charlotte mason – Page 3 – Pollywog's Place Blog

It’s that time of year again for us… time to get the next school year planned out. We finished up our 2022-2023 school year back in April and I’ve been busy gathering supplies and making schedules as I coordinate with everyone for vacations, holidays, and special trips that we have planned.

Last year was a bit of a whirlwind as everyone got readjusted to life at home. We also had another little one join us mid-year and that made things very interesting and kept me on my toes… he will be with us again this year so we can’t wait to see what the year will hold for everyone.

It is SO TEMPTING to take a few months off to just focus on this house but I know from past experience that this doesn’t go well and that it takes FOREVER to get a couple of the kids back into the school routine. You can read more about last year’s curriculum and routines HERE.

We had switched to Living Education Books from Master Books for our Language Arts and Math and we absolutely loved them but I decided to go back to some of our oldies but goodies books that we already had on hand for this year. We still have the Living Books and I may decide to switch back but I really wanted to try to simplify things just a bit. I also found some great workbooks to go along with these older books so I’m curious to see how they work out. If you want to see how we liked our curriculum from last year then check out this post HERE.

One of the biggest changes will be that little Ma’am will be joining us at the table for some of the lessons that she can participate in… she loves school and we try to include her as much as we can. I also have another post with activities that we use for little miss last year.

I’m also super excited to be using more of a Charlotte Mason-style approach this year. It’ll be interesting to see how everything plays out and how the kids react to this new method of learning. You can look up Simply Charlotte Mason on YouTube for lots of helpful information or check out their site for TONS of FREE resources and helpful tips! I’ve recently some more wonderful FREE resources at DonPotter.net.

Note: I’ve had to recently update this post to include this wonderful FREE site of Charlotte Mason-style curriculum lesson plans for grades K-5… go check it out HERE!

We have a wonderful all-in-one printer that we use to make copies of the work so that we can use/reuse the books/materials multiple times which helps to cut down on the cost of books every year. Our old one lasted for several years so we just bought an updated one to replace it. We also try to stock up on school supplies when they go on sale and/or on school tax holidays to help save money. Check out this post for essential supplies.

Please note that it is not necessary to purchase any of these materials to give your child/children a good education. We happen to have a lot of them on hand already and many of these we have been able to find for FREE or discounted prices online or on our local FB groups. You can also find lots of used books on eBay, thrift books, and Amazon. Your local library often has many books on various subjects that you can use for lessons too!

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When I first began homeschooling I really didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I had seen a few homeschooling families on TV shows and they pretty much did ‘school at home’ so that was what I tried to recreate in my home… I failed miserably.

I was getting stressed and we did not have a great environment for learning… it wasn’t what I had envisioned at all and I was so frustrated! I was struggling and beginning to doubt that this was really the best thing for our family at that time.

It was then that I found the Easy Peasy All-in-one Homeschool site… I fell in love instantly and so did my kiddos. The site has been through several changes since then but we always seem to fall back to that when we are stuck or feeling overwhelmed! We are still using it now for some independent learning and the kids all enjoy working on their lessons without being completely dependent on the internet for our lessons.

I also began researching other methods and have always been drawn toward the Montessori and Charlotte Mason styles. I have always considered our style to be a bit relaxed but over the past two years we’ve had a different kind of style… I’m not sure what you would call this but it definitely hasn’t been the most enjoyable learning environment. Sure, some parts are super exciting but others are lacking and seem extremely boring. More Montessori links HERE.

I’ve been wanting to make some changes so I’ve been going back through some of our past lessons and trying to take notes on what we really enjoyed and what we didn’t. I’ve also asked the kids what things they remember about the past few years of school and what they remembered and enjoyed. Using this information I have been putting together some notes on things we want to try again or try to incorporate into our school days.

In addition to the Easy Peasy site, I have been going back to the Simply Charlotte Mason site and checking out all of the FREE resources that they have. I plan to incorporate more of these principles into our daily routines to see if we can find that happy place we had before. We really love being able to combine as many subjects as possible and the kids seem to enjoy this method more as well. I’m hoping that this may also help some of the kids with the adjustments to our new living arrangements by making them feel more like a team… this would alleviate so much of the daily stress in our home and maybe help lower my blood pressure a little!

I know a lot has changed since we began homeschooling and a lot of things have changed with our family in the past couple of years. Nothing ever stays the same so we need to continue to adapt to these changes… the same thing happens in every area of our lives so it is important to continually reevaluate our situations and make changes when they are needed

What are some changes you would like to make in your homeschool?