Have you been interested in A Gentle Feast Curriculum, but finding yourself confused with not enough information? I’m going to break down our year using A Gentle Feast so you can find clarity for your own family style curriculum.
A Gentle Feast is a Charlotte Mason style curriculum that organizes the education like a nutritious meal. It covers so many subjects to complete the feast.
While I absolutely loved using A Gentle Feast last year, it can be confusing with multiple children. If this is your first time checking out their curriculum, I am going to break down how I set up each week, and share what subjects we follow completely, and others we skip.
After reading this, you will have a much better idea of how this homeschool curriculum can work or not work for your family!
A Gentle Feast: Forms
Instead of traditional grade levels, Charlotte Mason’s Parent’s National Education Programmes divided students into Forms. This benefits those of us with multiple children or with large families. More family style learning is possible this way versus trying to teach every subject to each individual grade level.
Julie Ross, the creator of A Gentle Feast, has adjusted Charlotte Mason’s forms further into four groupings. This simplifies the process so you, as the home educator, can adjust up or down in the forms based on your children’s needs and ability. Here is the general guideline, with lots of room for flexibility for your situation.
- AGF Form 1: Grades 1-3
- AGF Form 2: Grades 4-6
- AGF Form 3: Grades 7-9
- AGF Form 4: Grades 10-12
For example, I have my 2nd grader in Form 1, but they have some options labeled for 3rd graders in Form 1. I love that they offer plenty of options for children in the lower or upper end of a form. My 5th grader will use Form 2, and my 8th grader will use Form 3. The great thing is we are all studying very similar time periods, people, and places, but with different literature of varying difficulty.
A Gentle Feast: The Feast Explained
1. The Appetizer: Morning Time
If you are familiar with the Charlotte Mason method, Morning Time is probably very familiar and special to you. This is a time you all gather around and join in on. Toddlers to teens can benefit greatly from this quality time. If you’ve been on my Instagram before, you probably know it is a favorite and valuable time for us. Here is a breakdown of how A Gentle Feast structures Morning Time.
Bible reading
- Four days of Bible readings are assigned. The fifth day can be used for your personal denomination readings, missionary biographies, habit training, etc.
- A four year rotation is given that covers stories from the Old and New Testament in chronological order. The Psalms and Proverbs are included.
- There are personal devotion suggestions for older students to read.
- Every 12 week period, or term, there is a longer Bible passage to be used for memory work.
We pretty much will be following this structure for the 2022-2023 year.
picture and composer study
- They provide a 5-step method within the Teacher’s Manual for how to do a picture and composer study. Resources are also included in the online resources portion or you can purchase a separate printed Morning Time manual.
poetry recitation
- Poems are included in the Morning Time manual, and students receite them for 4-6 weeks.
poet study
- Poems are included in the Morning Time manual, and you read a selection written by the term’s poet. These can easily be substituted by poetry of your choice or to your children’s interest.
fables and hero tales/biographies
- They offer selections for each form here, or you may choose to select one fables book to read to the entire family.
hymn study
- A Gentle Feast utilizes the book Then Sings My Soul for background information about the selected hymn. Love this book! There are lyric sheets in the book and also found within the Morning Time manual.
- I found these great free printables from Happy Hymnody that I use for our Morning Menu inserts.
[RELATED POST: Set Up a Morning Menu]
2. Soup & Salad – Language Arts
I won’t go into this section in too much detail because I’ve only used the Language Arts from A Gentle Feast for my kindergartener (100 Gentle Lessons in Sight and Sound) and in 1st grade (Language Arts 1). I really liked 100 Gentle Lessons in Sight and Sound. It was the perfect amount and level for my kindergartener. However, after that level, I prefer to use other resources that specialize in language arts.
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A Gentle Feast Language Arts covers copywork, dictation, composition, phonics, reading, literature, grammar, and narrating.
3. The Main Course – Academic Block
Now, to my favorite section. The MEAT. I don’t even eat red meat, but this section is so filling!
history
Anyone else like me and used to loathe history in school, but now can’t get enough of it in homeschooling? I really hope our enthusiasm and interest is contagious to our children!
A Gentle Feast selected rich living books for each Form:
- Form 1: Books can be read to your child, or they can read them to you. After the reading, have your child give an oral narration.
- Form 2: Students will study a period in American History, and readings are split over 2 days. In 4th grade, students will add in British History, with Ancient History beginning in 5th grade. You can decide either to have them independently read or not, along with oral or written narration.
- Forms 3 and 4: Students will study American History, World History, and Ancient History. An oral or written narration will be kept as routine.
Forms 2 through 4 will keep a Book of Centuries. This is a record of significant people, places, and events gathered from their readings.
geography
- Form 1: Grades 1 and 2 focus on Physical Geography and early map skills. Grade 3 focuses on the United States geography. This is all through living books.
- Form 2: Students will advance in their knowledge of United States geography, and branch out to nearby countries.
- Form 3: Once a week, students will use a geography reader to learn about other countries. Another day a week, students will complete some map work, adding countries.
- Form 4: Very similar to Form 3 work.
natural history
This is another favorite section of mine. We have read many of the Among the book series by Clara Dillingham. Most are available free on Kindle. I like to supplement these with CM Simple Studies for my Form 1. My older kids have enjoyed reading Christian Liberty Nature Readers and James Herriot books.
science
We skip this section in favor of our beloved Apologia studies or Sabbath Mood Homeschool. However, the living book suggestions for science from AGF look great too!
citizenship
- Form 1: nothing is scheduled for citizenship.
- Form 2: Students begin reading about famous men and women, and US Civics.
- Forms 3 and 4: Students begin reading the book Ourselves by Charlotte Mason. Small bite sized chunks weekly is the perfect amount.
The remaining subjects in the main course
These subjects are also included with recommended resources, but we have not tried them. Either lack of time or interest, but I appreciate that it is there is flexibility to do it if we want to dive in or skip it guilt free. The remaining subjects are singing, Swedish drill, foreign language, and Latin.
4. The Dessert: Tea Time
A Gentle Feast ends each day in tea time. It almost seems like Morning Time, but in the afternoon. We do not do a tea time daily, but again, I pick and choose what I’d like to make time for each week in this area.
Included are options for poetry, read alouds, drawing lessons, nature study, and handicrafts.
A Gentle Feast: Principles for Scheduling
I highly agree with the scheduling principles A Gentle Feast outlines. It is very much in line with a Charlotte Mason style of education, and offers parents much flexibility. They encourage short and varied lessons, combining (as much as possible) for multiple children, time for leisure and outdoors, and 3 x 12-week terms.
A Gentle Feast: Is it For You?
This homeschool curriculum has been a blessing to my family. Now that I have three children in 3 different forms, it has been helpful for me with juggling. I love the grid style of the Teacher Manual, and the generous options which allow me curate what’s best. I don’t know if I would have used this with just one child, but with multiple students at different levels, I really like being in the same time period together. Check out the website for more info!
This was a breakdown of A Gentle Feast curriculum, and how we use it in our homeschool with multiple children.
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