Charlotte Mason was a British educator in the 1800's who believed all children deserved a broad education. Her methods and philosophies are still used today by many homeschoolers. While some follow her methods strictly, homeschoolers using almost any method can benefit from her teachings. Some of her most popular methods that are still being used are; narration, dictation, and copywork.
Brookdale House has a lot of wonderful curriculum that follows Charlotte Mason's philosophies. You can find resources for almost every subject (except math) for the elementary years. Three of the most outstanding products are the Writing Through History Series, the Geography Drawing Series, and The Fun Spanish!
Writing Through History
To say the Writing Through History curriculum is amazing is an understatement. This is a writing curriculum for elementary aged students that uses stories, poems, fables primary source documents and more. Each passage is based off of the period of history you are studying. There are four books, covering the four year history cycle. The amount of historical information in each one is excellent, if you were just to use the books for copywork your child will learn a lot.
The books are very flexible. A suggested schedule is provided, but the books can be used however you choose. Your child reads (or is read to if they are unable to do it themselves), completes copywork, dictation, and narration. In the process they practice history, grammar, penmanship, and writing.
Geography Drawing Series (The United States or Europe)
This is a simple curriculum that will help your child learn geography. Each week your student is introduced to a few new countries or states. They learn a little information about each one and then trace the outline. Over the week they trace and draw the countries from memory. At the end of the week they draw all of the countries that they have learned.
The lessons are quick and easy. The first day of each week takes a little longer while you learn basic information about the areas, but the rest of the week takes 15 minutes or less a day.
This curriculum will make sure your student not only knows the names of places, but their location as well.
The Fun Spanish
If you are unable to learn Spanish from immersion, this is a great option! The Fun Spanish is a quick addition to your day that will have your children giggling through their work. The silly sentences will have them laughing and help them to remember the vocabulary.
Students as young as second grade learn vocabulary, sentence structure, and verb conjugation. Each day they conjugate a verb, read and say vocabulary, read a sentence in Spanish, translate a sentence from Spanish to English, and illustrate a picture. It sounds like a lot, and it is a lot of learning, but not a lot of time.
Lessons take only ten to twenty minutes, but your child will be willing to do the work. The work is not boring and will have even the more advanced student learning new things. The third lesson has students translating the following sentence.
Ella es una osa rosada con tres orejas.
It translates to, “She is a pink bear with three ears.” With sentences like that your student will beg to do their Spanish work.
Handwriting Practice From the Bible Books 1 and 2
All children must learn to write. And there are several handwriting curricula available on the market, but most of them provide children with random, meaningless, disconnected words from which to learn.
This isn’t so with the Bible Handwriting Practice Series. The Bible Handwriting Practice series is a 3 book series, designed to teach traditional manuscript handwriting to young students, using Bible verses as the source for the handwriting models.
Whether you follow Charlotte Mason's methods to a tee, or only use a few of them, Brookdale House has you covered. Their materials are solid and provide a great way to learn.
May 9-15, 2016, you can get a coupon to save on Brookdale House materials as part of the Build Your Bundle sale when you click the coupon below
Rachel says
The fun Spanish sounds great! I think my kids would love it!