Language Arts and Some Planning

Our last two meetings have been wonderful.  There has been a hint of language arts in both.  I am always cautious in this area because like many new parents introduced to Charlotte Mason, I too, question the method in the beginning.  If you haven't read her original works or feel you don't fully understand the whys to such a simple, gentle and slow approach; I highly recommend reading Simply Charlotte Mason's Hearing and Reading, Telling and Writing: A Charlotte Mason Language Arts Handbook.  It breaks down age groups and gives you many quotes from the original volumes.  We were able to share how we do language arts in our home.  It is always helpful to hear why something works in one home and not another.  I'm constantly reminded that one of the joys of home schooling is being able to take the best and cater to your family. 

This was a nice transition into discussing one of the key points made in the first chapter of When Children Love to Learn.  Mrs. Schaeffer Macaulay describes how wanting of Charlotte Mason methods and ideas does not mean recreating a Victorian school house.  How the core of her philosophies are so solid that they can be taken and used in our modern day and within the context of our own cultures.  This is such a sigh of relief because while in my home we enjoy the older books and classics we also have come to appreciate new works of literature.  They might not be considered old but I'm sure that many will be considered must reads in the future.

Last, we began watching and discussing something that I have found almost essential in our Charlotte Mason education: planning.  We were only able to watch step one of the Planning Your Charlotte Mason Education DVD, but it was a nice way to begin the thinking process about our home schooling.  As we've mentioned before in our group; Charlotte Mason is a gentle and natural approach to education, however, there is plenty of structure needed to accomplish an abudantly rich education.

Some Notes On Art Study & Living Books

While it might seem that I'm neglecting this little space;  rest assured our group has been meeting every month.  We have had two very nice gatherings since I last reported. 

November's meeting focused on Art Study and Appreciation.  We watched Eve Anderson's Art Study DVD and like each mom there, I was very impressed with this very simple technique.  The amount that a child can retain from just a few minutes of careful observation is just amazing to me. 

We also discussed the importance of allowing our children to experience art appreciation by means of practicing art itself.  Sometimes if there is a particular artist or art medium we are focusing on, it benefits the child to attempt it. Our little group is blessed with some pretty creative moms who grace us with some great art co-ops.  This has been a nice outlet for our children to experience and learn about certain artist.

This months meeting on the use of living books and sources of good books could have continued for hours, but, alas, we all needed to get home.  We all agree that sometimes a good book can very much capture the minds of our children and go a long way in providing them with good information.  There are just so many wonderful books that can very easily cover just about any topic.  One of the things that I enjoy most about living books is that my children can create relationships with them and later start making connections with others they have read. 

As the year comes to an end, I must say, I'm grateful for the moms that get together every month and discuss some wonderful philosophies of education.  We have been able to cover some great key Charlotte Mason topics including a book discussion of Catherine Levison's book.  Most import to me has been sharing with one another about this wonderful journey of home educating our children and feeling the support we give each other.

I'm excited to put together some more topics for next year and looking forward to discussing When Children Love To Learn by Elaine Cooper.  I'll post soon our schedule and topics. 

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and Holiday season with loved ones.

Copywork, Dictation and Some More Narration

I'm a little behind on my meeting notes report.  We had another great meeting with nine moms joining us.  We started our meeting by jumping right into the Eve Anderson Narration DVD that we missed last time.  I'm so glad we decided not to skip it.  It was a little longer than I expected but still reasonable at about 30 minutes.  I think we all appreciated watching this very important part of a Charlotte Mason education.  We discovered a few things about narrations that we didn't know.  For example, how narration doesn't necessarily mean to tell back in the fewest words possible just the key points or that it is at will a no structure talk as long as you like method.  There was order, respect, information and gentleness provided by Mrs. Anderson.  I particularly appreciated knowing that she prepares her narration sessions before starting a reading/narrating time with the child(ren).  I think we all picked up a few new and interesting tips from it.

Next, we dove right into our book discussion with the emphasis around copywork and dictation including grammar, composition and spelling.  I know we could easily divide each of these into a meeting all of their own.  Hopefully, we can come back to them again.  I think the main point about our discussion was that if the children are reading and using good literature for copywork they are setting a good foundation for the other subjects we touched on.  There was not a rush by Ms. Mason to have children under 9 years old to begin any of those subjects with emphasis.  As soon as they have good motor skills, however, they should be introduced to daily doses of good written copywork.  In the beginning it might just be a few perfect letters, but transition to good short sentences.  I have enjoyed creating our terms copywork.  From the advice of some more experienced CM moms I realized that if I break down the written work to terms rather than the whole year I can concentrate on problem areas.  Our copywork comes straight from the books they are currently using and/or reading.  A program that a few us really seem to like for the task is StartWrite.  Earlier this spring they came out with their 6.0 version which is even better than the previous.

I highly recommend you check out Hearing and Reading, Telling and Writing: A Charlotte Mason Language Arts Handbook.  Even if you just take a look at the down loadable sample under chapter 1, it gives you a breakdown of how copywork, dictation and narration work to cover all the language art subjects.  I will try to work on a chart to post under our tabs page.  Here is a good article from ChildLight USA on Composition.  I also want to include these great posts by my friend Jen at Wildflowers and Marbles. This is the beginning of  her series on language arts: start with this post and as you scroll down she links you to others on specific methods. Highly recommend you read them all.

There is so much to talk about and cover in just two little hours but I'm glad we are focusing our efforts in learning as much as we can.  I'm enjoying this very much.  We will have to schedule some meetings just on planning and dealing with multi age children after our December meeting because I think these were topics that everyone seemed very interested in.

Narration and Gentle Learning Continued

We had our first official parents support meeting last night.  Needless to say the powers that be decided to grace us with a little authenticity:  our host had no power!  She was very gracious to still host and have a candle lit home (and a little help from a borrowed generator).  There were ten of us present and I feel very blessed that we could get together.  To start we shared a little about how we came to share this journey.  Half of us have been doing it from the beginning and the rest decided to pull our children from school systems for various reasons.  One thing is true: we all care about our children and their futures.

We began our discussion with "what did Gentle Learning mean to us?"  I encourage you to follow the discussion at Simply Charlotte Mason.  Sonya mentioned in her post today that Karen Andreola will be a guest next week.  We then turned our attention to our book for discussion.  A few topics were covered with interest: living/whole books vs. twaddle, various subjects offered in a term, poetry, and our biggest emphasis was on narration.

There were some great ideas from moms who have been homeschooling for many years on how to approach this with our children.  Among those thoughts were using shorter passages, picking just a few books to start, randomly picking times to narrate, group narrations with siblings, having dad incorporate narrations at the end of the day,  using other methods of narration like drawings or presentations.   I think we agree that narration is a habit that the child will build once they have routine,consistency and practice.

One mom asked how do you start the habit in children younger than six who are not expected to narrate yet.  I found this to be an excellent question because Charlotte Mason does refer, in her Volume 1, that keeping children outdoors for many hours develops the art of observation and attention.  The children naturally notice so much and are so eager to tell us about it.  This focus and observation is key to getting them started in the path of attention and narration.  Their focus is now shifted to telling you about his readings, rather, than just the things he observes outdoors.  We briefly touched on written narrations; I think we will have to cover this further.

I promised at the meeting that I would link to Nancy's post at ChildlLight and on her blog.  At the bottom of her post she links to a wonderful report by Dr. Carroll Smith on the importance and benefits to narration: the idea of reading and telling back what you have read.  I really encourage you to take a look at that too.

Great meeting ladies, thank you!

"Gentle" Learning

A couple of interesting discussions and a few posts have popped up in the last couple of days.  One which I find very intriguing for us new moms learning about Charlotte Mason and beginning to implement in our homes is the idea that this is "gentle" learning.  There is a certain appeal to her methods and philosophy.  I know that I personally have enjoyed how "gentle" the approach is. Now, here is the catch.  What exactly does that mean?  Why do I (we) use the word?  Is my interpretation different than yours? 

Hmm...take a look at Sonya's blog post part 1 of a series over at Simply Charlotte Mason.  I'll enjoy sharing my experience these last few years and look forward to your first impressions at our meeting.

First Meeting Information

It is hard to believe that this month is but a few days from ending.  I'm sure most of us have either already started our new school year or are a few weeks away from beginning.  I hope you all had a great summer break and are fully charged for a new year.

I'm so excited about our new group.  We have about thirteen moms interested so far.  I look forward to our first meeting on September 20th at 7:00 pm.  Location will go out to those on my email list.  We will begin our year with a 40 minute book discussion of the first five chapters in Catherine Levison's A Charlotte Mason Education.  I understand that Amazon is currently out of stock but hopefully Simply Charlotte Mason isn't.  If for some reason they are, please let me know and maybe we can coordinate sharing a book until you are able to get a copy of your own.

The second half of our meeting will be dedicated to watching a 36 minute DVD of Eve Anderson's Teacher Training Tools on Narration.  She was a teacher and headmistress in a Charlotte Mason school in England.  The video will demonstrate this very important and pivotal method of learning the CM way.  I know that this can sometimes seem like a difficult thing to do or get started with in our homes.  Hopefully, this tool will give us some instruction to begin the practice or to pick up some good tips on implementing with our children.

In case anyone is feeling the need to read more and be inspired I wanted to recommend a few books that are not necessarily on methods or how to, but explain the heart of why Charlotte Mason is a good approach.  The first is For the Children's Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay and the second is When Children Love to Learn by Elaine Cooper and contributors.

Over the weekend we had a great unofficial support group session viewing the Books & Things Seminar.  I am so grateful to our host and the moms that could attend.   This is a wonderful group of moms.   Lastly, I wanted to let you know that I posted some topics under our schedules tabs that we will be covering this fall.  If there is anyone interested in leading one of these topics please let me know.  I think this would be a great way for us to practice narrating what we are learning : )

If possible please follow us on blogger or sign up to get post updates by email.  It would be nice if this is our official meeting updater.

Learning & Supporting Each Other: An Introduction

We are a group of moms that over the course of the summer started wondering whether there was a gentle approach to educating our children without undermining their educational abilities.  A way to let a love of learning grow in our children.  A way in which they would  build such a relationship with their studies that their education was actually enjoyable and meaningful.  A way in which all tedious and unnecessary tasks could be eliminated from daily activities to allow them to just be kids.  A way that an appreciation for God's creation could flourish.  A way to provide them with a generous Liberal Arts education without overwhelming them ...

We are excited to learn and support each other through our home schooling journey using the wise wisdom from an English 19th century educator; Miss Charlotte Mason.  Through her philosophy all these things can be possible.  We are not looking to reinvent the wheel.  We will look to those who have done this successfully and try to learn from them as well.  There is a movement out there and we are happy to be a part of it.

Our meetings will take place in the Conejo and Simi Valleys in California.  We will strive to meet once a month during the traditional school year (September - June) on Tuesday evenings.  We are a new group and welcome home school educators looking to learn or educate their families with Charlotte Mason methods.  I will be so bold as to say that if you believe like Ms. Mason did and are looking to make "[E]ducation (is) an atmosphere, a discipline, a life,"  in your home this is a group for you.

We will begin with an introduction about Charlotte Mason and her methods.  We will pick a book to discuss and a topic based on her methods to explore.  Some of the topics we hope to cover are listed in our page tabs.  Our first meeting date will be posted in the Schedule page soon. Be patient with us, as we are all learning together how to educate our children using the wisdom of Ms. Mason and her gentle approach.  This blog will serve as a journal for our group and the relationships we hope to build.