After my first son was born, I noticed something changed at church: I could no longer pay attention to the sermon. While disappointing, it wasn’t particularly surprising. I had responsibility for a little, fragile human who, in some ways, seemed an awful lot like a ticking time bomb. I never knew when he would sound…
One of my big reasons for homeschooling is to keep my children as intrinsically motivated as possible in their learning, something I’ve personally struggled with over the years. Because of this, when I noticed The Self-Driven Child (affiliate link) mentioned (a few times!) in a blog I follow, and in my Amazon recommendations, it caught my…
As a young, single adult, my hope for my future was pretty clear: meet a charming man, get married, have kids, and stay at home to care for them. Inspired largely by my own mom, who stayed at home until my siblings and I were all at school, set a wonderful example for me, you…
I love to read, and one habit I am working on is that of keeping track of what I’ve read, along with a short summary for posterity’s sake. A blog seems like a great place to store this information, so here is what is on our bookshelf this month. (Links to the books on Amazon…
In previous posts, I’ve covered both why we are doing preschool at home this year, and how we are keeping it in line with Charlotte Mason’s educational philosophy. Now I’d like share the five books I have in our preschool basket. Each of these books is appropriate for my nearly four-year-old. Some are just a…
In my last post, I listed the reasons why our family is spending time on ‘preschool’ this year. Despite Charlotte Mason’s belief that children shouldn’t have formal lessons before the age of six, I think that our approach to preschool is in line with her philosophy. Preschool is short. Really short. We are looking at…
One year ago, I assumed I wouldn’t do any sort of a formal preschool with my kids. Charlotte Mason advocates starting formal lessons no earlier than age six. So why complicate things? I trusted the method, and the wisdom of many home educators who said, ‘Wait on formal academics’. How things change in a year,…
It’s easy to think that there isn’t much to do school-wise for the first six years of a child’s life when you plan to home educate the Charlotte Mason way. She assertively states in her writing that a mother’s (modern-day me reads that as ‘parent’s) chief responsibility is to make sure that a child’s first…
Parents are investing more and more time into their children’s development, Alia Wong points out in the beginning of her recent article on The Atlantic: The American Obsession with Parenting. Wong points to several studies showing that this is quantitatively true, and I think we all know in our gut that there is an intensity around…
[sc name=”Disclosure” ] A few weeks ago, I mentioned that N age-nearly-three asked me if we could make a rainbow. I saw this as a great opportunity to follow his interest and to expand his experience with rainbows. Today I want to share a few, simple activities we did together to ‘go with the flow’…