It’s summer! Whether you follow a more traditional school schedule or school year-round, if you’re in the northern hemisphere, it’s time for some sun and hopefully some fun. In our season finale, Leah and Amy chat about what we do when we’re not doing school and how our children (not to mention ourselves) can find living ideas to grow and inspire wherever we live.
Don’t forget that our new self-paced course, Education is a Life is open for registration! It’s a great way to get in some mother culture over the summer.
Listen now, or scroll for show notes.
Surely, gentlemen, you do not suppose that a family party, the children, say, from fifteen downwards, can get in touch with such wide interests in the course of a six weeks’ holiday? I doubt if, even amongst ourselves, any but you, Mr. Meredith, and Mr. Clough, have this sort of grasp of historical and personal associations.
“We must leave that an open question, Mrs. Henderson; but what I do contend for is, that children have illimitable capacity for all knowledge which reaches them in some sort through the vehicle of the senses––what they see and delight in you may pin endless facts, innumerable associations, upon, and children have capacity for them all: nor will they ever treat you to lack-lustre eye and vacant countenance. Believe me ”tis their nature to’ hunger after knowledge as a labouring man hungers for his dinner; only, the thing must come in the first, the words which interpret it, in the second place.”
Charlotte Mason, Formation of Character
Our Plans for the Summer
[2:56] Leah takes a good long break from the end of May to the beginning of August.
[4:06] Leah plans to get back into the blogging habit. Follow her at https://mylittlerobins.com
[4:50] Sign up for Amy’s read along of Charlotte Mason’s third volume at https://aroundthethicket.com/newsletter.
What will your summer break look like?
[6:58] Amy is ok doing almost nothing school-wise.
[8:17] Timing our break to overlap with the local schools means that we can go at half place.
[9:04] Leah’s family likes having some structure, so we will do a morning basket.
[10:25] Even if we do nearly nothing, we still read aloud everyday after breakfast.
Living Ideas Over the Summer
[12:52] I think we often assume living ideas come from books and only books. While it’s true that in our children’s education, they will mostly come from books, but when we aren’t actively in “homeschool mode” children are still getting ideas from their surroundings, from nature, from special outings that might come up.
[17:03] I still feel that my kids are at an age where they don’t need a lot of explicit teaching at the expense of just enjoying the places we visit.
[23:00] Don’t try to turn your summer plans into a unit study.
[25:38] Summer is a time for masterly inactivity, to let children play and order their own days.
