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IS there time for reading aloud?
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It was about three weeks ago now that a friend lent me a book about Charlotte Mason Education. The beginning of a new school year was looming and I was looking for inspiration. And I found it, Everything mentioned in the pages of that book inspired me. Learning from Living Books just plain made good sense. I wasn’t a big worksheet person anyway but this just solidified my ideas.
I began to feel excited about homeschooling again and I just had to do more reading on the CM method. I came on here and read as much as I could. That’s when I started to see more about scheduling and all of the different subjects. I liked the idea of studying each suject for shorter periods and I became obsessed with planning our school day:
Start the day with chores and then reading a devotional. Then math for a 1/2 hour, then world or Canadian history. Then cursive writing. Then playing. Next memorization work and then spelling and typing. Next health and some art, and then lunch. I still have to fit in our hikes and nature study. Ugh. Not to mention grammar. Ideally, I’d like to spend the morning on school work and leave the afternoons for, at time impromptu, outdoor adventures with other homeschooling families.
After looking through my carefully crafted schedule I asked myself, where was all of the read aloud and narration time? Even when I look at sample CM daily schedules on here and in books I don’t see much time allotted to reading aloud. MAYbe an hour?
I originally got excited about CM because I imagined all of the hours spent simply reading (and them narrating back) with my children. What a wonderfully organic way of learning, I thought. But now CM looks like any other “schooly” way of learning.
Am I missing something?
I spend hours a day reading aloud. I read most, but not all, of the books for my kids. I only have two children, so this is managable and enjoyable. Eventually the kids will read more of their assigned books themselves, but I intend to keep reading aloud SOMETHING to them for the duration of our homeschooling years. This is a huge draw for me to the CM style.
I read during lunch, as well, though I know some families don’t like to do that. I find lunchtime great for poetry and artists study, as well as Bible studies and perhaps something else. I don’t read all the lunchtime books every day – I rotate them.
Read alouds for pleasure are almost always in the evening and weekends.
Keep in mind that you don’t do every subject every day. And many subjects, such as “health” and “manners”, etc. can be incorporated into your daily lives – you don’t necessarily need to schedule specific time slots for them, unless you enjoy it that way.
I don’t know if I’m answering your questions, but I’ve been doing CM-style homeschool from the beginning (children are 11 and 7) and I read aloud A LOT.
Your response was very helpful, Esby, in reassuring me. Thank-you. 🙂 I love to read aloud to my two children. It’s not unusual for us to read for 3 to 4 hours at a time…especially in the winter. Or even outside in the warmer months while they play in the sand or something.
So, I guess what I’m understanding is that I could divide up the subjects between the days. I have to first decide which subjects I think are important to do every day (like math). We could do a couple of hours of structured “book work” in the day and the rest be read aloud time. Is that similar to what you do?
Thank-you again for your feedback.
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