New Year, New Approach

Lori’s Take

Welcome to our Mother/daughter blog, CMschooling.  My daughter and I decided to adopt a more Charlotte Mason approach so that our homeschool would be a place where we learn without too much frustration.  Each week we plan to update how it is going with both our points of view.

I quickly learned that even with the kinder, gentler approach, school is still school and there is an adjustment.  The first day we finished everything so quickly, I wondered if we had completed everything we planned. The second day of each week we will attend a classical community for the friends and fellowship. We enjoyed our day with other homeschoolers, but the method is a little different than what we do at home. I hope to develop plans to create a Charlotte Mason Community for like minded homeschoolers in the future. By the third day, I realized the first day was not our new normal. The days were taking longer and I worried that we were falling into the old patterns I was hoping to avoid. However, when the week was over, I realized we ended our week with more smiles than frowns and more laughs and excitement than I remember from the past. Since we were narrating almost all subjects, even narration did not receive the groans of the past. The addition of the narration jar added a little fun and mystery to our days. For our nature study we had planned to watch the constellations, but every night was rainy.  We did read good books about the constellations and are still waiting for a clear night to look more closely at the sky.

We have homeschooled for HR’s entire education thus far. So what is different this year? The biggest difference is we are not doing every subject every day. We are adding more fine arts, including picture study and composer study. Family scripture memory work is at the breakfast table each morning. I’m trying to pace our studies on my child rather than on a study guide someone else designed.  I believe we will cover more during our year if school becomes more of a joy rather than a requirement.

Hannah Ruth’s Take

The biggest blow on starting school is getting up early. Mommy wakes me up about 7:30. I normally get up about 9:00 AM-12:00. Mommy says I’m getting up LATE compared to kids who go to private or public school. We would start school sometimes really late, or sometimes really early. (We finished school the first day in two hours.) Our schedule didn’t always come through. (Like the time we MIGHT have ended at 4:00 PM, or something like that.) During school, we start with Bible, then we move on the reading about constellations, then we do math, then Mommy reads me a book called Torches of Joy while I play with geometry blocks. After that we sort of do it randomly. Sometimes I then read assigned books, sometimes do handwriting, sometimes do a craft. We started this new thing this year where each day we do something different. One day, we do word study. Another day, we do picture study. (I ❤ picture study!)  When I do assigned reading, I have to narrate. We took a box of Earth Balance Butter (Maybe you’ve heard of it) and covered it with pretty paper with designs. Mommy cut out cards that said random ways to narrate. There was an hourglass on the left hand side that either had sand on both top and bottom, or had sand only on the bottom. If the sand was on both sides that meant it didn’t take long. If the sand was only on the bottom, it would take longer. I can’t decide if I’m excited for the school year, or not.