Here I am back in the Mom Mobile which is quickly becoming my office away from my office. It is raining again and every once in a while one of the kids darts out into the rain and runs up to the barn where they have it lit up like daylight. We live in the country so it is pretty dark out here! They are learning about lighting for their films tonight and practice makes perfect.
Last night was a really fun Mom’s Night out with our Homeschool Support group and we had loads of fun laughing, chatting about our kids and comparing stories about them! Some of us brought some of the curriculum we love so that the others could take a look. I met a couple of other Homeschoolers who are using Charlotte Mason‘s ideas in their Homeschools. That was really exciting to me because in my twelve years of Homeschooling, I have only met one other Mom who knew about her philosophies and used them!
Nature Study, learning about the Arts, learning together as much as possible, using short lessons, having students narrate back the information they have read, reading the classics and quality books aloud to each other- those are all things that came very naturally to our family and it wasn’t until we had been doing that stuff for a while that I actually learned that Charlotte Mason had written a terrific series on education that really mirrored a lot of what we were doing. It was great to know that I wasn’t “messing up my kids” by using those alternative ways of learning!
At the MNO, I shared a really great “Living Book” that I found at Books-A-Million – The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean. You can find it at Amazon and Barnes and Nobles as well.
The book shares interesting stories about each element of the periodic table and really makes it fun to remember the elements!
One of the characteristics of a Living book is that the author is knowledgeable and loves their material and this author definitely has done his research and put into book form an entertaining way to recall information that to too many students sometimes seems arbitrary or unrelated to the elements they are learning about in the Chemistry books. I highly recommend it based on my daughter’s reaction to it.
I hope that you are having a good evening. I am going to sign off now and just enjoy listening to some U2 while the kids finish up their filmmaking class. It is nice to have a little “downtime” !
Oh, and here are some other blogs that you just might enjoy visiting:
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Teresa- you are always so encouraging! Thank you
I always enjoy reading the excerpts at your blog. They do make us want to read more!
You sound like a very committed home school mom. I applaud you!