I have been homeschooling for 5 years now. Unknowingly, I have been using some CM methods, most of which I found out about from using My Father’s World curriculum when my son was in kindergarten. The curriculum had the kids doing things like scripture memorization, notebooking pages, copywork and reading from living books. At this time in my homeschool journey I had never even heard of Charlotte Mason, all I knew was that these things were definitely working with my kids.
Notebooking pages were a big success in our family. Having the kids write and illustrate what they just read about helped my daughter blossom into a good writer. I had no idea at the time that my kids were in essence doing written narration. I started this very young with my kids, first grade actually, just having them write one to two sentences about what they read. Sometimes I would even have them dictate to me and I would write it out for them.
So, we have actually been a CM type of family all along, just without knowing it.
I used My Father’s World curriculum for three years. We did enjoy it very much, and I highly recommend their curriculum for first grade. It gave my kids such a foundation in the bible and I feel blessed to have found it.
However, in November of 2009 things in our family took a turn for the BUSY and OUT OF ORDER!
My husband started up a new business and our family was having to relocate because of the business, so this meant finding a new house and selling ours. On top of this my father in law was diagnosed with terminal cancer. WOW! It all hit us almost at once, and it was overwhelming. I was able to keep up with school work for the most part… for a while, but once the entire house was packed and ready to go, and then our new house fell through right at the closing date, I LOST IT!
Here we were completely ready to move, EVERYTHING packed, and now our house wasn’t closing. Right after this my father in law passed away. It’s hard to really express in words just how much stress I was under. The kids were out of their routine, and I was lucky to get even a little school work finished in a day. I finally said, “Look, I can’t take it anymore! I am not going to do school work right now. We are taking our summer break NOW and we will resume once we are moved somewhere and settled in.”
I was instantly relieved once I had excused myself from the burden of trying to keep to a school schedule that I was failing at. I went to the library and checked out a stack of books and had the kids reading something everyday. Other than that, it was officially summer at our house.
To make a really long story a little shorter, with much prayer and faith our family found a beautiful house that we absolutely loved even more than the house that didn’t close, and within 1 month of starting our summer break we were moving in.
Upon finally getting settled into our new home, I knew it was time resume our homeschool life. But, I knew I didn’t want to go back to our old school routine. Even though I had loved using MFW curriculum, I felt I needed to find a new path for our family. I was confused at where my homeschool was heading in the years to come. I wanted my kids to become more independent learners, and I wanted to be able to have them together for as many subjects as possible. Something in my spirit said it was time for something new.
I have always been one to listen to my inner voice…that is how I operate. I said a prayer and offered my needs up to the Lord. This is really how it all began, my CM homeschool. I found some great websites that I mentioned in my last post and from there found some great books, and just like that, something new was in the air. Everything I read about CM made sense and my spirit instantly said, “This is it. This is what you’ve been looking for!”
In a nutshell this is how I found out about CM.
In my next post I want to tell you about our CM days. What does our schedule look like? What are we studying? What CM subjects have I incorporated? Can’t wait to share it all.
