This weekend marks the last of Summer for our family. We’ll be starting our school year on Tuesday and I’m really looking forward to it! Here are the details of what we’re doing.
Lots of Change
Last year we did half homeschool and half Christian school. It was a good experience, but having been homeschooled myself until college, I really missed having my daughter at home and doing all of the schoolwork together. With that feeling and all the changes coming for our family this year, we have decided to totally homeschool. The flexibility that home schooling provides is very valuable to us. I mean, We’re moving to England in the next months and we’ll be welcoming a baby in January as well, so we need all the wiggle room we can get in educating.
And, at this point, we’re really only educating our oldest daughter who is in 2nd grade. I’m confident we can cover everything this year without extra or outside help.
A Charlotte Mason Education
Several years ago I read Home Education by Charlotte Mason for the first time and was hooked. It’s a collection of essays written by a 19th century educator about how to educate children well. A lot of her focus is on getting children outdoors, studying nature, and educating through good literature as much as possible. Now, as with all education philosophies, it has its pitfalls. But the overall perspective and goals appeal to me and our family. I highly recommend reading her essays in that book and another book titled, “For the Children’s Sake” to introduce yourself to Charlotte Mason and her methods.
This is the main style of education that we are pursuing for our children this year.
Ambleside Online
Now, all of Mason’s methods are outlined in her books, even how to teach reading. So, you could technically just purchase her books and use them to guide your education. However, I have found Ambleside Online Curriculum to be the most helpful and it is what we will follow for this year. It gives plenty of resources and just enough planning for me. But I still feel like I am making most decisions. They provide book lists, artist and composer studies, and schedules/planning resources as well. It is a free curriculum, but you do have to purchase quite a few books to have to read as that makes up the majority of the curriculum.
Because Charlotte Mason was heavy on literature and nature study, she was much lighter on math and sciences. I do see this as a slight drawback to her methods, but I also think that if she were alive today and writing books about education, she would recommend more maths and sciences than she did. It has become more essential in the world we live in now than it was in Charlotte Mason’s world, simple as that.
I did buy a curriculum for math, it’s called Singapore Math and I’m excited to give it a try this year. It comes highly recommended by several of my friends who have been homeschooling longer than I have.
We’ll See How It Goes
Even with all that’s going on in my life at the moment, I’m excited to start school next week with my daughter. It brings a certain rhythm to our lives that has felt lacking over the summer. And whenever we get our visas and move to England, we’ll just stop and start again when we’re ready. The flexibility is key for us! But, ultimately, we will see how it goes this year and re-evaluate before next year. I also like not being tied to one certain curriculum or method year after year… we can figure it out as we go.
