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Views from the Choir Loft

When “Textbooks” Don’t Cut It

Veronica Moreno · June 21, 2019

83941 ver0 HREE CHILDREN sit tamely on the couch. The baby crawls around looking for things to taste…errr explore. But the two-year-old, she can’t sit beyond 12 seconds. Soon she’ll be on the floor with a Shopkin’ or a peg doll. During this, she’ll be “quieter”—because this is our “morning time,” the start of our homeschooling day.

To the casual observer, she is quietly playing, but looking closer, this little sponge is whispering. She’s following along with our prayers! A few minutes later, when her seven-year-old brother recites “Hope is the thing with feathers” by Dickinson, there is no doubt you will hear her little high-pitched voice whisper, “that perches in the soul.”

This routine has taken years to establish. When we decided to homeschool, there was no one to guide us. We felt absolutely alone in our choice to be Catholic homeschoolers. No family member or friend had done something so drastic as to take their child out of traditional schooling. We were both teachers, but our experience was only in the traditional systems. Of course, the internet search made things better, and soon we were ordering and receiving the “boxed curriculum.”

83940 ver0 OUR FIRST TWO, we homeschooled from the “curriculum.” In a way, buying the box was a little like buying what the traditional schools buy, doing what regular schools do. Our days looked “traditional”: adult teaches, child reads the lesson, some interaction to clarify what might confuse, and the child finishes the practice worksheet. If the twenty-five addition problems were unfinished or had many mistakes, I’d feel we’d failed for the day.

Yet as I continued to research in those first two years, a group of educational practices caught my attention. I learned to think “outside the box”. Without delving into the pedagogical details, I decided to transition into a “Charlotte Mason inspired” philosophy or curriculum. 1

Our “textbooks” weren’t cutting it. I needed to bring the most worthy texts, the most beautiful words, the most melodious songs, the brightest pictures, the most moving poems. Beauty was to be our teacher, and she is what their senses would devour. So in our third year of homeschooling, we did not buy a textbook-based, boxed curriculum, but instead we created a “feast of living books” about the subjects we needed to explore.

This is how we began to create a truly different type of homeschool, where our morning routine with Shopkin’ girl and the other four children became the anchor and launch of our day. We already had opening prayers and salutes, now we needed to add “the riches.” From now on, we would always have “a banquet.”



NOTES FROM THIS ARTICLE:

1   This meant many changes to the daily instructional routine, but what is most pertinent to this blog post is that it introduced me to the idea that every single text that my children consume and learn from—the literature and science and history—should be “a continual holiday to their door” or better yet, that I should only present “before them a feast, exquisitely served.”

Our focus in sharing this isn’t the pedagogy of homeschooling, but how that philosophy intersects with beauty, art, music, and the faith. There are many resources to learn about “living books” and Charlotte Mason. The quotes are from Mason’s six-volume series about education.

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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Veronica Moreno

About Veronica Moreno

Veronica Moreno is married to a teacher and homeschools five children. She has been cantor at her local Catholic parish for over a decade.—(Read full biography).

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Quick Thoughts

6 January 2021 • Anglicans on Plainsong

A book published by Anglicans in 1965 has this to say about Abbat Pothier’s Editio Vaticana, the musical edition reproduced by books such as the LIBER USUALIS (Solesmes Abbey): “No performing edition of the music of the Eucharistic Psalmody can afford to ignore the evidence of the current official edition of the Latin Graduale, which is no mere reproduction of a local or partial tradition, but a CENTO resulting from an extended study and comparison of a host of manuscripts gathered from many places. Thus the musical text of the Graduale possesses a measure of authority which cannot lightly be disregarded.” They are absolutely correct.

—Jeff Ostrowski
2 January 2021 • Temptation

When I see idiotic statements made on the internet, I go nuts. When I see heretics promoted by people who should know better, I get angry. Learning to ignore such items is difficult—very difficult. I try to remember the words of Fr. Valentine Young: “Do what God places in front of you each day.” When I am honest, I don’t believe God wants me to dwell on errors and idiocy; there’s nothing I can do about that. During 2021, I will strive to do a better job following the advice of Fr. Valentine.

—Jeff Ostrowski
31 December 2020 • “COMITES CHRISTI”

The feasts for Saint Stephen Proto-Martyr (26 December), Saint John the Evangelist The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved (27 December), and the Feast of the Holy Innocents (28 December) seem untouched by any liturgical reforms. These are very powerful feasts—I believe they once possessed octaves—and I believe they could sometimes “overpower” a Sunday feast. The rules for octaves in the olden days are extremely complex. These feasts are sometimes referred to as a single entity as: Comites Christi (“Companions of Christ”). This is just a guess, but there seems to be a triple significance: STEPHEN martyred after Christ lived, JOHN was a martyr who knew Christ personally, and the HOLY INNOCENTS were martyred before Christ’s birth.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Random Quote

The “jolly good guy” kind of pastor can be an irritant. […] Ministers of the Gospel are not used car salesmen whose heartiness is a mile wide and an inch deep. A bemused layman told me that a bishop joked with him, but turned away like a startled deer when asked an important question…

— Fr. George Rutler (7 August 2017)

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