Teaching Children: A Curriculum Guide to What Children Need to Know at Each Level Through Sixth Grade

Rating:
Summary: A somewhat useful book with a misleading title
Review: Out of the three Child-Light education books, this is the only one I own, but I'd recommend For the Children's Sake and Books Children Love over this one. Of the three, this is the least readable (it's mostly scope and sequence) and the least homeschool friendly (classroom teachers might find it more useful). It lists poems and books to read (mostly in the literature and history/geography sections--there is no booklist for science at all), but other books have more comprehensive lists (such as Laura M. Berquist's Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum). It does not draw at all on the resources currently available to and popular with Christian homeschoolers, even those that were available 10 years ago when the book was published. A very short chapter on using the curriculum in home schools ends up being only a plug for Calvert correspondence school. On the positive side, the breakdown of the steps in teaching reading and the related lists such as meanings of suffixes and prefixes are useful, especially for those teaching without a packaged curriculum. Some of the "alternate" social studies ideas (in an appendix) are more interesting and logical than the main sequence; for instance, third graders spend a year studying "The World Around Me", which involves local history, geography and nature study, branching out into local problems and areas in which children can serve others. The subject overviews, if you have not read For The Children's Sake or Karen Andreola's A Charlotte Mason Companion, which cover the same ideas in more depth, would be a good introduction to the educational principles of Charlotte Mason. For my money, though, I have gotten more practical use out of Ruth Beechick's You CAN Teach Your Child Successfully, which really does explain HOW to teach, and Laura Berquist's book, which pulls in currently available materials to create a curriculum probably more realistic and specifically for homeschoolers. (She doesn't include those phonics breakdowns, though.) If you can borrow this book, it's worth taking a look at; but if you have to spend money for it, there are others I'd go for first.