I’ve Fallen off the Charlotte Mason Wagon

Jimmie, over at Jimmie’s Collage, has a great post today about falling off the Charlotte Mason wagon.  (Charlotte Mason is a 19th Century British educator who espoused many wonderful educational techniques that a lot of homeschoolers now follow.)

Her ideas are “gentle” but not necessarily easy.  Here are the specifics that Jimmie mentioned today:

Narration

Daily nature walks

Composer study  (Here’s what I’m going to do for composer study this month:  Debussy, and later this summer Puccini.)

Artist study  (Today, I put up one of our Picturing America posters, of “The Boating Party” by Mary Cassatt)

Shakespeare (I just put Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare on hold at the library.)

Poetry

Unfortunately, I must admit that I have fallen off the wagon, for the only one of the above I was doing prior to reading Jimmie’s post was reading aloud a poem every day and some sporadic narration.  So, I’ve decided that this summer I’m going to reread one of my favorite books:  A Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola (and maybe her book A Pocketful of Pinecones, too).  And I’ll get back on the wagon!