Charlotte Mason Methods For Planning Units of Study

Charlotte Mason Methods

Charlotte Mason Methods For Planning Units of Study

Does your family enjoy using unit studies where you try to include most academic subject areas centered on one topic? Do you wish to add some of those neat ideas you hear about like "living books," "narration," "dictation," "copy work", or "notebooking"?

Charlotte Mason Methods Connecting Styles

Connecting these two instruction and learning styles can be natural! You need to begin by determining what material you will concentrate on in your education. Will it be a novel you all have been studying together? A character from history or a historical period or experience? What about a question in science or lesson you want to teach in your house?

Charlotte Mason Methods Strategies

Instead, you can use another kind of strategy and pick interest in your kids and develop that matter through the past. For instance, the history of canines or horses. When in the past do we see mention of horses or dogs as a part of a specific culture? Where they looked at as contributing something relevant to the culture? How did the horse or dog continue to add something to that particular culture, other cultures, and various times in antiquity?

Charlotte Mason Methods Choosing a Topic of Study

Once you've chosen the fundamental topic of your study, you'll want to list what educational areas and the skills and concepts that can cover in those educational areas. If it's a part of literature, what subject areas are in the text? Is it a novel that involves a famous person or ancient period, or geographical area that you can study adjacent the literary elements in the story? Does it include any scientific or mathematical concepts that you are researching?

Charlotte Mason Methods Tying it all Together

If your children are excited by history, it will be easy to pick a period you all enjoy and tie in everything that was happening at that time including science, math, literature, art and culture, and the geography. After you've listed what subtopics from different academic areas you want to include in your study, you can decide what "living books" you want to read for your narration (oral and written), dictation, and copy work. From there, you can determine what notebooking pages you need to create when completing the account.

There are additional techniques that Charlotte Mason used in her teaching that you can incorporate as well. For instance, your children can make what she referred to as a "Book of Centuries," a timeline of sorts in a notebook. Art, music, and handicraft studies can also be tied into your unit study topic, especially when focusing on a historical period.

Charlotte Mason Methods Summary

This technique is merely the start in including the Charlotte Mason approach in a unit learning because there are many other aspects to using Charlotte Mason's methods. But this is a good start!