Our Charlotte Mason Home School

We just started our own Charlotte Mason preschool home school program. That was sort of a complicated thing to say, but it's so far from complicated to do!
I knew very early on that I wanted to home school. [I have a variety of reasons that I'll save for another post.]  I spent a lot of time researching different methods and issues related to home schooling our son.
Noah is always craving more input, more knowledge, more learning.... as a life long learner myself, I couldn't wait to get started!
First I decided to try using work books for a more traditional model. It didn't work for us. He's not a sit at the table kind of guy and most of the work books I could find didn't work well with a two year old attention span.
Then, I fell in love with Maria Montessori. I saw so many Montessori success stories and I thought it would be perfect for such a self-motivated kid like Noah. We tried that one for a while before I had to admit it wasn't working out the way I hoped it would. He hated the "work" and I didn't feel like he was learning anything really valuable.
Finally, I found Charlotte Mason and she has been fabulous! I really wanted to love Maria Montessori. I thought I was in love, but it was just "puppy love."
Charlotte's methods are so perfect for my active little boy! They also work well for me because they are more classical and involve more structure and planning than Montessori.

We did our first official day of Charlotte Mason preschool on Monday and it went very well!
Here's what we did:

1. Say thank you to Jesus and have our breakfast.
2. Go play outside in the back yard where we explored piles of leaves, muddy puddles, and fallen tree branches. [We recently had a heavy rain]
3. Came inside to take a bath because we were super dirty. While in the bath we painted with bath paints and talked about the colors and shapes we were making.
4. After lunch, we talked about art by studying a painting from Giotto.
5. We fell asleep listening to Vivaldi in the recliner.
6. After nap time, we played with dinosaurs (his favorite!) and counted dinosaur manipulatives for math practice.

7. Before bed we read another chapter of Matthew.

8. We practiced Charlotte's early habits of attention and obedience all day long as well as our manners.

If you're interested in Charlotte Mason and want more information or curriculum, check out the experts at Simply Charlotte Mason. I love them!

-Crazy Earth Mama