An Old Fashioned Education
Since we began our home education journey every day in the Brennan house is messy and loud! And every day has wonderful and precious moments that need to be celebrated. Childhood is so fleeting, we need to capture all those small joys that might be forgotten or taken for granted.
We also want the children to have that "Life Long Love of Learning" and to find joy in all those tiny steps and giant leaps forward that they take in their education and their lives.
Almost 2 years ago, after a lot of searching, we finally decided to begin to include the methods of Charlotte Mason into our children's education and our day to day lives.
Once that decision had been made, we found that putting CM's methods into practice was much harder than it had looked and it has required some tough self discipline, reorganisation, and a very close inspection of how we live our lives and the examples we set for the children.
Add onto that the fact that until recently Charlotte Mason's methods have been pretty much forgotten by educators in the UK, almost every website we came across during our search for a suitable educational approach based on CM was American. You would think that with the very adaptable methods of the Charlotte Mason Philosophy this could be easily overcome. Not neccessarily so. On these websites you will find so many examples of exciting subjects to cover with your child, ways to present it (lapbooking is a favourite.), and all the information you could ever want on the books you should be using to feed the child's mind with ideas and knowledge.
However, after the initial excitement of finding such a full and varied curriculum has worn off, you soon find that the curriculum material mainly consists of American history that is studied alongside American Literature, Poetry, Nature and habitats, and many books only available in the US. And that this gives the novice CM educator no helpful examples of how to apply it all to a UK based education, especially those on a budget where buying books from abroad is difficult.
Using CM as a UK parent usually means that you have to start completely from scratch. What subjects should I cover and what living books should I apply to each subject? Is this book or poem right or wrong? Age approriate? Is it even something that fits in with the CM approach?
There are many, many occassions when I still can't answer those questions. I'm still exploring CM's methods, slowly reading my way through her 6 volume series of books on education and families, and finding something new at every turn. So if you're looking for a difinative answer to how to do Charlotte Mason in the UK, you won't find it here.
What I can show is how we do things. How we've fiddled and fitted together the best of CM with our children's interests and abilities.
For how we do things, keep an eye on the Brennan Family Blog!
And I can give a basic introduction to those new to CM - Who was Charlotte Mason? What are her principles? What is her Philosophy?
My blog has moved to www.likeleaves.wordpress.com
