A Day In the Life: Secular Almost Charlotte Mason

After pizza tonight, it was time for official homeschooling. I pulled up a picture of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers for picture study.  S had read a children’s biography on Van Gogh the week before last. She had actually read the book a few years ago, but since it can be good to learn about people more than once we are having Van Gogh as our artist once again - especially since we already owned the book and could save money this way.    For picture study, I pulled up the picture of Sunflowers that I found online. She looked at the picture for about a minute, and then described it without looking at it.  We had previously done the same thing for Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”  She saw “Starry Night” tonight as well, but that was just to be reminded of the painting. There was no describing “Starry Night” tonight.  I had played Don McLean’s “Vincent” for the past couple of days for her during picture study.  It’s a beautiful song, but I think I had better stop before she grows tired of it.  Here is the song:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxHnRfhDmrk

                After picture study, I pulled up a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “From A Railway Carriage.” S read the poem aloud and then I read it to her.  She will continue to read this poem throughout the week.

                She had already done some of her reading earlier today without being asked. She said that she had been bored, so she read!  I asked her if she would do a written narration to go along with what she had read and she happily obliged. She typed her narration while I put her little brother to bed.               

                For math, I wrote out some addition problems for her to work on in her notebook.  She did fairly well with those.  She knew how to work through them.    She doesn’t speed through math, but her progress is consistent.  She didn’t use any manipulatives or drawings for these problems.  The purpose was to have her work through her calculations and to keep up her skills in addition.  She had been working on multiplication a lot lately, so I thought it would be best to do some addition work again.

                    For tonight, S has covered art appreciation (aka picture study), poetry, literature, writing, and math.  It does not seem like a lot, but I reflect on the quality of what she is learning.  I also know from previous experience that while our days may not seem that full, by the end of the year, she will have covered more subjects and have a variety of artistic and poetic examples listed in her log.