Piney Woods Homeschool

I just wanted to share a birdsong CD we purchased in preparation for starting Year 1.  We love it!  Instead of being simply a list of bird names followed by the song, this one groups the birds by similar sounds, then a narrator explains how to tell the birds in the group apart.  This is critical for us, because once the leaves appear on the trees (and we have leaves for the vast majority of the year) we see very few birds, although we can hear a great variety.  Once we go through this CD thoroughly, I think we’ll be ready for one that follows the list format, but for beginners like us, this seems perfect. Birding by Ear: Eastern and Central North America (Peterson Field Guides(R))

Educating the Charlotte Mason way means spending lots of time outside.  I’m 5-1/2 months pregnant, so I’m anticipating a hot summer.  My last baby, two years ago, was born in early September so we did the whole pregnant-all-summer thing then too.  Having a tiny baby in the summer is harder than being pregnant all summer, imo, because although I’m uncomfortable I’m not in danger in a reasonable amount of heat, but with a baby, particularly keeping it protected from mosquitoes, you do have to be careful. We go out early, and then again late.  There is one local park that has some shade for the play equipment, so we can play there.  There’s another park that has a water feature the kids can run through, and I think the last two summers (since we’ve lived here) we spent time almost every week at that park.  There’s a local walking trail that feels like we’re in the woods, and last time around we spent many mornings walking there, slowly, th...

It seems like it might be worthwhile to try to summarize what CM values in a mathematical approach for the early years, meaning ages 6-9 or so. That will help anyone who wants to evaluate a curriculum to decide what to use when the school years approach, or who wants to create their own plan of instruction.  This is just a rough draft. The chief value of arithmetic, like that of the higher mathematics, lies in the training it affords the reasoning powers, and in the habits of insight, readiness, accuracy, intellectual truthfulness it engenders. In the early years, she sees arithmetic as training the mind just as the work with language (hearing great stories, learning to read with accuracy and attention, etc.) trains the mind. So this list she gives us helps us see at least some of the qualities we should be able to find in any math program we want to use. She then talks about how important it is not to put the child in a situation where he does not know the r...

I think most of us at one time or another feel the itch to go ahead and jump into Year 1, since after all our little ones can already handle the reading and many if not most of the other activities.  Why wait?  And we get lots of outside pressure, in many cases, to be doing formal school rather than this "whatever-it-is" that we call Year 0.  I don’t say this to imply that anyone is wrong for pressing on with Year 1 early, but just to let you know that there are good reasons for waiting.  You may decide that despite those reasons it is worth starting in, and that’s ok. Year 0 is a lot more than just read-alouds.  (In fact, read-alouds are really a very small part of it. CM didn’t recommend spending huge amounts of time reading to the children in the early years anyway.  She wanted them to be up and around.)  There’s so much more to focus on, including habit training and nature study (and lots and lots of time spent outside just ru...

Here are some thoughts I had while reading Chapter 18 of Volume 2. This part really reminded me of one important reason why we go outside, and why we make the effort to go to beautiful places: "We have in these few lines a volume of reasons why we should fill for children the storehouse of memory with many open-air images, capable of giving them reflected sensations of extreme delight. Our constant care must be to secure that they do look, and listen, touch, and smell; and the way to this is by sympathetic action on our part: what we look at they will look at; the odours we perceive, they, too, will get." CM spends quite awhile talking about Wordsworth’s poem "Tintern Abbey" and what that has to say to us about how important memories of beautiful places can be, and how those memories can evoke later feelings that have a positive effect on us even if we don’t realize it.  (You know, when *I* read "Tintern Abbey" in college, I just thought it ...

This year I decided to prepare for Easter, much as we prepare for Christmas by doing Advent activities.  Lent is the official season of preparation for Easter, but since our church doesn’t observe Lent, and we’ve never really observed Lent in our home, I wasn’t prepared for a full-blown observance of Lent this year.  My favorite church seasons book, Celebrating the Christian Church Year with Young Children, suggested using the story of the Good Shepherd throughout Lent to help small children prepare for Easter.  This seemed doable for us, so I used the book’s template to make paper Good Shepherd and sheep figures for each of the girls, and then gave them each a sheepfold made from a shoebox.  The girls are enjoying playing with their sets.  I have told them the story of the Good Shepherd, quite casually, a few times, and we’ve sung some hymns/choruses about Jesus-as-Shepherd.  I think for the 3yo especially, this approach will work much bette...

I’ve been mulling this statement for awhile and wanted to share it in case it might be an encouragement.  As I understand it, " the perfect is the enemy of the good " comes from the engineering world (although originally it was said by Voltaire–see the link), a caution to engineers not to chase perfection so far that they eliminate good solutions in the search for that one perfect solution that can’t be found. I think this applies to homeschooling as well.  Are you trying to create the perfect home environment or nature outing or library or … or … ?  Why not settle for "good enough" and move on?  Good enough is so many times much better than what you otherwise would have had, and what you give up as you try to achieve perfection is not worth giving up for that small improvement over good enough. BTW, FlyLady says something similar about how our quest for perfection often paralyzes us.  That’s why she says to just set the timer for 15 minutes and d...