Literature Themes -- Real Learning

Elizabeth is taking suggestions for the revised booklist in the second edition of Real Learning.

What follows here is an old post sharing how I used the Real Learning booklist for a couple of years, back when my older kids were in 8th, 6th and 5th grades and following. It worked for us well. I am posting it here just in case the method happens to be helpful for anyone else. It's not pure Charlotte Mason (because we moved through the books at more of a Sonlight pace) or pure unit study but something in between, I guess, with a strong literature-based component.
---------------------------


My 8th grader at this time was following a chronology-based approach --using The Story of the Church (a Catholic church history survey) and a lot of saints' bios -- and he just read through the 8th grade part of the booklist pretty much straight (depending on which books we had around the house or could find at the library) without really having them be part of his "school curriculum". It was just his nighttime reading program, and gave him some variety. A slightly more methodical way to do it would be to consult the research resources mentioned in the booklist: the Kingfisher History book for the time period mentioned (or the Kingfisher Science if it was a science-based month), write a book narration and an illustrated history page, and in that way compile a Book of Centuries and Nature Notebook of the child's own. Not much work required for mom, and over a few years you cover pretty much every area.

Here's the long version of what we did with a sixth and fifth grader (mostly using the sixth year of the booklist:

I used a history program called ABCs of Christian Culture (from Our Father's House) very loosely as a spine for history studies. It has you cycle through world history every year, but focus every year on different periods. Eg one year you might pay attention more to ancient history, one year to High Middle Ages, and so on. Continuity is provided by extensive use of a timeline or century book and by map studies (You could do the same thing by using Kingfisher World History, or Usborne's World History, or Hillyer's A CHild's History of the World, as a background). The main principle is that people learn not by memorizing facts, but by understanding relationships.

Charlotte Mason would, of course, agree with this principle. And this was how we approached the book list; as a way to focus on the details of the big picture. Whenever we went from one theme to the next -- say, Middle Ages to Shakespeare -- we would consult a broad-view timeline and do some mapwork that showed the big picture -- Europe in this case. Then we'd do a more close-focus map and timeline of the particular period. I usually chose a non-fiction book (sometimes a saints' biography, sometimes an Usborne or Landmark book, or sometimes we just used the Kingfisher World History or the encyclopedia) to read alongside with that month's literature.

The themes that were science or author -based would let us put history on the back burner for a month while we concentrated more on natural history or on literary themes. Again, I'd pick out a context book -- like a biography of the author, or a science text or encyclopedia. And sometimes
this would lead to a longterm interest that would continue after the month was over. My daughter is still reading horse books, for example, and has pretty much cleaned out the library by this point.

The basic formula I would use was to choose one book I felt was appropriate for a read-aloud per month, then find a non-fiction book about the same topic (or just use the Kingfisher World History). The first month we did the early middle ages, then the High Middle Ages from 6th grade, then we did the Shakespeare study -- then after a break in December we branched out on a multicultural study using the Japan and China months and adding Trumpeter of Krakow for a look at eastern Europe. We finished off by doing the World War II months and it was really interesting to see how the multicultural themes connected to the WWII themes, since of course Poland and Japan were big parts of the war.


When we went from reading Shakespeare in November to reading Samurai's Tale in January, the time frame was almost the same -- the 1500's -- but of course, the location was entirely different. The same was true when we went from Japan to Renaissance Poland (in "Trumpeter of Krakow"). The time was the same, but the different location gave us a chance to brush up on eastern European geography -- very helpful when we started in on WWII.


If interest in the theme for that month was high with my kids, they'd race through all the books on the list for that month and ask for more. This was true of the Middle Ages and World War II -- for the Middle Ages my daughter designed her own study of Don Quixote, and for WWII my son is still studying military aircraft. Some of the themes didn't "take" quite as much and we didn't use the whole list of books for that month, but they still do remember a fair amount of what they learned -- eg with Shakespeare and Japan. This is consistent with what Charlotte Mason says about providing a broad and generous curriculum, and one child finding his "meat" in Plato and another in Peter Pan.

So we did go on trails when there was a continuing interest, but the themed groupings helped us to have a place to go back to when the trail came to an end.

Another benefit I found, that I could not have predicted at the beginning of the year, was that we made our own connections during the study -- not just historical/geographical connections but literary ones. Trumpeter of Krakow and Samurai's Tale were both about courage against great odds, but one was a thoroughly Christian background and the other was an Oriental point of view. It was so interesting to compare the two.