Charlotte Mason

These past several months I've had fun researching homeschooling styles and trying to figure out our own.  I've been especially drawn to some Charlotte Mason ideas.  (She was a school teacher in England in the 19th century, I think)  Her style of schooling centers on using "living books" rather than text books, having children do "narrations" which are basically oral or written summaries of what they've read.  She also thought children should have shorter lessons in the morning, and have plenty of time in the afternoons to be outdoors, do "handicrafts," and use their imaginations.  There are a lot more specifics, but I've been trying out some of these methods this summer to see how it's gone.  We went on some nature hikes and worked in our nature journals, drawing some of the things we saw.  (A highlight was seeing two deer very close by in the same afternoon.)  We were already doing our school in the mornings, and not in the afternoons, but I was feeling guilty about that.  And I tried out narrating with Z.  It bombed at first.  I had her narrate back a chapter at a time in the book we were reading.  She didn't know what to say, she didn't want to say anything.  It seemed to suck the joy out of reading.  I talked with Jomo and he thought it sounded pointless, at least to her.  So I waited awhile and gave it a try again, this time using Aesop's Fables, as suggested by many CMers.  And I gave Z a project with it: to make her own version of the fables together in a book to read to her younger siblings.  Well, she absolutely loves it, and is asking to do Aesop at other times.  She tells the story back to me as I type what she says, then we print it out and she illustrates it.  The point of narration, by the way, is that the student does the mental work of summarizing what she's heard and learning to communicate that information.  So anyway, I'm not an all-out CMer.  There are some ideas I like, and other things aren't as important to me.  But I'm enjoying what we're trying.