How do YOU implement a CM ideal in YOUR homeschool, real world?

I always wanted my children to be children – I see so many confused kids growing up too fast without faith or guidelines.  I want to help them instill a deep knowledge of the Savior in their hearts.  I want them to hopeful, kind, and loving.  I want them to serve others.  I want them to challenge themselves and BE happy… and I want to help give them the tools to do that. 

I knew that I needed to homeschool.  I knew that it was imperative to get them home where I could feed them the way they need on so many levels.  I have tried this a couple of times and kind of flounder because box curriculums do not let you really adjust to your child.  I had this vague sense of what I really wanted and no idea how to make it practical.  When I was led to CM after prayer and searching, I realized that she had the ideas and much of the practicalities of what I wanted.  (Of course, SCM made that soo much easier).

Things that really spoke to me were the reading and narrating.  My APD dd had had such a struggle at PS.  I also really like the “extras” that I want my children to love and appreciate – the picture, composer, nature studies.  The scripture memorization, the poetry, the rich literature, the short focused lessons, the caring kindness felt beneath it all.  The variety of things really pulls me.  I like to learn it, do it and go on personally.  I have a hard time with and little patience for some of the twaddly things we have to learn to deal with in life. 

I really do not want to copy CM in every detail.  There have been many changes in our lives and cultures since she wrote her philosphy, and I need to address that in my home.  However reading about her methods and using the the guides avaiiable to me have made my goals and dreams a much closer reality.  It will take a bit longer to know how it will all turn out, but with hard work, faith and prayer I know that I will have been the best mother I know how to be.  And that is the goal for me.  =)

Ways I have worked to implement – well, I am working on removing the worst of the twaddle (I admit it finally – I like some twaddle to relax with) books, toys, and movies.  I have revamped the house to hold the books that God is blessing me with.  I am finding tons of excellent (free) resources to use to enrich our days.  I have made routines of my schedules because I am not always as diligent with the alarm clock as I should be.  I am learning to plan out our gluten, dairy, and yeast free diet better so we can feel better.  I am learning to relax a little about the school schedule and let the girls make their own connections without the guilt.  I am learning to let go of the guilt over paperplates and a few dustbunnies that shall remain nameless, and I am learning to love my children in new ways as we grow together.  I am letting the guilt go over not wanting to read out loud every book we are reading…audiobooks let me do a lot of things while still enjoying the literature.  I am learning that my girls are growing up healthy and strong and are learning from me all the time (sometimes that is a big yikes).  I am learning that I need to set limits for myself not just the kids to get it all done everyday. 

Ways that I know that this method is working is having my 11dd tell me that she loves doing her spelling using Spelling Wisdom and having her light all up with delight when she recognizes quotes she has done.  Watching my dd10 go from reading at a 1st grade level to a 3rd grade level over 8 months of stress- free reading with me (vs remedial reading classes for 2 yrs at PS), watching them learn to love and nurture their little sisters, when they snuggle on the couch and we laugh our way through a book, when they enjoy pointing out things they find outside, when we talk to Grandma and they can’t tell her fast enough about all the things we are doing.  =)  Does it ever get any better than this???   It just makes me so happy!!

Sorry for for the length.  I feel more focused and empowered to go forth and live the good life!  LOL

I think it takes a LOT of prayer to find all the ways to apply anything we are working on, be it CM or something else.  One thing I do want to add–many things I “thought” were not for us, I later felt impressed to try–and when I tried, I was glad.  Some things that initially sounded hard or like a poor fit for us later turned out to be some of our favorite things–things like Plutarch, learning Latin (believe it or not, I didn’t intend to try that for many years) reading books more slowly, following CM methods for composition,  concentrating on nature study, etc. were all things I once thought did not fit us.  I’m really glad I “tried those things on” because I would have missed a LOT!  So I do think keeping an open mind as we read and study can be a very helpful thing, as sometimes something can be impressed on our hearts that we didn’t think we’d use but perhaps it’s time for a try.  I do believe that Charlotte’s writings will well repay frequent study and re-reading, for something that might not fit at one time in our lives may very well be just what we need at another time.  Things can change in our lives.  I am personally having a hard time because some of the things in our life have changed so–we are doing a LOT less nature study these days.  Our schedules with the two older ones are SO tight, with schoolwork, outside classes, activities, friends, jobs, interests–it just isn’t working.  Being outside all together in the afternoons isn’t working either.  I MISS what I once thought I wouldn’t enjoy–miss it more than I can say.  I know that there isn’t really an alternative right now, and my three Boy Scouts are getting plenty of time in the outdoors–it just isn’t involving me!  And to think I once didn’t even like bugs.    I also miss all of us curled up on the couch while I read aloud . . . and all the fun hands-on things we would do . . . I miss our process of discovering the real beauty and peace of Charlotte Mason’s methods and the joy it brought us.  I’m delighted beyond my wildest hopes in the young men that we have here, what they’ve learned, and just how large the room is in which their feet are set, and the many things about which they care.  I wouldn’t have missed it!  Don’t miss any of it—prayerfully decide what you need to focus on, of course, but stay open to what God can bring into your life and the wonderful people, writings and ideas He can use to influence us.  I KNOW that Charlotte was inspired by God.  I don’t mean by this that I think everything she said was perfect or that everything needs to apply to everyone.  She was a woman in very different circumstances from us and in many ways she never knew the world many of us would be in.  (I’m DEFINITELY sure if she lived where some of us do she’d have known taking out very little children EVERY afternoon wasn’t going to work–England is a long, long ways from here!)  But I know that God used her to communicate truth to us to help us educate our children.  It is a privilege that we have that we can use her ideas and wisdom and her experience to help us find our way. 

Jo, Thanks for starting this thread and for your honesty. I know I am vulnerable to envy with all that I see and read about, and sometimes all I think about is what ISN’T working. I have two active boys, 6 and 3. Many of the ideal things I’d love to do just aren’t going to work with these guys, at least not at this point in our lives. But they both LOVE to be read to so I’m totally on board with living books. Nature study is great, too, though we haven’t achieved the sketching/painting outdoors in our nature journals that I dream about. I have a whole year planned out for my son’s first official year, and I’m already preparing myself that it’s likely not going to go off without a hitch. I am one of those people who, when I decide to do something, I dive in. And I find myself, too, thinking I “have” to do everything CM does, or everything that other CM families do. That’s not true, of course, but it’s my personality and I have to fight against it. So, I do understand the gist of what you’re saying. I probably didn’t give you anything inspiring in what I wrote, but I hope you know you’re not alone!

I’m really enjoying this thread because it goes with a conversation I have with a friend of mine at least every 6 months.  She is at the beginning of her 3rd homeschool year with four children (girls 10, 9, 7, and a 3yo boy).  We’ve been homeschooling since my 10yo was preschool age, so about 7 years.  I also happen to have 6 children and another coming.  She always comes to a point where she asks how I do this homeschooling thing and make it look easy (ha – we’ve been working on transparency to help her with that misguided idea), but she also is one to feel like she “should” be doing everything that every other homeschool family she knows is doing, including mine.  We have different methods we follow, which complicates things even more, because she’ll try to implement things without any foundation, then call me when it crashes and burns.  This past year she was trying to do school for 8 hours a day to fit it all in! 

We always have to go back to two facts:

1. God has different expectations for her family and mine, or hers and everyone else’s.  We are not called to teach the exact same things at the same time in the same way.  He is a creative God who has many educational paths that are all good, but that are individualized to the child and family.  We don’t need to be doing the same things the same way.
2. Even within her chosen teaching method, there will be places she needs to tweak, just like there are for me in my chosen method. The method is not God, it is a tool.  Seek God to know how to use the tool, and recognize that he’ll have us use different parts when we are ready or when we need to.

All that to say that, for me, we’re still very much picking and choosing what we do of Charlotte Mason’s methods.    Right now we are doing picture study, living books, and narrations.  We have no intention to go anywhere near latin or plutarch in the forseable future.  We are stepping into the nature study waters more regularly this year.  We don’t see eye to eye with Charlotte on spelling, because while it might work with my third child, and possibly my second, it was completely wrong for my first.  It was like handing her a spring jacket when she was heading into a blizzard – it didn’t help.  And that’s okay!

I love seeing the lights that go on with picture study for my children. We’ve been studying Monet and did Van Gogh before that.  Yesterday my 5 year old came running to me with a book she found on our shelves to show me a picture she recognized by “the sunflower man” (Van Gogh).  My son’s favorite painting so far has been one of Monet’s train station paintings.  

The living books in history especially have brought new worlds of play to my children.  You constantly hear them living as people in times we’ve studied, even months after the study.  The living books have allowed them to make a relationship with the people and events that is real enough in their mind that they love to relive them.

Jo your honesty is such a breath of fresh air!  I love it!  Not one of us has it all figured out in some perfect CM way.  No matter how the posts may read.  I mean really who wants to post that everything has gone wrong today, no one is learning a thing, the rails you thought you had down are now being used as catapults and that your typing on your laptop from your bathroom where you’ve gone to cry and call your husband at work! And face it we don’t want to read those utopian CM posts either were everything has gone absolutely perfectly in every way possible.  I’m voting for hearing about a happy, honest medium ground I like to call reality. 

I think God made a mistake – I was supposed to be born in England! lol

I’m with Becky, I should have been a British girl. My grandmother is french, maybe I should return to those roots. 😉

Thanks Linda for your insight!