We're in our third year running with Learning Language Arts Through Literature (LLATL). We have had starts and stops with it over the years, but my youngest set of children have settled in comfortably now. I don't think we're going anywhere else from here on out.
I read a lot. I have done enough curriculum research in the past 25 years that I have probably earned an honorary degree of some sort. This is not an uncommon thing among homeschooling mothers. We want the best for our kids and that sometimes means going on a quest to find the PERFECT curriculum. (Spoiler alert: It does not exist.)
Charlotte Mason (a 19th century educator in England) spoke of a "science of relations". The more you know, the more you know. What we learn today builds upon what we already know and will be added to things we will yet learn. Karen Glass wrote such a succinct article about this here. I encourage you to read it.
Children are not future people, they are people now. God gave them talents and gifts, curiosity and intellect. It's our job as parents to give them "mind food" and create an environment where they will be exposed to great thoughts, high ideals, and many other positive things.
One of our lessons in the Purple LLATL book this week had to do with the poem "America the Beautiful" by Katharine Lee Bates. I happened to have a book on hand from one of my many eagle- eyed browsings at thrift stores. (Hint: study quality book lists ahead of time so you can spot the good ones when you are out and about.)
Purple Mountain Majesties by Barbara Younger is a nicely illustrated picture book that tells the story of the cross country trip Katharine Lee Bates took that inspired her to write the poem that was the subject of our LLATL study.
Ironically, I happened to wily-nily select books at our public library this week, one of which was Mr. Ferris and His Wheel by Kathryn Gibbs Davis. Without retelling the entire story, Katharine Lee Bates visited the World's Fair in Chicago the year Ferris debuted his wheel (and took a ride!). It was a fun interconnection that I didn't plan.
Another irony: I had also grabbed the book Electrical Wizard, How Nikola Tesla Lit Up the World by Elizabeth Rusch. Tesla had been awarded the assignment to light up that same World's Fair where all this other stuff I have been talking about happened in 1893. My thirteen year old sometimes struggles with reading. It was his job to read this and narrate the story back to me.
I said to the boys, "Isn't it weird how we keep running into things we are studying about?" My ten year old said, "Not really weird. It happens all the time." This is true.
All this to say, it isn't so much picking the "perfect" curriculum as awakening a curiosity in your children and helping them to notice how often a word you just learned in your read-aloud pops up quite unexpectedly other places. Or how often you "meet" a person in your reading one day, then find that same person tucked away in another story at a later reading. We are alert to notice.
My boys are half ways convinced we caused the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral and the flooding in Venice, Italy, because both disasters happened soon after we learned of those places. (wink, wink) As a mother I lean more toward those places having taken on some significance to them because we spent time there in our books.
~Colleen
