Re: Charlotte Mason?
 

Right - and it all boils down to the way you perceive a child's nature. With unschooling (and I'm talking about radical unschooling), there's faith that the child instinctively craves what he needs and, if left alone, will gravitate towards what he needs to learn. CM felt that human nature needed a little more help.

Re: Charlotte Mason?
 

Not purely CM, but has been a helpful website for me:

www.oldfashionededucation.com

Re: Charlotte Mason?
 

Can anyone tell me how they accomplished reading aloud so much to an older child with a younger around?
DD will be 3 in august and DS is turning 7....he loves to be read to, but DD not so much.

S

Re: Charlotte Mason?
 

I save some of the read-aloud books with my older son for the afternoon when my younger ones are napping.

For fun read-alouds, we get a lot of books on CD from the Library which my son listens to after homeschool lessons are finished.

Re: Charlotte Mason?
 

Those of you who are using Charlotte Mason could you just give an example of a typical learning day? I'm just getting majorly confused with all the books and then adding in maths, phonics, science etc...

Re: Charlotte Mason?
 

For a kindergartener, it looks a lot like unschooling. We read the Bible at breakfast, pull out the storybooks ad lib., do math while we cook, work on birds/trees/directions as I run errands downtown, spend as much time as possible running around in the yard or at the beach or in approved indoor run-around spaces if the weather is bad, practice drawing/scribbling whenever they like, etc. Music and art appreciation consist mostly of having the good music on the radio and putting up art prints, although I sing whenever I get the chance. Language lessons will be ten minutes a few times a week and consist at first of a simple verb game where I read the imperative tense and they do the action. Our first craft will be finger knitting. I don't have a set schedule for any of this except dance class on Saturday, rather a list of what I want to do today that I go down as opportunities present themselves.

Much of the education at this age is focused on learning to pay attention and practicing good habits. The other basics are good ("living") books and lots of time spent outdoors and/or handling real, grown-up things or working models of same. I have found that just letting the kids mess around usually teaches them more than saying, "It's time to learn something," and trying to "do school." Dropping something in casually also seems to be more effective than sending "Stop what you're doing, this is important" signals.

Re: Charlotte Mason?
 

I guess we sort of do that a bit. When we are driving in the car DD and I talk about the signs and what the traffic lights mean, she tells me when they turn green and when they are red.

We also do some phonics I guess, c c cat, d d dog. Yesterday she was saying d d cat, c c shoe :giggle so cute.

I need to get out more, add in some nature, take some walks. We walk to playgroup every week, so we should stop and collect stuff and talk about things on the way.

I guess it's just a matter of me opening up my mind and thinking, how can I make this a bit educational.

We count a lot, and last night DS (2yo) was saying doo, hree, por, pie, even, aih, ni, te, ebeben :heart

Re: Charlotte Mason?
 

Noticing when kids are very interested in something and offering an interesting tidbit geared to their age level covers a lot of ground for little ones. Sophia's favorite tree is a big cottonwood in the heart of town that has a tiny rowan growing in its fork. We stop by periodically to check on their progress and I also point out things she and Eva might not have noticed on their own, such as the scent of the unfolding cottonwood leaves (I pull a branch down so they can examine it closely) or the way that cottonwoods tend to drop twigs everywhere while other local trees do not. In the process they are learning to observe and learning two of the six trees recommended on the Formidable List of Accomplishments.

Sitting down at the end of the day and thinking, "Well, what did we practice? What did we learn?" can help you track your progress. Sophia helps me make bread; as part of this, she is practicing manual dexterity by filling cups of flour with a spoon and leveling them with a chopstick and doing simple math when I have her track how many cups have gone in vs. how many we need. She is practicing the good habit of cleaning up after herself when she fetches the whisk broom and dustpan and helps clean up the spilled flour. Etc.

Re: Charlotte Mason?
 

:heart

reminding myself to come back to this later when I am not so tired.

Re: Charlotte Mason?
 

I have been spending hours going over the AO website and looking at simplycharlottemason, and I am LOVING her method. I love that the kids learn poetry, music and art. I am starting to understand how it all works.

I just have a question, are there any of you who use the AO site as your sole curriculum? How do you work it?

Those of you who do the charlotte mason method more loosly, how do you work that?

I had been thinking of going with a structured curriculum like ACE, but we don't have a huge amount of money, and we have to pay fees for registrations as well as the books etc. Going with something like AO I am assuming I would be a bit more free to buy things as they are needed and not spend $100's of dollars in one go (or at least try not to).

Is it possible to use AO as your curriculum? I can now see that it covers just about everything you need to learn. Can you use AO alongside of simplycharlotte mason? I have noticed they have set out ideas for bible reading, artists and composers.

And my final big deciding (i guess) question is... how much preperation is needed before lessons if you go by the AO curriculum? Will I have to organise :jawdrop ahead of time lesson plans?

Oh... there is one more question... do you use the books that charlotte method suggests that were written in the 1800's? or find modern versions?

I think that is all for now... :giggle

Re: Charlotte Mason?
 

For Year 0, the curriculum is easy to apply and extremely simple; you can drop the lessons in whenever your daily schedule permits. Your biggest expense will probably be language instruction materials if you don't speak a second language already. Living books can be purchased used or read online for free if you don't mind reading off the computer. You may or may not want a reading or writing instruction book depending on how ready your child is to read or do copywork. Much of the recommended "coursework" for this year is best done outdoors, so a nature handbook geared to your area is a good idea. Because the weather is apt to cause hypothermia or frostbite for so much of the year, I also signed Sophia up for ballet on the assumption that anybody that crazy about Angelina Ballerina and tutus might like to do it for real. She had her first recital a few weeks ago and looks forward to taking the classes up again in the fall. This should take care of her large motor skills when the weather allows for going from building to building, but not for hanging out in the park on the way. You may need to do the same, or not.

Curricula for the lower grades are very relaxed, not quite as close to unschooling as "Year 0," but not nearly as structured or busy as public school. I have been told that daily tracking and scheduling become ever more important as you move up the grades. However, a structured lesson plan is not as important as in many other methods of education because you don't have to present things point by point. The student is expected to draw out the points himself or herself by reading the ideas presented in context, hence the long lists of non-textbooks in each year. Because you are expected to critique recitation, though, it's a good idea to have read the selections yourself already! The amount of pre-prep and planning needed for science, math, and foreign languages will depend on the curricula you buy.

Re: Charlotte Mason?
 

OK I have been reading on the ambleside site Tons of great information. My first concern is - I was reading the sections about learning outside and naturewalks. It seems like the mother has lots of knowledge about the plant parts, species of flowers and trees etc. Is this something you just prepare ahead of time if you don't know all these things?

And if mother is outside with them when is the housework getting done?:) I am really interested in this, just wondering how to make it work for us:)
And do you still do french or I was thinking maybe latin or spanish instead?

Re: Charlotte Mason?
 

We've just really started doing nature study last year...I don't have alot of knowledge about nature either. What we do is take pics of things we see on our walk. Using a handbook, or the internet, we try to identify what it is, then study further into it. DD will try to draw pics of what we see, write about it too. We also have been doing gardening to learn about plants and how they grow, etc.... Alot of the learning happens just with observation, and knowing the names of everything you see can come later.

I'm planning on buying The Handbook of Nature Study that AO recommends...

For language study, we won't be doing French. CM originated in England, but you can adapt it to what makes sense for you. We will be studying Latin first, then Spanish. I also will not be emphasizing British history as much, but incorporating some of my own heritage's history, as well as more focus on American history, sticking with CM methods. :)

If you have specific questions, it might be a good idea to start a new thread to get more responses. ;) Hope this helps some!

Re: Charlotte Mason?
 

Also, moms who spend a lot of outdoor time with their kids tend to have less housework . . . because they aren't in the house! :) We just had a month of sunny weather (amazing for Kodiak) and I made it a rule to put sunscreen on everybody in the morning and chase them outdoors as soon as the dew was off the grass. We ate outdoors, read outdoors, drew outdoors, etc., and I did sewing, letter writing, and laundry folding out there. If we had a grill, I could do all the cooking out there in good weather as well.

Re: Charlotte Mason?
 

I follow Charlotte's methods. We use Heart of Dakota curriculum. I also incorporate some Ambleside Online books and definately go there for inspiration. Heart of Dakota is wonderful if you are interested in CM but don't want to plan everything out for yourself. I love it.

I have a homeschool blog. I haven't worked on it in awhile. I took a break from it for the summer. Anyways, if you go there, there is a Charlotte Mason section down on the right hand side bar. I have gathered some links there that may help you to look into Charlotte's approach. There is also a section on nature study, which we love.

Is it ok to post the link to my blog here? I'm new :scratch. I am quite sure I read we could post our personal blogs here but I think I'll go back and double check to be sure.