Throughout the last 18 years of homeschooling, we are constantly changing and refining the way we do our learning and homeschooling.  I first began teaching my oldest son with textbooks and workbooks.  Over the years, however, we began doing less and less workbooks and many more hands-on projects and literature studies.  I began seeing that children learn more with “living books” and when they can see, hear, and touch what they are learning.  Each time I abolish another textbook and workbook, two things happen.  1 - My children cheer!  2 - We begin having much less stress in our homeschooling and much more joy in learning. 

I used to shun the Charlotte Mason style of learning, but over time, I find myself really appreciating her ideas about what a child’s education should consist of.  It makes a lot of sense and I find it working for almost all of my children.  (Please note that I said “most” of my children.  I have one child that would prefer the textbook/workbook style of learning.  However, the other 7 prefer learning through literature, hands-on projects, and real-life experiences.)  Let me introduce you to Charlotte Mason.  She was an educator in the 1800’s, in England, who had very strong ideas of what a child’s education should and should not look like.  She was appalled by how much time was wasted with busywork.  Charlotte believed that learning should be exciting and should cause the child to naturally love learning.  Work should be able to be done in a relatively short amount of time. 

Much of the learning can be done through the reading of living books, art and nature appreciation,  copywork, dictation, notebooking, and narration.  I will admit - I balked at first at the idea that one doesn’t need textbooks and workbooks to teach a child.  However, during the last few years, I have seen our children learn much more as we slowly incorpoate Charlotte’s learning methods.  I’ll try to show you how we use the various methods in our home.

Copywork:  Copywork is not the practice of one’s handwriting.  Instead, it involves copying whatever you place before the child so that every detail in capitalization, grammar, punctuation, and spelling is correct.  This can be done using copywork books (sold in our store), language lessons, or with your own pieces of literature.  In our home, we use this particularly while working on our language arts workbook.  We absolutely love Language Lessons by Sandi Queen (sold separately in our bookstore, www.godseternalmasterpiece.com).  The lessons are short and only take 10-15 minutes to do.  The children practice copying various words, sentences, poems, speeches, etc.  After they believe they’ve perfectly copied their assignment, they bring it to me to check.  If there is even one error, they have to do it again.  It only takes a day or two, and the kids make absolutely sure the work is correct before they bring it to me!  Capitalization, punctuation, and grammar rules are memorized quickly, in a natural way, as a result of copywork.  Most of my kids also learn correct spelling as a result, also.  However, I will say that I have one child that does not learn spelling well from copywork.  He still needs to be reminded of the phonetical and spelling rules.  Therefore, I use “The Natural Speller” with him (also sold in our God’s Eternal Masterpiece bookstore).  It is for grades 1-12 and reinforces all the spelling rules as he moves from grade to grade.  We also use copywork for math facts.  Instead of just using boring flash cards and drilling the kids non-stop, we let them copy the math facts.  That way it’s drilled into their heads while they are copying the facts.  They learn the correct answers quite easily, it seems.

Living Books:  Living books are books that bring any subject, character, and time period to life.  Historical fiction, great biographies, many of the character-building books from the early 1900’s, and more can be included.   Many of our favorite living books include Lamplighter Publishing books, historical books by Emma Leslie, Jotham’s Journey (and the other books in the series), and The Testimony of Charlie Coulson.  (These books are all available on our website, www.godseternalmasterpiece.com).  Kids can learn facts from a textbook, but they quickly forget them.  Read a well-written book from the time period you are studying, and the facts and characters come alive, thus sticking in a child’s memory forever.  When we are reading a great book, many times our kids will run to the internet to look up even more information about that subject.  They will also ask to do crafts or field trips based on what they’ve learned from the literature.  Their love for learning has been fanned by spending time reading a good book with mom!  I enjoy the fact that I can teach children of all ages can learn from the same book I’m reading to them.  I don’t have to be stressed out trying to teach each grade level textbook to each child separately this way.  No advance preparation is needed on my part. 

Narration: Narration is simply having the child tell what he or she has learned.  A child enjoys this much more than filling out blanks in a workbook just so that mom can know what he has comprehended.  It’s so simple to do.  In our home, after reading a chapter of a book, I’ll simply ask who can tell me what they enjoyed about the book.  I also might send a younger child to a teenager to tell them what the book was about.  The little ones love to go on and on about every little detail of the book.  A favorite is when daddy comes home from work.  The kids love to run to daddy to tell them about what they learned in school that day.  Daddy gets to be included in the day, that way, and the kids are reiterating the knowledge they’ve gained from good books.  Sometimes, daddy will ask more questions, which gets them thinking and analyzing even more. 

Dictation:  Dictation is the toughest for the kids, but still workable since it’s done in short spurts.  I usually use it basically for my high school kids.  Instead of copying various pieces of speeches, poems, etc., I read it to the child.  They write it down and pay close attention to the various rules of grammar, punctuation, capitalization, spelling, etc.   This helps the teens to become exact in their writing skills.

Notebooking:  Notebooking looks different to different people.  My high school daughter, Janette, learns best when she is putting everything she learns into a scrapbook form.  She loves using Apologia science and the corresponding notebooks for that very reason.  Reports or small paragraphs are written and placed in a fun way into a colorful scrapbook/notebook.  Extra features are added to make it a keepsake.  My older elementary children enjoy making simple notebooks with facts, maps, and pictures while I am reading science or historical novels to them.  It keeps their hands busy while they are listening and assimilating what I’m reading to them.  Our preschoolers like making simple books out of colored paper with stickers and markers.  They draw pictures of what they hear us reading about.  As they explain their pictures to us, I’m always amazed at what all they’ve picked up on.  Notebooks and journals are also used when we go on nature hikes in our woods or in state parks.  The kids find all sorts of interesting clues about various plants or animals which they then write about or draw.  When they get home, they pull out the nature books so they can add extra bits of facts to each notebook page.  (Nature hikes are also great for collecting rocks, leaves and flowers (for pressing and identifying), etc.) 

I hope you’ve gotten a glimpse what our homeschool looks like now.  We do still use some textbooks - like for math.  However, even in math - I’m learning to do things with a more laid-back approach.  We’ll discuss that another time.  If you yearn to enjoy homeschooling more, I urge you to consider looking at the literature approach, the unit-study approach, or the Charlotte Mason approach to learn instead of using just textbooks and workbooks like the government schools do.  You might be surprised at how enjoyable learning truly can be!

Becky - God’s Eternal Masterpiece