Here’s the secret to getting through your lessons without needing big breaks. Planning and scheduling your homeschool studies involve several steps. Five steps, really. First, you start with the big overview, then zoom in on this year; then I like to take that year and break it into three terms and figure out what I’m […]
We often talk about homeschooling as a journey, and we can apply that in many different settings. But when you think about it for your homeschool year, a lot of times we like to put things on cruise control and just go through the year. We think if we have our plan, we can just […]
Today I’d like to walk through two different ways to schedule a school day. Both are viable options. Use the one that fits best during this season of life. Over the years—or even during different terms of a single year—you might find that one of these works better at that moment. Feel free to switch […]
Today we’re going to do some slicing and dicing. Not in my kitchen. We’re going to slice and dice a calendar. I want to show you four different ways that you could schedule your school year. Most of us were raised with a traditional nine-month school year: nine months of school and three months off […]
Welcome to another installment of Your Questions Answered. As usual, my friend and co-worker, Laura Pitney is joining me. Here’s the question we’re going to discuss today: For elementary students, how do you balance all the subjects and still give them plenty of time to play together? Laura: That’s a good question. Sonya: I think […]
Planning for your home school can sometimes seem overwhelming. But let me encourage you that the more you do it, the easier it gets. And today I want to share with you a quick and simple trick I use when I’m trying to lay out a weekly schedule and a daily schedule. I’ve been using […]
It’s that time of year again — the season when many of us get the itch to plan our next school year. Whether you’re just starting out or have been doing this for decades, here are five friendly reminders—just five ideas to keep in mind as you plan for your Charlotte Mason homeschool this coming […]
DIY—Do It Yourself. For some of you, those initials generate great excitement! Images of potential projects arise in your imagination and you can hardly wait to dive into a new one. Others of you get tired just looking at those initials. To you, DIY stands for a pile of decisions and precious time that you […]
My friend and co-worker Laura Pitney joins me again as we answer another of your questions. This time, we’re talking about how to have a smooth morning of lessons. Here’s the question that we want to discuss today: I would love to see some ideas of how to practically get lessons done in the morning, […]
My friend and co-worker, Laura Pitney, has joined us today, and we’re going to share some ideas on organizing your Charlotte Mason homeschool. Laura has a real heart to encourage and help other homeschool mamas, plus she’s very organized! So I’m glad that she can join us for this discussion. You’re going to love her […]
I recently did an article called Productive Afternoons, and in it I mentioned that in Charlotte Mason’s schools formal lessons were done by lunch. Well, we received many questions about how lessons could be done by lunch, so I want to do a couple of things in this article. First, I want to show you […]
We talk a lot about your school schedule and how to make it work for you and your students. But what about that block of time before school starts? That part of your morning can have a big impact on your school day. If breakfast is pleasant, chores get done, and the children gather in […]
A slip of paper. That’s all. A slip of paper. I find it very interesting that the word schedule comes from the Latin for “a slip of paper.” Can you imagine? When Charlotte Mason homeschoolers talk about schedules, somehow it takes on much more significance than a slip of paper. We read books about how […]
I love how, with the Charlotte Mason approach, you’re done with lessons by lunch time. Younger students in her schools were done by 11:30, middle students by 12:00, and older students by 1:00. It’s so refreshing to focus head-down for a few hours and then relax. The variety of subjects covered during those hours helps […]
Over the past few weeks we have been walking through how you can make a transition to the Charlotte Mason approach in your home school in stages, getting comfortable at each stage before you move on to the next one. If you haven’t read the posts for Stages 1–4, I encourage you to do that […]
We’ve been talking about how to make the transition to the Charlotte Mason method in your homeschool, easing into it little by little. We’ve talked already about Stages 1–3: The Basics, Once a Week, and Everyday Subjects. I recommend that you read those posts if you haven’t already. Today we want to do Stage 4. […]
We’ve been discussing how to make the transition to the Charlotte Mason method in five stages. We’ve already talked about Stage 1: The Basics and Stage 2: things you will do just Once a Week. Today, let’s look at Stage 3, which is two things that I want you to start doing every day. Literature […]
We’ve been talking about how to make the transition to the Charlotte Mason method in five stages. Last time we talked about Stage 1: The Basics. Today let’s move on to Stage 2: Once a Week. The Once-a-Week stage is comprised of five subjects that are not hard to do, and you do each one […]
Today I’d like to discuss a question that I hear frequently. It goes something like this: “The more I hear about the Charlotte Mason method, the more I become convinced that this is the method that’s going to fit my family best. This is what I want to do. Currently, I’m doing ____. How do […]
When my children were younger, we would always run out of time to do hands-on projects. By the time we got out all the materials and cleared a space for the activity, we had about ten minutes to work on it before we had to begin cleaning up. How frustrating! It became easier and easier […]
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