Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Charlotte Mason


Charlotte Mason was an educator who believed in "the gentle art of learning". She firmly believed that children needed to be outside in nature exploring God's creation. She utilized "living books" as opposed to text books, short lessons, narration, notebooking and no grades.
We are utilizing many of her techniques in our homeschooling approach. Charlotte's ideas were to create a love of life long learning in the student. She is quoted as saying, "The more we do for a child, the less he will do for himself. If we give him watered down material, many explanations, much questioning, if we over-moralize, depend on the workbooks to work the mind, what thinking is left for the child to do? How is his mind to grow from within...?"
For those of you seeking to implement this style of teaching into your homeschool settings, I highly recommend reading this book by Karen Andreola. It breaks down the philosophies into easy to read chapters written in modern English. It is extremely helpful in guiding you as the instructor and introducing you to nature notebooking, implementing great literature, classical music and great art into your day, ways to teach reading, spelling, composition, how to use narration, etc... You will love it!

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