Boxing Lessons

by Anne White

D. E. Stevenson’s Five Windows is a coming-of-age novel set in a Scottish village. The early chapters tell about a nine-year-old boy, David, and his friendship with Malcolm, a local shepherd. Malcolm is also a woodworker, and one day David goes to his shop and shows him a picture frame he has made at school, as a gift for his mother. “I was rather proud of it,” the older David remembers. Malcolm’s reaction is not what he was expecting. “Did they learn you to make that at school? It’s dreadful! And the wood is good, too. A good piece of wood doesn’t need to be cut about and ornamented with whirly-gigs and scrolls. A piece of wood has its own beauty which just needs to be brought out.” Malcolm realizes quickly that he has hurt David’s feelings, and apologizes for his abruptness; but David notices himself that, even against the plain polished wood of the worktable, his project looks “tawdry.”  And then the amazingly wise Malcolm says, “Well, lad, I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll choose a piece of wood and you’ll make a box for your mother. You’ll do it all yourself—every bit of it—and I’ll show you how.” And he does. It takes them from the Christmas holidays until sometime in March, but finally the box is finished.

It was a solid chest, made of beautifully grained wood, about three feet long and two and a half feet broad, perfectly plain, with no nonsense about it. The lid fitted as snugly as the lid of an air-tight container. It stood upon the bench shining like a chestnut and I it was beautiful. Malcolm ran his hand over it, and said, “You’ve made something worth-while, Davie. That box will still be a good, useful box long after you’ve gone…When you’re dead and gone—and perhaps forgotten—that box will be as good as ever. The work of your hands, Davie!” It was a new idea to me—rather a frightening idea, but interesting too. Somebody would own that box, he would open it and shut it and use it to keep things in…

Worrying a little that his makership might be forgotten, David carves his initials and the date on the bottom of the box.

A year later, Malcolm is killed, fighting in France. In his grief, David begins to write Malcolm’s story, telling what they had done together (including fishing and taking care of the sheep), and what Malcolm had taught him. “Then there would be no danger of forgetting him.” He shows the story to his mother, who loves it, and not just because her boy has written it (as she might have felt about the picture frame), but because it truly is a good story. (Those  who have read Jan Karon’s To Be Where You Are might see a resemblance to the story young Grace writes about her “adopted grandma” Louella.) David’s mother stores up everything that he writes in the wooden box, and, much later in the book, the adult David, now a novelist, comes back and re-examines his early work. Some of it he thinks not bad, some he discards. But the box itself matters just as much as the stories. “It was the same sort of thing,” the adult David writes; “Malcolm had had a hand in making me.”

This story is only a small part of Five Windows, but it can be unpacked in several important ways. First, for those who are concerned with Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education, Malcolm’s gentle lesson in contrasts can be taken as both a general principle and a practical example. Even quality materials, as Malcolm points out, can lose their beauty if we insist on decorating them with “whirly-gigs and scrolls,” or if we praise that which is quickly completed but which holds no lasting value. We are content to have a slow but solid method of teaching.  David’s box took him weeks to make, and Malcolm told him that it would last for a hundred years. What are we giving our children that will be that solid, last that long? When someday they look back on their education, will they remember only the small projects, or will they have any recognition of the box itself?

Second, there is a spiritual sense in which we may spend years making things we consider beautiful and valuable, even quite big and important things in the world’s eyes, things of which we are “rather proud”; but when we lay them on God’s worktable, they are shown in their true light. As Robert Boyd Munger writes in his classic My Heart—Christ’s Home, God has come into our workroom and is not impressed by the few “little toys” we have managed to knock out. He does not scold or reject us for our lack of skill or taste, but He does ask us to let Him teach us his better way of box-making. And box-filling.

Third, we have the opportunity to make beautiful, lasting boxes. But even a clumsy handmade picture frame is, these days, still a step beyond something stamped out of a machine. Though we may have begun polishing our own boxes (in whatever sense), we are reminded to be gentle with those who need encouragement to enter the workshop and view the work of the master. We have all been there once.

And finally, we are reminded of the need to value the past, including its artists and craftspeople, those who had skills and knew things we have forgotten. We also need to appreciate the work of those  who are still with us. A thing that has been carved, or embroidered, or painted, or built with stones, or hammered out of iron, or baked, still carries something of its maker (as well as its Maker).  Our care, our ideas; our initials, our fingerprints.

Ma made the cornmeal and water into two thin loaves, each shaped in a half circle. She laid the loaves with their straight sides together in the bake-oven, and she pressed her hand flat on top of each loaf. Pa always said he did not ask any other sweetening, when Ma put the prints of her hands on the loaves. (Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie)

CM is just a lot of reading....

by Wendi Capehart

Answer: Not quite.

People often ask for projects to do to supplement the reading in a Charlotte Mason education.  For the most part, this type of supplementation is not necessary.  If the students have spare time in the afternoons (or in some part of the day), they can use it to come up with their own projects.  You may need to remove the screens and let them be bored for a bit in order to give this process a bit of a nudge, but boredom is a great starter dough for creativity.

There are also plenty of non-book activities already built into Miss Mason's philosophy and practice of education. Some of the non-reading things in the curriculum include:

• Singing folksongs 
• Singing Hymns 
• Drill- some sort of physical activity, exercise, sport, physical game 
• Handicrafts- origami, cardboard sloyd, clay work, weaving, soap carving, basket making, cooking, baking, and so on. 
• Map work 
• Timeline, history book or century book work (you need not do all, but they are each slightly different) 
• Picture Study 
• Composer Study 
• Recitation is kind of in the middle, it involves some kind of reading, but the focus is on style and saying the words clearly and with a speaking voice it is a pleasure to listen to. 
• Narrations can be oral, written, acted, drawn set up as a scene using blocks, legos, tinker toys, toy soldiers, plastic farm animals, and more.  Here are some ideas.
•  Nature study, nature walks, and nature journals
• Occasional visits to museums and historical sites, with sketching (sketches here can go in their history books or timelines) 
• Foreign Language 
• Science experiments 
• Some of the map and geography work is more hands on 
• Mason also recommends some sort of service project the children can do 
• She also recommends learning to play an instrument. 

That's off the top of my head, and two or three times I thought I was done, and then I remembered something else. You don't have to do it all every day, or even every month.  I just wanted people to see how many non-book related activities are part of a CM education.

Some children appreciate a bit of input into the curriculum, which can help when you are worried about 'too much just reading', but don't overdo it.  They need to own their education, but they don't run it, they don't decide what topics are or not necessary.  But giving them some choices here and there can be a useful way to get them invested in what they are doing.   Decision fatigue is real, and it's harder for some kids than other, so again, use the following ideas with wise eyes on your children:
Sometimes after a reading ask if your child would rather narrate orally, or set up a scene from the story using his* legos.
 Pack a picnic lunch to take on a nature walk and ask if he'd* rather help learn to make deviled eggs or cut the cheese into squares and make toothpick shiskabobs of the cheese squares and sausage slices with pickles.
For foreign language study, ask him to choose ten nouns or verbs to learn together and then practice using them all week.
 For copywork, let him choose the sentence to copy form his reading. (this is the ideal)
If he is into artistic things, see about learning calligraphy.
When doing the folk songs and hymns, find two versions on youtube and ask which he prefers.

These things should be mixed up and sprinkled throughout your school day, because the schedule should be varied. Read something and narrate, then sing something, or do copywork, or go outside. Read something and narrate by drawing a picture, then read something and narrate with a diorama, then sing a song.  Mix things up so it's not all book reading in a row. 

*or her, hers, or she, of course.

AO: Challenge the Seventh

Previous challenges:

Challenge 1 is here.

Challenge 2 is here.

Challenge 3 is here.

Challenge 4 is here.

Challenge 5 is here. 

Challenge 6 is here.

We concluded the text portion of the previous challenge with Miss Mason's disclosure that she is labouring 'to disclose for public use' the way to give children that 'attention, interest, literary style, wide vocabulary, love of books and readiness in speaking' which unlocks an education so rich and meaningful it continues long after school days are over.  She is excited about this, and she is sure of her ground.  This is volume 6, written fifty years after her first volume and after decades of work.  These methods are not mere theories.  What she writes about has been tested in real, practical, boots on the ground, teachers in classrooms, parents and governesses and tutors in homeschool rooms experiences.  Mason required families who signed up with her PNEU schools to submit exams to the PNEU office for grading. She was strict about this, so she could see the results of these methods put into practice in homes, cottage schools, experimental schools, boarding schools, around the world.

  It is true most of the P.N.E.U. members were indeed middle to upper class with educational and financial advantages we would consider upper class in most western cultures today.  However, many of them were also deeply philanthropic and active in social reforms and either started or contributed to schools for working class children, continuation night schools for children who had to work for a living, small country schools for the children of miners or other disadvantaged workers.  There are articles in the Parents' Reviews about reaching out to help mothers in the slums.  During World War I, at least some of the teaching students from the House of Education made it part of their work to run girls' clubs in London, specifically to give at risk girls skills and interests that would keep them off the streets, and the used such P.N.E.U. methods as they felt would reach the girls where they were.  Miss Mason was serious about helping as many people as possible by sharing what she could about putting her methods to 'public use.'  It is for this audience that she wrote volume VI- the general public who may not have previously known about her work.  She explains here her audience, her experience and justification for reaching out to this new audience:

"I am anxious to bring a quite successful educational experiment before the public at a moment when we are told on authority that "Education must be . . . an appeal to the spirit if it is to be made interesting." Here is Education which is as interesting and fascinating as a fine art to parents, children and teachers.
During the last thirty years thousands of children educated on these lines have grown up in love with Knowledge and manifesting a 'right judgment in all things' so far as a pretty wide curriculum gives them data."

Now she explains some of the differences in her approach, the things that justify her bringing this old/new idea before the public, what it is she wants done differently.  Note that this 'new' thing is not necessarily 'new' in the annals of education history. It could be 'new' in the sense that the British school system wasn't doing this anymore.  

She wants the children prepared for school by having heard stories in good English. She does not want their schoolbooks limited to the restricted vocabulary limitations of what they can read for themselves.  So while teaching them the nuts and bolts of reading, she wants them to be *hearing* well written stories and literary passages beyond their ability to sound out on their own: 

I would have children taught to read before they learn the mechanical arts of reading and writing; and they learn delightfully; they give perfect attention to paragraph or page read to them and are able to relate the matter point by point, in their own words; but they demand classical English and cannot learn to read in this sense upon anything less. They begin their 'schooling' in 'letters' at six, and begin at the same time to learn mechanical reading and writing. A child does not. lose by spending a couple of years in acquiring these because he is meanwhile 'reading' the Bible, history, geography, tales, with close attention and a remarkable power of reproduction, or rather, of translation into his own language; he is acquiring a copious vocabulary and the habit of consecutive speech. In a word, he is an educated child from the first, and his power of dealing with books, with several books in the course of a morning's 'school,' increases with his age."

It is from these excellent books, in advance of their reading skill, that children will gain the expansive vocabulary that is one of the foremost tools for gaining more knowledge.  Consecutive speech is the ability to communicate clearly, in order. It is not just a pleasant and useful habit- it is the sign or an orderly mind, of clear thinking. 

She knows there are going to be objections to her method, she has heard them- and, oh, so have we, so many times, in exactly the same words as the the next sentences Mason writes:

But children are not all alike; there is as much difference between them as between men or women; two or three months ago, a small boy, not quite six, came to school (by post); and his record was that he could read anything in five languages, and was now teaching himself the Greek characters, could find his way about the Continental Bradshaw, and was a chubby, vigorous little person. All this the boy brings with him when he comes to school; he is exceptional, of course, just as a man with such accomplishments is exceptional; 

Not all children are the same, we hear, and Mason heard.  Some children are advanced in quite astonishing ways, such as this youngster who joined Mason's PNEU correspondence school.  

Of course not children do not all have a matching set of gifts, strengths, weaknesses. That has little to do with the application of Mason's methods, however, because of the areas in which all neurologically normal children (and adults) do have in common:

"I believe that all children bring with them much capacity which is not recognized by their teachers, chiefly intellectual capacity, (always in advance of motor power), which we are apt to drown in deluges of explanation or dissipate in futile labours in which there is no advance."

All children may not be duplicates of each other in precise abilities. But all children have great potential, often un-known by their elders.  The current (to Miss Mason) method of doing school tends to suffocate those natural intellectual gifts, or waste them- by wasting their time with lectures and useless busy work.  That busy work, by the way,  may amuse and entertain the children, but that doesn't mean it informs and educates them. "There is no advance."  Have you thought about what this might mean?  I'm wondering. How much advance is there is filling out worksheets? Making pretty designs and collections of scripted information on file folders using scissors, glue, and some tape is fun for children with certain artistic bents.  There is nothing wrong with fun.  But what direction does it go, and how far? Is this something you do as an adult to learn, to process information, to communicate information to friends or employers? With narration, there is not level at which it is a bit babyish or immature to narrate. You can take narration up to the next level, and it becomes composition, and then essays, and more. Whatever work projects you assign to your children, what is the advanced version? How will they advance in this area? What will it look like?  Maybe, if there is no advance which takes them into their adult lives, it is not work worth assigning for school, no matter who they are.   And while all children may not be alike, we are all more alike than we think:

 "People are naturally divided into those who read and think and those who do not read or think; and the business of schools is to see that all their scholars shall belong to the former class; it is worth while to remember that thinking is inseparable from reading which is concerned with the content of a passage and not merely with the printed matter."

Regardless of individual strengths and weaknesses, the business of education is to help the learners read and think.

If this is not happening, neither is education.  Of course, other things are happening, too:

"The children I am speaking of are much occupied with things as well as with books, because 'Education is the Science of Relations,' is the principle which regulates their curriculum; that is, a child goes to school with many aptitudes which he should put into effect. So, he learns a good deal of science, because children have no difficulty in understanding principles, though technical details baffle them. He practises various handicrafts that he may know the feel of wood, clay, leather, and the joy of handling tools, that is, that he may establish a due relation with materials. But, always, it is the book, the knowledge, the clay, the bird or blossom, he thinks of, not his own place or his own progress.
[His focus is on the work, not on himself.]"

His focus is on the work, not himself, not his grades, not his scores, not how much he is beating the other students nor how far behind. These things are irrelevant to the actual work he is doing because the work itself is valuable and meaningful for its own sake.

"I am afraid that some knowledge of the theory we advance is necessary to the open-minded teacher who would give our practices a trial, because every detail of schoolroom work is the outcome of certain principles. For instance, it would be quite easy, without much
vol 6 pg 32thought to experiment with our use of books; but in education, as in religion, it is the motive that counts, and the boy who reads his lesson for a 'good mark' becomes word-perfect, but does not know. But these principles are obvious and simple enough, and, when we consider that at present education is chaotic for want of a unifying theory, and that there happens to be no other comprehensive theory in the field which is in line with modern thought and fits every occasion, might it not be well to try one which is immediately practicable and always pleasant and has proved itself by producing many capable, serviceable, dutiful men and women of sound judgment and willing mind?"

It's not enough to just use the same books- if you are mucking them up with vocabulary tests and multiple choice questions, rote memory and grades which are compared to those of the other children, that is missing the point of this form of education, and removing its value.  You need the principles, and the student needs to be the one doing the learning. 

"In urging a method of self-education for children in lieu of the vicarious education which prevails, I should like to dwell on the enormous relief to teachers, a self-sacrificing and greatly overburdened class; the difference is just that between driving a horse that is light and a horse that is heavy in hand; the former covers the ground of his own gay will and the driver goes merrily. The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding."

"Vicarious education."

What does an vicarious education look like?  It looks like somebody who knows hwo to read and to think, and who does it.

  Who should be working the hardest at the children's education?  The person doing the reading and the thinking, and that should be the student.

The teachers or the students themselves?  How do we see to it that they do the work? By giving them the books, the real books containing real knowledge and ideas, not just lists of facts that other people put together in textbooks, and then by giving them the work of thinking- which happens with narration.

This concludes this first set of AmblesideOnline Challenges.  By now you should have read from the opening page of Volume VI to the end of the first chapter, which is more material than it seems like. Most books today have a whole idea perhaps in an entire chapter. Mason's books are densely packed with multiple ideas worth thinking about on every single page. 

By now, you should know some of the plants in your own backyard or neighbourhood, something about the different categories of leaves, and you should be comfortably singing folksongs.  You have been reading for your own education and personal growth several times a week.  I hope you have attempted the forum.

There will be other challenges- I am preparing to move from the Philippines back to the U.S. and the holiday season is upon us, so I won't be working on another set of challenge posts until sometime in January.  However, you should continue to challenge yourself. I hope you have grown through this series.  I hope where you are now is a little further in understanding and practice than you were two months ago.  I hope you've been encouraged.

Here are some challenges to work on for the next couple of months.

1. This is an open-ended challenge to consider.  Let me review a handful of Mason's statements:

a. "One discovers a thing because it is there, and no sane person takes credit to himself for such discovery. On the contrary, he recognizes with King Arthur,––"These jewels, whereupon I chanced Divinely, are for public use." 

b. For many years we have had access to a sort of Aladdin's cave which I long to throw open 'for public use.'

c. The public good is our aim; and the methods proposed are applicable in any school. 

This has been a cherished goal of the AO Advisory for all many years. We also want to help you put these ideas to use, first in your own lives, homes, and families, and then, if at all possible, in some other public use.  Use these methods and ideas to reach out to children in your neighbourhood, churches, and community, the people God brings into your life.   Will you pray with us for all our eyes and hearts to be open for these additional opportunities? I can't tell you where or what they may be. Here are some I know of:

Start a story hour at your library or volunteer to help at one. Or do this with your church. Or ask if you could try this at a local homeless shelter or battered wive's shelter.
Foster care- officially, or unofficially.
Foster care respite care
Mentor family for drug rehap program (look into what is available locally and see if this is something you can do)

For that unofficial foster care-  Maybe there is a single parent or a struggling family that would benefit from you offering to do something fun with their kids once a month.  Take them to a park. Tell them a story, a fable from Aesop's, or the story of the three little pigs or Goldilocks. 

Visit a nursing home as a family and sing for some of the residents. Or bake cookies for the staff.

Plan a meaningful craft activity and invite another family over to do it together.

Volunteer to hold babies in the NICU. 

Serve a meal 

I'd love to hear of any other ideas, suggestions, or examples!  Not all of these will work for every family in every season, of course. You may be the family in need!  This is not a guilt trip, it's a list of hopeful possibilities for some time in your life.

Challenge 2:  Try something in the century-book, century chart, timeline department.  There are multiple ways to approach this. Start simple. In my family what we did most frequently was a family timeline essentially composed of duct tape on a large set of pocket doors. We used half of an index card and sketched figures or events on them and taped them to the appropriate lines on the wall.  My goal was to do this once a week. The children chose from their own readings, although sometimes I would ask them to choose from a specific book.

 If you want some help and ideas on timelines and time charts- see this thread in the forum- Forum: Timelines and History Charts

Challenge 3: for nature study look at Moon cycles.  One thing to do is to pick one night a week to look at the moon and then sketch it on a calendar- look at the moon November 21, for instance, and then sketch it on the Nov. 21 square of your calendar.  Do this for at least one month, preferably 2, and see hat you notice.  You can also make a chart: Moon cycle chart

Challenge 4: Read something for you.  One of the sweetest, most practical and helpful of the PR articles I have ever read is a paper delivered to a PNEU group by an older mother whose children are apparently grown.  The title is "The Limitations of Theory," which is delightful in itself, but even better is the title she says she considered- "Experiences of a Muddler".  The goal expressed in this paper is perfectly in keeping with the goals of these challenges, 

" to encourage parents to confer together, and that the papers read need not always be didactic treatises, but might sometimes be homely chats on what is interesting us all so much—the training of our children."

PR Article: Limitations of Theory

Challenge 5:  Start working on some Crafts for Christmas gifts.  We have quite a collection here in the forum: Forum: Christmas gifts to make

Challenge 6. Consider working together on memorizing a poem to present to grandparents, or adopted grandparents, or residents of a nursing home, or for a little family party for Christmas or New Year's. Or start a poetry night.  Here's how the author of Please Don't Eat the Daisies conducted their poetry night (get a tissue). 

Here are some winter and Christmas poems to consider.

Challenge 7: Read Karen Glass's recent series called The White Post.   You don't want to miss these!

1, Introduction

2. Sow an Act, Reap a Habit

3A The Wisdom of the Past

3B The Wisdom of the past cont

4a A New Hope for the World

4b. A New Hope for the World cont.

#5, Old or New? 

And don't forget to narrate!

Charlotte Mason and the handicraft of making 'smyrna rugs'

Previously: http://archipelago7.blogspot.com/2016/08/handwork-and-crafts-from-cm-volume-1.html

Basically, I'm thinking latch-hook kit.

Ah- see also here for more info.

Handwork and Crafts from CM, Volume 1

I offer the following information in the spirit of scholarship and understanding, because I totally groove on discovering this stuff.  It really helps me flesh out what Mason meant, what her philosophy looked like in practice, when I find more specific and concrete examples like the information below.  When I see exactly what she did, it helps me come to a better understanding of what we  might do today to further the same goals.

If it might be fun and enriching and delightful to reproduce the same crafts in your home, by all means, please do, and share.  If, however, the reading of this post makes you beat your head against the wall while repeating a tired and harmful mantra about your own worthlessness as a CM mama, please, stop.  I am not sharing this to burden anybody.  Don't beat yourself up.


 In CM's volume one, page 315 on our website, we find:

"Handicrafts and Drills.––It is not possible to do more than mention two more important subjects––the Handicrafts and Drills––which should form a regular part of a child's daily life. For physical training nothing is so good as Ling's Swedish Drill, and a few of the early exercises are the reach of children under nine. Dancing, and the various musical drills, lend themselves to grace of movement, and give more pleasure, if less scientific training, to the little people.

The Handicrafts best fitted for children under nine seem to me to be chair-caning, carton-work, basket-work, Smyrna rugs, Japanese curtains, carving in cork, samplers on coarse canvas showing a variety of stitches, easy needlework, knitting (big needles and wool), etc. The points to be borne in mind in children's handicrafts are: (a) that they should not be employed in making futilities such as pea and stick work, paper mats, and the like; (b) that they should be taught slowly and carefully what they are to do; (c) that slipshod work should

vol 1 pg 316

not be allowed; (d) and that, therefore, the children's work should be kept well within their compass."

In the appendices of a 1906 edition of volume 1, page 389, we find this fleshed out a little more:

"Work.
 Six twigs of trees (not done before) in brushwork. For occasional use, Pour Dessiner Simplement, par V. ...

 Attend to garden (Aunt Mai's Annual, 1894).

Carton Work, by G. C. Hewitt (King & Sons, Halifax, 2s.) : make a pillar-box, a match-box, a pen-tray, and a vase.

Smyrna rugs (see Aunt Mai's Annual, 1894). Children make their own designs.

Self-Teaching Needlework Manual (Longmans, is.) : children to be exercised in stitches, pages 1-15. Use coarse canvas and wool ; then, coloured cotton and coarse linen."

Here is the pertinent section from Aunt Mai's Annual, 1894, which I was thrilled to discover online (it's lovely!).

(Keep in mind 1894 British prices are given for supplies.)
WHAT CAN WE MAKE?
JAPANESE CURTAINS.

THE educational advantages of this work are many ; it teaches carefulness, numeration, colour and design. Carefulness, in pushing the string through the bamboo ; numeration, in getting the right number on each string ; colour, in choosing the coloured reeds and beads ; and design, whether the alternate lines should be the same colour, or two and two, or two and three, etc.

The materials required for this work are :
1.  Bamboos or reeds, 2/9 per 100.
2. Beads, 10d. per 500.
3. A ball of string, 6d.
4. A bar of wood for each curtain.

The bamboos are supplied in bundles of 1000 tubes, and can be had in white, red, purple, green, yellow, etc. They are each three and a half inches long, and are hollow, so that the string easily slips through. The round beads are the best for the nursery, and can also be had in many colours.

A little four-year-old is very busy at present making a short curtain for the studio window, of cut green and yellow reeds, and bright yellow beads, and the effect is charming.

The bar of wood can be made by any local joiner for a few pence. This must be three-quarters of an inch broad and thick ; the length must vary according to the width of your windows. Holes must be bored through at regular intervals of half an inch, one from the other, and he had better stain it brown or black before the children begin to work.

The following lengths are those we have found to be most useful ; but each mother can measure and decide for herself whether the curtains must be longer or shorter.

1.  Cut the string into lengths of forty inches.
2. Thread a bead on to each piece of string, hold the bead in the middle, and tie once. This prevents the little fingers pulling the string out of its hole. To vary this, you can again place a bead on each side of the tied one.
3. Push one end of the string through the first hole in the rod, and the other through the second hole, leaving the bead or beads or. the top.
4. Thread four beads on the first string. This makes an effective border.
5. Thread one reed, one bead, one reed and so on, until four reeds are on. Then put a bead on and tie. The first row might be green.
6. Work the second row in the same way, substituting yellow reeds for the green ones.
7. Take another piece of string and thread one end through the third hole, and so on.
     A very effective and simple pattern can be worked in the following way:
After the string has been threaded through the two first holes put—1st row; 1 bead, 1 green reed, bead ; 1 yellow reed, bead ; green reed, bead ; 1 yellow reed

2nd row; 2 beads, the rest in the same order—green, yellow ; green, yellow.
3rd row; 3 beads; &c.
4th row; 4 beads, &c.
5th row; 5 beads, &c.
6th row ; 4 beads, &c.
7th row; 3 beads, and so on, until the child comes again to one bead, when she again begins the next row with two. "

What can we take from this? Breaking this down, it's essentially stringing beads and rods in a pattern, right?  Not just randomly, but for a specific project of some use.   But you could begin with a tin of beads and some string- a shoelace, perhaps.  Our disabled child used to 'string' beads on a pipe cleaner, which I had anchored a bead at the end so she could not pull it off.  A pipe cleaner was easier for her to handle.  When she had a pipecleaner of beads, I would bend it into a shape- a circle, a heart, a star.  one of my favourite Christmas ornaments is a bell shaped from a pipecleaner of beads she worked.  Our beads came from thrift shop finds- they used to be popular in macrame projects.

You could duplicate the window curtain, or make a door curtain as a family project- if you have a place where you could keep the project out for a while, safe from babies, each family member could work on their own string, or everybody could add whatever, as they have time.

You could make jewelry, elastic string and beads are fairly inexpensive (when we orphan-hosted, we made our four boys bracelets with our phone numbers on them using number beads, interspersed by coloured beads).  Youtube videos explaining how to tie these off abound.   You could make key chains or Christmas ornaments or cell phone charms or something to hang from a car rear view mirror.

Mainly, you want a project involving stringing beads in a simple pattern of the child's design, the more useful the better, keeping in mind that a beaded window curtain is our standard for useful here.  IOW, don't overthink the useful aspect.

Supplies are far more readily available to us than they were to mothers in CM's time, and not much more expensive in terms of real dollars.

Amazon has wooden cylinder beads, dark or light , round and oval beads of coloured wood, holes large and small (so does ebay, in an impossible variety of colours, shapes, sizes, in wood, plastic, glass and stone or clay).
You could use hemp cord or cotton embroidery thread.

You could even resort to macaroni.  Dye it by shaking in a bag with a few drops of rubbing alcohol and food coloring, spreading to dry on waxed paper.  I prefer more permanent supplies, and don't recommend macaroni jewelry.  But for early practice in stringing colored beads in a pattern, this may be an economical alternative.  I have a cupboard over my bathroom sink which is missing a door.  I am thinking a beading project to hang over a shelf or small cupboard indoors might be a useful way to display a child's beading craft while improving the appearance of a messy shelf or a bathroom cupboard missing a door.

Up next, the smyrna rug.

More here as well.

What I learned from a tree ornament

by Anne White

November is my annual crafting, making, planning for holidays month. As I was putting ideas together, I saw these patchwork tree ornaments linked from Sew Mama Sew's Handmade Holidays, and thought they didn't look too difficult.

Wrong.

Photo below: the almost-finished disastrous first attempt. If it doesn't look that awful, that's just because the photo's a bit blurred.

I put that pattern aside for a week or so while I worked on other things. Then I made a second try.

Sewing these ornaments made me think of several Charlotte Mason principles.

1.  In many parts of life, hit-or-miss is good enough. In this case, it didn't work well. The first time around, I thought I would save time by folding rectangles in half and then snipping across (to make squares), and eyeballing the seam allowances. The second time, I cut paper patterns for each required piece, and marked the patterns with quarter-inch seam allowances as well. No more missing tree points and crooked borders. Everything lined up the way it was supposed to. Should I have been surprised?

But it's not just about practicing attention and accuracy. It's about commitment to the method. It would have been easy to say the pattern was not right or too hard, just because my first try didn't work. I didn't become that much better a sewer in one week. What made the difference? Having faith in the image that was presented, and following all the instructions.

2.  Just because something's free doesn't mean it's the best choice. For the first ornaments, I used a scrap of red holiday-print fabric for the borders, and another green and red print for the backing fabric. (I was very limited in what I had to use, but I thought it should be red because the original was red.) The print turned out to be too scattered for the small area, and the backing fabric didn't match very well. The second time, I had been to the store and picked up a quarter-yard of brown print with tiny hearts, for both borders and backing. It looks much nicer, even though it wasn't sold as a "Christmas" fabric.

3. But it's okay to mix new and vintage materials. The white sections in both sets of ornaments are a scrap of old white percale sheet, the last remaining piece after using it for other projects over a couple of years (it was a really big sheet). I found that the percale had an interesting quirk: any holes made in the fabric, such as needle marks made in the wrong place, were very noticeable and couldn't be smoothed over. It was a strong encouragement to do it right the first time.

4. Iron, iron, iron. Kind of like narrate, narrate, narrate.

5. New challenges are how you grow, and just because a first attempt at a new book doesn't go well, it doesn't mean that you or your students are failures, or that the book is bad. In this case, I'm glad I came across that new fabric that inspired me to try again. I learned from the first failures. (But don't expect me to hang them on the Christmas tree as an object lesson.)

From the Parents' Review: on children's collections

(posted by Anne White)

"As for the educational value of juvenile collecting, there are many sorts of collections which are instructive and quite harmless, which depend on contributions gathered by the children themselves, not bought in shops: shells, pebbles, twigs, seeds, mosses, and best of all, paintings of flowers. It is as easy to make a child look out in the map the country whence comes a plant, the flower of which he has painted, as it is to make him look for the town where a stamp was issued. The secretary of the Bayswater Branch of the P.N.E.U., in inviting children to send Natural History collections for the annual exhibition, expressed a wish that shells, seeds, etc., should be sent in boxes not bought, but made by the children."

("The Stamp Traffic As a Factor in Education." Letter to the Parents' Review by Mary Everest Boole, Volume 10, 1899, pg. 214.)

Arts and Crafts, P.U.S. style

by Anne White

St. John the Evangelist on Patmos, (Dirk Bouts, 1465)

Homeschoolers love to integrate lessons.  It seems to go with the territory.  Whole "curriculums" have been designed around activities that extend and amplify children's literature, history, science books, and sometimes mix them up all together like an Everything Pudding.

However, assigning integrated work in subjects such as art and handicrafts is not integral (pun intended) to CM.  It's not forbidden, maybe, but it's not required either, except for a few exceptions which I'll note below.  I drew this conclusion mostly from the old P.U.S. term programmes, but I can't find any other "evidence to the contrary" in Charlotte Mason's books or elsewhere.  Holiday gift giving and card making was integrated into the year's craft work, but the themes or periods being studied in school were not.  I realize I'm going against the usual homeschool grain here, as well as current school practices of having students make clay castles during medieval studies and foam-ball solar systems during astronomy.  But Charlotte Mason education was never all about fitting in with everybody else.

So what did they do?  Here are some outlines based on Form III programmes (so that would be for twelve- and thirteen-year-olds).  CM homeschoolers will already be familiar with a lot of this, but bear with me.

First off, the simplest, most unchanging part of Charlotte Mason's art curriculum was Picture Study, sometimes called Picture Talks.  Out of a number of programmes from the 1920's, I have this list of artists:  Matthew Maris, Millet, Watts, Steen and Dou, Corot, Durer, Raphael, Goya and José de Ribera, Holbein, da Vinci, Pintorrichio, Millais, Holman Hunt, Dirk Bouts, Turner, Carpaccio, Botticelli, Vermeer, Filippino Lippi, Mantegna.  A lot of "big names" and a few lesser-known ones; heavy on the Renaissance with a side of landscapes.

Middle schoolers were expected to learn and practice drawing skills (watercolouring seemed to count as "drawing"), using books such as the "Art of Drawing" series published by Philip and Tacey; Drawing, Design and Craftwork, by F.J. Glass; and Drawing For Children and Others, by Vernon Blake.  (The Glass book was also used for craftwork.)   There were specific subject suggestions given in most terms, such as "objects in the home," "tree studies," "objects out of doors," "kitchen utensils," "figures in action."  Glass's book got a bit more creative with assignments, suggesting that the students paint fruits on tiles or draw what they would see through doorways.

"Illustrations of scenes from Literature" was an every-term assignment along with the other drawing work. "Simple memory drawings" or "Memory drawings of out-door scenes and places" were often included as well.  Sometimes there were seasonal projects such as "Design Christmas cards or calendars, using beautiful lettering."  There was also the request that students join the "P.U.S. Portfolio," a sort of art club like Harmony Art Mom's online Sketch Tuesdays, where they submitted work by mail and added to it in a sort of round-robin.  (According to this article, they had to set a rule that "the Portfolio only remains one day with each family. There are so many members that the unfortunate artists whose names begin with letters at the end of the alphabet cannot see it during the month unless this rule is kept"). Here's an article with notes for one season's "portfolio," and I love the suggested illustration from George MacDonald!

And that's it for "art class."  Clay and cardboard modelling, and anything else of that sort, came under "Work," a.k.a Handicrafts, Shop, and Home Economics.  The study of architecture was listed under General Science.  "Beautiful lettering" went under Sunday Occupations.

Ox-Cart Man illustration by Barbara Cooney

Handicrafts  included lots of needlework, sewing and knitting, darning and mending, cooking, helping in house and garden.  Occasionally there was something special included such as "Frame your pictures with glass and passé-partout," "Make a design for an Empire medal" (in clay).  What I notice about the "Work" section of the programmes is that it got longer and a bit more diverse in the years after Charlotte Mason's death.   (Although I found one more unusual suggestion back in Programme 44, "Dress a doll in Tudor style.")  Both boys and girls were to make papier-mache bowls as gifts, make plaster casts from linoleum blocks, reseat chairs with rushes, carve toys (from a Dryad Leaflet), "make rugs" (using a design book by Ann Macbeth) and help with laundry. Girls were to knit or crochet baby clothes, and sew and embroider an "overall" (what North Americans would call a smock).  Boys were given books such as Light Woodwork for the Classroom, by W.J. Warren, and 101 Things for a Boy to Make, by A.C. Horth (a book that went through many updates and reprints).  They were also assigned stenciling (why the girls couldn't do that too, I'm not sure).

Not everything was stuffed into every term, of course.  Cardboard modelling, which I can't imagine anyone getting that excited over (sorry!), was one of the usual repeats from term to term, and of course all the household skills and charitable work were repeated as well.  Most term programmes had one or two things that were special or different, such as carving toys.

Ox-Cart Man illustration by Barbara Cooney

What does all this say to a homeschool parent or other educator planning a term's work now?

First, if the P.U.S. could stretch its view of crafts from "reseat chairs" to "make a design for an Empire medal" to printmaking and carving, it seems to me that almost any good craft (or art class technique, like lino block casting) might be fair game for a term's work.  All this work didn't seem to be timetabled into the school schedules, though.  There are footnotes in the term programmes that the work given includes "hobbies," and I think that's one way of saying that some of this should be self-directed on the students' part. Obviously some of the more involved crafts would take instruction and supervision, but there would be some things that they could do on their own.

Second, the P.U.S. made use of books by some of the best art teachers and designers out there.  Ann Macbeth, for one, is a fascinating person to look up online; I just wish [more of ] her actual books were scanned in (see comments for a link to one of them). So that says to me that we can find ideas in mainstream (not just educational) craft resources; also in ideas given for groups such as Scouts (the P.U.S. programmes recommended doing work for Guide or Scout badges).

Third, it's instructive to see what does not appear on the list:  for instance, crafts made from specifically kid-marketed materials, such as fluorescent-coloured modelling material; and those just copied from someone else's exact pattern.  There is a goal of developing an independent sense of design and taste, of learning each craft well enough to be able to make some of your own design decisions, and not just connect the dots.

Something that does not seem to be discussed or encouraged much, at least at this age, is the kind of undirected art or crafts, smushing stuff around, that is mostly process but with no real product in mind.  This may have been because craft materials were expensive; but taking that further, I think the students were to develop a "relationship" with the paints, wool and clay.  That is, learning and respecting the properties of whatever material you were working with, in the same sense that a cabinetmaker seems to enter into the spirit of the wood he uses.  If you have good coloured pencils, you try to get the most out of them, learn what you can do with them, as well as treat them carefully.

And, as I said at the beginning, there are few crafts listed that seem made to fit (usually) with a particular lesson or historical period.  The exceptions would be illustrating scenes from literature, or occasionally something like dressing dolls in historical costume.  Even the art-class projects were not directly inspired by the term's artist or the historical period, in contrast to much of today's educational thinking. Papier-mâché bowls for gifts, yes; papier-mâché gargoyles, no.

Does that mean you should never make sunbonnets when you read Little House on the Prairie, or that you can't make earth-strata art during a geology unit?  (If I had all the stuff, I'd love to do that one.)  No, I don't think so...nobody wants to take all the fun out of homeschooling.  But perhaps this takes some of the stress out of it.

If you're a CMer and you're going to do crafts...mostly...do crafts, and don't worry about how well they fit.  If you're going to draw, then draw.  If the relationships (to the materials, or to the landscape or natural inspiration or just to general ideas of beauty and design) are being formed, then the real learning is happening--with or without gargoyles.