be happening. Perhaps the material is too difficult for the child, or the passage could be too long. For beginners, have them do a narration after reading only a short paragraph or two. Possibly the child just isn't experienced enough with narration yet to attempt anything long or complex. When we were first starting to use oral narrations, I found that Aesop's Fables and the Beattrix Potter books contained just about the right amount of material for my beginning narrators. These books contained short stories that could be read completely in one easy sitting. One trick I've learned to help the reluctant narrator is this: when I hear the "I don't know/I don't remember" response, I'll say something goofy that has absolutely nothing to do with the story in question (with a smiling glint in my eye), such as: "So, the little red wagon turned into a purple frog. Is that what happened?" Then my reluctant little narrator says, "NO, Mommy! That's not what happened -- you're funny!" And then with a giggle and a huge smile, they're off and running giving me a detailed description of the story they "didn't remember" moments before. Works everytime. ================ SHAKESPEARE Last year we added Shakespeare to our curriculum for the first time. My daughter loved our field trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, and I don't think I ever would've thought of introducing my children to The Bard at such a young age if it weren't for the inspiration of Charlotte Mason and some of the people writing on Charlotte Mason topics. Before we chose a play to study, we looked at the schedule for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We decided the most "child-friendly" plays that season were "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "A Comedy of Errors." Since we were able to prepare more fully for seeing "Dream," I'll tell you what we did in preparation for that particular play. First off, we read through Charles and Mary Lamb's version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Tales from Shakespeare just to enjoy the plot and make sure we understood the basic story line before attempting to wade through the Elizabethan English of the play itself. Then we read "Dream" aloud together. It was amazing how quickly we began reading the original work with ease. The first scene or two was a struggle for me to read aloud since I hadn't had much personal experience with Shakespeare other than a class in high school and seeing several plays. But before long, I found myself not only reading the language fluently, but also starting to think in Shakespearean-type phrases. It really grows on you! After we read through the play itself (twice), we went to the local library's inter-library loan system and checked out a video of the New York Shakespeare Festival's production of "Dream." Seeing William Hurt as Oberon, King of the Fairies was interesting -- a very unusual rendering of the part. We watched the video several times, and even my eight-year-old son enjoyed it tremendously. Then for the grand finale of our study, my daughter and I saw "A Midsummer Night's Dream" performed live during our trip to Ashland. It was all-in-all a wonderful experience. When preparing for "A Comedy of Errors," we weren't able to locate a video tape of the play, and the audio tape we found wasn't very high quality, so we sufficed with reading the play itself several times and then seeing it performed live. Personally, there's nothing quite like seeing a live production of Shakespeare. His plays were intended to be seen performed on the stage with live actors -- not read from a book with all the stage directions, etc. If you don't have a professional Shakespearean company close by, don't despair. Check for local high school and college productions of Shakespeare's plays (these are often very good productions and not nearly as expensive as seeing a professional Shakespearean company). Also, I regularly check through our local "What's Happening" guide in the newspaper and frequently find Shakespeare being offered in nearby towns and with local production companies.

These Charlotte Mason web-pages are maintained by Debi (DSimple@aol.com), author of Frozen Assets: How to Cook for a Day and Eat for a Month. Visit me at: A Frugal, Simple Life


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