Homeschooling Downunder
Home Education Resources
for Australia and New Zealand
that save you time, money and stress.
Homeschool English can be efficient, effective and enjoyable when you use Charlotte Mason’s strong literature based methods for teaching English.
When you home educate you can cut out all of the busy work and get your child focused on the task of real learning. This is done by teaching your child to deal directly with books.
All of your lessons can come from real literature, good literature, literature that you want your children to read. Using this method combines handwriting, spelling, grammar, reading, writing and thinking into a holistic time saving approach to teaching English. When you use living books all subjects can be an English lesson.
Copywork, dictation and narration from living books form the framework of Charlotte Mason’s English lessons. This approach to teaching language arts has been used for centuries and is still endorsed today by leading homeschool educationalist, such as Ruth Beechick, Susan Wise Bauer and Laura Berquist.
Loving books is the first step to teaching reading. From infancy we have read to our children and all of them love books.
The right age to teach reading varies in each child. All four of my children have worked on a different learning timetable gaining fluency in reading from the age of 6 to nearly 10. By fluency I mean confident to read an easy novel like Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven.
Great debate surrounds how we to teach reading. We started with a strong phonics program that was very labour intensive. We switched to a more relaxed approach for the last two children.
Read Aloud from ‘living books’. Sometimes the book that is being read is beyond the younger ones. I still read the book and get the younger ones into the habit of listening. I read for about 60-90mins, 3-4 times per week. I choose at least one book each from the following categories;
• The Bible (I usually use some sort of study guide for children).
• A Christian novel, historical novel, Christian biography or a contemporary novel with good morals.
• A fact based reader; nature history or geography. I make my choice based on what we are studying in history.
While the children are being read to they are allowed to occupy themselves quietly. From time to time we stop for oral narrations and for the older ones we sometimes require written narrations.
Are you wondering what to read? Our living booklists will give you some suggestions.
Good-looking handwriting is an art and good handwriting habits need to be established from the start. While this may seem time consuming, care must be given, not only to the formation of good, but to the prevention of bad habits.....
Find out how to do this with
Teaching Handwriting, Spelling and Grammar
Well-chosen passages expose children to good literature and a variety of writing styles that help them recognise and use well-structured sentences, good grammar and correct punctuation.
I personally like Ruth Beechick's opinion on writing. Just get them writing something every day. Form the habit of writing in your children. She is practical and realises that some kids have a 'story in their head' and seem to be an author in the making- while others won’t but you can still get them to write something even if it's send a card to Grandma.
Charlotte Mason Copywork is simply writing out by hand, or copying, from good quality written texts or models. It has been employed for centuries as a technique for teaching writing.....
Read more on how to organize copywork in your homeschool.
We have pre packaged copywork resources of a high literary standard that will save you time. .
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The dictation method that Charlotte Mason suggests is not what most of us would remember from school. A great emphasis is placed on preparing the dictation passage before they are required to write it. The goal is to get it right the first time....
Read more about how dictation teaches spelling, grammar and punctuation.
Narration is the simple telling back of what has been read. Narrations can be oral or written. Narration helps the child think through the passage they are narrating and then take out as much as they can from it. It is a memory, comprehension and concentration skill. A six year old can tell you a whole lot more during an oral narration than they can if they had to write it and ask you to spell every word.
The teacher does not talk much and is careful never to interrupt a child who is called upon to 'tell.' The first efforts may be stumbling but presently the children get into their 'stride' and 'tell' a passage at length with surprising fluency. The teacher probably allows other children to correct any faults in the telling when it is over. The teacher's own really difficult part is to keep up sympathetic interest by look and occasional word, by remarks upon a passage that has been narrated, by occasionally showing pictures, and so on. But she will bear in mind that the child of six has begun the serious business of his education, that it does not matter much whether he understands this word or that, but that it matters a great deal that he should learn to deal directly with books. Charlotte Mason
Educator Emma Serl combines all of these methods into an easy to follow English resource.
From the first language lesson, the child is encouraged to practice composition. Her curriculum continues to develop these skills and it introduces poetry analysis and outlines later on.
If you add some Classic Copywork or Downunder Copywork to the mix you have a complete language arts program.
Primary Language Lessons is for Grade 2-3 Available in Austalian and US Versions.
Intermediate Language Lessons is for Grade 4-6 Available in Austalian and US Versions.