A Charlotte Mason inspired homeschool co-op for grades 1-4.
Join us this fall for a Friday morning homeschool co-op! We will follow portions of the Ambleside Online for Groups Form 1A curriculum (Paddle to Sea, An Island Story, Just So Stories, Blue Fairy Book, etc). Parents will share teaching duties, and there will be a sliding scale fee ($50-$100/month) to cover art supplies, books, and use of the space. The Ambleside curriculum is available freely to all here.
Subjects covered in this co-op:
- Geography
- History
- Literature
- Nature Study
- Potentially: mapmaking (using David Sobel’s Mapmaking with Children) and Latin!
Charlotte Mason’s approach consists primarily of reading living books to children and their narrating or telling back what has been read. She puts it this way in Towards a Philosophy of Education:
Given a book of literary quality suitable to their age and children will know how to deal with it without elucidation. Of course they will not be able to answer questions because questions are an impertinence which we all resent, but they will tell you the whole thing with little touches of individual personality in the narrative. Perhaps this is the key to the enormous difficulty of humanistic teaching in English. We are no longer overpowered by the mass of the ‘humanities’ confronted with the slow process of getting a child to take in anything at all of the author he is reading. The slow process is an invention of our own. Let the boy read and he knows, that is, if he must tell again what he has read. This, of telling again, sounds very simple but it is really a magical creative process by means of which the narrator sees what he has conceived, so definite and so impressive is the act of narrating that which has been read only once. I dwell on the single reading because, let me repeat, it is impossible to fix attention on that which we have heard before and know we shall hear again. Treat children in this reasonable way, mind to mind; not so much the mind of the teacher to that of the child,––that would be to exercise undue influence but the minds of a score of thinkers who meet the children, mind to mind, in their several books, the teacher performing the graceful office of presenting the one enthusiastic mind to the other. In this way children cover an incredible amount of ground in the time at their disposal.
When will we meet? Friday mornings from 10 a.m. to noon. Where will we meet? 1106 Harris Ave. Suite 307. Must parents be present during co-op? Yes! We will share teaching duties. How many children will participate? The co-op is capped at 11 learners. Will we meet every week? We will meet four Fridays per month. On months with a fifth Friday, we’ll take that day off. Is the co-op religious? Charlotte Mason was a Christian educator, but this co-op is not sectarian or denominational and is open to families of all faith backgrounds.
If you’re interested, please fill out the form below:
Questions? Write to info@fairhavenprogram.org.