Just in time for the new school year, a review of a new curriculum! And if you are like me and enjoy flying by the seat of your pants as your homeschool, perhaps you have not yet settled on your curriculum and can benefit from this eleventh-hour review.
My apologies for the lateness and for my absence from Substack. Our family has just embarked on a cross-country move from California, where, believe it or not, we enjoyed a wonderful, conservative Catholic homeschooling community and glorious traditional Latin Mass, to the mid-Atlantic (where, God-willing, we will also have these things). The Covid Plandemic turned out to be a blessing for our little family and has allowed my husband to work remotely, so what did we do? We bought a hobby-homesteading-farm on 15-acres. Time to grow our garden-chicken-coop-apiary operation that we had crammed into our backyard in CA and see what we’re really made of. The interesting thing is that after three generations of absence from the land, our family is returning to within 50 miles of where my great-great-grandfather once lived and farmed. It’s funny how things work out.
Some Good Books
Before the review, I’ve got a “10 favorite books” list in answer to a friend and to anyone else who needs to refresh their home library or is looking for a quick suggestion. Target-age roughly 8 and under. Here is a quick smattering of some good books that we are enjoying now (affiliate links—because after all, why shouldn’t I?!):
1. Book 1 (“In the Nursery”) of the My Book House series by Olive Beaupré Miller. This lovely series of books was originally published in 1920, and it shows. The illustrations are sweet and brightly colored. It is full of short, lyrical Mother Goose rhymes and nursery tales from different cultures around the world—which reflects how many of these countries used to be, giving children a sense of different national identities. The rhymes and tales are short and hold the attention of the youngest listeners (yet my older children gravitate, too, when I read this). One fun part is that Miller knew her history and includes quite a few interesting footnotes for the mother to skim as quickly as possible before the youngster demands she go on.
2. Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs by Tomie dePaola. We, like you I’m sure, love this illustrator. We have many dePaola books, and I highly recommend all of his stuff. This story in particular is so sweet because it does something that seem unusual for children’s books. It tackles the difficult subject of natural death, but it does this entirely aesthetically and through a story that is relatable and wholly non-didactic (the death of good literature). A little boy witnesses the natural passing of his great grandmother and eventually his grandmother, but we get to experience his profound, childish love for them. It is told from his perspective, too. How many modern children’s authors could learn a thing or two from this story—one that is actually for children rather than for adults.
3. A Street Through Time illustrated by Steve Noon. My kids love to stare at these highly detailed pictures of a single street as it changes from the time of primitive human history to present. I’ve got a whole post on this one, but one reader mentioned that you can get the older edition of this book and it does not include the final page of cultural degeneration that you probably want to shield your children’s eyes from (the book presents this stage as “The Future”—God help us).
4. Any book by Elsa Beskow (see my post on the imagination of Elsa Beskow here). Our favorites are Children of the Forest, Woody, Hazel and Little Pip, and, as of recent, The Flowers’ Festival. This last one is great if you happen to garden with your children. I laughed out loud during parts of it and my eldest really understood the humor, which draws on gardening metaphors, thanks to our time outside working and doing nature study. These books are great to pull out seasonally (Woody, Hazel and little Pip is perfect for Fall and The Flowers’ Festival is great for a lazy summer afternoon, for example) to keep that special liturgical rhythm going.
5. C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a classic. We started reading this aloud when the oldest was about 7 and his brother was close to 6. It’s something we return to, and the oldest went on to read the whole series with Dad at age 7-8.
6. The Barefoot Book of Classic Poems is a beautifully illustrated book of poetry for children. If poetry isn’t a part of your family culture, this is a good book to start with (alongside Mother Goose). Even if some poems are challenging for the youngest listeners, the bright and lovely illustrations hold their attention. I also recommend A Child’s Garden of Verse by Robert Louis Stevenson as another great book to introduce the joy of poetry to the young child. This one is our favorite edition.
7. Catholic Tales for Boys and Girls (and More Catholic Tales) by Caryll Houselander. I absolutely love these short stories. Houselander is a lesson in how to tell a “Christian story” that is just a good story. She helps to shape the moral imagination perfectly. See my full review of Houselander here.
8. I would be remiss not to include at least one knight story. Patrick O’Brien’s The Making of a Knight is a great one because it shows what really went in to making a knight—all of the hard and humble work—and also some battles, of course. If you’re interested in this genre, I’ve got a review of knights and castles and tales for boys here.
9. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett is one of my absolute favorite books for children. I had only sons listening when we read it, so it is definitely not a “book for girls.” It is just a great book with a wonderful message about the redemptive power of beauty and gardening (a topic that deserves its own post here, as I have learned lately how therapeutic garden work is, especially for curing bouts of anxiety). This book could be started with readers around age 6, depending on the child.
10. Black Ships before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff (we love the one illustrated by Alan Lee). I’ve got an entire post on a reading the Iliad with your Christian student. We combined this book with Tales of Troy and Greece by Andrew Lang. My boys were 5 and 7 when we did this. The 5 year-old followed along with the help of the wonderful illustrations in Sutcliff’s book. They couldn’t look away from the battle scenes!
This list skews mostly toward children ages 5-8. Younger than 5 do very well on a diet of nursery rhymes. I have various illustrated editions of Mother Goose. Get a few and see what you enjoy!
Review of The Children’s Tradition
I’ve sprinkled mention of Charlotte Mason and her overarching philosophy throughout many of my posts. During graduate school, and truly after a lifetime of desiring to know the answers to the eternal questions, I came to the conclusion that the imagination holds the key to our relationship with reality. For Mason, too, the imagination is central. I fell in love with Mason’s method to homeschooling when I first discovered it. Her emphasis on the integration of knowledge, on the synthesis of ideas through “living books,” on the role of nature-study for putting children in contact with reality—all of these were ideas that I had come to by an entirely different path.
Putting her method it into practice with my own children, I have come to appreciate the profound truth and depth of her insights.
Today, I’m going to review a new Charlotte Mason curriculum (introduced in 2024), The Children’s Tradition, designed by Amanda Faus. Amanda kindly provided me with a gratis review copy for The Christian Imagination (and a discount code, see below).
What intrigued me about this new curriculum is that it is based on John Senior’s 1000 Good Books list. If you aren’t familiar with Senior, he ran away at 13 from New York to the midwest, was returned to his family by a rancher in the Dakotas and continued to resturn West each summer for work, earned a PhD and became a professor at Cornell, and then founded the Integrated Humanities Program (IHP) at the University of Kansas in 1970. IHP was, hands down, the best program ever to come to a public university. Thus, the academy shut it down. Based on the great books tradition of Western civilization and amplified by Senior’s belief that students must be put in contact with the real, IHP was truly life-changing for the freshmen fortunate enough to have experienced it.
Senior had become convinced of the “poetic mode” of learning, “the awareness of wonder,” Senior said. Faus, quoting Senior, explains that in the poetic mode, “The senses and emotions were being called upon to experience the transcendentals of beauty, goodness, and truth, rather than offering mere definitions to be learned for an examination. Letting the stars, the poems, the songs come in directly through their senses… was already accomplishing the end of poetic education.”
Reading the great books is not enough, Senior realized. The incoming freshmen knew nothing and had no point of reference with which to understand the wisdom in the great books. So Senior began to rectify this by introducing the stories, songs, folktales, myths, and fairytales that they had missed. He took them stargazing. They spent time in nature. They learned the art of calligraphy.
I often write about children’s books here at The Christian Imagination, and I have said that reading these books shapes our imaginations as parents or grandparents alongside those of our children. These books present a worldview that strikes the imagination and affects us on an intuitive level. I, in fact, missed out on many of these great stories as a child and am now getting to experience much for the first time with my children. It’s a treat. Senior believed that even at the age of 18, it was not too late to reshape the imagination. Perhaps it never is.
But what if we begin this shaping using the “poetic mode” during the tender years of childhood?Senior seemed to be operating from a similar perspective as Mason, believing wonder and imagination are key to knowledge—to knowing reality. Amanda has, for the first time, taken Senior’s insight and applied it to a Charlotte Mason education (or, alternatively, taken Mason’s insights and applied them to Senior’s book list) and titled her curriculum The Children’s Tradition.
If you peruse Senior’s list, you will see many familiar and some unfamiliar titles. These books have withstood the test of time.
One of my first questions was, how does The Children’s Tradition differ from Ambleside Online (AO) and The Charlotte Mason Education Center (CMEC)? Amanda has a post on how it differs from AO, which you can read to get the full scoop. In sum, The Children’s Tradition does not include some of the titles which “purist” Charlotte Mason curricula, such as AO and the CMEC, have been known to use. These are books that the PNEU schools relied on and that Mason recommended. However, Amanda points out, some of these books can sometimes make things feel a bit like a Victorian time-capsule. I remember last year reading a book from one of these “purist” Charlotte Mason curricula that opened by discussing the current King of Prussia and the British Empire. I wonder if Mason would laugh knowing this book is on a curriculum in the 21st century, long after European kings, Prussia, and the British Empire have ceased to be. I had to pause to try to explain so much my young listeners that I decided the book was not actually a helpful one for their education.
The Children’s Tradition also does not teach “subjects.” Following John Senior (and Mason), Amanda has laid out a more integrated approach. This, in my mind, simplifies things for me. I sense that I will feel like less of a failure following this curriculum than the CMEC, which, don’t get me wrong, is an absolute treasure trove of resources, support, ideas, and courses for mothers. But, perhaps because of all of this, it can be a bit daunting or overwhelming—perhaps only for certain personality types, like mine.
The Children’s Tradition does not cover handicrafts, which AO and CMEC do, and CMEC in particular I know covers handicrafts very well—we greatly enjoyed their art instruction videos. I could see fruitfully combining the CMEC with The Children’s Tradition, making use of some resources while avoiding the feeling of overwhelm.
Another difference is that The Children’s Tradition does not stress the need to keep reading lessons as short as the Mason “purists” do. I always found it very challenging to spend an entire year (or even two) on a single book. My kids get engrossed in a story and do not want me to stop. They’re paying attention, they’re able to narrate the story, and everyone is happy with longer reading sessions. I know that this is a gross violation of Mason’s philosophy for, as she says, short lessons teach children the habit of paying attention (it does), and it also allows for a greater variety of lessons/subject throughout the day. Perhaps there is some room for individual needs and preferences, here. I appreciate that The Children’s Tradition seems to think so. Amanda writes,
“The word curriculum is from the Latin for a course to run, and it will give you a clear direction, but I want you to keep in mind that this way of educating preserves a great amount of freedom for you as the parent or teacher to synthesize the principles and wisely discern what is best for your children or class.”
There are helpful sections on the topics that are covered, including prayer life, folk songs, narration, dictation, poetry, Latin, Shakespeare, history etc. At the end of each section is the curriculum for that topic, broken down by year. Later, time tables are given by year, which can be filled in with the books recommended for each topic.
The introduction is thorough and lays out John Senior’s philosophy as well as Mason, and how Amanda has combined these two to produce the curriculum. For the mother looking for guidance in homeschooling, this introduction may be very helpful. It is something that can be returned to, year after year, in order to regain one’s bearings.
My only gentle suggestion would be to begin the book (or PDF) with the curriculum by year, so that busy mothers can see, at a glance, the entire curriculum and book list (by year). After that, provide the different topics and explanations, so that these can be referenced easily. Finally, the long introduction that opens the curriculum could be saved for last so that the mother-teacher could read and contemplate it at her leisure, rather than feeling the need to get through it before getting to the curriculum. This, of course, is the point and is, in a sense, necessary for understanding the books and the approach, but so much is learned “on the job” that the incredibly thorough and philosophically keen introduction could perhaps best be absorbed and understood in the process of teaching rather than presented as a rather daunting prerequisite for beginning the curriculum. Perhaps a very brief introduction to John Senior and his list could open things gently and introduce the reader to the overarching ideas of the The Children’s Tradition and what makes it distinct.
All in all, the emphasis on the imagination, “restful contemplation,” freedom to integrate the curriculum as family circumstances require, the importance of prayer life, and the relatively simple structure of this curriculum make it appealing. And last but not least, I love that Amanda breaks down John Senior’s 1000 Good Books list by age (and color codes it!)! Such a huge help!
If you are interested in trying The Children’s Tradition or adding it to your existing homeschool routine or curriculum, Amanda has provided a 10% off discount code: CHRISTIANIMAGINATION
Have you tried this curriculum or another Charlotte Mason curriculum? Leave a comment!
[Edit: one reader asked where to buy the curriculum. Here is the link]
[Edit: This exchange from the comments further explains my rationale for suggesting that the longer explanation of the philosophy and methodology behind the curriculum be saved for after the presentation of the curriculum:
From a reader: “I spent the summer educating myself on the curriculum and preparing to make this switch in our home. I think encouraging the mothers to take the time to continue their own education and reframe their thoughts before jumping in is important!”
My response: “Surely! My suggestion to put the lengthy, philosophical explanations after the curriculum is to give the mother-teacher concrete examples in order to better understand the philosophy. Even if she jumps into the curriculum before reading the thorough philosophical explanation, I offer the suggestion that she will learn the philosophy by doing and during or after this process of doing, she will be able to better and more fully comprehend the deeper meaning of what she is doing and teaching. If I had to guess, you probably have some experience with homeschooling and/or with Charlotte Mason. If you do, then the deeper philosophical explanations probably resonate with you because of your experience. For the mother without such experience, the philosophy behind the curriculum may seem abstract or daunting, or perhaps even lovely and exciting, but without the experience under one's belt, however little, it may have less of an impact. I hope that my gentle suggestion for changing the order and beginning with a lighter introduction won't be taken as a suggestion that mothers do not need to continue their own education or reframe their thoughts. Quite the contrary! I just think that those things are done primarily through practice and experience, with the philosophical deepening coming as a result of and being more fruitful because of the practice.”]
What about Mater Amabilis? While we don’t follow all of the suggested curriculum, we’ve really enjoyed the book lists and suggestions so far!
Your list of “10 favorite books” is truly great. Thank you for sharing it with us! I wonder what you would recommend for teenagers. For my 12-year-old boy, Karl May (all his Old Shatterhand and Winnetou stories) and Jules Verne—besides J.R.R. Tolkien’s heroic romances (as the Professor used to call them)—are some of his favorites.