Thursday, February 25, 2010

What I have learned about Charlotte Mason So Far…

I am really excited to be learning more about Charlotte Mason and her educational philosophies. I find it interesting that although I have been homeschooling for a few years now and have heard of Charlotte Mason numerous times, I’ve never taken the time to learn more about homeschooling in the Charlotte Mason methods.

So far the things I have discovered that I love about CM are –1st her methods of oral narration.Teaching our children to listen,really listen and to be able to organize there thoughts and tell us what they learned.

I am also 100% with her on the living books VS Twaddle!! LoL I love her term “twaddle”. There are so many books out there today that are not worth the paper they are printed on. Since when did childrens authors decide that our children are “stupid” and so we needed to “dumb things down” for them?? I am just like every other homeschooling parent I am sure in the fact that I LOVE books. A good living book can draw you in and teach you so much!

Another area I find interesting is her take on doing Artist studies as well as composer studies. I’ll be honest with you. I am not really an artsy type of person. I think there is some beautiful art out there. But I myself am not artistic at all.I enjoy classical music and religious music, but I am not remotely musical myself. So these are two things that tend to get neglected in our homeschool. What I like about Charlottes ideas are that they are simple. They are things I can do.

Charlottes idea’s about being out in nature and studying nature hit home for me. I love to be in nature and it is also my favorite area of science to study. I think its sad that so many children today are so over scheduled that they have little to no time to be out in nature observing and enjoying the world around them.They spend 7 hours inside there school building just to come home to homework, lessons, sports practice then time for bed!

I look forward to sharing more about Charlotte as I read and learn more. As well as sharing our plans for implementing some of her ideas into our homeschool!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I agree! I "attended" HOTM's Winter Homeschool Refresher webinar this week and the first speaker discussed CM methods and I was quite intrigued. I have a book about it all on my wishlist now. :)

Amelia said...

I can come to your place on a Saturday and do art projects with your kiddos! That would be so much fun!!

Just an Average American Mom said...

Thanks for visiting my blog.

I have been homeschooling myself four years and was like you in the fact that I had heard of CM numerous times but failed to get to know the method until recently.

I am discovering a whole new idea and it makes perfect sense. Hopefully we can encourage each other through our findings as well as through our similarities.

Looking forward to reading more from you and learning as well.