My Catholic CM Homeschool Curriculum Outline

Let's face it, sorting through all of the possible approaches to homeschooling can make one's head swim, especially if too much time is spent surfing the web and reading ad nauseam descriptions and opinions. It might be easiest to just be eclectic, choosing from the homeschooling buffet the things one likes from various methods and putting them together in a hodge podge manner. This may work well for some. My belief, though, is that one needs an underlying purpose, a guiding philosophy. Then one needs a method that works with the child's predominant temperament and learning style. Some of this, for me, is provided by Marianna Bartold's Keeping It Catholic Series Home Education Guide. The rest can be found in the sources listed below, in the curriculum outline that I will be providing to our school superintendent (for the state of OH). 

I intend to continue with the Charlotte Mason method, relying upon Mater Amabilis and Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum for Catholic book recommendations for the relevant age group, and also potentially using choices provided by the other resources listed.  Despite Keeping It Catholic's red flag, Charlotte Mason is an adapted form of classical education, the teaching methods of which Bartold herself says can be used with any worldview, be it Protestant, Catholic, atheist, etc...

I wanted to get this done early so it is ready to submit as soon as the school year has ended. I am not primarily relying on my Montessori manuals at this point, but I still reference them occasionally for ideas. While the idea of unschooling still appeals to me and will be incorporated, I do think my daughter needs some structured learning time that is teacher-led. The CM method designates this and also provides for the free time, real world experiences, and child-led pursuits that unschooling champions. It's really the best of both worlds, the middle path between the "school at home" and the "freedom without limits" ends of the spectrum, neither of which is appealing. So think it out for yourself, but keep your homeschooling simple. Remember the "Little Way". In the end, the best way to learn to teach your children is to just do it!!

Curriculum Books and Resource Materials:

- Mater Amabilis: a Charlotte Mason style curriculum for Catholics (materamabilis.org)

- The Original Charlotte Mason Homeschooling Series (6 volumes by Charlotte Mason)

- A Charlotte Mason Education by Catherine Levison

- A Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola

- Keeping It Catholic Series Home Education Guide, Vol. 1 by Marianna Bartold

- When Children Love to Learn by Elaine Cooper

- Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum by Laura M. Berquist
- Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock

- Montessori Resource Manuals: Language, Science, Mathematics, Geography, Art,   

   Music, and Movement             

- Corresponding Montessori materials and similar manipulatives

- The Holy Bible, RSV, Second Catholic Edition

- St. Joseph's Baltimore Catechism

*Involvement with the Keystone Homeschooling Co-op for field trips and special programs, such as fire safety 
 

*Religious Education at Sacred Heart Church

Classical Education, Charlotte Mason (CM) Method: The Charlotte Mason method of narration will be used in the teaching of all relevant subjects. The child is read to, or reads for herself, from literature and retells (or writes) what has just been read. The use of what Ms. Mason termed “living books” will be the predominant choices, with minimal use of textbooks and workbooks. Living books are those written by an author who takes a special interest in his subject and in which the facts are presented in story form. Classical learning tools such as copy work, dictation, and recitation will also follow the CM method. Many resource materials will be borrowed from the library.

Subjects and Books/Materials:

Language Arts – handwriting (printing and cursive); Starfall.com reading curriculum and reading and writing journal; Ginn readers; Beatrix Potter book series; Little House on the Prairie book series; The Harp and the Laurel Wreath by Laura M. Berquist; children’s classic literature; Poetry for Children and Other People; Native American literature; public library programs; beginning Latin; American Cardinal readers (Neumann Press); The Velveteen Rabbit

Geography and History – United States puzzle map; Native American history and tradition; history of cultural, seasonal and holiday traditions; American Girl book series; visits to Sauder Village living history museum; Ignatius Press lives of the saints (biographical novels); A Child's History of the World; Hurlbut's Story of the Bible; National Geographic for Kids magazine; observation of the liturgical year

Mathematics – Montessori Tens Boards; Time & Money workbook; Total Math workbook; measurement; fractions with manipulatives; place values; addition and subtraction with regrouping; continuing multiplication; beginning division

Natural Science – Rocks, Rivers, and the Changing Earth by Herman and Nina Schneider; nature walks and keeping a nature notebook; study of trees and leaf collection; study of flowers and flower pressing; study of insects, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and dinosaurs; the seasons; climate; sustainable living and organic gardening; science museum visits; daily calendar; ecosystems/animal habitats; 4-H project: pets (dog)

Health Education – study of bacteria, mold and viruses; personal hygiene; nutrition; food preparation; herbology; vegetarian diet

Physical Education – dance classes; Parks and Recreation soccer program; yoga practice; daily outdoor play; hiking; sledding; trampoline; local running races; swimming

Fine Arts – painting; poetry and art appreciation; Come Look with Me Series by Gladys Blizzard; art museum visits; attendance at plays and concerts; dramatic play; Parks and Recreation/library arts and crafts programs; ArtSpace (WCAC) programs; West Bethesda folk concert series; St. Patrick School art classes; 4-H project: cake decorating

First Aid, Safety, and Fire Protection – Continued reinforcement of these subjects through library materials, field trips, and home safety plans

Homeschooling: Christian Curriculum Warning for Catholics

Here is an interesting segment from the Keeping It Catholic website that will hopefully help you in choosing your homeschooling materials:

I am still unclear on what exactly about (company name deleted) is anti-Catholic as opposed to just being non-Catholic..... I realize their history up to a certain grade leaves out the Catholic material and I have heard not to use their history and science after this grade. I would appreciate some specific examples of how they are ANTI Catholic.

The discussion was off and running! The following reply is the most edifying -- because it comes from a person with firsthand experience as a "Biblical Christian."

Well, have you asked yourself why they leave out the Catholic material in the history? I'm a convert from Fundamentalism. We were very careful neither to give the Catholic answer on anything nor mention anything in the history books that might cause our children to be open to Catholicism down the road.
Our view was that Catholicism was one of the many wide roads straight to perdition. Our school loved to get Catholic kids in so they could gradually wean them from their faith and make sure they learned all about Sola Scriptura (only the Bible) and Sola Fide (only the faith) so well that they would never return to Rome. (At the time I approved, until I saw the truth of Catholicism. It was then that I realized we should never have been so narrow as to tolerate such interference with parental authority-- because that's exactly what we hated about the public schools!)

Abeka, Bob Jones, and Alpha Omega were our favorite resources. When a Catholic parent asked about homeschool materials, we loved sending them to these three companies. Why? We knew that the entire slant of their educational program would range from Protestant to anti-Catholic. Like the public schools, we all knew that the way you train and educate a child will determine his whole outlook on life as an adult. After all, the Scriptures say, "Train up a child in the way he should go...."

That is why, when it comes to history, the Protestant publishers gloss over or omit the Catholic contribution and point of view. The child will never know it and, therefore, can never refer to it. Eventually, it will be easy to convince the child to become a "born-again Christian" (meaning a Protestant one or even a fundamentalist one!).

The Fundamentalist Mindset Toward Catholicism. If the Catholic contribution to history isn't important enough or influential enough to mention, then all the things that happened through the good influences of the Catholic Church can be credited to other cultural elements. So the Catholic Church can be effectively written out of the history books. With this kind of educational approach, the bad things that happened in history can be blamed on the evil influence of the Catholic Church. All the good things can be credited to the "Reformation" or various "enlightened" heretics who held the protestant-type positions long before breaking with the Catholic Church.

We screened our history books very carefully to make sure that no hint of good was written about the Catholic Church. We understood even a morsel might lead our children into slavery to the Catholic church and then to hell!

A Specific Example. When Alpha Omega carried a homeschooling book written by a Catholic, they apologized for it in their catalog's advertising blurb. They explained that they thought the book had some useful material in spite of being tainted. As a fundamentalist, I appreciated the warning and thought it was very conscientious of them.
 Reading books were another issue. They could use verses and stories that promoted sola scriptura and sola fide and re-emphasied those ideas until they were totally ingrained. The rules were -
-Never hint of Tradition as being from God; always indicate that Tradition is of man and never of God.
-Talk about ANYONE from the Bible as a good role model--except Mary or Joseph.
-Talk about any good religious leaders - provided they aren't Catholic. A good Jewish leader is better than a Catholic as an example for our children, because a Jewish person doesn't have the whole truth. As for Catholics, the fundamentalisst view is that a Catholic has chosen to ignore the truth in favor of the evil constructs of power hungry men and idolatry.

How truths are worded is important. Mostly, fundamentalists know it is important to use a way of wording upon which almost all Christians agree upon. By not presenting an obvious denominational slant, the loyalty to a single creed is weakened. By organizing words and phrases in a way with which a Catholic can agree or won't "catch on" (to the Protestant definitions, of course), the issue at hand is not offensive and Catholics tend to agree with it. Eventually, Catholics become comfortable with other, similarly worded, comments that are, if analyzed, anti-Catholic.

Why do "Christian" publishers do this? It's not because they have an agenda to hurt Catholics. It is because they want to be absolutely certain that their children are raised to view the Bible and only the Bible as the authority in their lives. Tradition (meaning the Tradition of the Catholic Church as upheld by the Magisterium) has no place in the faith life and neither does the Catholic "faith and good works" doctrine.

The Christian publishers want to ensure that children grow up totally convinced that faith is the only thing they need to be "saved." There is no place for good works; it is only your faith that gets you to heaven. No matter how much good you do, you have to build up a rock solid "faith" feeling inside yourself about God. The strong message is that if you don't accept this view of salvation, you really don't have faith in God and your soul is totally lost. As a fundamentalist, you have to check that "faith-feeling" meter on a regular basis. This, of course, clashes with the fundamentalist once-saved always saved teaching, although the alleged reasoning even behind that is "it's a faith thing."

Catholic parents have to ask themselves: If Christian books are written to permeate Protestant fundamentalism into children, why would a Catholic parent want to use them?

For Catholics making use of these kinds of books or curricula, the end result is serious. The children become accustomed to hearing about faith and other matters from the Protestant view.
There is no mention of the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph or the Saints, the need for confession after repentance, etc. Those parts of Catholicism become alien to children because the curriculum is permeated with fundamentalism. For example, when the children do hear about Mary (as taught by the Catholic Church), it is so different from the simplified, watered down religious commentary in their "Christian" curriculum, that they have trouble connecting with the truth about the Virgin.

Language is a very powerful thing. How the faith is presented fits with the entire theological construct. If the book or curriculum presents information as the fundamentalists do (because some Catholic truths cannot be stated in the same way), and a child is exposed to this approach daily and yearly, which will the child understand and choose? Will he choose and believe the one to which he is accustomed, or the one that sounds "odd" to him?

Another example -- if the child finds that the only mention of Mary is "once there was a young Jewish girl named Mary. God chose her to give birth to the Baby Jesus," then the theological understandings of Mary as Mother of God, and the Immaculate Conception, are alien, and the foundations for understanding them are not there. The child needs to hear exactly what the Angel said to Mary, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee." The child needs to hear Mary's responses, "How shall this be accomplished, since I know not man?....Let is be done unto me according to thy word."

The child needs to know that the Holy Spirit (God, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity) came upon Mary and caused her to conceive God (Jesus, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, who is both divine and human). This builds the foundations for understanding that Mary is the Mother of God (Theotokos). Repetition is needed for mastery of the concepts in the story of the Annunciation.

Parents need to know that if the truths of and about the Church are downplayed in the rest of the curriculum, it weakens the concept that this "religion issue" is important . The fundamentalist language in Christian books and curriculums will never allow anything good about Catholicism to be included; the complete truth and the real answers will never be found in a "Christian" curriculum.
As a convert to the Faith, I have given much thought to all of this. Now I use Catholic religion and history and reading. I want to be sure that my kids learn to be Catholic. I have the same dedication I once had as a Protestant because I understand the underlying premise of nondenominational materials...but it was a long, somewhat painful road to get here.
  

Self-Designed Catholic Homeschool Curriculum

As I increasingly orient our homeschooling to the Catholic Faith, I'd like to share what we are using for "curricula", considering that term in an open source, unschooling kind of way. That is to say, by way of seamlessly joining learning, life, and the Faith. Using my little way of the fleur de lis, with faith formation at the lily's center, I endeavor to be vigilant in keeping Beezy's home education Catholic. Our curriculum is self-designed and utilizes "living books" as much as possible.

The most important resource, of course, is the Catholic Bible. (We use the Holy Bible, RSV, second Catholic edition). I checked out a Catholic Children's Bible from the library but decided it wasn't going to work. It paraphrases the stories and then explains their significance. I could tell it would be tedious for Beezy and would not work well for her age level. Even for older children, though, this does not fit into the Charlotte Mason philosophy of using original sources and letting children make their own connections regarding the material. The Bible as it is written has always unfailingly held Beezy's attention. I only got the children's version because it was suggested on the Mater Amabilis online Catholic CM curriculum site.

I have been teaching the Rosary to Beezy, and we have covered all five Joyful Mysteries, reading the stories from the Bible to meditate upon as we pray the Hail Marys. At her age (8), one decade at a time is plenty. For copy work, she has written out the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be. We will continue with the Fatima prayer and the Salve Regina (Hail, Holy Queen), as well as the Apostle's Creed. This also covers memorization/recitation.

Since yesterday was the Feast of St. Joseph, I read a St. Joseph Story for Kids from parentsduty.com. I especially liked this, because it discusses doing chores as a gift of oneself. I could almost hear the wheels in Beezy's head turning! We are almost finished reading, Kateri Tekakwitha: Mohawk Maiden by Evelyn M. Brown. This is from Ignatius Press, which has a whole series of novels about saints. I read a chapter, or part of a chapter if it is very long, and Beezy narrates it back to me. This book also falls under the subjects of history and Native American studies. We previously read, Our Lady Came to Fatima. 

Today Beezy asked me who the "Glory Be" prayer is addressed to. When I told her, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, she wasn't sure exactly what that meant. She knew the Father was God, and the Son was Jesus, but who was the Holy Spirit? I just so happened to have a book I was planning to begin today, A Young Person's Book of Catholic Signs and Symbols by Francis Tiso. This book begins with the symbol of the circle representing the One God, and then proceeds to the Trinity. Love those moments of synchronicity!

So there are several ideas for beginning a Catholic-based curriculum. You probably already have a Bible and a Rosary. I simply type the prayers on the computer to print out for Beezy to copy, and the books come from the library. Easy breezy lemon squeezy! Not all of your resources have to be Catholic per se. For example, we are reading Little Town on the Prairie for American history/literature right now, and we are using a basic, "Time and Money" workbook, plus a toy clock with movable hands, for math. The important thing is to avoid curriculum choices that are anti-Catholic or specifically eliminate Catholic historical content (or which contain a Protestant bias). You want to be sure that the Catholic point of view, or point of conscience, as it is expressed by Keeping It Catholic, is upheld.

Speaking of KIC, my book had not been sent due to a warehouse error, but I have been assured it has been shipped, so no doubt I will be giving my feedback on the Keeping It Catholic Homeschooling Guide soon! Tonight Beezy's religious education class, which meets weekly, prayed the Stations of the Cross, and I joined them, participating in this ritual for the first time myself. Ten days until I'm Catholic, thanks be to God!!