Sunday, August 24, 2008

Charlotte Mason

Funny, my very first post would be about a subject I know absolutely nothing about. In my free time, I am often reading other blogs or doing research on different curriculums. I happened to come across one referred to as the Charlotte Mason curriculum. One thing I did like was this idea of installing habits in your children. The websitehttp://simplycharlottemason.com/ mentions that the habits are addressed one at a time for 4-6 weeks. Habits include cleanliness, courtesy, gentleness, and kindness. I think these are important lessons for the young child. They do have curriculums available. What I tend to do is take what I am interested in and combine them all together so that it fits for my interests and family. Since my little girl is only 2, I'm not as interested in activities for older children. Where my blog comes in handy is for parents of other toddlers. Anyway, for a 3 year old (we tend to go with 3 year old level activities a lot) the curriculum consists of the following: habits training, outdoor free play, read alouds, learning letter names and sounds, tracing upper case letters in sand or rice, and rote counting. Probably my favorite part of this tradition is handicrafts. To study art, the site recommends displaying large prints of great artists one at a time. To study music, they recommend great works be played during quiet and meal times. The recommend reading aloud poetry once a week. This is a religious based program, so they recommend reading the great stories. Anyway, it really didn't add that much information but I am interested in the idea of adding handicrafts.

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