When I was in kindergarten, I wanted to be a teacher. Many years later, I found myself sitting in the Intro to Elementary Education class at Baylor University. That is where I first heard the name of Charlotte Mason. I remember being intrigued by her ideas of education, but my exposure was very short as we had to cover a large array of educational aspects. I never heard her name again, and I was trained to be a public school teacher in a typical classroom with textbooks, quizzes and standardized tests.
Then my life changed. I had my own children, and all of a sudden, education took on a new meaning. I wanted more for them...something richer and deeper...something that inspired them to love learning and to grow into the callings God had on their lives. I wanted a custom-built education for each child. So we chose to homeschool, and Charlotte Mason's name floated back to me. I began to research her educational philosophies, and I knew it was a perfect fit for what we wanted in our education.
I won't go into detail about Charlotte Mason's life and ways, but I do hope that you dig around and discover her on your own. I wanted to run a few blog posts detailing what our own Charlotte-Mason-style education looks like.
Today's post is a detailed tour of our learning room. My husband blessed us by hand-crafting this beautiful room that has made organization and learning truly wonderful. But, if you don't have a room with this sort of set-up, you can achieve it in other ways. We haven't always had this kind of set-up for our learning room. For most years, we've been at our dining table and had to keep books in another room and the map hidden under a quilt on the wall. :) So, use what you have, and get creative with your space. You'd be surprised what a couple of sets of inexpensive shelves can do too!
Here's an up-close of our work spaces...
This bookcase serves as a frequently-accessed point...
The first shelf has our morning activities and our Book of Time (also known as Book of Centuries). I will explain more about these in a later post.
The second shelf has reference materials (when we need to look up the meaning of a word or to remember the arrangement of the planets or to see who was vice President under President Andrew Jackson). In other words, this is a go-to spot for quick information when a question arises. Instead of saying, "We'll look that up later," we have a spot where we can look it up right then and there when the question is pressing and the window for learning it is wide open. Also on this shelf are our learning puzzles. How much better to learn the location of all the countries in the world than by piecing them together by hand? Here we have puzzles with dinosaurs, the Titanic, a U.S. map, a global map and the Civil War.
The third shelf has several books of personal interest. Our children have been most intrigued with the Civil War ever since we read about it over a year ago. They gobble up everything they can get their hands on that involves the Civil War. They have books, puzzles, movies, handmade costumes (thanks to big sister!), replicas of Confederate money...really anything they can find about the Civil War. Charlotte Mason wanted her students to have a love of learning that goes far beyond the textbook snippets of information and many memorized facts that are forgotten after the test is passed. She wanted them to love learning, and I have seen that to be absolutely true in our application of her philosophies in our own home education.
This is our little reading corner, most frequented by our youngest child. It's comfortable and filled with literature. I have removed a lot of what Charlotte Mason calls "twaddle" (dumbed-down, non-inspiring...anything less than excellent literature). I do admit that we do have a handful of twaddle items, mainly gifts that our children hold dear. But, for the most part, the books in our home are about 95% twaddle-free.
This is our United States map, and we added some postcards from places we visited last school year. We went to Texas, New Mexico, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington D.C. Also on this map, we have placed a prayer photo card of missionaries who are planting a church in New York City. Above all, in our education, we focus on God's Kingdom work, and praying for missionaries is one of those things we keep in the forefront of our days.
This is cabinet #1 above the long work desk.
The middle shelf is all about coloring. This box is geared toward times when our youngest child is finished with her learning activities, and Mama needs a bit more time to work with the older children. This is not one of my "excellent learning materials" box. It's simply practice in coloring, which has progressed from scribbling in the past year. She has her separate container of crayons, because she has a tendency to use them to a pulp quickly (and her siblings don't appreciate that). :) She also has a box of WASHABLE markers all of her own.
This is what all our children graduate to after they hit the maturity level of 1) not scribbling in coloring books and 2) being able to appreciate a coloring book and being able to learn from it. At this stage, we invest in nice coloring books that aren't aimed at keeping hands busy but rather aimed at bringing information to life in yet another way. We have collected these a little at a time, usually as gifts for Christmas or back-to-school. We have over 20 of these, covering information about all sorts of things...the way people dressed in Colonial Days, ocean creatures, dinosaurs, old-fashioned farms, medieval knights, castles of the world, clothing styles of the many Chinese dynasties, battles of the Civil War, etc etc etc. Most of these are Dover coloring books, and we buy them to go along with different things we are interested in as we learn.
The bottom shelf is for our oldest child. Because she is in high school and has more books, she has an entire shelf by herself. These are the books she is using for the first few weeks of school (some books she will use all year, while others will change out). Most were recommended by such sources as Simply Charlotte Mason or Ambleside Online. The only thing I'm not happy about is the science book. For high school science, we have found it difficult to find living books that are a hallmark of Charlotte Mason's style of education. Living books make the subject come alive, and information is retained simply because of how it is presented. I see textbooks as the opposite of living books. When researching curriculum for the high school years, I looked at Apologia (the most recommended by Charlotte Mason experts), but I still found it to be dry and...well, textbook-y for the high school years (especially for a child who is not bent toward the sciences). I debated about getting a high school science book from Queen Homeschool (which is very Charlotte Mason in its approach, and we do use some of their books), but it was lacking the labs that are needed for college transcripts. So, we settled on ABEKA science, which is definitely a dry textbook and not a living book. I'm hoping that we will find something else (someone please write an excellent CM-style living science book for high school!!), but for now, we are planning to just use what we have and opt to do narrations instead of all the fill-in-the-blanks, quizzes and memorization of dry facts that are typical in a textbook. (***UPDATE: After struggling for weeks with the dry aspect of the ABEKA physical science book, our daughter requested that she use her own money to purchase Apologia Physical Science. We found a good deal on Amazon, and she was elated to get her hands on it when it arrived. Her take on it…after having a side-by-side comparison...is that Apologia is much more conversational and understandable. Science is still not her very favorite, but she is no longer frustrated with it and is actually enjoying it on many days.***)
The top shelf is dedicated to what my boys like to call "Inventions." :) After reading about people who invented airplanes, seat belts, cars, telephones and lightbulbs, they got an itch to invent things. They sent a plea out to friends to give them any miscellaneous items that were just lying abound their houses. This, along with scavenging around our own home, produced such things as screen door handles, CD covers, screws, old tape dispensers, lids, and all sorts of things that look like junk but are really treasures in the mind of a young boy. We repurposed a box to use for it, and it sits on the shelf where they can easily locate it when they need to invent something (which is quite frequently).
The middle shelf has our books that we will read at different points in the year. How this works is that we are following a basic timeline for studying World History this school year, using Sonlight for the youngest 3 children and Notgrass World History for our high school student. They read an interesting main book that outlines the story of world history, and then at frequent stops along that timeline, the curriculum recommends a wonderful living book that makes that time period come alive. These are the books that we will be reading this school year.
Here is our container with audio books and a tape player that can be operated by little hands. This is great practice for auditory skills, which are severely lacking in our visually-overloaded society. We also have audio books for the older children that are put on the iPod.
The bottom shelf is used by our 2 boys. This photo shows most of the books that our oldest son is using. Some of the books will be used all year. Others will be read and then replaced with other books as we go through the school year. For example, he will read Riding the Pony Express in the first week of school, because it goes along with something he will be learning in history. When he finishes that, the history curriculum will suggest another book that will be read, so we will switch out the books. He will choose either Kidnapped or Treasure Island to read for his literature selection for the first weeks of the school year, and then that will be switched out with another piece of excellent literature.
Cabinet #3 holds much needed and often-used supplies.
On the top shelf, we have a container with play dough, clay and cookie cutters.
The middle shelf has craft supplies and art supplies. This gets used a lot! We have oil pastels, paints, Modge Podge, glue guns (used only by our oldest child), balsa wood soft enough to carve with not-too-sharp utensils (safe for those not yet ready for real carving), and many other supplies.
The bottom shelf houses a zillion fresh, clean notebooks. I buy these at the beginning of the school year when items are so inexpensive, and I keep this supply on hand all the time. This is easily accessed when a child wants to record his inventions or make a book about his trip to the Confederate Capitol in Richmond, VA, or needs to replace a used math notebook...almost unlimited uses for these notebooks and folders.
And this container is used for miscellaneous supplies that sometimes need to be replaced...print cartridges, crayons, markers.
Other supplies are in the drawers below the work desk. The first drawer contains many items that we need often (pens, pencils, scissors, index cards, timers for math facts drills, calculators, tape. And have you really ever seen so much glue? Why so much glue, you ask?? One of our children makes everything out of paper mache...quivers, bows, helmets, breast plates, whatever she reads about pretty much! :) I'm really thinking that we need to invest in one of those gallon bottles of glue instead!
Here we have a tiered stand that has many of the items we need often...Kleenex, baby wipes (for sticky hands that have just finished a snack or a project), crayons, markers, and the best homeschool catalog ever printed (Rainbow Resource).
Oh, this little box is a life saver! It houses all our library books. Some library books do go up to bedrooms, where they are consumed at bedtime or in little breaks throughout the day. But, this is their "home," and all books get returned here. All library books must be in this box on the day we go to the library so that we aren't hunting all over the world for that one lost book!
And hidden under the table, we have our hard-working sewing machine (which gets used ALL the time), sewing supplies and a CD player for audio books, music, etc.
I keep dry erase markers are other supplies handy for my use when I'm working with my children.
Pinned to the wall next to the back door, I keep some guides that they can use to identify a tree or flower or or bug or animal track (as we live in the woods). These are always within reach for the moments when curiosity strikes...like when they wonder, "What in the world is that pretty black and red ant-looking thing in the yard?" Ohhhh...it's a female wasp...stay away! :)
Also by the back door, we have a bookshelf with lots of good literature. In the middle is a set of multi-colored drawers. Each of our 3 oldest children has their own drawer. This is where they can keep any supplies they need for their own work, accordion files with their drawings, etc. Each Wednesday, part of their daily routine is to straighten their own drawer, so it usually keeps somewhat organized (though sometimes one child cannot get the drawer to open due to the build-up of stuff...we're still working on organization). :) The pink set of drawers I have just moved into this space, and I plan to gear it toward the educational needs of our youngest child. She is blessed with Down Syndrome, so we have some extra needs we address (speech therapy, fine motor skills, etc). She's going to adore these little pink shelves (which we are repurposing this year to be used for her).
That's a detailed tour of our learning room, set up to facilitate our Charlotte Mason education. Soon, I will write about how we go about planning our school year and what materials we use and love.
