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Educational reset!
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Hello!
I am very new to all of this and currently making my way through the Charlotte Mason series.
As I am picking up information greatly and mostly without struggle.
I am needing advice on how to maybe do an educational reset?
I took part in homeschooling my nephew for about 2 years. As he was homeschooling my DD would want to join in and be a part of everything so I started making her activity trays and bins to play with. As months went on and our first year past she wanted to do more so I allowed basic letter strokes and counting games. She was 2 1/2 when I started homeschooling my 7 year old nephew, so she was introduced to everything very young. His mother has taken over the roll of schooling him, however, my DD still wanted to learn and do “school work” which at the time I had no clue about Charlotte Mason methods.
She is now 4 and still a ways off from 5 and knows all of her letters and sounds, vowels, we started doing word building and recognition activities months ago. She writes her name with ease along with a majority of her letters and shes able to make some word on her own writing that she recognizes or memorizes like my, me, i, as, cat, rat etc.
She loves doing it. However, for a short moment she was resisent on things so I perceeded to put what she wasn’t liking away. I started looking for differnt methods, which led to montessori, I found that to be lovely but pricy, then that proceeded to led me here. Over the last two months I have been readin and studying the Charlotte Mason method to get a better understanding.
But now I’m also feeling like a bad mother for doing things with her so young. And since there isn’t too much reccomended to do with children at her age now, mostly being outside and exploring the world around which we have started to adopt the habbit of doing which has been going wonderfully.
But as far as her word building and wanting to learn new words and wanting to learn how to perfect writing her letters and words that she knows. Do we continue this? Do I stop it and just read to her?
I’ve just really been having trouble pondering how to continue things with her. I’ve been worried that it’s caused to much pressure which it doesnt seem to be, but have slowed down any type of lessons at all. But now mentaly I feel a stress of bad mothering.Would reading to her and having her orally speak back to me about what she read be ok at this age? Her love for learning is admirable. And reading and learning about Charlotte Masons views have really struck a spark in me. I know this would be a route she and I both would love to experience. The living books, artistic and nature aspect, and the musical part are all things she enjoys and my favorite part has been how in everything i’ve seen or blogs i’ve read make Charlottes methods seem as if they bring families close. Her dad would love an opprotunity to be involved in her blossoming educationally as I have. We read every morning at breakfast, we draw, paint, or color pictures together every day and we’ve always sang songs together, she also enjoys poetry (the kind we’ve went through has been mother goose) These are things we’e done together since she was able to hold a crayon and not eat it.
For now the only answer I came across for myself was to get the delightful reading sets 2 & 3, I also got her the delighful handwriting book since these are things she already knows. My plan and hopes are to embrace this method fully to my capabilities and anything I purchase I will use with my DS when he gets of appropriate age.
My worry is that if I stop what we’ve been doing this last year she’ll feel as if I’m giing up on her and all i want is to provide her with the best education possible and allow her to be herself and have a wonderful full childhood.
Any help or advice would be greatly appriciated and I am so sorry for the rambling
Writing this i realized how important it is to proof read. My mind moved faster than my fingers. Please ignore the mistakes :/
Let me reassure you that you have not ruined your daughter by following her lead on academics. 🙂 When Charlotte Mason stated no academics before age 6, she was referring to formal schooling, the requiring of participation in academics.
As long as your daughter wants to continue learning to read and write, go ahead and give her some lessons. Just be careful to follow her lead at this time, and don’t insist on lessons if she’s not interested. Take it day by day. On days she is eager to have a lesson, do a short 10-15 minute lesson with her. If she’d rather play, skip the lesson for that day.
As for reading and narrating, hold off on requiring a narration from her until she is 6. Read good books to her and let her simply enjoy them. If she voluntarily tells you about what was read, that is fine, just don’t require it.
thank you for responding!
I think it’s been the stress of us slowly transitioning into a new life style. I am guilty of being a tv, tabet, textbook mom. We have been trasitioning out of that and spending more time together while focusing on developing better habits as a unit. Then, I began worrying that maybe we’ve started things way too soon. However, she does enjoy everything she does.
I don’t require her to tell me anything! If she does she does it on her own. I needed comfort in knowing I didnt need to have her tell me since we’ve already done so much in the past.
Usually she’ll tell me about a character or she’ll make her own story with the characters she’s heard about in books. Which almost always lead to her making her own illistration to go with our story (or her own story) in a drawing notebook!
Thank you again for the response! We live in a small town where the word “homeschool” is foreign and we don’t have much local support or anywhere to gather advice 🙂
I have nothing to add to Karen’s response but also wanted to assure you that you are not a bad mother! You have allowed your daughter to take the lead. There is often a confusion about starting academics in a CM education. Some take it to mean that we teach nothing prior to age 6 which is not true at all! If you’d like to read articles about the early years or perhaps see some of our book suggestions (I always LOVE quality book suggestions), take a look at the early years on the website.
It sounds like you meeting your daughter where she is at and allowing her to show you when she is ready or not. Great job!
Wow, you are doing a great job! All of that drawing, painting, songs, poetry, and stories makes me want to come to your house! I just wanted to encourage you in teaching reading and writing in a fun way when she has the interest. I’ll share what happened with us. I had a tag along second child whom I had sitting with us occupied with coloring and stickers. Little did I know that she was also learning all her letters and sounds at the age of three while I was teaching her older brother. Was I wrong to include her with us for lessons at the table? I think not. And so we continued reading lessons at age four, at her pace. She would read a book each day, sometimes the same book. She loved to read Biscuit stories about a girl and her puppy. She picked these stories herself. And she continued to progress. Now in 6th grade, she loves to read, and she also enjoys writing stories.
Also, you may find a natural narration of read alouds later in the day through her play time. If you want ideas for learning activities to go along with read alouds, Before Five in a Row has a lot of good ideas. They stress the importance of family relationships. So the learning activities are very informal.
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