Since it’s impossible to cover every aspect of a subject each week, questions arise in our listeners’ minds. Many of you are sending us your questions and in this podcast we attempt to thoroughly answer a few of these based on the wisdom of Charlotte Mason and our experience in using her method. This is the first of several sporadic Q&A sessions we will post.
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Thank you for your thoughts! I can't wait to peek at the links in the show notes! 🙂
Thank you!!! I so appreciate your taking the time to answer my question so thoughtfully! Starting Monday, math will be timed, and then put away. It feels so obvious now that you've said it, sort of like Donatello's dome 🙂 I am energized and excited to try this. Bless you all!
Blessings be upon you as you tackle Math this week! We pray it helps!
There are lots this time, Amy! (Of course, since we can never have too many books, we need lots of places to find them) And our quarterly book sale update was postponed until February 1st over at LBL, because I'm revamping our listings to include photos!
-Emily
I have been enjoying all your podcasts and your book recommendations. I read the intro to Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain and was inspired, and tonight I have put 5 of the books Liz challenged us to read for 10 minutes on hold at my library. I also bought one for my kindle. Thanks for sharing all your knowlege and experience. I have been "catching up" as I only started listening last month. 🙂
RuthAnn,
Oh, I am so excited that you are taking the challenge. Which five? Let me know what you think. I should put up a new challenge for 2016. Glad you are enjoying the podcasts and so glad to have you joining the conversation–every good conversation needs listeners.
-Liz
Liz, I started Understood Betsy tonight. I have read 2 chapters already. What a great book! I can't believe I haven't read this one before. I have Hard Times, Last Child in the Woods, The Shallows, and Of Other Worlds coming from the library. Am I supposed to rotate through the books? For example, I read Understood Betsy today, then I will read Hard Times for 10 minutes tomorrow and then The Shallows for 10 minutes the next day, and so on. Is that the idea? Thanks for the challenge. I definitely needed to invest in some "mother culture".
Good choices. It's fine to read them one at a time, but they are all very different, so if you can manage to read two at a time, alternating, that would be good brain work. Have fun.
-Liz
I've been mulling over the third question and answer in this episode, the one about the 12 year old and his attention to his math work. I recently re-listened to it and in it I heard you discuss the importance of a timetable and doing math for a certain amount of time rather than a certain number of problems, both ideas that I understand and implement in my home.
However, I had a couple of questions. I also heard you mention that if the child is done early with his lesson, then he can have that extra few minutes to do something else before starting his next piece of work. If he is doing the lesson for time, how can he be done early? I can see how that could work with a reading and narration, but not so much with math. Does he actually have both a time and a set number of problems for the day's work?
Also, if the child's attention does wander and we take that as a sign that the lesson needs to be over, what do we do with the rest of the time in that time slot? If I move to the next thing, then I throw off the flow of the day (important when I am trying to coordinate between multiple students) and I effectively shorten that child's school day as well… and doesn't that mean I'm rewarding him for his inattention? Or do I have him sit there and do nothing while the clock runs out on the lesson time?
Thanks for all the work you are doing on this podcast!
Amber,
Concerning your math time management question, often it is not wise to begin a new concept toward the end of the lesson, so there might be a few minutes left over. In other words, 20 min. might have been spent finishing some problem work or hands-on work, and the child has grasped the lesson perfectly and needs no further time to practice. We do want to avoid drill for the sake of using up the time. That said, I have a few math biographies and sometimes give that for a few minutes to read at the end of a productive lesson while my attention is with another child.
Regarding attention, there are two ideas at play here. The first is a child wandering or dawdling. The best way to build the habit is to switch to another task. Do return to the lesson again by the end of the morning when it is possible to fit it in without disrupting the rest of the "flow"–and I do realize this can be challenging. The second consideration is that this can also be a discipline issue, a disobedience or disrespect. Sometimes I dismiss the child from the room who is disrupting others, but not to go play or do as he pleases, but to sit somewhere else; sometimes I make them sit without being able to do anything else for the rest of that lesson, or participate; sometimes I choose a different activity, perhaps copy work or an independent reading book, and when that subject comes up later in the morning, I return to the broken lesson. There are other possibilities too, but I hope this makes that answer on the podcast clearer.
-Liz
Yes, that helps, thanks!
Thank you for this, particularly the last bit. I’m glad to know that I’m actually doing a good thing by having more than one book going at once! I have never stopped reading but my reading sounds more like Nicole’s. I’ve been reading so much about certain topics related to my boys’ special needs and gut health that I’ve been pining for good fiction. I’ve resorted to old favorites because I can’t seem to find anything I enjoy. My current reading list is all non-fiction. Thanks so much for that blog post, Liz! There are some of my favorites on there but so many I’ve never read as well. Now to decide what to read first. And I hadn’t even thought about poetry. I’ve very much neglected that. I just love listening to your podcasts. It gives me so much hope that I can do this, do school in this way, by the grace of God.