First, if I may just mention, there is a facebookathon for friends of a friend. They are trying to get together the funds to bring a kid home from Ethiopia. For these folks, $5.00 here, $10.00 there can make a big difference, and there are easy buttons to use your card so it's really easy to pass them on a couple bucks. They also have t-shirts and stuff like that.. So if you're so inclind, I just thought I'd pass that on...

Anyway, even though I've gone through a lot of homeschooling methods I find the one that resonates with me most is the Charlotte Mason method. I didn't do this one with my older two (why is it that what you're looking for is always in the last place you look? One of the great mysteries of the universe..), I'm incorporating it more with my middle girls, and starting out with it with my boys. I have never read the full Charlotte Mason series but I have read some other books that summarize her take on education, my favorite being the Karen Andeola's Charlotte Mason Companion. I use Ambleside Online a lot and I am on their mailing list. Though I do not follow it the way some people do. I do not follow the years exactly because there are some books that I just don't care to bother with, some that may be in a previous year (to where my child is) that I don't want them to miss, etc. Also, they tend to have a lot of books going at one time, and I would rather to have maybe two or three books, but then read more of them in a day and finish them faster.

The thing with Charlotte Mason that I especially like to emphasize is the narration. I find having a child repeat back to me the contents of a chapter (or for younger children a page or a paragraph) gives me a much better picture about what that child got out of that chapter than having them answer key questions. In times past I put one of Owen's narrations here.  He enjoys narration and took to it like a duck to water.

In the books I have going at any given time I usually chose the one I feel is most important at the moment and do narrations out of that one. I don't have the boys do one everyday. (They are still working directly with me, the girls are more independent.) For example we recently read Where Do You Think You're Going Christopher Columbus? by Jean Fritz. One day I might copy a picture from the book, the next have them narrate a paragraph. The next day label a map, the next day narrate a paragraph. All of these I put together in one of those little paper notebooks that use brad clips to keep things in. Each boy has his own little book. They love having their own book that they made and get them out and look at them on their own. Which means the book doesn't last long sometimes. It's then I pause and ask myself, "What is the goal. That we have memorials of all their schoolwork? Or that they enjoy learning, indulge their curiosity in good ways, etc." So I leave them be. But I should probably put up a few, just for memory sake.

Time to make breakfast...