How to Teach Literature Without a Curriculum Part 2: The Early Years

a long, long time ago

Deb, my virtual buddy from Not Inadequate, dropped a bomb on the Twitter Posse yesterday.  It seems she is considering buying a literature curriculum for her kid.  Her six year old kid.  She asked for advice, so I’m sure you all know what I did.  First I laughed at reassured her, then I started writing a companion post to How to Teach Literature Without a Curriculum.  Because little kids don’t need a literature curriculum.  All they need to do is read.

But, but but!  (That’s Deb interjecting.)  How do you know they understand what they’re reading?  Well, you talk to them.  You ask them questions.  But, but, but!  (That is Deb interjecting vigorously.)  How do I know what questions to ask?  Well, it depends.  If your kid is between 4th and 8th grade, you can try the ones listed in the grammar stage section of The Well-Trained Mind.  If he’s six, the only questions you need to worry about are:

What was the best part of the story?

What was the worst part of the story?

Which character did you like best?

Which character did you like least?

And so on.  Very basic, very specific, very concrete questions.  Don’t throw all of them at the kid at once, either.  Pick one per session.  And don’t even bother trying to do a narration session if either one of you is excited about a birthday or tired after a long day at the zoo or hungry or constipated or nervous.  This should be a mostly pleasant activity for all parties.

Be sure to model complete sentences.  Let’s say you start out by asking, “What character did you like best?”  When (not if, but when) your kid says, “Bob,” you respond by saying, “Oh, so Bob is your favorite character!  That’s great; I like Bob, too.  Now say, ‘Bob is my favorite character,’ so I can write that down for you.”  (Your kid will give you the stink eye, but you will ignore him.)  You may go on to ask, “Why do you like Bob?”  When (not if, but when) your kid says, “He doesn’t have to take baths,” you reply, “Oh, so you like Bob because he doesn’t take baths.  I know you hate to take baths, sweetie, but sometimes you smell like cheese.  Don’t cry, darling.  If your mother won’t tell you, who will?  Now.  Say, ‘I like Bob because he doesn’t take baths,’ so I can write that down for you.”  Eventually you’ll have written a narration similar to this:

The Greatest Story Ever by The Greatest Author Ever

Bob is my favorite character.  I like Bob because he doesn’t take baths.  He thinks soap smells funny and he pushed his mom into the bathtub because she said he smelled like cheese.  Bob wasn’t sorry.

And that’s it.  Let the kid draw a picture of Cheesy Old Bob at the bottom of the page and stick it in his notebook.  Leave it at that for now.  Don’t expect your six year old to be able to identify the time period in which the story was set.  Don’t get wrapped up in the lead character’s (or, heaven forbid, the author’s) internal motivations.  Don’t ask him to explain the symbolism.  Keep it simple. 

At first you’ll do most (if not all) of the actual writing yourself, but eventually you’ll transfer that chore to your kid.  I did this gradually.  My Goobs started out not writing anything at all.  Then they wrote the first sentence.  Then they wrote the first two sentences.   They wrote a little more, and a little more, and by third grade, they were writing fairly respectable book reports on their own with a minimum of fuss.  We did written narrations for literature once or twice a week.  (We also did narrations for history and science.)

But, but, but!  (Hey, Deb!  I feel your angst.  Let’s get adjoining rooms in the asylum, okay?  We’ll drool and watch teevee.)  What books should they read?  In the earliest years, we focused on Bible stories and fairy tales.  Bible stories and fairy tales are perfect for beginning narrators: they’re short, they’re exciting, they have a small cast of characters, and the plots tend to be linear, without confusing flashbacks and other distractions.  Later on I tended to save our “big discussions” for the weightier titles.  (I mean, Bunnicula is awesome, but I wouldn’t count it for school.)  We read many of them aloud or listened to them on tape.  

Here are some of our favorite books (in no particular order) from our early years of homeschooling:

• The Wind in the Willows; Kenneth Grahame
• Island of the Blue Dolphins; Scott O’Dell
• My Side of the Mountain; Jean Craighead George
• Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH; Robert C. O’Brien
• Ella Enchanted; Gail Carson Levine
• Where the Red Fern Grows; Wilson Rawls
• A Dog Called Kitty; Bill Wallace
• The Secret Garden; Frances Hodgson Burnett
• Fairy Tales; The Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Andrew Lang
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Lewis Carroll
• Peter Pan; J. M. Barrie
• The Hobbit; J. R. R. Tolkien
• Black Beauty; Anna Sewell
• Little House in the Big Woods; Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Rascal; Sterling North
• The Chronicles of Narnia; C. S. Lewis
• Tuck Everlasting; Natalie Babbit
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone; J. K. Rowling
• A Wrinkle in Time; Madeleine L’Engle
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; Mark Twain
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; L. Frank Baum
• The Trumpet of the Swan; E. B. White
• Stuart Little; E. B. White
• Charlotte’s Web; E. B. White
• Babe the Gallant Pig; Dick King-Smith
• Sarah Plain and Tall; Patricia MacLauchlan
• Five Children and It; Edith Nesbit
• The Sign of the Beaver; Elizabeth George Speare
• The Best Christmas Pageant Ever; Loretta Swit

Other favorite authors (again, in no particular order) include:

• Maurice Sendak
• A. A. Milne
• Jon Scieszka
• Kate DiCamillo
• Edward Lear
• Shel Silverstein
• Demi
• Tomie de Paola
• Beverly Cleary
• Richard Scarry
• Ludwig Bemelmens
• Robert McCloskey
• Margaret Hodges
• Beatrix Potter
• Rosemary Sutcliff
• James Howe
• Dr. Seuss
• Judy Blume
• Roald Dahl
• Neil Gaiman
• Jean Fritz
• Philip Pullman
• Cynthia Rylant
• Sharon Creech
• Avi

There are a million lists to check out; the lists in The Well-Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise-Bauer are excellent, as are the ones in The Latin Centered Curriculum by Andrew Campbell.  Another good one is the 1,000 Good Books List by the Classical Christian Education Support Group.

But, but, but! (Sez Deb.)  Shouldn’t we be doing, I don’t know, MORE? 

No, not really.  Not yet.  Yes, sure, you could do more.  But unless your kid is starting conversations about the lack of female agency in Cinderella or the possibility that the evil stepmother is nothing but a convenient outlet for the stifled rage of powerless children everywhere, I wouldn’t bother.  Just let him enjoy his stories and save the formal stuff for later.  

Honestly, I think you should take the money you’d spend on a literature curriculum and buy these instead:

• Deconstructing Penguins; Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone
• How to Read a Book; Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
• How to Read Literature Like a Professor; Thomas C. Foster

Or buy the literature curriculum.  What the hell do I know?  My Goobs are still pretty young; they still might end up living in a van down by the river.  (But if they’re in a van down by the river, they’re not in my basement.  So I’m fine with that.)  

The Strictest Relaxed Classical Homeschool EVAH

Deb (who is Not Inadequate) writes,

As you know, I am very interested in some of the aspects of the classical education - Latin and Logic, specifically. However, I also feel like at the age my kids are now, they are also doing really well with a more interest-led approach for science, geography and history. Do you think there is a way to marry the STRICTEST method with a really LAX method successfully? Or is that the road to crazy town? Can I do Latin and Logic successfully without some of that other WTM stuff, like poetry memorization?

Deb, I know it’s possible because I did it.  Throughout elementary school, my focus was on the basics: math, English grammar and composition, and Latin. Those subjects were non negotiable, and were done every day using the most straightforward, no-nonsense books I could find.  The rest (history, science, literature) was much less structured.  That was not my intention; every year I purchased loads of books and equipment and supplies because that was the year I would get it together and do modern history (and physical science and classical literature) three times a week, every week, all year long.  But in January I’d realize that JellyMan hadn’t done a science experiment since September, Anemone had read nothing but dog stories since October, and I couldn’t remember the last time I heard either one of them recite that list of dusty old Pharaohs.  I’d spend a few weeks torturing everyone to make up for lost time, but by March we’d be back to watching videos about the barbarian hordes, listening to The Hobbit and Harry Potter on tape, and drawing pictures of ravens in our nature journals.  I’d lie awake at night, staring up at the ceiling and wondering if parents with grown children in the basement ever manage to get away on vacation.

Over the course of one of those long, sleepless nights, I got over myself and stopped caring whether our history studies were structured enough.  Honestly!  Structured enough for what?  Not hearing the fictionalized story of the Mayflower’s voyage every year throughout elementary school will not keep Anemone out of graduate school.  Not knowing the third Holy Roman Emperor off the top of his head will not keep JellyMan from starting a business.  No potential employer is going to say, “I’m sorry.  I can’t hire you because you didn’t cover the Pony Express in third grade, and quite frankly, your inability to recite the British Prime Ministers of the 20th century disturbs me.” My Goobs loved ancient and medieval history, so I let them wallow in it.  For years.  I saved modern history for field trips, national holidays, and the random PBS special.  If we learned something about the time period we were “supposed” to be studying that year, I had them write something about it.  Otherwise, they were free to do whatever they wanted.  JellyMan kept a notebook full of notes and drawings about Greek mythology.  Anemone built an historically accurate model of a medieval castle out of shoe boxes.  They wrote historical fiction.  They had fun!  In late elementary, I require them to outline sections of a history encyclopedia, and in 8th grade, we do a survey course in world history using A Short History of the World by J. M. Roberts.  They’re then ready to begin a great books study in high school as outlined in The Well-Trained Mind.  (We follow the process, but not necessarily the book recommendations.)  JellyMan’s great books study is going beautifully so far, so I’m going to assume we did something right.

I don’t believe it is necessary to study science in a formal way until high school, if then.  Most kids just don’t have the math background to understand why things work - my own questions invariably lead me to a page of pretty equations that make absolutely no sense to me, so I’m focusing on math while my Goobs are home with me.  Until late middle school, our science studies consist of reading popular science books, watching videos, writing up random experiments, going on field trips, and keeping nature journals.  We grow gardens.  We go stargazing.  We dissect stuff.  We have fun!  I bought all the stuff we would have used if we had been following The Well-Trained Mind down to the letter, and then just hoped The Goobers would be fascinated enough to use it voluntarily.  They usually were.)  When they’re in 8th grade, I sit them down and have them outline Science Matters, a book designed to provide adults with basic scientific literacy.  After outlining each chapter, they write a summary using their notes.  Then they move on to Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything.  (No outlining required; just sit back and enjoy the book!)  I’m not quite brave enough to skip science in high school, even though I still don’t think it is necessary.  (The fact is, all the vocabulary words they need to memorize by grade 12 will be in the first chapter of their college textbooks.  They should be able to learn it over a weekend.)  Still, the thought of them applying to colleges with no science on their transcripts makes me nervous!  So we’ll do science, but we won’t do the usual biology, chemistry, physics, AP-whatever sequence.  Why not learn about the things that interest you?  The current plan is for JellyMan to do a year each of geology, astronomy, and physics at home, plus freshman biology and chemistry at the local community college.  Anemone has expressed a vague interest in botany and meteorology, but the rest is still up in the air. 

I made book lists every year, and I still do.  We don’t use a reading program (see my post on How to Teach Literature Without a Curriculum), and my book lists are (gasp!) merely suggestions.  If a Goob hates a book, he or she is able to choose another one.  (Within certain parameters, of course.  They can’t trade Jane Eyre for Percy Jackson.)  If this happens, I simply tell them why that book was on the list (it was the first of that particular genre, it illustrates the social conventions of that time, I had already read that one so it would be easy for me to talk about it, whatever) and let it go.  I’m pretty sure I would not do this if I had kids who claimed to hate everything, all the time, but it works well for my semi-reasonable children.

Now, about geography - I never found a natural, interest-led way to do geography successfully.  (To me, being successful in geography includes being able to point out everything from Albania to Zimbabwe on a blank map.)  We used maps and globes all the time, but nothing ever made it into their long-term memories.  I’m not too proud to tell you that we’re using iPhone geography apps to learn what should have been learned years ago.  It’s working just fine, but it’s taking time away from other things, and I resent it.  I wish I had just made them memorize the stuff when they were little.

I happen to like the poetry memorization.  Kids can memorize things very easily (just think of all the 8 year olds you see around town singing along to Lady Gaga on the radio), and memorizing poetry when they’re small means they will have quick access to a store of beautiful language when they’re big.  I’m glad we did it, and we should be doing it still.  Note to self: assign some poetry.

Well, Deb, I hope this explained how we became the Strictest Relaxed Classical Homeschool EVAH.  I know I’m missing some things; it’s hard to remember what we did when The Goobs were small.  It was a difficult time for me (the amount of bodily fluid a small child can excrete boggles the mind) and I have blocked it out.  For further reading, here is a post where I share some Well-Trained Angst; here is a post about how I get kids interested in stuff; here are some sample field trips; here is proof that we let the academics slide when we’re busy with real life; here is what I consider to be the essentials of homeschooling and education in general - the rest is gravy.  As always, feel free to ask questions, and remember, The Well-Trained Mind (along with every homeschooling book ever written) is a tool, not a weapon.

Tentative Schedule for 5th Grade (Anemone)

Daily

Math (7:00)
Latin (8:00)
French (9:30)
English (10:00)
Piano (late afternoon/evening)
Bible (evening read-aloud)

Monday

Literature (1:00 - 2:00)

Tuesday

History (1:00 - 2:00)

Wednesday

Christian Studies (1:00 - 2:00)

Thursday

Science  (1:00 - 2:00)

Friday

Art History (evening)

Saturday

Catch Up Day

Math is Anemone's best subject, so she will whip through a Saxon lesson in an hour or less, especially in the first half of the book.  Latin is another story; she'll spend upwards of an hour just drawing pictures on her flashcards.  French is new; language isn't typically her strong suit, but she very much wants to learn it, so I'll give it a half hour time slot for now.  English lessons vary; some days she'll spend fifteen minutes on a Rod & Staff lesson and some days she'll take an hour.  It just depends on how she feels that day.

She'll be able to finish her reading list in the time available, with plenty of time left over to read her own books. 

Like JellyMan, she is required to put in 30 minutes of correct piano practice daily; she also spends another half hour or more playing around on her own time.

She'll spend at least eight hours a week at her dance studio.  I'm not particularly keen on this, but it's what she loves so I'm not going to make waves over it.

And that's about it!  I am so glad to get that off my chest.

Anemone's 5th Grade Homeschool Plan

Math

Saxon 8/7

Grammar

Rod & Staff English 7

Foreign Language

Henle Latin 1
First Start French

History

Famous Men of Medieval Times
The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia
Jackdaw Portfolios: The Black Death

Literature

Tales From the Mabinogian; Gwyn Thomas and Kevin Crossley-Holland
Druids, Gods & Heroes from Celtic Mythology; Anne Ross
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table; Howard Pyle
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood; Howard Pyle
A Midsummer Night's Dream; William Shakespeare
Beowulf (I haven't yet chosen a translation)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (I haven't yet chosen a translation)

Science

Nature study using a modified version of the Mother of Divine Grace Natural History syllabus

Christian Studies

King James Version Bible
Lingua Angelica

Fine Arts

Piano
Dance (ballet, tap, jazz, lyrical, youth theatre productions)
Art History (Sister Wendy videos)

Homeschool Planning

I've been planning for next year.  If ever there was a time when I wished we were unschoolers, now would be that time. This is what we've purchased for next year:

JellyMan (6th grade)

• Saxon 8/7
• Rod & Staff Grammar 6
• Spelling Workout
• Critical Thinking, Books 1 and 2
• Latina Christiana II

Anemone (3rd grade)

• Saxon 6/5
• Rod & Staff Grammar 5
• Spelling Workout
• The Story of the World Volume III

For science and history we use the Kingfisher science and history encyclopedias as spines and branch off from there.  We will try to keep our focus on physics and chemistry this year, but there is no guarantee.  We tend to drift in science.  It's all good.

I will have to buy all the fun stuff (literature, art supplies, science equipment, etc.) over the next few months.  That last sentence shows just how warped I have become - a few years ago those things would have been the first items purchased.  What has happened to me?  Ah, yes.  The Well-Trained Mind happened to me.  I have to admit that I'm pleased with my kids' academic progress and we still have a lot of fun, but we don't have nearly as much fun as we used to.  I'm not saying everything has to be fun, but it would be much more pleasant if most of it were.  I'd like to stick with Saxon math and Rod & Staff grammar and chuck the rest into the sea.  In fact, I think I might do just that. Well, JellyMan does love his latin so I suppose I'll let him keep it.

I'd love to hear if anyone else is rethinking their approach to homeschooling.  Does anyone out there want to lighten up?  To buckle down?  To run away and live in a cave?  That last bit sounds great to me.  I've been wanting to teach the kids survival skills for a long time, and I think a few months in a cave would do wonders for them. :D