mommydama

I've become very enamored of Charlotte Mason. I've been reading about her and her methods of teaching for YEARS, so this is not new to me, but lately, watching how my children learn, especially Zoe, I'm feeling myself lean more and more toward her philosophies. I, so far, see no real problem with combining my somewhat classical approach to WHAT I teach with Charlotte Mason's approach to HOW to teach. We already use narration almost intuitively with a lot of what we read, mostly because I was just curious about how much my kids were actually internalizing of what I read to them. We've been doing copywork since Maria was four and wanted to write letters to her grandmas. She would dictate to me, and then copy what I wrote for her. I think a lot of the "interpretation" of Charlotte Mason by other writers leans toward an almost unschooling approach and I don't think that is fair to Mason actually. She was, after all, a classical educater herself who definately believed in an orderly, disciplined learning environment with clear goals. She just felt strongly about not killing a child's natural love of learning with dry and boring drills and seatwork. I could be misunderstanding her myself though.

I don't really know if what we are doing could be call a Charlotte Mason education. However, I have a feeling if the Bluedorns or Wise-Bauers saw our homeschool in action they wouldn't exactly call it strictly Classical either.