I decided to take the children on a walk over to our local library this afternoon. We have about 90 minutes in between lunch and naptime, and sometimes it can get dicey in there, so since the weather was nice I thought a little trip would be great, and it was.

It's been SO hot here of course, but we've had rain the past couple days and today it was only 85 or so. I have so missed being outside with the children, but we've mainly stayed indoors (except for our backyard) because of the heat and the sheer number of people I have to lug around anywhere.  So our walk and library trip was great. We are blessed to live only 2 blocks from the library! We live in a small town so our library is very tiny, but it's so great! They have a pet lizard that the children stared and stared at for about 20 minutes while I was finding some books. They also have frogs and snakes in aquariums and lots of little children's areas.

I checked out 10 books, and have about 10 more on Inter Library Loan request or requested from another local library. I've been reading The Well Trained Mind and getting really passionate about starting the children on a Classical path of education, so we checked out several "living" books, including Bruce Coville's version of Hamlet and Rosemary Sutcliff's version of the Iliad, both came highly recommended to start children into some of the "Great Books." It will be fun to try this on for size and I just love reading with the children.

Right now the older 2 are listening to the classic, unabridged Winnie the Pooh, and I also checked out the unabridged The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I'm planning on having them listen to the Bible or unabridged classics on CD during rest time, and doing lots of read alouds throughout the day to fill them up with lots of good literature. I have always subscribed to the Living Books theory of education and I'm excited to have more of a guide in that with Charlotte Mason's resources, the Well Trained Mind, and the Bluedorn's resources on Teaching the Trivium. These are the educational philosophies that have stood out to me the most over the years and I'm excited to delve more deeply into this as the children get older.

Posted by HomeofLove4Him

Hey!

Just wanted to say that we, too, had looked into TWTM and it made so much sense. But, I wanted to point out that Charlotte Mason is a different method from Classical Education. There is some overlap, yes...but they really are two different methods.

We were looking into doing Classical Education ala TWTM, until I realized that I would still have to supplement in some crucial areas (phonics/reading and arithmetic). That led me to decide to stick with Abeka. ;)