Kindergarten Charlotte Mason style...

Kindgergarten at our house was very simple.  The Charlotte Mason method doesn't require much formal "seat work" for children under about 6 or 7.  Instead it mostly requires reading aloud for short periods of time, listening to beautiful music, observing nature, and free play outdoors.  Discovery through the five senses is the very best way to allow a young child to learn at this age.

I kept "seat work" very low key in these early learning years, although I did like the Rod and Staff workbooks for young children.  They are called the Preschool Series ...one is Bible Pictures to Color, another one is Adventures with Books, Counting with Numbers, and several others.  These are very user friendly workbooks that little ones will enjoy the lessons of coloring, writing numbers, counting, cutting, pasting and such.  All of our children liked these very much and they are very inexpensive...about $2.35 each.  I also loved their wide-lined penmanship paper (with the center line).  

Keep lessons very short, about 10 minutes at a time.

In my humble opinion, I say just enjoy your little ones!  They are natural learners and their curiosity will teach them many lessons that a book can not.  Allow them to discovery naturally,  but give them time to "sit and do" tiny bits of "school work."    Children can count with dry beans or crayons,  sea shells or rocks, measure water in the sink (cup, pint, quart) or measure using the dry beans on a large cookie sheet (How many full cups go into the quart jar?).  

Let toys be of a minimum.  Instead, give them wooden blocks, sticks, small tools like shovels and rakes and brooms.  Allow them to discover that pine cones and rocks and shells are fascinating things to play with.  Bits of colored yarn or snippets of mother's scrap fabrics make playtime fun too.  Click Un-toys for an interesting downloadable PDF article.

Have plenty of paper and crayons on hand for creative drawing. Scissors, paper punches, rubber stamps and stickers are also fun for little children. It's fun to cut pictures from magazines and practice gluing them on paper to make interesting "posters."  Sometimes we made ABC books by cutting and gluing pictures that begin with each letter:  A - apple, ape, apron.   B - boy, banana, bucket.  C - camera, cow, cook. Save each page and staple them together with a homemade cover.  It will be fun for the child to review his letters with a book he made by himself.

Allow your child to "copy" words out of a book (just for fun) or draw his favorite pictures.  Give him many beautiful picture books to look at and let him "tell" the stories in his own words (he may say he's reading the book). And always be ready to read aloud to him on your lap. I like picture books with good stories.  Some favorites are:

Peter Rabbit and others by Beatrix Potter

Home for a Bunny and others by Margaret Wise Brown

The Lord is My Shepherd and others by Tasha Tudor

The Real Mother Goose

The Children's Book of Virtues by William Bennett

Wonders of Nature and others by Eloise Wilkin

Brambly Hedge books by Jill Barklem 

Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne

Together with your child, collect bugs or flowers,  leaves or rocks. Find out their names.  Help the child to hear the wind in the trees or the owl in the night. Point to the changing color of the leaves. Tickle his nose with the chicken's feather or let the woolly bear caterpillar crawl on his arm.  Watch the ants on an ant hill work.  Set up bird feeders in your backyard and learn the names of each visitor.  EXPERIENCE nature together.

 I used to take "dictation" from my little ones and make books for them about different things that they were interested in.  One year my 6 year-old son wanted me to read about knights, castles, horses, and tournaments and so we did.  Then we made a little book with his re-tellings of these stories.  He drew and colored pictures of horses and shields to go with his words, and we just stapled them together into a very simple book with a cover made of a coloring page he did.  He thought these books were real treasures and even gave some of them away to favorite people as gifts!!  

Make things out of clay or playdough. Here is a very easy recipe that your young child can make. 

Homemade Playdough

2 cups flour, 1/2 cup salt and about 1 cup water. Mix flour and salt. Add water gradually to make a smooth stiff dough. You may add food coloring and/or mint flavoring for smell along with the water.  Store in air tight containers or in food storage bags.

Allow your children to bake with you too. They can measure up the cup of flour or sugar. My children always enjoyed tapping the eggs on the counter and then handing them to me to break open and dump into the bowl. On holidays, we always made sugar cookies and used our cookie cutters, so there was much rolling out of dough, cutting, and decorating to be done with frosting and colored sugars. Children love doing this and they can say proudly, "I helped!"

Give children the opportunity to work with you. A small child can be taught to tidy up his room by putting all the Legos in the box or by picking up the dirty socks and dumping them into the laundry basket. He can learn to dust or spray and wipe door handles with a cloth. Teach him to fold washcloths in half and in half again (fractions) or match socks for you. Your child can learn to set the table at a very young age.  A small child can take care of a pet. He can learn to  feed the dog daily, brush its coat, or play fetch with him. Children enjoy working in the garden also -- digging, dropping in seeds, and pulling up weeds to put in their own buckets.

Sing with your child! Even if you're a little off-key, he'll never notice and will be glad that together you are making joyful sounds! Give him happy songs like Whistle While You Work, Yankee Doodle, Skip To My Lou, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and others.  Also play those beautiful classics like Vivaldi:  The Four Seasons or Brahams at Bedtime.

There are many music CDs of classical collections put together especially for young children

One of the most important things I feel we need to give our young children, is plenty of room to imagine,  and that doesn't come from always giving an assignment or lesson,  but rather by giving free time to think on their own -- time to romp in the yard, play "fort" under the kitchen table, make airplanes with Legos, play tea party with Dolly. Even when they are much older, time for solitude is vital.  Enjoy your little blessings!  Letting them know that they are loved by you and by God builds great confidence in your children and gives them reason to be and do their best.

For additional information on Kindergarten Charlotte Mason style, click Ambleside.

Little Boys - playing in the dirt won't hurt

click image to enlarge

Several years ago I clipped this article from a newspaper or magazine or something.  I'm not sure what its origins were really.  But the message was strong and clear and I knew I would refer to it again and again since I, myself, have four boys and just one daughter.  The article puts it well.  Young boys just don't always fit well intothe mold of a school desk and their hands don't conform well to a pencil and paper.  My boys could make a pencil do many things well except do what it was intended.  A pencil could become a dart aimed at a brother or sister or the dog.  It could become a SCUD missile complete with sound effects.  It could be used to launch rubber bands across the room or to dip wax from the candle in the middle of the dining table.  Once dipped in wax, the pencil could easily be lit on fire.  So many, many things that pencils could do, but to become a writing utensil in the hand of a boy and make it write legibly and intelligently was a most difficult task.  The darn thing would drop instantly out of the

hand, bounce on the floor, and roll off somewhere never to be found that day.  The lead would mysteriously break moments after touching the paper and there would be no sharpener to be found.  Even a mechanical pencil could be made to do many of the same tricks that a wooden one could do and it could disappear and lose it's lead just as easily too.

What's a mom to do when her little boys can't sit still?  I say, work with the wiggle!  That's right.  Let them wiggle and squirm and fiddle around while you read aloud from Rifles for Watie.  Let them build Lego cars and trucks or stack blocks or play Lincoln Logs while you read from Milne's Winnie the Pooh.  I promise (I really do) that your little boys are paying attention.  It may not look like they are listening or soaking anything up, but they are.  Try this experiment and see if I'm right.  When you are in the midst of reading aloud and they are quietly playing , stop reading in mid-sentence.  See if they notice.  (they will.)  Then ask a question about the story, and I'll bet you one of your many mother's hats that they will be able to answer you.  Try it and see if I'm right.

Boys, especially little boys, really must be allowed to wiggle and move and be busy with their hands while they learn.  School desks are mere traps to boys and they don't allow for much freedom other than lifting the lid for a pair of scissors with which to cut the braids of the girl in front of him.  One thing I have learned is that all children, especially boys, do well with short lessons when it comes to school-ish things.  Did you know that the first 10 minutes of any presentation or speech is the most listened to and the most absorbed?  So with a child, a 15 or 20 minute lesson in handwriting or math is plenty if you wish to capture their attention and have them truly learn.  More time than that, and their eyes begin to wander out the window and to the tree fort where the pirates are just now sailing alongside the cargo ship....and you've lost them.  You might as well open the door and set them free to sail.

The other thing I've learned about boys is that they need lots and lots of time outdoors -- thinking their own thoughts, arranging their own battles with the Redcoats, hunting for skunks, hammering nails into another section of the tree fort.  It all goes right along with their education.  Without a hefty amount of free play time and work time, I don't think their brains function right, and they certainly have far too much energy to sit still for long if they aren't allowed to burn it off.  One of my favorite energy burners that often took place when I was at my wits end was laps around the house.  No matter the weather, I'd send them all out the door to take laps.  I designated the number and counted the laps off as they ran past the picture window.  It always seemed to fix the problem and give their brains some added energy for the task at hand.  Plus it was fun!  I'm no psychologist or child expert, but from my point of view, kids need wiggle room, fresh air, and time to romp every bit as much as they need pencils and books.