Family Keeping Meeting, Summer Edition

Last fall we started a new tradition in our family.  Just about every Saturday, we gather around the breakfast table at 7:15 and share a meal and pieces of our work for the week.  This isn't just for the kids, but also for my husband and I as well.  This acts as a time to check in our the kids' work, as well as an opportunity for my husband and I to share what we are learning about and our attempts to be lifelong learners.

You know, it is very challenging to take a picture of a large family sitting at the table and have it turn out decently.  But I guess that's just to be expected.  Photo courtesy of Gregory (and his new-ish camera with a timer)

In our Family Keeping Meeting, we share each item from youngest to oldest before moving onto the next item.  We don't all bring everything each week, but we all have at least something to share.

What we share

• Book of Centuries/Century Charts/Stream of History or other time keeping
• Commonplace or Copywork
• Drawing Practice Exercises
• Drawn Narrations
• Written Narrations
• Nature Observations
• Finished Books (which I note and add to their reading lists)

Then we review the activities for the weekend and discuss upcoming events for the week.  We also settle on a schedule for our shared family work in Shakespeare, Plutarch and Art.  The kids then have an opportunity to ask questions or make comments about the week past or the the one to come.  The whole thing takes 45 min to an hour, but I feel like it has a much bigger impact on our overall life as a family than that.  It keeps my husband and I accountable for using these various tools that we know are important, it allows all of us a glimpse into what we each are doing, and it gives us additional  opportunities for conversation about what we're learning.

Examples from a recent Family Keeping Meeting

Gregory (12) - From Top Left - Drawing Practice, Drawing Exercise from Masterpiece Society Drawing 101 Lesson, Drawn Narration of the layout of the fort complex he is building with his siblings, and Nature Observations

Nathan (10) - Drawn narration of watching the fireworks on the 4th of July, Nature Observations, Drawing Exercise from Masterpiece Society Drawing 101 Lesson, and Drawing Practice

Emma (16) - Written narration (on iPad), quote shared from PEAK packet, Lettering in her PEAK journal. 

My work - Written narration (on iPad), Drawing Exercise from Masterpiece Society Drawing 101 Lesson, Commonplace quotes from The Memory of Old Jack and Norms and Nobility

Matt's work - Written narration (on iPad), Commonplace (on iPad - he uses his Commonplace for quotes and images that come from his reading), Drawing Exercise from Masterpiece Society Drawing 101 Lesson, and his Book of Centuries entries

Checklists

And some might be wondering about how I manage to keep track of what we are doing, and what I give my kids so that they can be prepared for this meeting.  

I keep a general Weekly Reference on my clipboard - this isn't just for the weekly meeting, but also has my evening review steps, weekly review steps and Sunday activities.  I mark it up as I go through the Family Keeping Meeting and use it as a place to jot down what the kids have read as ebooks or listened to as audiobooks.  (I have a place by my desk where the physical books are stacked.)  Each week I print a new one on the back of my weekly overview sheet.

And since it is summer, the boys' list of weekly work is a lot shorter, and they do not have to bring time keeping or written narrations to the Family Keeping Meeting.  They are welcome to, of course, but neither has taken me up on that yet!  This goes on their clipboard and they get a new one each week.

Year In Review: Family Studies (2017 - 2018)

Orienteering with a map and compass on a Sunday family nature walk

Subjects We Study as a Family

In our family studies, we tackle subjects together at set times during the day and week.  Some of my children will have additional readings or work in these areas, and some will do all their work in this area with the family.  Our family studies include:

Lives of Saints
Mass Readings
Picture Study
Hymns
Folk Songs
Poetry
Plutarch
Shakespeare (I also led a Shakespeare study with other families in the spring)
Memory Work
Literature
Nature Study and Journaling (as a family on Sundays after Mass)
Composer Study

There's a few changes from last year, but many things have stayed the same.

Changes This Year

Shakespeare, Plutarch and Art Instruction

Last year my family started a process of integrating my husband more into our family studies by moving our nature walk and nature study to Sundays.  This year we moved Shakespeare and Plutarch to the evening so my husband could join us in those subjects as well.  When we read Shakespeare, we all take parts and read and then narrate the scenes together.  With Plutarch, I read and those who want to can also follow along with a digital version of the text.  We spend about 30 minutes two nights a week doing this and we've enjoyed this time together.  I also appreciate how Shakespeare and Plutarch have become so much more of our family culture.  In the spring, we also started working through Alisha Gratehouse's Drawing 101 Course at The Masterpiece Society one evening a week.  We will continue with these activities through the summer, because they are regular parts of our lives now, not just school subjects.

Saturday morning family keeping meeting

Family Keeping Meeting

In the same vein as above, we've started a weekly Family Keeping Meeting.  Really, this could be a post of its own, but essentially it is an opportunity for the entire family to come together and share work we've done over the course of the week.  I make a breakfast we can share, generally a baked oatmeal and sausage links, and we sit down at the table together at 7:15 a.m. each Saturday morning for about 45 minutes.  Each person, including my husband and me, share things like Book of Century entries, commonplace quotes, written narrations, drawn narrations, drawing practice, and nature journal entries.  We move through this in order, sharing each type of keeping in sequence and we share from youngest to oldest.  Once we finish sharing, we review the calendar for the day and the upcoming week, then we move onto the rest of our day.

Memory Work

Last year I tried moving to just having the kids do individual recitation by themselves, and letting them chose from a binder of pieces what they would practice.  Each day of the week they had a different area to focus on - Shakespeare, Poetry, Bible passages, Hymns and Psalms.  I saw some improvement in their recitations - less mumbling, more engagement - but I didn't like how individual our memory work became, and I didn't like how pieces were dropping from our collective memory.  One of the things I've long appreciated about our shared recitation time is how the pieces we have memorized together have become part of our family culture, and touchstones for us as we share our lives together.  After Charlotte was born and I had my feet under me again, we brought memory work back to our morning time.  However, I did keep the individual recitation time for my two younger students (4th and 6th grade).  They enjoy that time to recite by themselves, and it has made them stronger in our group recitation time.  Everyone has welcomed this return, and it also keeps the pieces we have learned fresher in our memories.

Reading Aloud

This is an area that has become sadly and surprisingly deficient in our home.  The younger ones still get read to throughout the day and especially before bedtime, but the only things I read with the older kids are the daily Mass readings, Shakespeare, and Plutarch.  My husband still reads aloud after dinner, but often this is only once a week at most.  I intentionally dropped the lunchtime read-aloud when Charlotte was born, and I've found it a surprisingly difficult habit to resume.

Books and Resources

Lives of Saints
We've enjoyed reading about the Saint of the day through this series of (free) ebooks from CatholicCulture.org.  They are my favorite Saint of the day resources by far.

Picture Study 
Vermeer, Constable, and then a shorter study of E. Charlton Fortune and Benjamin West in the third term.  This was my first year buying prints from Riverbend Press, and I thought they were very high quality.  After seeing how great it is to have physical copies of the art, I had my own prints printed for the last term's subjects.  I had previous just showed art on my iPad, but having the prints is definitely worth the money and hassle.  Having physical prints also let me put one up on the fridge, which then informally included my husband in this part of our studies.   We also watched Tim's Vermeer, which we thoroughly enjoyed and led to some great discussions not only about Vermeer's art, but also about possibilities versus proofs.  (Warning: brief bad language at one point at about the middle of the movie)

Hymns 
Ordinary Time
Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
For the Beauty of the Earth
Be Thou My Vision
Advent
Canticle of the Turning
Christmas
Hark the Herald Angels Sing
We Three Kings of Orient Are
God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen
Lent
O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded
Change Our Hearts
Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence
Easter
Alleluia! Alleluia! Let the Holy Anthem Rise
At the Lamb's High Feast We Sing
Alleluia, Alleluia! Hearts to Heaven

Folk Songs 
I've Been Working on the Railroad
O Susanna
This Land is Your Land
Star of the County Down
She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain
Simple Gifts

Folk Dances 
(Thanks to the Alveary to pointing me to these YouTube videos, and to my daughter for actually learning the steps to the first one, teaching us, and getting us going on it!)
O Susanna
Big Mountain Circle Dance 

Poetry
The Courtship of Miles Standish, Malcolm Guite's two poetry collections (Waiting on the Word and Word in the Wilderness for Advent and Lent, respectively), a poetry collection called Poetry Out Loud (which I don't particularly recommend - I read selectively and didn't share some of the notes - it was a library book sale find) and we've just started a long poem by Robert Service called Ballads of a Bohemian.

Plutarch
Pericles, Fabius Maximus, Alexander the Great (in progress - this one is long, but good)

Shakespeare
Macbeth, Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2 (not quite finished yet) and The Tempest with other families as part of our spring Shakespeare workshop.

Memory Work
As a family I've only added Wisdom 2:23-3:9.  Otherwise we've just been solidifying what was already in our memory work system.

Literature 
On the Far Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George and The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge (shows how little we've read aloud together, doesn't it!).  Both of these were read immediately after dinner at the dinner table by my husband over the course of the school year.

Composer Study 
Mozart, Handel's Messiah, Bach  - I thought we did a reasonably good job studying the Messiah (and it is encouraging to see how familiar it is now that we've studied it for a few years now each Advent) but the other studies were not well executed.  I never found a particularly good time to play the music for casual listening, and our focused listening was only so-so at best.  Unfortunately, in a baby year, beautiful music becomes noise when I can't focus on it.  And noise, which is always a trial, is even more difficult in a baby year.

Year In Review: Overview (2017 - 2018)

In previous years, I've been able to write very detailed, multi-part summary of our school year.  This year I'm not going to be able to be as in depth.  We welcomed a new little one into our family in the later part of August last year, which delayed the start of our school year by a few weeks, which then pushed out our end date out as well.  That time I would usually use to write the summaries was taken up by finishing the school year, and now I'm at the point where I really need to start planning our next school year so I can start when we usually start.  However, I know I will regret not writing at least a little about the school year and how it went, so here it goes.

In the spring of 2017, as I prayed the Novena to Our Lady of Good Counsel, (as I do every year), I focused on what our school should look like in the upcoming year.  How was I going to manage the planning time I needed for the school year, write my conference talks for the CMI Western conference, be able take the kids to the pool, lake and river during the summer, endure the third trimester, and prepare to welcome to our sixth child?  And once that all happened, how would I ever manage to actually run our homeschool with three students (10th, 6th, 4th grade), a 5 year old and a 3 year old, plus a newborn?

In prayer, I realized that I was in a good position for the year, as my three students were all strong readers and could do quite a bit on their own.  I would not be able to run a scheduled day with them - no morning lesson time table this year - but I felt fairly confident that with direction and some help, they would be able to do a reasonably good job.  I could focus on reading practice with my five year old, and that, with lots of outdoor time and reading aloud, would be sufficient.  My three year old could be included in this to whatever extent she wanted to be included, and this would be sufficient for her as well.  Our morning time with prayer and poetry, music and art would continue, and would also continue to be a blessing to us all.

The main sticking point was the planning.  Last summer I was burned out on planning.  I had spent a huge amount of time on it the previous summer (2016) and while it was a good year, I felt like things were just a little off.  I also knew that I did not have the time to throw at the planning that I had in 2016.  I also was far more enthusiastic about writing conference talks than doing all the planning work, which might have been a distraction I allowed myself rather than a legitimate project. 

In the end I decided to try the Charlotte Mason Institute's Alveary.  I wouldn't have to select books, schedule them out, or create the spreadsheets.  All those subjects that were taught in Mason's schools but aren't well supported by other CM curricula, such as sol-fa, foreign language, geography, drawing, and dancing, were included.  With it, I was left with very little to do other than plan Sunday
reading, buy books, print schedules, and make sure we had the appropriate supplies.  It was a blessing for our family, and it made our summer last year much better than it would have been otherwise.

I am thankful for the Alveary, and I feel like we had a good year.  I appreciate the work they are doing to create such a full Mason curriculum, and I am glad it is out there.  However...  we won't be returning to the Alveary in this upcoming school year.  I wanted to like and use the materials that are exclusive to the Alveary, but after trying them for a term, I dropped them and replaced them with other materials.  The pace of the scheduling often did not suit my children, and by the second term I had made a number of changes.  The level of the books also was problematic, and I ended up making a number of substitutions.  In the first term I printed out the lesson plans and used them for their daily lists, in the second term I used the lesson plans for a couple of subjects, and by the third term I wasn't looking at them at all.  My high school student did use the lesson plans throughout the year for some of the subjects, but there were other issues as well.

As I prayed the Novena to Our Lady of Good Counsel this year, I realized that all the things that were working well in our homeschool were either books we had used or were using already or were books or resources I had found outside of the Alveary.  Initially I was not looking forward to planning another school year, but once I realized how well we were doing while only giving the Alveary a passing nod, I decided that I could gird my loins and do it.  Besides, with a ten month old, I have no summer or fall conference plans to distract me. 

And since I used the Alveary this year, I am not certain I can give as full of a review as I have in the past, even if I did have the time.  Their work is proprietary, and I do not want to infringe on their hard work.  In subsequent posts, I plan to share a few favorite books as well as things I've found on my own.  It won't be as complete as previous years, but I am hoping it will be helpful for me in future years and perhaps helpful for others as well.