Emme and I were about two months into her kindergarten year when we discovered the Charlotte Mason approach to learning, and from there, Amblesideonline.org. 

I have always been an avid reader, a lover of beautiful words, music, and art.  I wanted to instill in Emme the same thing, but I was worried that her schooling might become a bit one-sided. 

We started by incorporating bits and pieces of the CM approach and Ambleside to our more structured curriculum.  Looking back, I can't BELIEVE how many worksheets I made that poor girl do her first few months of school!  But I was new to homeschooling and even the CONCEPT of homeschooling, so I was just following the patterns which I had learned by attending public schools all my life. 

We began the change by reading books that were considered "living"  -- a big change from our masses of "twaddle" books we had been reading! 

Then we started a nightly snuggle/reading time.  This was a change that I made myself, as CM believed a child should be sitting in a chair, not fidgeting, paying close attention to what is being read.  I just wanted Emme to grow to love books, and that is exactly what this change brought about for us!

Next, I started to use famous art as the background on my computer.  Emme and I would talk about the art; the colors, the texture, the subject, and over a couple of weeks, she started picking out certain themes that certain artists used, either with the heaviness of their brush stroke, the shape of their context or the abundance of color used.  Of course this was all shared with me in the way of a then 5-year-old!

Over the months we started incorporating classical music (mostly Mozart) with our lessons, nature walks (ambles), notebooks, and finally some habit training ---- which is long overdue.  We put up several types of birdfeeders, follow flitting butterflies, scavenger for finds to put in our nature jar, and spend more time outdoors than we do sitting at the kitchen table. 

We still do math, religion, reading, copywork, narration, science, phonics, etc., but we use living books to answer questions, round out ideas, and broaden our scope. 

It's not the way for everyone, but for nature-loving, book-loving, art and music-loving people such as ourselves, it is the perfect match!

Here are a couple of pictures of our nature jar:

I read a quote this morning by William Ralph Inge which prompted this post:

"The aim of eductation is the knowledge not of facts but of values."

How very true.

Sherry