School Time

It’s school time here and we are all starting to settle into a groove. Daddy is back at teaching and so far, so good on his school year. Kaley is very busy with her own school year, not only as a full-time student at the community college but as a teaching assistant as our local Charlotte Mason school, Willow Tree. It’s an adjustment, not seeing her as much, but it’s good and I am so happy for her. Now we greet two people at the end of the day and hear their adventures and share ours with them.

Kaley, with Jack, on a recent visit to MN

I was afraid I was over ambitious when I made our school schedule and lessons plans but I am finding it is going very well. And this is why…

…all I have said is meant to enforce the fact that much and varied humane reading, as well as human thought expressed in the forms of art, is, not a luxury, a tit-bit, to be given to children now and then, but their very bread of life, which they must have in abundant portions and at regular periods. This and more is implied in the phrase, "The mind feeds on ideas and therefore children should have a generous curriculum." Vol 6 pg 111

The beauty of Mason is that in our school we have about fourteen books going, in addition to math, handwriting, copywork, dictation, reading aloud, Spanish and Latin for Curtiss BUT that breaks down to reading for 30min or so of three to four books a day and is very manageable. I think the amount of books is what really threw me when I first began homeschooling. It seemed impossible to school that way and still run a home and take care of babies or toddlers or both. I found that frequent readings and doing different subjects between each reading to get us moving or use a different part of the brain is very refreshing and stimulating.

For me it was important to also not think of school time as something I put in a box from 9-12. It is okay with me now if we are doing school until 3pm. It is part of our life, the atmosphere of our home, our focus and purpose of how we live out our days. That was very freeing, and really, we still are done with school in the early afternoon. But it is the conversations that we have that are my favorite thing about educating my children. I am so thankful I am doing it.

I absolutely love how Charlotte Mason compares the ideas we give our children as an education to food. So all these books and ideas are the feast I am laying before them. Like Thanksgiving every day! We take a little here, a little there so we don’t get too full all at once but what a buffet we have laid. Yum Yum! Not just meat and potatoes here, but a rainbow of colors, delicacies of exotic kinds with a side of favorite comfort foods.

In devising a syllabus for a normal child, of whatever social class, three points must be considered:––
a) He requires much knowledge, for the mind needs sufficient food as much as does the body.
(b) The knowledge should be various, for sameness in mental diet does not create appetite (i.e., curiosity).
(c) Knowledge should be communicated in well-chosen language because his attention responds naturally to what is conveyed in literary form.
As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children should "tell back" after a single reading or hearing: or should write on some part of what they have read.
A single reading is insisted on, because children have naturally great power of attention; but this force is dissipated by the re-reading of passages, and also, by questioning, summarising, and the like. Vol 6 pg 154-155