Learning how to read the Charlotte Mason way...

Me, that is!....the kids have been reading small portions of good books, and then stopping to reflect and retell what they remember or thought was interesting ever since I started reading about Charlotte Mason's homeschooling methods several years ago.

When we weren't consistent, it was primarily because it was such an odd shift in how I was accustomed to reading.

 Here I must confess that I am a recovering book "gulper" who went through life LOVING books, but going about them in a very wasteful way. If they were fiction, I read them so fast, that within 12 hours, all I was left with was a pleasant warm feeling (and a pile of undone responsibilities. :) If it was for school, I sufficiently memorized what I needed to to make an excellent grade on the upcoming exam and then effectively cleared my short term memory to "make room" for the next term's reading.

My husband was the one who first encouraged me to "savour" a book, mostly because he enjoyed talking through a book we were reading. My self-control in that area was so bad, that really the only way we could discuss a book as we went through it was if I read it aloud to him. Left to my own devises, I could skim the whole thing in two days; but we would miss out on getting to think it through.

Now as a homeschool mama, I am trying to practice what I preach...and you'll NEVER guess what I found out! It's actually FUN to let a book's words soak in slow, to think about an idea, or a word picture, until you've weighed it, and lived it out in your mind!  (This sounds obvious, if not simply sarcastic now, but I remember in the beginning, I was NOT convinced that it could be as enjoyable to read this way.)

Besides still being enjoyable, I also found out that I am now able to make connections and contrasts between things that I am reading. See my post here to listen in on what Charlotte Mason and Tedd Tripp taught me one evening. :)

I still get lazy and read without thinking sometimes, usually when I am reading as a time-wasting activity instead of reading intentionally.  I still don't always make time to sit down and discuss what I've read, (either in person or print). But I'm learning. I'm learning that this way of getting living ideas from a printed page is really important; not only for my kids, but for their mama, too.

Ferns, Fiddleheads, and other Fun. :)

Being from the DRY part of Texas, ferns were not part of the natural world I learned about as a kid.

(Mesquite blossoms or cactus wrens, yes. Ferns, not so much. :)

That makes it all the more fun that our kitchen window looks like this:

Our nature "walk" this time looked more like a nature scavenger hunt. After we talked about ferns just enough to be able to find them, the kids went off to count how many, and of how many different kinds they could find in our yard. They came up with I think 23 plants, of 3 distinct varieties! Along side the tally lists of ferns they found, several of of sketched for a while in the Nature Notebooks. Incidentally, I have really enjoyed having my own book to sketch in. It is really the only time I sit down and try to draw.

They also counted the new, uncurling fronds, commonly called fiddleheads, and examined the undersides of leaves to see which had fruit dots for spores to come out. We found one frond that looked like we could collect spores from, so we set it on a white sheet of paper for a few days; it was pretty fascinating to see the print the fallen spores left. :)

This study made for an easy introduction of where leaves are attached to a stem. (Coming off in pairs, or alternating). It was also good to stop and count just how many separate "unfoldings" the frond had to go through before it was all the way opened.

This term we have been trying to do nature study every Wednesday. Sometimes it is a large part of the morning; most times it is just a chance to get outside together. Last time we just went for a walk I asked the kids to try to notice one thing growing, one thing moving, and one thing they had never noticed before. It's not always some amazing learning experience, but it IS time scheduled in to stop and smell the roses. (or pond scum, or what have you.) We've enjoyed having it every Wednesday for a couple of reasons. First, I have found that when I didn't pick a specific day of the week, I would inevitably push it off to the infamous "manana" which never actually comes.

Second, Wild Things Wednesday is just fun to say. :)