Learning Framework
One great story, encountered according to age
The Framework
St. Mammas provides a shared architecture within which Orthodox homeschooling families can learn together. This architecture consists of a four-year chronological framework, an original reading plan, common historical and theological questions, and age-specific pathways through the material.
The framework is not a complete curriculum. It does not prescribe every subject, lesson, teaching method, or academic requirement within the home. Parents remain responsible for directing their children’s education, while St. Mammas coordinates a common path that allows many individual homeschools to inhabit the same story and come together for meaningful conversation and enrichment.
A Four-Year Chronology:
The framework extends across four years of thirty-four weeks each. Every year is organized around one large question that gives coherence to the historical periods, peoples, texts, and events encountered along the way.
Year One: How did God prepare the world for the coming of Christ?
The first year begins with Creation and follows the formation of the ancient world, the history of Israel, the rise and fall of kingdoms and civilizations, and the providential preparation of the nations for the Incarnation. The year culminates in the Nativity, ministry, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Year Two: How did Christ transform the world?
The second year follows the Church from the age of the Apostles through the conversion of peoples, the Ecumenical Councils, the Christian Roman Empire, the formation of monastic civilization, and the development of the Christian cultures of Europe, Africa, and Asia. The children encounter a world gradually reordered by the proclamation that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Year Three: How did Christendom divide and expand?
The third year considers the divisions that arose within the Christian world and the ways European Christendom expanded into new lands. The Renaissance, Reformation, global exploration, religious conflict, and Enlightenment are considered within the longer history of the Church and the Christian civilizations from which they emerged.
Year Four: How should Christians live in the modern world?
The fourth year examines revolution, industrialization, nationalism, secularism, totalitarianism, technological society, and the transition from Christendom into the modern and post-Christian world. The purpose is not merely to catalogue recent events, but to help older children recognize the spiritual character of modernity and consider how Christians may live faithfully within it.
A Christ-Centered Understanding of History
The framework treats history as more than a sequence of disconnected civilizations, inventions, wars, and political changes. Human history has a center: the coming of Jesus Christ. The Incarnation is not simply one event placed upon a timeline; it is the event toward which the ancient world was providentially prepared and from which the subsequent history of the world must be understood.
This approach also prevents the ancient Mediterranean from being reduced to the history of Greece and Rome alone. Israel, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, the Celtic and Germanic peoples, and the many cultures surrounding the Mediterranean are encountered as parts of a larger human world being prepared for the Gospel.
In the Christian centuries, the framework regularly draws upon Byzantine and other Christian chronicles. Children therefore learn to see the past not only through modern historical summaries but also through the eyes of Christians who understood history as the arena of divine providence, human freedom, faithfulness, sin, judgment, repentance, and renewal.
An Original Reading Plan
St. Mammas is developing its own reading plan to accompany the four-year chronology. The plan brings together Holy Scripture, the lives of the saints, historical narratives, literature, Christian chronicles, conciliar and theological texts, and carefully selected primary sources.
These books and texts supply the content encountered by the children; St. Mammas supplies their sequence and relationship. The reading plan identifies which portions of the larger story families will inhabit during a given week and suggests readings suited to different stages of development. Parents determine how those readings are taught, narrated, discussed, supplemented, and incorporated into the rest of their children’s home education.
The plan is deliberately restrained. Children are not asked to race through large quantities of material merely to complete a list. Readings are selected and limited so that they may be approached attentively and remembered as parts of a coherent whole.
Age Specific Encounters
Children of different ages should not simply receive the same text with a different number of pages assigned. Each stage requires its own manner of encounter. A young child may receive a story through narration and imagery, while an older child may encounter the same event through a primary source, a theological witness, or the original language.
1Seeds: Early Childhood to Pre-K
Seeds enter the common life of the co-op through prayer, stories, songs, play, sensory experience, and simple handiwork. Their participation is relational and imaginative rather than dependent upon a formal reading assignment.
2Sprouts: Kindergarten to Grade 3
Sprouts encounter Scripture, the saints, and history through children’s readers, oral narration, and carefully retold stories. Their normal weekly reading is brief—generally one short story or approximately two to six pages—so that the material can be received slowly and remembered.
3Shoots: Grade 4 to 6
Shoots begin reading more independently through accessible Bible translations, historical narratives, biographies, and adapted sources. Their normal weekly reading is approximately five to fifteen pages, with emphasis upon comprehension, narration, and connection to the common story.
4Vines: Grades 7 to 9
Vines begin working directly with genuine Church texts, historical witnesses, and accessible primary sources. Their normal weekly reading is approximately ten to twenty-five pages. They are increasingly asked to compare accounts, recognize differing perspectives, and participate in sustained discussion.
5Vine Dressers: Grades 10 to 12
Vine Dressers encounter many of the same primary texts as the Vines at greater depth, often with paired historical or theological witnesses. Selected Septuagint, Biblical, or liturgical Greek phrases may also be incorporated. Their normal weekly reading is approximately twenty to forty pages, allowing room for careful consideration rather than hurried coverage.
From Home Reading to Cooperative Learning
Families complete the appointed readings at home according to the needs, abilities, and circumstances of their children. The weekly gathering then gives those readings a common life. Children discuss what they have encountered, hear the perspectives of others, make connections across Scripture and history, and deepen their understanding through enrichment activities, sacred arts, handwork, and shared experience.
The gathering does not replace the work of the home. It depends upon it. The framework allows the education taking place in many homes to converge in a single cooperative community without surrendering the freedom, personal attention, and parental responsibility that make homeschooling valuable.
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