A Means of Interest and Delight

"This habit [of using books as a means of interest and delight] should be begun early; so soon as the child can read at all, he should read for himself, and to himself, history, legends, fairy tales, and other suitable matter."

- Charlotte Mason

This week, Jaela and Macey have each read these books to themselves, in their own free time:

Anya is working on reading this:

Not My Mother's Casserole

When we were first married, Mike and I had a deal.  He cooked, I cleaned up after him.  That system worked for a few years, but when I started working only part-time and eventually not at all, I took over the cooking.  I will freely admit how much I really enjoyed that first phase of our marriage, because I have never liked to cook.  I knew HOW, (Mom made sure of that!), but I didn't have to like it.

I came into our marriage with a boatload of family recipes and familiar cookbooks, and collected more along the way.  I discovered Cooking Light magazine in 2003, and suddenly, cooking was fun!  I was trying new, sometimes exotic recipes that were actually good for us!  I tried something new almost every night, and I spent a lot of my spare time reading through other people's published recipes.

That phase didn't last long, though.  Maybe remodeling a townhouse with three little girls ages three and under had something to do with it...or maybe it was the cross-country move to Tennessee that killed it, but whatever it was, by the time Mike deployed to Iraq, I was back to basic, boring meals.  Whatever was quick, relatively balanced, and easy to make, that's what was for dinner.  Eat-it-anyway food.

When Mike came home, I started cooking again.  Nothing fancy, but things that actually took prep time.  Things I had to plan ahead for.  There-are-no-leftovers food.

That didn't last long either.  I got pregnant with Isaak, and I.  Was.  Exhausted.  All the time.  I was doing good to get something -- anything -- on the table.  And then I had 3 kids and an infant.  And I started homeschooling.  And for 11 weeks I had to cook in a kitchen the size of a postage stamp, that had a teeny tiny fridge and no oven.  With three pots and a skillet.  At-least-we're-eating food.

The one thing that was consistent through all of those phases was my attitude.  I was selfish.  I still am, but I'm admitting it now.  :)  I didn't want to spend time cooking, because that took away even more time from the little "me" time I had left in my day.  

I've spent quite a bit of time in the past year or so with three women, Elisabeth, Charlotte, and Tammy, who have greatly influenced my thinking, and my attitude.  Elisabeth Elliot started the changing process for me when a friend re-introduced me to her books.  Her words, some gentle reminders, some not-so-gentle statements, addressed my root issue of selfishness and challenged me to aim higher.  I am a wife and mother -- THIS is my calling, my portion.  (Including the cooking part, which has slowly BECOME my "me" time, even when I share it.)  Charlotte Mason, while addressing the issue of the Will in teaching children, showed me that when I change my thoughts, my attitude will change along with them.  And then Lindafay, who led me to Charlotte, "introduced" me to Tammy's Recipes through a link in her side-bar.

Oh my.  A recipe blog.  Filled with common sense, a good attitude, good recipes, and links every Tuesday to OTHER blogs full of recipes, ideas, and thoughts.  As I read through Tammy's blog, and others I found through hers, I started thinking about not just WHAT to cook for dinner, but about things like WHAT is IN what I'm cooking for dinner, and how high our grocery bill really WAS every week.

It didn't take long for me to get excited about cooking again.  I was already enjoying the challenge of cooking more from scratch, trying new recipes (although recipe blogs can be addicting!), tweaking old ones to suit our tastes, and seeing just how low I could get the grocery bill ... and then I started reading the labels on everything I buy.

I've always tried to pay attention to the labels on the foods I give my family, doing the "good mommy" thing by avoiding the "bad fats" and making sure sugar wasn't TOO high on the ingredients list.  BUT.  I started reading the labels on my favorite "staple" items too.  High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, and Sugar as the first or second ingredients in "healthy" foods.  MSG, and Polymonuglutasucramites, and glurocamodirides, (yes, I made those two words up), and more unpronounceable chemical additives.  I quit buying them.

Yeah, I've made some big changes lately.  Mostly it's my attitude that has changed, but the way I shop and the way I cook have changed, too.  And I'm making some little changes as well.  

Take tonight, for instance.  I made one of my mom's recipes, Hamburger Green Bean Casserole, but I made a few changes.  I made my own Cream of Mushroom soup instead of using a can, and I used plain yogurt instead of sour cream.  Mom's recipe is very good the way it is, and those were the only two things I changed, but it was Not My Mother's Casserole anymore.

It was mine.  :)

Inspiration and Motivation

The kids and I spent the day cleaning and sorting.  We got their room completely done, and my schoolroom closet sorted through and re-arranged.  My task tonight is to plan out the rest of our school week, and since I would much rather sort through another closet instead, I am posting this quote from Charlotte Mason, hoping that re-reading it will motivate me to do what I OUGHT to do before I do what I WANT to do.  :)

Charlotte Mason wrote:

It is something to know what to do with ourselves when we are beset, and the knowledge of this way of the will is so far the secret of a happy life, that it is well worth imparting to the children. Are you cross? Change your thoughts. Are you tired of trying? Change your thoughts. Are you craving for things you are not to have? Change your thoughts; there is a power within you, your own will, which will enable you to turn your attention from thoughts that make you unhappy and wrong, to thoughts that make you happy and right. And this is the exceedingly simple way in which the will acts; this is the sole secret of the power over himself which the strong man wields––he can compel himself to think of what he chooses, and will not allow himself in thoughts that breed mischief.

(I guess that means that for me, sorting a closet is mischief!!!)  :)

Beginning Narration

The concept of narration as a learning tool is not a new one, but as I learned today, it is a very effective one!  Charlotte Mason wrote that a pupil should learn to be able to "grasp the sense of a passage of some length at a single reading: and to narrate the substance of what they have read or heard." (from the appendix of School Education, Volume 3 of her series).  Narration is:   "Quite simply, it is the art of 'telling back' what you just read or heard from a book." -- from Lindafay at Higher Up and Further In (Which, by the way, is my favorite Charlotte Mason method homeschooling blog.)  :)

We do our Bible readings every morning before we do any of our other schoolwork.  It's the most important thing we learn, so we do it first to make sure it gets done!  :)  It takes so long for me to read it aloud, though, that I have started assigning chapters for Jaela and Macey to read on their own in their NIVs, while Anya reads a Bible storybook.  They read so quickly that when they told me they were done with their SIX chapters this morning, I asked them to narrate to me individually so I could make sure that they actually read it.  (My mom is thinking right about now that this sounds awfully familiar!)  :)

They read the first six chapters of Exodus today, so I told them to start from the beginning of the story, and pretend that I didn't know anything about Moses.  Macey went first, and it was like pulling teeth to get any details out of that child!  She had the storyline completely correct though, and told me everything in the right order, but it took a lot of prompting and patience on my part to get it all told.  Jaela, on the other hand, went into so much detail that I found myself thinking more than once, "I'd forgotten that!", and even "Did I ever know that?".  She too had the storyline in perfect chronological order, and they both proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they had read what they were supposed to!

I have to admit that the differences between their narrating styles really surprised me, although I WAS forewarned that there could be such differences.  Lindafay wrote about her own children on her blog in a post titled Detailed Narrations and The Summary:  "One of my children loves to give very detailed narrations.  She can remember details so well that when she narrates, she sounds like the author....However, she shows a weakness in her ability to summarize a passage so that just the most important people and events are mentioned.  My other daughter has the exact opposite strength and weakness.  She summarizes beautifully but doesn't pay attention to details as much as she should."  

I am so grateful (as a mom and as a teacher!) for Lindafay's insight!  While I might have considered one narrating style only a strength and the other only a weakness, Lindafay points out that BOTH styles have equal parts strength and weakness, and she lays out a method for me as the teacher to use to strengthen the weaknesses and teach the proper use of each style.  Not only that, but in her post she continues on the subject of narration, giving more ideas and backing them up with examples from her (and her children's) experiences.  I really, really like her blog (can y'tell?!?).  It's nice to have an example to follow as we're beginning this new method of homeschooling, and yet I don't feel compelled to do everything the "Lindafay way", either.

And, OH, this new method is fun!  :)

Especially the Stories! (Part 2)

Have you ever worked really hard, thrown all your energy and efforts into something, and then when you were done (finally done!), scrapped it all and started over?  That's the story of my spring, summer and fall this year.  I began in early May; researching, reading reviews, pricing and choosing curricula, and then haunting ebay, amazon, and cbd (Christian Book Distributors) for the absolute best deals on the curricula I had chosen for 1st Grade and Kindergarden.  Once I had ordered everything, and it had all finally arrived, I spent most of the summer planning out lesson plans, projects, and worksheets for every subject.  Every day  -- at naptime, late into the night, and every spare minute I had during the day -- I worked on typing out 180 pages of daily lesson plans that combined the plans for each subject all onto one page per day.  When she visited in July, I enlisted mom's help so I could get them done before school started on August 11.  (She's a much faster typist than I am!)  Everything was finally finished, printed out, and ready to go with a week to spare.  Over three months of planning and prepping had gone into those lesson plans, and I was as prepared and organized as I was ever going to be.

Three weeks into our school year, I scrapped everything ... and started over.

Somewhere toward the beginning of my research, an article in a homeschooling magazine called, "What's So GREAT About Shakespeare?" by Linda Johnson, caught my attention.  I was so impressed with the article that I (somehow!) found and began to read her blog.  She talks a lot about Charlotte Mason (who is called the founder of the homeschooling movement) and the Charlotte Mason method of homeschooling.  She uses words  like "living books", "narration", and "copywork".  Her kids study nature, great composers and their works, master artists and their art.  They do math, copywork and dictation (handwriting, spelling and grammar), and make useful craft projects.  They (both the kids, and the whole family) read a LOT of books, and they compile very detailed notebooks of what they're learning in history, geography, literature, and poetry.   

Which is all very neat and exciting, I thought, and I would love to put some of those things into practice in our homeschool someday, but I was going to stick with what I had planned for this year, thank you very much, and then maybe, MAYBE I'd start incorporating some of those ideas into my lesson plans next year.  So, to prepare, I read her blog all summer and filed away a whole bunch of neat ideas and how-tos.  I read other people's articles online about different homeschool methods and programs.  I read Elisabeth Elliott books in my spare time, and I read my Bible.  And my thoughts kept returning to quotes I had read online from Charlotte Mason's books that intrigued me greatly, so I started reading Charlotte Mason's Original Homeschooling Series too, and at some point, without me realizing it, my thinking began to change.  

Where is it written that we should dread each school day?  WHY do we dread it?  Are the kids as bored as I am with what we're learning?  Who determines what and how I teach my children?  What SHOULD our homeschool be like?  As these thoughts and others chased each other around in my brain, I began to realize that although we had decided to homeschool for the right reasons, I, at least (I can't speak for Mike), had not yet determined how to best educate my children.

After only three weeks of school, we were all disenchanted with those oh-so-detailed lesson plans.  The girls fly through their weekly memory verse.  The Bible curriculum was dumbed-down, and left out important details.  The handwriting worksheets were tedious and boring.  The accelerated math program...well, let's just say we're backing up a little on that subject :).  Their phonics workbooks are so easy and quick they could probably do them in their sleep.  The science was a little above their comprehension level.  Reading and Spanish are just fun; new and exciting.  :)  Geography, history, literature, and poetry, on the other hand, were, and still are, greeted with excitement and eagerness, BECAUSE (drum roll, please!) we read books and stories, both fiction and non-fiction.  What child does not enjoy being read to (especially when the subject is something they are interested in) or even reading something themselves for the first time?  In the first six weeks of school, we've read about Creation, the Nile River, the Rosetta Stone, hieroglyphics, Egypt, birds, animals, maps, globes, hemispheres, oceans, and continents.  We've been introduced to Adam and Eve, Menes (the first Pharaoh), Leif Ericsson, Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, John Cabot, Captain John Smith, Jamestown, Pocahontas, and others.  We've read from Shakespeare, Aesop's Fables, the Bible, Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, Grimm's Fairy Tales, Rudyard Kipling, and James Herriot.  What's not to like?!?

That's the kind of thing that Charlotte Mason advocates; reading REAL books on all subjects, reading thought-provoking literature and poetry, and TALKING about what we're learning.  It is nothing but an exercise in futility for my children to trace out and copy letter after letter on a handwriting worksheet (which will eventually get thrown out), when as an alternative they could be practicing their handwriting skills as they copy a verse, a quote, or a line from a hymn into a special book (that they could keep forever if they want!), or maybe they could even write a letter!  Wouldn't it be wonderful, too, to read to my children from ACTUAL scripture instead of from an infantile Bible curriculum?

We still need the math program and the phonics practice workbooks, but I am determined to implement more and more of those lofty ideas of Charlotte Mason's into our school days.  In the last three weeks we have slowly added in more literature, poetry, and history readings than I had previously planned, and slowly phased out of most of the worksheets and fluff.  This new way of doing things has so far been so successful and satisfying that I have not looked back at those slaved-over and now-rejected lesson plans; instead, I keep discovering little assurances that this is the right choice for us and our homeschool right now.  

Take this morning, for instance.  Last night I came across a quote (Charlotte Mason, of course!) that I thought the girls would enjoy.  I paraphrased it (she wrote in the late 1800's - early 1900's, which is a little above the girls' reading level...for now!) and wrote it out on our whiteboard for them to see.  They didn't say anything about it, but when I came upstairs to start school, I found that Macey had copied it on a sheet of paper, illustrated it appropriately, and left it for me to find.  

THAT'S what I want our homeschool to be like.  I want them to enjoy what they do, see for themselves, take the initiative, understand, and to learn to LOVE to read, and listen to, books and stories! 

Especially the stories!  :)

Oh! This is going to be FUN!

I just started reading Home Education Training and educating children under nine, Volume 1 of Charlotte Mason's 6 volume series on homeschooling and education.  I'm only into the Preface, and I am already finding gems!

"A discontent, is it a divine discontent? is upon us; and assuredly we should hail a workable, effectual philosophy of education as a deliverance from much perplexity."