How I turn any textbook into Charlotte Mason style
Take any book and teach it Charlotte Mason style
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Make it Charlotte Mason!
I honestly didn’t know where to start with this. Where do I begin?
I stared at my history books for 3 weeks. I honestly didn’t know where to start.
All I knew was this; I wanted to take my Generations world history course (History of the World set) and make it into a Charlotte Mason style course.
But I’ve never fully adapted a course like this before, so it was a little foreign to me.
All about the Charlotte Mason Homeschool switch!
Here’s where I started.
I knew these textbooks by Kevin Swanson are by far the most engaging, well written textbooks I’ve ever laid eyes on. Although not classified as a living book, I think Charlotte wouldn’t be too upset with me for using them in my homeschool. I’m not a purist in that manner, so I knew I wanted to do this my way.
I knew I wanted to add living books throughout the year. The backbone of any Charlotte Mason lesson is living books and narration. I went to work hunting down all the living books in my home library and made a list of ones I had.
I had to make a decision on the workbook. That will be a later video, but I’ll show you that soon enough. Short answer for now is this; I’m using only parts of it. Narration will replace the typical question and answers.
With that in mind, I needed to flesh out these living books throughout the year.
My Step by Step Process for Charlotte Mason-ing my textbooks
First, I went into the schedule in the parent/student workbook and makes out the three terms of the school year. I put a number beside each week and a line where the break for each 12 weeks would be.
Charlotte broke her school years up into 3 twelve-week terms. This helps me keep track of each term individually, and made the task a bit easier. I focused on one 12-week term at a time.
Next, I took out my notebook and wrote a list of each chapter of the textbook. Beside the chapter number, wrote down the name of the chapter (giving me an idea of the content) and the years it covered in history.
I ended up with a long timeline of world history in my notebook. I also broke those into the 12 week chunks.
Having a notebook beside me with the chapters and dates was extremely helpful during this process and I highly recommend doing that.
Then I listed out all of the books I had, and put them in historical order. I placed them in my notebook, in historical order. Then arranged them into the timeline with my chapters. I did this for each 12-week term.
Then I looked for gaps. What didn’t I cover that I wanted to cover? For example, I wanted to go over was Napoleon. I don’t have a book on him, so I made a note to do that. I had to do some real research and really think about what I wanted to teach.
Some honest truth here: there is only a limited amount of time, and so many books. You have to pick and choose. Find what is most important to you and your family to teach about and start there.
By the end of a couple of hours, and about $50 of books on amazon, I had my year almost planned out for World History with books!
I’m still working on term 3, but I’ll get that finished up soon.
Where to find Living Books for Charlotte Mason Homeschool:
A few places to find living books:
Simply Charlotte Mason Book Finder: https://apps.simplycharlottemason.com/
Sonlight Curriculum packages: https://www.sonlight.com/shop
Ask AI or Chat GPT
Ambelisde Online: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nPPei_V-x1tKURTQ6InmFSmFXuRNH3t91B_1ZYtlPgE/edit?pli=1
That was essentially all I did for this curriculum.
Thankfully, it stands on its own really well. I didn’t need to do much to make this into a Charlotte Mason style curriculum. The base of this is going to be the textbook itself, then I’m adding in those real, living books. I purchased the audio book to these textbooks to make things a little easier on myself (I have arthritis in my jaw and can’t read aloud for too long).
We will be doing narration after listening to the audio book together, and I’ll be using the workbook questions as a jumping off point. I won’t be doing the traditional notebook, as I don’t think it’s necessary for what I want to do with the course. However I love the maps inside the workbook! I want to use those to add a geography element to this history course. These will be perfect for that. The maps inside the textbook are also very well done, and worth using.
Is this totally, 100% Charlotte Mason? Well, no. I’m not a Charlotte Mason homeschool purist. I’m simply teaching books that I love in a way that best suits my child learner. My son learns very well through living books and this will suit his learning style. We’re leaning into his preferred learning style more now that he’s the only homeschooler in our home.
Isn’t that the point of homeschooling? Teach the way your child learns, and you won’t go wrong.
Blessings!
