Our “school” day

I was recently asked by a friend to describe a typical school day in our house.  She also homeschools and is considering changing her current educational approach.  I decided to record the results here.

Our basic educational philosophy is known in the homeschooling world as “Charlotte Mason.” For those of you not in the know, the short version is that Miss Mason was a teacher and teacher of teachers 100 years ago in England.  She recorded her thoughts and experiences for parents, teachers and students in several articles and in what today is a six-volume set of books.  A Charlotte Mason education is associated with terms such as “gentle” “short lessons” “habit training” “nature study” “living books” “narration.”  The quickest way to explain “living books” is “not boring text books and not workbooks.”  Narration, for one thing, replaces constant quizzing.  (It does so much more than that!)

My summation of a Charlotte Mason (CM) philosophy is that she cared about the whole child — inside and out; mind, soul and spirit; intellect and heart and character.  She believed that children were whole persons and should not be talked down to.  And definitely, definitely, definitely, no Twaddle!

So in keeping with the “short lesson” philosophy, I try to keep each lesson (for James’ current age) to no more than 20 minutes.  Most are 10 or 15 minutes.  Yes, we do go over from time to time.  One reason is — and this is one of the reasons CM advocated short lessons — is that someone is distracted and not paying attention.  Sometimes that someone is Mom!  And then sometimes we’re just having too good of a time discussing whatever it is that we’ve just read.

We start every morning with Bible reading.  We’re working our way through Luke right now.  James does narration and I try my best to keep up with him and record it on journal pages.  Eventually, around 10 years old, he’ll record his own written narration.  We sing some from his Hymnbook after this and one day a week we do Hymn Study (one hymn a month.)  This Hymn study covers a lot of areas.  It’s Literature, Theology, Music (singing and theory) all wrapped up in one 10 minute lesson.

We try to spend the rest of the morning with our every day lessons — Math, Spelling, Reading, Copywork (penmanship), and Poetry reading (we read from one poet per term/one poem per day).  We take a break sometime after Math or Spelling for exercise.   If this takes us to lunchtime, then it’s lunchtime.  If not, we continue with whatever is scheduled for the day.  We usually have two readings (and narration) selected from one or two of the following subjects:  Natural History, World/British/American History, Literature or Geography and any map work scheduled with the Geography lesson.  (On the weekend I plan which reading we’re going to do on which day.)  And then follows one of the following: Composer study (maybe just listen to the work), Art/Picture study (look at the painting and discuss whatever he wants), Folksong (one song per term, once a week).  We also do a German lesson two or three times a week.  And once or twice a week we do Drawing lessons in the afternoon.  Every day, once all lessons are completed, James practices piano.  I try to schedule all the afternoon readings and studies for Monday through Thursday so that on Friday we have the whole afternoon to do Nature study.  We go for a walk and record or draw in our special nature journals.  This has been a challenge always and especially with the winter weather.  We also take along our cameras.

Is this clear as mud?  Basically, five days a week our morning involves Bible and the 3 Rs and our early afternoons are about other subject readings and art and music studies.  We read, we talk, we demonstrate and we play and we love it!

Any questions?

And now I will see if James agrees with this post.