Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Charlotte Mason Education

One of the families I used to hang out with used the Charlotte Mason approach to homeschooling. It is loosely structured, built on great books and generally seems like a good approach. It is sort of unschooling but not with an in your face, we don't like authority bent to it. Anyway, I found her 6 set series of books at half price books one day and got it for a steal of a deal. I have now found that you can read the original or a summary of almost the whole thing on line. Actually, I was surprised that her work wasn't included in the book I just read about alternatives parents have for educating their children. He had some other curriculum philosohpies that I hadn't heard of but not this approach.

As I consider the possiblity of homeschooling or at least how I want to create an environment for my little one to learn in, her thoughts are helpful. She has 20 basic principles that her work is based on. I do like the idea of narrating because I think it does help children internalize what they are learning when they can retell it. She also focuses on training of the will of a child - which is a key concept and something that really isn't going to be trained in a school setting. So, this is yet another idea among many about educating your child.

No comments: