I’ve been using Charlotte Mason’s methods in my home for a long time. My oldest will graduate from high school in May, and we started when she was in preschool. I take this seriously. I believe that Charlotte Mason’s principles and even her specific instructions are wise and well founded and almost always I can find a reason for why she suggested what she did. You might think that means that my home is a picture of all the CM goodness, but you’d be wrong. So many, many basic elements of a Charlotte Mason education don’t happen in our home or get implemented in non-standard ways!
For several weeks this spring, my 11 year old’s nature study consisted solely of looking out the front door at the daffodils in the front yard and drawing some generic flowers in his nature notebook.
My 13 year old has been using the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition (from Star Trek) as his dictation.
My 15 year old is doing a lighter version of a light schedule, and we don’t always get that done.
You get the general idea. My family is a picture of imperfect implementation. All of us are, really. If we expect perfection, we’ll inevitably be disappointed. Besides, imperfection is part of the process. If we could do perfectly what we’re attempting to do, we’d be attempting too little and shutting ourselves off from growth. And often God uses our imperfection to teach us about humility and grace and how to rely on Him. Sometimes our image of what perfection would look like is actually the completely wrong course of action for our specific case, so by chasing perfection we can find ourselves going in the wrong direction. Instead of chasing perfection, we have to find success in our imperfection!
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