The Charlotte Mason Girl

HSLDA @home e-vents

Hello!  I"m still in the midst of painting and other work on our new house, but I wanted to let you know about this great service that HSLDA offers!  It's worth checking into!

 

Introducing HSLDA’s @home e-vents!

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Legal Defense Association is excited to announce the launch of a new Internet workshop program designed to encourage and equip home educators! These new “@home e-vents” are an innovative and easy way for you to attend an interactive workshop right in your own living room!

Attending these @home e-vents is as easy as sitting down at your computer and logging on! We can’t pour you that cup of tea or coffee to sip while listening, but we can provide you with interesting and insightful help that’s only a mouse click away! Join us and hear speakers like Andrew Pudewa, Carol Barnier, and Dianne Craft offer you information and tips to enhance your homeschooling experience. Special sessions for HSLDA members will also feature live discussions with HSLDA staff attorneys on a variety of state issues, concerns, and how-to’s.

By utilizing WebEx, an Internet-based event center, HSLDA will be able to bring you live, real-time presentations. Visual aids and a live video feed streaming to your computer will make you feel like you’re in the same room with the speaker, while a Q&A feature enables interaction between you and the speaker. If you’re unable to attend a live presentation, you can watch the recorded session later at your convenience.

Basic system requirements and recommendations may be found on our website. Both Windows and Mac operating systems are supported, though features and display style may vary on different systems. Please note that the minimum connection speed recommended is a 56K modem; however, performance would be greatly improved through the use of a faster connection such as DSL or cable.

To accommodate the busy schedule of homeschoolers across the country, many of the sessions during the introductory period will be scheduled at approximately

9 p.m.

Eastern Time. Please see the website for a list of speakers and topics!

As a special launch gift to you, we are pricing all sessions at the member’s price of $9.99 for paid e-vents. (Some e-vents will be member-only and will feature HSLDA attorneys – these e-vents will be free and available only to members.) E-vent pricing may vary depending on the speaker, length of seminar, number of seminars, and other factors. HSLDA is a nonprofit organization and is pricing seminars low in order to bless many homeschoolers. Of course, one of the many benefits of HSLDA membership is that members will always be able to register at the membership price. If you aren't a member of HSLDA, what are you waiting for? Join today!

HSLDA hopes this new service will enrich your family’s homeschooling experience by equipping you with new tools and encouraging you with fresh vision. We’re confident that our e-vents will meet a need for easily accessible, on-demand homeschooling help and we can’t wait to share them with you! Space is limited, so register today!

Questions? Contact us at: webinars@hslda.org or 540-338-5600. Heather Terwilliger is our @home e-vent coordinator.

Answers to Dina's Questions

Dina recently asked a great couple of questions, and there was so much to the answer, I decided to make a post out of it!  Here is what she said:

We are beginning homeschool this July. I love the Charlotte Mason concept but I am a bit confused. How do I plan a year of lessons and how do I know if a living book is factually accurate?
Job one for this first year is to work on faith and Character and learning to read for our 7 year old. I would appreciate any suggestions for living books that would help build character and faith. I would also like to begin learning more about American History. Do I begin at the beginning of our country and go forward chronologically? Please help!!!!

Dina, these are great questions, and I’m so glad you are looking into this method for your own homeschool experience!  First of all, you have your priorities right!  If we give our children all the knowledge the world has to offer, but don’t give them faith, or train good character, then we have raised brilliant heathens. 

As to how to plan a year of lessons successfully, I would first recommend that you RELAX!  This is especially true if your oldest is learning to read.  If you accomplish learning to read, and instilling a love for learning in the first year – you have laid a great foundation for future years in your homeschool.  Second, plan from the big picture down.  Start with your end goal in mind – what do you want to have accomplished by the end of the year?  Write it down.  Then break it down into smaller chunks – divide your year into terms – 6, 9, or 12 week terms work well.  Figure out what you have to accomplish in each term to reach your year-end goals.  Write that down.  Break each term into the number of weeks, and figure how much you need to accomplish in each week to reach your term’s goals.  Write it down!  (Do you see a theme, here?!)  Then, break each week down into 4 or 5 days, depending on your schedule.  Write down what you need your daily schedule to look like in order to accomplish your weekly goals.  Now, you will live and work out your schedule one day at a time, but with the goals for each day, week, term, and year before you.  You will be able to see the progress you make toward your year-end goal! 

Let’s move on to knowing if a living book is factually accurate.  Naturally, you won’t worry about this with your fiction picks, but your history and biography books you definitely want to be accurate!  My source for knowing what books to read for these areas is primarily our History curriculum, written by Diana Waring.  She has studied history so thoroughly, that she really knows her stuff, and she has wonderful recommendations of living books throughout her curriculum.  (You can see her curriculum here.)  Now, she isn’t the only reliable source for truthful books.  You can see some of the books we have read at this post.  Mostly, what you want to do, is find a reliable source of recommendations, and stick with someone you trust. 

Moving on to American History – there is a wealth of information out there!  One general guideline is to stick to books that were written before 1920.  After this, the revisionists really started producing a lot of books.  You want to look at a books’ bibliography, and you want to see a large number of references to original source documents.  I will right away recommend two books to you – Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford (about the Plymouth colonists and why they came to America, and what they left to us - click on the title, and scroll down the page a bit, and you'll see it), and Original Intent by David Barton (just below Plymouth Plantation, on the same page).  Mr. Barton is a contemporary author, but he is very careful to give excellent documentation from original source materials.  His bibliographies are as thick as a chapter!

This is such a cursory reply to such deep questions, but I hope I have given you much to think about, research, and ponder as you begin your homeschool journey.  Next time, I’ll add a few more thoughts for you, after I have pondered this myself, for awhile!  Meanwhile, enjoy your children, and love them extravagantly!

A great resource to tell you about!

OK, I'm going to take a little detour here to share a note with you about a resource that I use in our home.  It's called "Homeschool Freebie of the Day".  It's put out by a great family who serve the needs of homeschoolers through their websites.  This one is just like it sounds!  They put together free resources for each day of the week, and you can download each item on it's day.  Today is a great one, and it's available all weekend! 

To celebrate the 234th anniversary of Paul Revere's famous midnight ride, they've put together a bundle of four great resources!

Listen My Children (MP3 audio) -
FIRST UP up this a great half hour audio story about
Revere's long life and influence, including the events of
that fateful night, as originally dramatized on the radio
program "Cavalcade of America", in December, 1952.


"Listen My Children" Listening Guide (PDF ebooklet) -
Next, you'll want to use this PDF discussion guide with
background info and questions to accompany the above audio program.


Paul Revere's Ride (MP3 audio) - Next, we have a SECOND
classic audio for you: A wonderful dramatic performance of
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's classic poem,
"Paul Revere's Ride" as performed by Frederic March.
If your kids have never heard it, they are missing
out on one of the quintessential American poems. Give it a listen!


And FINALLY, we also have a neat PDF art study lesson focusing
on paintings & sculptures depicting Paul Revere (as well as
the Minutemen), courtesy of Yes You Can! Publications.
This is lots of fun and a great way to combine history
with art appreciation & hands-on activities to boot. 

To get these great resources for your family, just go to http://www.homeschoolfreebieoftheday.com

 

That's all there is to it - REALLY!  It's that simple. 

I hope you enjoy the resources.

We will return next time to our regularly scheduled posting!

Getting in touch with the Creator through His creation

I have already shared with you my favorite aspect of using CM method in our homeschool – it’s all the great books and how easy it is to teach your children wonderful things from living books!

Well, running a VERY close second in my book is nature study!  We love it!  Nature study is another large part of a CM education.  In fact in the early years of education, if you do a great job using living books, and spend a lot of time outdoors doing nature study, you have a well-balanced beginning to your children’s education.  Add in teaching them to read for themselves, and the beginnings of some understanding of basic math concepts and your children have a fantastic start in their educational journey.

So, how do we do nature study?  It’s so simple!  You go outdoors where there are living things, and you observe! REALLY!  It can be done in a postage stamp of a back yard, at the local park, in the country, in the woods; a few lessons could even be done around a single tree growing up through the sidewalk near your city apartment!  We have had great nature studies.  Some I planned and some just happened because we were available when God wanted to show us something really neat.

This is putting your children in touch with the Creator through His creation.  Just as you put your children’s minds in touch with great minds through living books, you are able to put them in touch, so to speak, with God through His living creation.

We have a postage stamp of a backyard.  It’s got some grass, some weeds, bare dirt patches, and some rock usually works itself up every year from the time that most of the yard was a gravel driveway, and we have a bird feeder that my oldest son made for me for Mother’s Day one year.  However, we have had some great nature studies there!  My children have observed worms working in the dirt, seen the birds come and get some of the worms, they have seen how grass grows, the flowers develop on dandelions into seed that they have fun blowing in the wind (I’m sure our neighbors love that!), but the greatest lesson happened last summer, and I didn’t plan it at all!  My 7 year old took her bug catcher outside and found herself a caterpillar.  She put it in the box with some twigs and grass and a bit of water.  By the time the evening came around, the beginnings of a cocoon was being formed in the little box!  We were so excited!  The next morning, there was just a little cocoon and some twigs and grass in the box.  Where had the caterpillar gone?  I got to explain to Esther about how caterpillars do this before they mature into butterflies.  For about two weeks, Esther checked on her little cocoon several times a day, and she was letting me know how it looked each day – there wasn’t much change, and I thought she might get bored with it before the next event happened, but she didn’t!  After about two weeks, she went out to check on it, and she found something so exciting in her box!  The leftovers of a cocoon, some twigs, dried out grass, and a moth!  We learned which caterpillars will turn into moths!  We took a couple of pictures, and then I told her to let the moth go right away so he could get some food! 

Now, there are some great books, worksheets, videos, etc. on the lifecycle of a moth.  Esther could have learned a lot from those types of things.  However, don’t you think that now she KNOWS what the lifecycle of a moth is like?  She got to live out the two week wait to see the moth.  She saw what the cocoon looked like every day for two weeks, she saw what the moth looked like within just a few hours of emerging from the cocoon, and she saw what the cocoon looked like when the moth was done with it.  Now, I do NOT know enough about caterpillars to be able to tell when one is about to go into the mode of building his cocoon!  I couldn’t have planned that lesson out if I’d spent weeks capturing caterpillars and waiting to see if they would build a cocoon in my little box.  But, the Lord wanted to teach Esther something about His creation, and His timing is perfect!  We still talk about that experience, and Esther is eagerly awaiting the next time to play outside, because maybe, just maybe, she will see something wonderful!

I read a book by Karen Andreola (the same one who wrote the Charlotte Mason Companion), called Pocketful of Pinecones.  It’s written like a mother’s journal by a young mother who is just beginning to educate her young children at home, and it details their nature study adventures.  It’s a wonderfully easy read, and it did help me to relax and not worry about having everything just right before we venture outside for nature study.  If you would like to get your own copy, you can see Pocketful of Pinecones at Ancient Paths Christian Bookstore. 

So, don’t be afraid to venture outdoors with your children and let them get in touch with the Creator through His creation!  You never know what He might have in store for your family.

Next time, I’ll share with you some great ideas for how to record your lessons from nature study!

 

Listening and Narrating in Homeschooling

You have the idea of how narration works, but you are wondering “We have 5 students, how do I do it?” or “We have teenagers, how do we get started?” or “I have 3 pre-schoolers, how do I do this and care for them?”  These are all great questions, and the answers may surprise you!

 

First off, I am speaking from experience!  We have 5 children – the oldest is 14, and the youngest is 3.  Two are pre-schoolers; three are students in our home school.  Although things do not always go as planned, I believe we have worked out some ways of doing narration that make it as smooth as possible!

 

Let’s start with the mom with several students, old enough to narrate when asked to.  You just read a passage, and you want a narration.  There are a couple of options here.  You could break the passage down into sections – one for each student.  You could make the section for your youngest student very short, and make each section longer, and after each section, stop and request a narration from one of your students.   The other possible option would be to read the passage all at once, and then ask the youngest to narrate.  When she is done, ask her older brother to narrate, and to add something that she didn’t share.  Keep moving up the students, from youngest to oldest.  The oldest will have to pay VERY close attention to remember something that hasn’t already been said.  You will probably be reading more than one book or passage per day.  Ask for a different child to narrate each story or passage.

 

I would suggest trying one of these methods each day – not just pick one method and stick with it all the time – after all, variety is the spice of life, right?!  Sometimes you will be reading to just one child, and that would be a great opportunity for a one-on-one narration.  This is especially useful for the child that hasn’t gotten comfortable with narration, yet, and is hesitant to let loose and give a great narration in front of all the siblings.  Eventually, you will want to encourage doing the narrations in front of everyone, but you don’t have to push that until you are both comfortable with narration. 

 

Now, on to the mom who hasn’t used this method before, but your children are older.  Actually, it’s no different than teaching a 7 year-old to narrate.  You will just use more grown up books!  Start with fairly short passages – just a page or two – and ask for your child to tell back what they have just heard.  You both will probably get comfortable with this fairly quickly.  You can move to longer passages (like a whole chapter) quicker and eventually you can request the narrations in writing.  I wouldn’t move to all written narrations too soon, however.  You want to keep hearing the narrations as your child is thinking them out for quite some time.  Again, do not request a narration for every chapter they read, or you will take all the joy out of reading the great story. 

 

What do you do with all the little ones while you are reading to your students, and they are giving their narrations?  Have them sit with you!  The great thing about homeschooling is that you get to have all your children together, and you are home with them!  Don’t scoot the littles off on their own while the rest of you ‘do school’!  You would be amazed what the little ones will pick up just because they are in the same room with you while you teach and interact with your older children!  Now, if you’ve not had all your children together for school time before, you need to expect to spend some time training the littles to sit still and quiet during school.  I think it’s perfectly acceptable to have them coloring, playing with playdoh or other quiet toys, or even looking through books on their own.  This has made it easier for us to train the little ones to sit quietly with us while we are reading and narrating.  Some children will have it down in just one week, others may take a month of consistent training to get everyone used to the new set-up.  The extra time and days that feel ‘lost’ to training little ones to sit quietly will be made up many times over through the years of quiet cooperation from your children!  Don’t despair, and don’t give up!  You can do it!

 

I want to offer one more word of encouragement.  Even after you all are used to being together for school, and your little ones are able to sit quietly while you teach, doesn’t mean they will always do it!  There will be days that they seem to ‘forget’ how to sit quiet and still for you – don’t despair, they just need some ‘reminder training’, I call it.  Be sure not to let it go one bit!  Give a gentle reminder as soon as they start to slip up.  If you do it right away, you have a better chance of the gentle reminder being all that is needed.  If you let the first instance go, they will see if they can go farther, and they will keep going farther until you step up and put a stop to it.  If it goes for too long, it will take more effort and time on your part to re-train, and it will be harder for you to stay calm and gentle yourself!  (Don’t ask me how I know this!)

 

I have given you a great understanding of how living books and narration work.  Does it seem too easy?  Does it seem like it’s not enough?  What about all the testing to ‘make sure’ they are comprehending what they are reading?  Well, I want to assure you that you will know immediately whether your child understands what was just read to him, and when she is struggling with attention to your reading.  This is really a very gentle method that produces the fruit of a well-educated child!

 

OK, I would love to hear from you – especially seasoned CMers – how do you do narrations with more than one child?  What has worked for you?  For you who are new to CM – do you have any questions that I haven’t addressed about narration, yet?  Please ask away, and I’ll answer to the best of my ability!