But really, don't you think they learn more with projects?
No, I really don't. They may remember the projects with great joy, and for that reason, if you like them and the kids like them, and you want to do them, go ahead. But my experience has been that the projects don't really help the children remember (or even make) connections with their learning.
So what do we do? Read a section ask for a short narration if your child is
old enough. That seems too simple and easy. It's so simple, that I suspect many
of us subconsciously feel that we're cheating, but it's really a very meaty,
idea-filled study.
Sometimes we add so many extra, unrelated projects- and it's
a bit like adding a bicycle wheel to your 8 cylinder Corvette- quite superfluous,
and a rather clunky detraction. In the year or two before switching completely
to CM I went to a lot of work planning our studies so that everything
coincided. I did this to avoid confusion (mixing up learning from one subject
with another) and because I thought the children needed me to put together these
'units' so that they would connect their subjects together better. And, to be honest, because it seemed fun to
make a unit study on attentitiveness out of learning about the human eye.
CM said that children make their own connections and form
their own relationships- and she was right! They do! They are not as easily confused
as I imagined (especially when you follow CM's advice to break up similar
subjects with very dissimilar activities and use a century book or timeline and
a map).
I am continuously astonished by the connections between one
topic and another that we discover, connections that I never would have thought
have making . And, to be honest, sometimes I am dismayed by the connections
they do not make- however the latter does not happen nearly as frequently as the former. Fortunately, with a Charlotte Mason education the teacher is there to
gently suggest those connections, point out relationships when the children
miss them. But they have the first opportunity at the joy of discovery.
The connections we discover in our readings that follow a
chronological framework just tend to make a lot more sense and be less forced
than they were when we did unit studies.
Well, this makes me happy. I'd been thinking of Charlotte Mason as stuffy and stiff and old-fashioned, and here I'm finding out (mostly from you) that she says a lot of things I've said. Now I wonder if everybody I know thinks I'm stuffy and stiff and old-fashioned. ;-)
ReplyDeleteWe like to put a fun activity in every once in a while, if it's really cool, but the truth is, I hate projects. Life is full of projects. Why on earth should I expect my kids to pin all their learning to a three-section piece of cardboard, write a report about it, dress up as a character, and then make a sculpture of it? Seems to me there's more learning to be had in extended thought than in producing something--anything!--just for the sake of proving that you've learned something. And that really is all it is to me: photographic evidence so friends and family will know that my kids are getting "educated".
I'd been feeling guilty about not having more hands-on stuff (not that they don't get their hands on things, but I don't have them whipping out a salt-dough map and sewing a regional costume every time we talk about a new country or time period). It seems like so much busy-work, when we could be doing useful things together and talking, reading, and exploring concepts.
This is very helpful. Thanks for the perspective!
ReplyDeleteHmm. While I agree with the pp "I don't have them whipping out a salt-dough map and sewing a regional costume every time we talk about a new country or time period", I have always found great success in planning unit studies with an end project in mind. Of course, the end product ALWAYS includes writing, requiring my students to apply in their own words what they learned (think higher level Blooms). I'm not familiar with CM, so I can't give an opinion on it, but I have found that giving students opportunities to dig out information on their own, and then publish that information in a meaningful way in their own words, has been the best way to facilitate learning.
ReplyDelete