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kristinannie
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| Posted: Jan 06 2012 at 5:26pm | IP Logged
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We are using a lot of their selections for this year (K). I went on their website to look at 1st grade just to kind of get an idea of what was on there for upcoming years (I am trying to get a basic history cycle down). I was surprised to see that they do Ancient Egypt and American history in Level 1B. It seems to be that my kids would like to be immersed in one time period or region at a time. I know that CM says to give a broad education and kids can cover many subjects in the same term. I am wondering if anyone has done something like this. I do kind of like it since when you do a chronological history sequence, I feel like American history gets left out. I was planning on doing a solid couple of years on American history. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: Jan 06 2012 at 5:59pm | IP Logged
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Mater Amabilis doesn't do Ancient Egypt until the second year of 1B, so that would be third grade rather than first. Second grade has them more seriously studying Old Testament Bible history alongside American, but that doesn't feel like so much to me since Bible stories cross a lot of lines for study and isn't strictly "history."
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CrunchyMom
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FYI 1A is 1st grade
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Lindsay
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kristinannie
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| Posted: Jan 06 2012 at 7:04pm | IP Logged
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Oh, I didn't realize that it was 2 years! That makes a lot more sense to me. I guess I should have looked at it when the kids weren't screaming! 
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stellamaris
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Kristin, we have done the two stands of history using the Mater Amabilis. I alternate days, usually two days a week for ancient history and two or three days a week for US. At first, I wondered how this would work. But I got to thinking about how much we all retain from, for example, serial TV shows that only air once a week! We never confuse one show with another, even if we watch several shows during the week. So that is how I thought about the CM curriculum and it seems to be quite true. When the boys were younger, we just enjoyed reading the books aloud together; the MA book lists are so rich in great literature for children! Now that they are older and doing a lot of reading on their own, the boys don't have any problem reading about Roman history one day and about Columbus the next. They do draw some interesting connections between different historical events.
Your young children will just take in the stories and they will become "pegs" for future knowledge. The whole point of the early MA curriculum is just this broad exposure to cultural stories and to excellent language.
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kristinannie
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| Posted: Jan 06 2012 at 10:28pm | IP Logged
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stellamaris wrote:
Kristin, we have done the two stands of history using the Mater Amabilis. I alternate days, usually two days a week for ancient history and two or three days a week for US. At first, I wondered how this would work. But I got to thinking about how much we all retain from, for example, serial TV shows that only air once a week! We never confuse one show with another, even if we watch several shows during the week. So that is how I thought about the CM curriculum and it seems to be quite true. When the boys were younger, we just enjoyed reading the books aloud together; the MA book lists are so rich in great literature for children! Now that they are older and doing a lot of reading on their own, the boys don't have any problem reading about Roman history one day and about Columbus the next. They do draw some interesting connections between different historical events.
Your young children will just take in the stories and they will become "pegs" for future knowledge. The whole point of the early MA curriculum is just this broad exposure to cultural stories and to excellent language.
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Thanks, this really makes a lot of sense to me! We are working on several books at once in our house and the kids never have trouble with that. Right now, we are learning about South America, study biology and nature, reading a chapter book, today we read a story about George Washington that really resonated with them, we are reading a children's Bible, etc. I sometimes think that we don't give our kids enough credit. We feel like we need to put them into a small box. In my own reading, I am reading several different books as well. I never get confused (OK...well, I am confused a lot because of lack of sleep and quiet...  ). I have also found that the kids really make connections between books. We learned about the Statue of Liberty several months ago and then read Stuart Little which takes place in NYC. Both kids knew right away that was where the Statue of Liberty was.
Thanks a lot for posting this!
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kristinannie
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| Posted: Jan 07 2012 at 9:17pm | IP Logged
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I have been thinking about this a lot and have found a couple of CM pages who actually suggest doing American History at the same time as a chronological world history, especially Charlotte Mason Help. I am really intrigued by this. I would love to hear some opinions!
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Mackfam
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It's generally because CM believed strongly in a varied and wide curriculum. In her schools she always taught local and national histories alongside another history period each and every year. Her observation, and I believe she was correct, was that children could easily distinguish between the different periods of study and were not confused by this presentation.
In earlier forms, history is, appropriately so, learned through stories. As children grow, culture is still studied and understood through stories as well as through artifacts, museums, and other ways of meeting history in living ways. A Book of Centuries or timeline gives a student a skeleton upon which to hang the information they gather through the stories they read, be it national history or ancient history. The Book of Centuries provides a great tool to the student of history, a visual reference of information collected by the student.
If we think of history presented in a textbook-y/dry history spine/reading comprehension way it WOULD be overwhelming and confusing to the child. One of the strengths of a CM education is that it never goes beyond the child, and that is accomplished through those narrations. Allowing the child to tell what they know, and stop there. The approach is wide, generous and varied and lays the groundwork for connections to be made in future history reading.
I don't always *plan* in formal ways how or what to study in national/local history alongside whatever period of history we're reading about for the year, but we almost always are doing that, and always have. We do still study our national history in depth when we get to that point in the rotation - we take that time to really study our state and local history in depth. We take advantage of current events and historical anniversaries (like the sesquicentennial of the Civil War) and that provides the tone of the national and local studies for us. The children continue reading about other events in history, and almost always, and especially as they grow and their reading is expanded, they make more and more connections between the two.
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leanne maree
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We found MA rather early on in our homeschool journey. The year we did Ancient Egypt was one of my dd now almost14, favourite years. We used lapbooks as well vto embellish this topic.
we have fairly much stuck to this way of travelling through history, but as we are Aussies we left out American history and replaced it with Australian history.
This year we will finish our over view, really on World History and delve into American history moch deeper. It is the perfect time for us. I am so pleased we used MA as our backbone and branched from there.
I really hope Kristinannie, that you get as much out of using MA as that We have.
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Leanne
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4Real Forums : Across Time and Place
Topic: Question for those who use Mater Amabilis
