I did not realize that a fallout of COVID-19 was limited bike supply. Both Anne and Clare had outgrown their bicycles. Clare needed at 16-inch bike. While we had a couple of 18-inch bikes lying around, we did not have a 16-inch. Clare needed at 20-inch bike, which we have never owned, because Meg went straight from an 18-inch to a 24-inch (she had a serious growth spurt that year). 

I really do not like assembling bikes, so I gathered my courage to go to Walmart to buy already-assembled bikes. I was surprised to see there were no bicycles displayed outside the store as there normally are. I was even more surprised to find the bike display area inside nearly empty. The only bikes in the store were 12-inch Frozen II bikes. 

Okay. No big deal. I drove home and told the girls we would buy bikes online and I would toughen up and assemble them. We managed to find a very cute 16-inch bike for Anne. We even added a matching doll seat for the back, because she has always rigged up contraptions to the back of her bike to hold her stuffed animals and dolls. For example, in the picture below, she tied a box to her bike so she could be Doc McStuffins, giving medical treatment to her stuffed animals.

Clare's bike proved to be much more difficult. We checked both Walmart and Target's sites and 20-inch bikes were out of stock. We tried Amazon and the 20-inch bikes that were within a reasonable price range would not be shipped until well into August. On a whim, I checked Craigslist. Immediately, Clare spotted a Descendants-themed bike that she absolutely loved. I contacted the seller and by that evening, she had a new...well, new-to-us bike. The bike seems to be in great shape and I don't think Clare would have found one in the store or online that she like better. She likes that it is clearly a girl's bike, but is also a little edgy. 

So, Clare now has a bike. Meg already had a bike. And Anne's bike will be here in a few days. In the meantime, Anne will happily ride a scooter.

Do you want to know what it is like to have a Montessori teacher as a mother? I get emails from her with fantastic educational ideas. For example, she sent me an email last week with a link about smash painting, saying I had to try it. Do you know what smash painting involves? Paint and a hammer!!! Does that sound like  a great idea?

My response: We absolutely need to do that. 

The link my mom sent me was from Art Bar, which is an excellent resource. The idea of smash painting is that you put paint (preferably, very washable paint) onto a cotton round and place that on a larger piece of paper (we used 5x5 flat canvases). You then strike the cotton round with a hammer, mallet, meat tenderizer (that last one happens to be one of the things we had around the house). The paint then splashes and creates an abstract painting. You can overlap the colors, creating quite an artistic smash effect.

Of my three children, Clare had the most fun with this activity. She used the hammer to smash her paint and it splashed beautifully. She took great care choosing her colors to create a certain ambiance for each canvas.

Meg gave up on this activity quickly and opted for doing an abstract painting inside the house on her canvas (it was a hot day). She and Clare developed a painting technique where they squirt colors on the canvas and carefully swirl it around with a palette knife. Anne's approach to smash painting was more of a smash and smear technique. She then moved to painting mermaids. Hey, whatever. At least everyone was being creative. 

Here's a few photos of our smash paint adventures. 

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Since mid-March (the beginning of our social distancing), I have read 24 books. There's nothing like being stuck in your house to keep you working towards your Goodreads goal. 

While I've managed to read a lot of books, the books had to be carefully chosen. The world was stressful. I needed books that relieved that stress. There were times I was binging one series of books. There were times I needed something totally different. I tended towards books with humor, but even more towards books with strong, adventurous plots. 

Kate Morton

In March and April, I was consumed by gardens. When I searched for novels about gardens, Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden kept coming up. I am so glad it did. The book tells the story of young child who arrives in Australia aboard a ship without anyone accompanying her. She is taken in by a loving family, but later in her life she begins to explore her origins. After her death, her granddaughter must find the answers.

Kate Morton's approach in story telling is to mix a present day story with a mystery from the past. The interwoven plots keep the story moving and the reader thoroughly enthralled. I later read her book The Secret Keeper, which I enjoyed just as much. I look forward to reading many more Kate Morton books. 

Rhys Bowen: Her Royal Spyness Mysteries

I discovered the Royal Spyness series a couple of years ago while looking for Christmas mysteries. I happened upon The Twelve Clues of Christmas, the sixth book in the series, and I listened to the audiobook, which I greatly enjoyed it. After Christmas, I listened to books one and two in the series while walking our dog. During quarantine, when I was looking for something funny and entertaining, I remembered this series. I proceeded to listen to or read every remaining book in the series. 

Her Royal Spyness mystery series, set in the 1930s, is about Georgie, the daughter (and now sister) of a Duke and a cousin to the British royal family. Georgia is fictional, but many of the people she encounters are not. Queen Mary makes regular appearances as does the then-Prince of Wales (you know, the one who later renounces the throne) and, of course, Wallace Simpson. Georgie's mother is dating a prominent German, so there is an undercurrent of the Hitler threat which build as the books progress.

The series works because, while she is related to royalty, Georgie is completely relatable to the reader. She is completely broke, not to mention awkward and accident prone. 

I love the audiobooks for this series because the original narrator, Katherine Kellgren, provides the most amazing listening experience. She captures all the various accents: the aristocratic British accent, the cockney accent, a few Scottish accents, an Irish accent (for Georgie's love interest--Darcy O'Mara) and numerous International accents. Sadly, Ms. Kellgren passed away in 2018. I opted to read the books she did not narrate, because I just couldn't bear listening to someone else narrate the audiobook. 

While I recommend starting this series with book one and reading it in order, here are a few of my favorites.

Elizabeth Peters--The Amelia Peabody Series

I discovered the Amelia Peabody series a couple of summers ago and wrote about it here. I have continued to enjoy these books and I read a couple of the best books in the series during COVID-19. In fact, when I first became aware that we might find ourselves in lockdown, I quickly ordered these books so I could read them during that time. 

Like the Royal Spyness books, this series combines humor, mystery and history. Amelia Peabody works with her Egyptologist husband, Emerson, in the early twentieth century. Barbara Mertz (the real name of the author) had a PhD in Egyptology and fills her books with Ancient Egyptian facts as well as historical figures (Egyptologists) from the time period in which the Emersons work. 

But don't think these books are heavy historical reads. The books are so funny. Amelia's take on thing as well as her lack of self-awareness are fantastically humorous. There's a constant bemoaning by fans online that these books have not been turned into movies. The stories really would be excellent on film. 

Here are the Amelia Peabody books I read during quarantine.

While these were my "go to" pandemic authors, these books also make great summer reading. In fact, I recommend them for any time of year or during periods of any level of stress. 

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​I wasn't quite sure what our 4th would look like this year. Due to social distancing, the intense heat, and the fact that none of us have felt well the last couple of days (allergies!!!), I knew we'd be staying home and mostly inside. But that doesn't preclude fun. 

Our first activity was inspired by Hamilton. We had been listening to the music from Hamilton  all week (due to the Disney+ release on July 3) and we had discussed many aspects of the American Revolution and the early years of our country. I happened to see an escape room activity pack for the American Revolution on Teachers Pay Teachers and decided to go for it. I should note that this particular pack is designated for 7th through 10th graders, which is an older age bracket than any of my children. However, we live just outside of Washington, D.C., visit Mount Vernon regularly, vacation in Rhode Island and love Colonial Williamsburg, so my kids basically live and breathe all things early American History. This packet was very doable for them. 

There were seven puzzles for the girls to solve. Each puzzle would provide some sort of code. At the end, we used a QR code that came with the packet to enter the codes and check if we had in fact escaped King George. The tasks included jigsaw puzzles with hidden clues (which 6-year-old Anne was quite capable of helping with), identifying which soldiers should be quartered in which buildings, and figuring out the order of items subject to the stamp tax. When they were working on quartering soldiers, Meg immediately set up a chart to identify which groups were eliminated or required to be in certain structures. I was impressed. 

 Our next fun activity was tie dying shirts. Tie dyeing is apparently back in vogue these days. The girls have been begging to do it for months now, but kits were sold out everywhere. I did manage to get this kit from Amazon, though we did have to wait longer than normal for delivery. The kit and the last of our shirts to be dyed arrived the week of the 4th, so I decided we should use it as part of our celebrations.

The girls had been studying various techniques using YouTube videos as well as the booklet that came with our kit. While they had definite ideas, I reminded them this was our first time tie dyeing, so they shouldn't get too set on creating a particular look. After all, isn't the uniqueness of tie dye that it is not perfectly controlled. 

I gave each of the girls two shirts to dye. Prior to mixing our dye, they bunched the t-shirts and placed any rubber bands they wanted. I set up our foldable table and covered it carefully with garbage bags and paper towels. Then the girls went to work with the dye. Yikes!  

When they finished, we wrapped the shirts in plastic wrap to let the dye sit overnight

After a little rest, we then worked on our next activity--food. As I wrote about in an earlier post, we went to an orchard and had quite a few tart cherries and blueberries. Imagine my joy when I found a recipe that called for both. It gets better. The recipe came from a great book called Eat Your U.S. History Homework and it focused on the Colonial period. The dish was "Colonial Cherry-Berry Grunt"--apparently, "grunt" is a Colonial term for cobbler. While the recipe called for canned cherry pie filling, I used this recipe to turn our fresh cherries into homemade pie filling. 

Of course every good cobbler needs ice cream on top. Why use store bought ice cream when you make your kids shake cream in ziplock bags?! Eat Your U.S. History Homework also has a recipe for "Independence Ice Cream." Using a small ziplock bag of ingredients inside of a large ziplock bag of ice and rock salt, the girls tried to shake their way to ice cream. They eventually got tired and we resort to using a hand mixer. But regardless, we ended up with some very tasty ice cream.

For a perfect ending to our Fourth of July celebration, the girls caught fireflies in the yard. 

Such a fun holiday! 

As we all know, one of the great questions during the COVID-19 quarantine was how to cut our hair. I had to trim my husband's hair using borrowed clippers, which was a stressful moment for us all. Meg had her first deva cut a short time before quarantine. If you don't know, the deva cut is a cut specially designed for curls and it allowed her hair to grow out nicely during our months of isolation. By mere chance, Anne and I had our hair cut the day before our social distancing began. We went quite awhile before I had to trim both of our bangs. Clare's hair just grows, but she did bemoan not having her split ends trimmed. 

About a week ago, Anne declared, "My hair is too long. I need a haircut." Her hair is not particularly long, but she refuses to keep it pulled back in a ponytail during the heat of summer. While her sisters grow their hair long and experiment with braids and messy buns, Anne wants a chin-length bob that she never has to think about and barely needs to brush. 

I decided to make an appointment for both Anne and Clare and called our local Hair Cuttery. While we normally just walk in, I knew appointments were required during the reopening phases. To my amazement, we had to wait three days to get an appointment. 

We arrived the day of our appointment wearing masks. Our temperatures were taken and Anne was quickly taken back for her wash and cut. The problem with social distancing when a 6-year-old is getting her hair cut is the stylist frequently needs to ask mom questions. I would wait at the front of the store and then run back to the stylist when she needed to check length with me. Because Clare is older, there was much less back-and-forth with her. 

In the end, everyone was happy with their haircuts. The stylist did have to touch up Anne's cut a bit at the end, because a few hair had been stuck in her mask and, when they fell out, they were quite a bit longer than the rest of her hair. Oh, the problems of face masks. While Clare usually gets a deep conditioning treatment and a blow out (she enjoys seeing her how long her hair is straight), we kept our appointment short with just a wash and trim. We will save the fancy treatments for later phases. 

We are frequent visitors to Butler's Orchid in Germantown, Maryland. We have gone there to pick strawberries, blueberries, and apples. We have attended their spring festival and we have enjoyed their play equipment and slides. I am certain that COVID-19 has not been easy for family-run, pick-your-own orchards, such as Butler's. We were excited that orchards would be allowed to open and definitely wanted to show our support. We knew our experience this year would be quite different than most years, but it was still better to have part of the experience than miss it altogether. 

We began planning a trip to Butler's a few weeks ago, but initially had some trouble securing a reservation. If you plan to go to an orchard while COVID limitations are still in place, make sure you check their website beforehand to see if reservations are required. Butler's is so popular, it is necessary to know when reservation openings will be released so you can grab tickets before they run out. The tickets specify when you are allowed to enter the fields and you will have 90 minutes of picking time. 

We were finally able to secure reservations for July 1. As we prepared for the trip, I tried to explain to the girls that this visit would be different from previous visits so they wouldn't be too disappointed. At this time, the wonderful wooden play structures and huge slides (which the girls love) are still off limits. I wanted them to understand that before we arrived. 

While in the fields, everyone elementary-age and up must wear a mask. Again, I made sure the girls understood this requirement prior to our arrival. However, the masks were the most difficult part for my kids. While the temperature was quite mild for summer, wearing masks made it seem so much hotter. Because the fruit needs sun, there is not a tremendous amount of shade to be found in the fields. We would encourage the girls to sit under the shade of the cherry trees when they needed a break. 

Even with the limitations, our trip to the orchard provided some sense of normalcy to our lives. We usually pick fruit in the summer and here we were getting out of the house, driving to Maryland and picking blueberries and tart cherries. It felt nice to be outside in the fields and the girls even raced around a bit in an open field. They haven't had much opportunity to feel that type of exhaustion in awhile. The best part is we came home with nearly a gallon of wonderfully sweet blueberries.

Back in March, when we realized we were going to be stuck at home for awhile, I had great aspirations for all I would accomplish during this time at home. As I think back over the past few months, I can confirm that I had quite a few unproductive days. There were days when my greatest achievement was refreshing my Amazon Fresh page repeatedly, so I could snag a grocery delivery time when they were periodically released. At times our house was a mess. At times I spent days cleaning and throwing away things the girls had outgrown. While I didn't accomplish as much as I would have liked over the last few months trapped at home, I can say there were a few projects I am so happy to have completed during quarantine. 

Project Number 1

I refinished our dining room set. I inherited our dining room set from my grandmother and I love it dearly. However, years of small children abusing it had taken its toll. Worse than that, parts of the dining room set had been damaged by a water leak while in storage many years ago. In an effort to "make do," I chalk painted the set a few years ago while we were living at our previous house. At the time, I liked the look of the paint, but, once we moved and had a proper dining room, it just didn't look quite right. 

I began the process of refinishing the set in May. I hoped that I would be able to get away with just refinishing the table and bench with a color similar to what I had already done. After sanding and staining the bench and the table leaf, I realized I didn't like the stain color. To protect the table, I planned to used many coats of polyurethane. But when I added the polyurethane to the ebony stain that would match my previous painting, it took on a shiny 1980s look. Considering my dining room has a Jane Austen-like Regency feel, that was not going to work. 

I re-sanded and switch the stain color to dark walnut. Success!!! I loved the color, but once I put the table back in the dining room it became immediately evident that I would need to redo the sideboard, china cabinet and chairs. It took me a few weeks to be brave enough to tackle these elements in the room, but I finally managed to get there. I spent last weekend putting the finishing touches on the dining room.

Project Number 2

​About four years ago we were hit by a blizzard. During the week were stuck in the house, I felt very pioneerish and began a very basic quilt. I cut a bunch of four-inch squares from fabric I loved and slowly began piecing it together. We dug out of the blizzard and, for the most part, I stopped working on the quilt. 

Periodically, I would pull out the portions I had completed and would work on the quilt briefly, but I never picked up the same momentum--until quarantine. I sewed and sewed until I ran out of fabric. My biggest challenge was tracking down more fabric once I ran out. On one exciting day, I placed a curbside pickup order for fabric at a quilt store in Fairfax, Virginia, which is about twenty minutes away. The girls and I piled in the car for the first time in a month and, first, headed to Chick-fil-a for a curbside pickup there. We ate our lunch and drove to Fairfax, where I picked up my fabric. Yep, that was one of our most exciting days during early quarantine because we managed to leave the house (though not the car). 

With my new fabric, I set to work. I paused my quilting during the time I was refinishing the furniture for fear I would get furniture stain on the fabric. But I was finally able to finish my quilt top. So far, I've only finished the top and pieced it together with the batting and backing. I still have the long process of hand-quilting ahead of me. But I am thrilled that I have gotten to this point. 

Other Projects

In addition to these two major projects, I've done a few small things here and there. I painted our front foyer. I painted it the very same color it already was, but the walls do look much cleaner.

While it was still spring, the girls and I did a lot of gardening. We have managed to grow radishes from seeds. Our tomatoes should be red soon and it looks like we'll have some squash.

​One of my favorite additions to our garden this year was our ladybug tomato garden. We took an old tire swing and spray painted it red. However, prior to painting, Clare crafted circles out of painter's tape which we placed randomly over the tire. As you can see, a ladybug look emerged and we planted a tomato plant right in the middle of it. 

I also put together an arched trellis with the dream of roses growing over it. So far, all I've managed to do is keep our tiny little climbing rose plants alive. But considering Meg told me numerous times the roses were certainly dead, I'm pleased they are at least doing this well. Perhaps by next year we'll have something growing up the trellis. 

I am sure I could provide you with a long list of things I haven't done, but why be negative. I am quite happy to have these things to show for our time in quarantine. 

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Did you know that if you have a fourth grader, your family can get a free pass to the parks run by the National Parks Service? The NPS started the Every Kid Outdoors program to encourage families to explore the National Parks together. It is quite easy to secure your family's pass by going to the website linked here. 

While we have a fourth grader, we weren't sure we would be able to take advantage of the family pass due to COVID-19. The parks were closed for quite some time. Imagine my excitement when friends of ours sent us a picture taken from the Shenandoah National Park. The parks were opening in phases. No visitors centers. No picnic tables. No bathrooms. But some of the trails were open. 

We soon headed for the Shenandoah National Park ourselves. Here's a tip for you. There is an excellent app available to help navigate Shenandoah. However, it is important to download the map prior to going to the national park because cell service is spotty at best. 

Because we knew only a handful of trails were open at the time we went, we stopped at the first trail we came across. We soon discovered how fully entrenched in nature we were and began wondering if we would soon run across a bear. Everyone began reciting We're Going on a Bear Hunt. 

"We're going on a bear hunt. We're going to catch a big one. ...We're not scared."

"We can't go over it."

"We can't go under it."

Well, you get the idea. After wearing ourselves out on the trail, we enjoyed the views for awhile. 

Talking about views, we visited another National Park in our area for the purpose of taking in the view. Great Falls National Park is only about thirty minutes outside of D.C. and, oh, does it have some beautiful views. While the park does offer some wonderful trails, it is only a short walk to the various waterfall outlooks right beside the visitor center. The walks are easily manageable for just about everyone. ​The view is definitely photo-worthy and, while we weren't worried about bears, we did spot some amazing birds. 

I am definitely hoping we are able to use our family pass at a few more National Parks prior to it expiring. Meg and I dream of an RV trip out west to take in the National Parks. While that won't happen this year, we are just happy to take in whatever nature we can in this year of quarantine. 

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On the day we finished school this year, I began planning our curriculum for next year. I found these free printables from Homeschool 101 very useful for planning, particularly the Year-At-A-Glance for Multiple Kids printable. Here is what I have settled on.

Anne (First Grade)

To continue working on phonics, Anne will be using All About Reading and All About Spelling this year. The All About Reading curriculum has a nice balance of working with manipulatives, colorful worksheets (which Anne loves) and games to give students a strong foundation in reading. 

She will begin learning about grammar with English Lesson through Literature, Level A. With this curriculum, we will read Beatrix Potter books, Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, Edith Nesbit's Five Children and It and so much more. Using sentences from these works, we will talk about basic grammatical rules and she will practice writing short sentences. 

Anne will begin studying geography and history with Confessions of a Homeschooler's Road Trip USA. If she chooses, she will sit in with her sisters' history lessons, which I will discuss below. Similarly, she can sit on science lessons with her sisters (especially experiments), but it will be very advanced. Therefore, I will be doing a weekly first grade science lesson with her using Interactive Notebooks Science. 

For math, we will continue using Math-U-See. As I discussed in my previous post, Math-U-See uses manipulatives that allow children to fully understand what they are doing when they do a math problem. For each chapter, the creator of the program provides a short video lesson (4 to 5 minutes usually) and then the child works on the concept presented throughout the week until she has mastered it. 

Clare (5th Grade) and Meg (6th Grade)

Many of Clare and Meg's curriculum choices overlap and so it is easiest to present them together. For math, the girls will do different combinations of Math-U-See and Beast Academy. For Clare, her primary curriculum will be Math-U-See. Clare does best in math when she understands why certain problems are done certain ways. She won't just memorize a math fact or do a problem because you tell her that's how it is done. She will always ask, "But WHY does that work?" Math-U-See seems to answer her questions most effectively.

She, however, enjoys Beast Academy. This unusual curriculum uses a comic book with monsters to present math concepts and then works students through fun math problems and games to hammer the concept home. For Clare, we will use Beast Academy to supplement her work. Meg, on the other hand, responds best to Beast Academy. We will use that as her primary curriculum and supplement where needed with Math-U-See.  While it might be cost prohibitive to use Math-U-See as a supplement in most cases, I can use it for Meg because I have both Clare and eventually Anne who will be using that curriculum. 

For grammar, both Meg and Clare will use English Lesson through Literature, Level E. I'm very excited about the books we will be reading together this year. The curriculum works through several O. Henry stories as well as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Little Women and Around the World in Eight Days. While this curriculum uses those texts to then cover writing and grammar (and throws in art appreciation as well), we will supplement a bit. Independently, Meg and Clare will be working through a grade-level Spectrum Spelling workbook as well as IEW's Fix It! Grammar. Clare will also be working with me on IEW's U.S. History-based Writing Lessons, while Meg will be doing IEW's World History-based Writing Lessons. Would it be easier for us to do the same writing course? Yes. However, the girls can be strangely competitive when it comes to these types of things and I decided that it would be best to have them working on different topics, even if they are learning the same methods of writing. 

For history, we will be combining a few resources. As our basic textbook, we will be using different sections of The Good and the Beautiful's History 1 and History 2. We are using both volumes because we have already covered some of the time periods using different texts this past year. The Good and the Beautiful's curriculum is designed for homeschoolers who need to present the material to various age groups and then make it more or less difficult depending on the children's various ages. Therefore, Anne will be able to sit in with us for some of this. 

While The Good and the Beautiful curriculum will provide us with our major history facts, I love the historical time period book compilations from Beautiful Feet Books. Our "living books" (see my previous post discussing Charlotte Mason), will mostly come from those compilations. This year we will be discussing Ancient Greece, the Medieval period, the French and Indian War through the Constitution, and World War I. As you can see, I am very much not a believer in teaching history in pure chronological order. My girls love history (especially Meg) and we seem to do best moving around to keep interest levels high. 

As a bonus to history this year, we will be doing a unit on the presidential election. Sonlight is offering a free downloadable curriculum for the election that I will be using. In the weeks leading up to the election, we will replace one lesson a week of history with a lesson on the presidential election. Additionally, to reinforce her U.S. geography, Clare will be joining Anne for ​Road Trip USA. This is a curriculum also meant for homeschooling families, so it can be used for various age levels. Clare will be supplementing this with Draw the USA. Meg, who is pretty much an expert in American geography, will be working on Draw Europe.

We had ups and downs with science this past year. With Meg entering the middle school years, I knew I wanted to offer a more complete curriculum to the girls. I decided on Apologia's General Science for Middle School. The curriculum comes with a very thorough student workbook, which allows the student to reinforce the textbook as well as keep lab reports. We will only do science two days a week (we will do history the other three days), so I anticipate this very thorough curriculum lasting us over the next two school years. 

Finally, Clare and Meg will be doing typing and handwriting from The Good and the Beautiful. Anne will also be doing The Good and the Beautiful handwriting for her grade level. These books use pleasant and uplifting poems and verses to reinforce good handwriting and typing. The older girls will be assigned a certain number of pages to complete independently during the week. Perhaps the positive content will contribute to their character as well as improve their handwriting and typing. 

I will admit this all seems rather overwhelming as I detail it here. However, I have been able to set out a reasonable schedule that incorporates all of these things. Additionally, both Meg and Clare anticipate doing foreign language classes through a resource such as Outschool. They also both independently do coding and animating work through Khan Academy, which I anticipate they will continue to do through the next school year.  

For the first time, I have a summer break to plan our coming school year. In previous years, we planned for our children to be in Catholic school and had to make the quick decision to homeschool one or all of our children in the midst of the school year. For the first time, I know all three girls will be homeschooling this coming school year and I am planning accordingly. It has actually been great fun! 

While I fell into homeschooling this last year, I did have the opportunity to experiment with different curriculum and theories of education. So which education theory do I adhere to? Quite simply, whatever works best for each particular child. That's the beauty of homeschooling. But to better explain where I am coming from, I will say that I am strongly influenced by Charlotte Mason educators as well as Montessori. 

My mom was a Montessori teacher for many years and I had the opportunity as a college student to work in her school's summer camp. I quickly became a believer that the Montessori hands-on, concrete approach has huge benefits--especially in math. Even when my girls were in Catholic school, we used Montessori math beads at home to supplement their education. After exploring quite a few math approaches this past year, my girls seem to benefit most from Math-U-See. This curriculum has many of the hands-on benefits of Montessori math, but is very usable in a homeschool setting. Pure Montessori heavily depends on manipulatives that are costly to reproduce in a home setting.  I was thrilled when I discovered the hands-on approach Math-U-See and both Anne and Clare have benefited greatly from using it. 

The Charlotte Mason approach to education has strongly influenced my choices in Language Arts and History. Charlotte Mason was a British educator in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. I don't feel qualified to explain her educational approach, but Simply Charlotte Mason offers an nice explanation here. I came to Charlotte Mason almost in the negative. I liked the substance of what was taught in Classical Education, but the rigidity in which it was often presented didn't work well with my children. Their natural educational curiosity was turned off by pretty much every Classical curriculum I used. For example, my kids love Ancient History, but if they are forced to only study Ancient History and only read Ancient History books for an entire school year, they soon hate Ancient History. Also, as I once heard Rea Berg, of Beautiful Feet Books, explain, the chronological approach to history often means you are missing the best books for a particular age group about a particular time period. The Charlotte Mason method allows for more flexibility in the historical time period you are presenting. 

I love the Charlotte Mason approach of using "living books." Basically, the idea is that children don't remember textbooks, but we are all wired to remember great stories. The plot of a really well written novel about a historical event or a particular scientist can trigger the love of learning about that subject for the rest of the child's life. The Charlotte Mason method encourages the use of excellent books to excite interest and help children learn in a personal way school subjects. As I thought back through my own education, what I remembered were books my teachers read aloud which really made a historical time period or figure come alive for me. 

Again, this approach took some experimentation throughout this past year. We rely on Beautiful Feet Books history packets for excellent books about particular historical time periods and they do come with a very helpful teacher's guide. That being said, we found we needed something more basic to walk us through the important facts. We finally settle on using The Good and the Beautiful History curriculum, but supplementing this with books from history packs offered by Beautiful Feet Books. 

For Language Arts, we discovered English Lessons through Literature this past year and love it. This curriculum is self-described as "Classical Mason." It uses the very best literature to teach grammar and writing. Charlotte Mason encouraged teachers to not use "twaddle" (i.e. lower-quality or mindless stories) even when a child is an early reader. Anne, in first grade, will be using books such as Beatrix Potter stories and The Jungle Book. Meg and Clare will be reading such books as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Little Women and Around the World in Eighty Days. Part of education should be exposing our kids to the most beautiful options, so they continue searching for that beauty long after their school years. 

In my next post, I will lay out the specific curriculum I have chosen for each girl.