Charlotte Mason

I have heard this name quite a bit since we started homeschooling. I have even tried to read a couple of her books at one time or another. I have always been struck by her method of education in which children are taught as whole persons through a wide range of interesting living books, firsthand experiences, and good habits. I couldn't really understand what that meant and visualize how it would work so I just kept doing what we were doing!

This journey of ours into homeschooling has always been such a 'God thing' for us and it has been truly amazing to see the ways that God has led me throughout this journey. He put people into my path to help us to make this decision -people that really spoke to my heart and my desires at that point of time. He has put families in all different stages of homeschooling and all different ways of homeschooling in our path for me to be able to 'see' how they do school and for me to be able to recognize what I DON"T want to do with my boys!! Throughout the past 2 years he has put CM materials into my hands - even though I didn't quite understand all of the philosophy.

Last year I was led to this book called 'Educating the Whole-Hearted Child' by Clay & Sally Clarkson

I loved this book! Some of the scriptures and what she said about them combined with the philosophy of teaching(which I now know is CM - I didn't realize it at the time of reading this book) led us to make the decision to claim Religious Exemption from the state in regards to our household. This has been the best decision we ever made for our family second to homeschooling.

At the end of last year a friend I had known thru different meetings became a really great friend and her and I have spent many hours discussing philosophy, books, schooling and other things too! Through her I started learning about Good Books and we started reading them and the boys just love them(now I know they are Living books). This started me on another journey of questions and answers and after a couple months of reading different emails and info about Charlotte Mason I knew I loved her ideas but I wasn't quite ready to commit to her style whole hog. I still felt as if I needed a curriculum to tell me what to do and say.

So - we started the school year with lots of Good Books and another curriculum. I lasted about 2 weeks and I hated it! Now - you might remember that I had posted about using CM here and I got frustrated and said no way this is not for me! Now - this is where you can really see what a freak I am because I was gonna use this CM curric but then decided I didn't like it and switched to the one I had been looking at that told me exactly what to do and say and now I am going back to the CM curriculum! I had been seeing and reading about Charlotte Mason but I still couldn't quite wrap my head around the WAY it should be done so I bailed on it. Then I read these articles and all of a sudden a light bulb went off in my head and I realized I could do this and that this is what I have wanted for our school from the beginning! I am truly in awe of the path God takes me on to get me back to where he was leading me in the first place - DUH!!!

So - now I have been doing more reading from this AWESOME website which makes it all so simple and even has lesson plans to use!! The more I read the more I understood and the more I really felt the Lord leading us to head this way!!

I have also started reading this book - which also puts her ideals into modern day english!! I will have you know I did read this book about 2 years ago and it didn't speak to me but boy did it this time!!!

We have been doing CM whole hog this week and it has been an amazing week of school!!!