Today was day 2 of our new, Charlotte Mason-inspired schoolday.  I’d meant to blog about the plans for this whole thing, the reasons and rationales and ideas and all that, before actually starting it.  But, ya know, life and busy-ness and all that stuff.  The actual planning took up any spare time I might have had to blog about the planning…

So what are we doing, and why?  For the most part, I’m really just getting more organized.  Getting some long-range (and medium-range) goals for what we want to accomplish homeschool-wise.  And incorporating some more varied ideas and topics.

I’m a huge fan of unschooling.  In retrospect, I wish I’d been more unschooley with Flipper when he was younger.  Maybe he’d have better self-motivation now.

But that’s water under the bridge.  Right now, he thrives best with a certain amount of structure and direction — but not too much.  And he’s getting older.  He’s almost 11.  He’s ready to start to dive into some more complex and intricate subjects.  Things that you would have to spoon-feed to younger kids.  Things that there’s really no pressing need to teach to younger kids.   He’s not a ‘younger kid’ anymore though.  Those teen years are coming up quick.

Plus, he’s been asking more questions about these more complexd ideas.  So, the time is right to get more organized.

Next question — why Charlotte Mason?  That’s pretty interesting, actually.  We’ve been using NOEO Science this year, and it’s been amazing.  He loves it, does his daily work independently, with enthusiasm and — say it with me — self-motivation.  NOEO uses a CM-inspired methodology, where the kids “narrate” their lessons rather than complete fill-in-the-blank or question-and-answer worksheets.  Usually he will draw a picture and write a few sentences about whatever topic he’s read about that day.  Each lesson is very short, so it holds his attention and isn’t overwhelming.

I have just been loving this approach for him, it fits his style so well.  So I decided to research some more on the CM philosophy and see if it was something we could incorporate more into the rest of our ’schooling’.   I quickly found that much of it is stuff that we were already doing — or that I’ve been wanting to do.  I found some resources to help me figure things out, and started the plans.

Yesterday, our entire “school day” took about 4 hours.  That’s including the break we took for lunch, and about an hour where he decided to play outside.  In that time, we did math, Canadian studies, french, grammar, literature, logic, ancient history, poetry, and music.

Today we spent slightly less time than that, again including lunch.  He didn’t play outside, but he was having a cranky, unfocussed morning and it wasn’t until halfway through the subjects that he finally settled in.  We did math, Canadian studies (geography), french, grammar, cursive practice, literature, Aesop fables, and… um… and music.

Once we’ve got the routine down, I think we’ll be able to get the “bookish” stuff done in under two hours.   There’s a couple other things we’ll be adding in as well, or modifying as we progress.

I’ll post more details and what approach and resources we’re using with the different topics another day.  Right now, I’m just excited that we’re getting so much done, with really very little resistance and complaints from Flipper.  He even said “this is more fun than I expected” while tracing border lines on his Canadian geography map for today…

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