Words of wisdom from Charlotte Mason!

Hi friend,

  This is my first post of 2015! ( that's exciting)

 I wanted of corse, to talk a little bit about Charlotte Mason. How she inspires me in my daily homeschooling Journey. Every time I read anything of her, or her own works. It really makes me think  in such a different way. To look at my daily life in a different way, how I parent, how I see my children, how beautiful God's creation is. And mostly, to slow down. Take life in. 

  

        I recently found a lovely book called Charlotte Mason study guide -------- A simplified Approach to a "Living" Education. By Penny Gardner. It's an older book and I got a used copy on Amazon. What a lovely book it is. If you don't have time to read through Charlotte Mason's series. This is a great book for you. Each chapter gives you lots to think about and shares a little about Charlotte Mason's life.

  I like to look at education as being a Constant thing. It's not certain hours of the day. It's always present. A constant thing. Learning is a way of life! Hands on. Visual. Living. This is the environment we are creating in our home. Our home is a place of ideas, we are free to think out loud. We ask lots of questions. Make lots of mistakes. And we live life. 

    

    I love these quotes from Charlotte Mason.

  

   "Let information hang upon a principal, be inspired by an idea."

        (  In my case this happens to often)! 

   " The mind feeds on ideas and therefore children should have a generous curriculum." 

    I love this so very much,it reminds me of when I was a young girl. I constantly wanted to learn, to know. My mind was hungry. I tend to learn better when I'm busy with things.  Hands on, and I might ask you the same question many times. I need to process things before I can speak of whatever I'm learning. So I'm so thankful that I may be near my children as they are learning. My mind is still hungry and I can relate to my children's different ways of learning. The first thing I tend to do is inspire them with encouraging words. Books,living books! Poetry.  

    " We hold that all education is divine, but every good gift of knowledge and insight comes from above, the Lord the Holy Spirit is the supreme of mankind, and that the culmination of all education... Is that personal knowledge of and intimacy with God in which our being finds its fullest perfection." 

   

      Just three years ago I was in such a distress about what we were doing for our schooling. Struggling along and thinking to myself, Lord there has to be another way.. It's only by The Lords grace alone we have peace in our schooling that passes all understanding. Praising the Lord for his many blessings.  Are you struggling at the moment? Do you want to share.? Or maybe your schooling is doing great and you would like to share! Do share!! 

           Blessings to you on this hard but most rewarding Journey.

The last of 2014 & a little bit about us!

Hello Friend!

 It's been a while since my last post. There has been lots of good things going on and not much time to write all about them. Alas, I didn't want 2014 to end without reminiscing about all the blessings and to share a little bit about myself to all the lovely new mamas following my feed!!  First I wanted to say, God is good, He is always so good to me. He has blessed me with such a wonderful man, who not only loves his family but loves The Lord with all his heart and loves to share that lovely truth with all the people he meets.  We have been married for 11 years!!! I love him more today then I ever thought I could. We have four children and one on the way!                                               

      •  My desire is to teach our children to love the Lord God with all their hearts and to seek Him in all they do. To find the things of the world rubbish compared to The Lord's goodness. That's our main goal in our schooling. The rest is secondary. 

   

   • We love Nature and all that God has created. Exploring is one essential key to learning. ( in my  humble opinion ).  

• If I could, I would talk about Nature study all the day long. Not because I'm an expert but because I enjoy it so much!  

•Charlotte Mason is my homeschool Hero along with Karen Andreola! When I read Charlotte's work,  I often wish I could have met her and  perhaps had a cup of tea together.  I find the Lord granted so much wisdom to Charlotte Mason. He also gave her eyes to see children in such a lovely way and gave her a soft and kind heart  to do what she did,not just for her time, but for us today as well.  ( so thankful) I found out about CM from Karen Andreola's  book, The Charlotte Mason Companion. And I love, love Karen's writings she is a homeschool classic!  The rest is history. 

  •I love to read and read to my children on a daily basis. We love Beatrix Potter collections, Thortnton W.Burgess, Lamplighter and classic lead me to Christ kinds of books. We enjoy biographies as well.  

 • We love to be creative and ask lots of questions myself included. I believe The Lord is blessing me with a second education, the kind I never experience, trough teaching my children at home! 

( big blessing) 

  • I love to bake bread ( sourdough is my favorite).  I love the old world look of rustic breads. 

• I also love to cook . Involving the children as we go along.  They will one day need to know how to cook for themselves , why not teach them at a young age.  And as parents it's a blessing to see them choose healthy foods to eat.

• We have a garden and we enjoy it every year.   The children love to harvest what we plant and get excited to cook.

• I dream of one day keeping bees and having chickens! Lord willing.  And it's ok if The Lord has different plans, in that case maybe in heaven! 

 • I'm very sporadic ( not intentionally) in my conversations with my friends and family, I'm constantly thinking of everything else. Or maybe it's just pregnancy brain and I can't remember having a one subject conversation! 

  • I love using exclamation points a lot!! See.  It doesn't take a lot to get me excited. 

•   I love real flowers and can't stand fake ones. I grew up with fake flowers all over our house. I am not a big fan of roses, they are overrated.  

• I am a tea drinker and on occasion coffee. Tea is # 1.

 

• I hate clutter and tend to trow lots of things out that is not being used. I can't focuse if the house is messy for to long.

 • My favorite movie is The sound of music.  { brown paper packeges tide up with string, these are a few of my favorite things} & ratatouille. Anything French or Italian is a hit with me. 

• I love poetry and I'm so blessed to be able to share my love for books and poetry with my children and watch them enjoy it as much as I do.

 • My husband had lots of health issues in the past and was very over weight. Today my husband and I are passionate about healthy eating habits and thank the Lord for showing us a different way of life. ( my husband is a hunk). 

  

• I have a moto that I live by and it go's like this. If my grandmother didn't eat it, I'm not either!  I brake this on occasion . And enjoy onion rings at a wing place.  

 • I enjoy Pendora and my favorite stations are ,Old hymns that touch you so deep you weep  & French cefe music  to give me that extra creativity when we are cooking, oh and children's fulk songs! Down by the Bay, where the watermelons grow..... Back to my home I ... Lalalala... I think that's a fulk song?! 

  

 There ya go friend. I'm sure I can write so much more, but at the moment I think this is just fine. I am thankful for The Lords grace and mercy. I'm also thankful for transforming my life into something totally different then what I ever would have imagined. The Lord is Good!! All Glory To Him. 

           Blessings to you and your family's and may your 2015 be filled with The Lords super natural power to be a blessings to all around you!! 

                      ~ Elena~

   

And it Begins!!

 Hello Friends, 

 So this week was a mellow week for me in one way and not so much in the other. (But I guess you can't have everything;)) My plan was to go trough all my books and organize and purge, to get ready for school. I did eventually get it done. ( felt great.) My husband was baddling a bad cold this week and now we are all dealing with it at the moment. Ick! But as much as we struggled to get done what needed to be done, there has been great success in the schooling area!! Let me explain. 

   I have been wanting to start reading the first volume  of The Charlotte Mason Original series, but kept getting side tracked with other things and as soon as I pick it up, just to put it back down feeling   frustrated that I couldn't get past the first few pages. Well, I picked it up and I'm on page 45 yey!!!! I know, the little things get me really excited. But wait, there is more exciting news.

 So as I was going trough my Intagram someone had a picture of a DVD that they were watching about the Charlotte Mason  method  and I started looking it up with no success. I asked for some information and the kind women pointed me to http://www.livingbookslibrary.com/2014_07_01_archive.html?m=0

   I didn't end up finding the DVD but I found a recording of Home Education!!!!!! This for me, was and is still epic! ( as I often wished there was something like this out.) I couldn't wait to put my kiddos to bed and put my head phones on and go trough the book. It's about $12 for a PDF download of CM Home Education. I can't wait for the lovely ladies to record Volume 2. Parents and children.  They do have Volume 4  Ourselves available as well. I highly recomand these recordings as well as the written work of Miss Mason. I defiantly am getting a lot out of them. There is something completely wonderful about going to the original source.  You can't get this from a secondary source.

  Now, I wanted to touch on one more thing. Little ones ages two to four doing Nature study. I have moms say that their little one doesn't know how to draw or doesn't have much of an interest. I know every child is diffrent. I can tell you what we do and maybe it can benifit you as well. With my little one, he sees that his older brother and sister are doing nature study and he wants to be involved as well. In everything from nature study to math to narration. So we got him a scatch pad of his own. When we take walks we collect a little of nature for later drawing or pressing. ( flower pressing) 

 Now I don't recomand that you let your children loose to rip every flower they see. We don't want that. But if there is an  abundance of Queen Ann's Lace we will pick a few to press for later or if you know me even a little you know that I take lots of pictures. We take an empty egg carton or a paper sandwich bag and collect our treasure from our walk. We bring our treasures home and the children choose to draw what they found.  Let me just say that it's up to you the parent to guid your children in their studies . If you will be excited about a topic and show intrest, they will also!

   I love the Parents' Motto from CM.

 Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life. It's our job as moms and educators of our children to make our children's education experience a pleasant one. Not that they will always do things that are always pleasant. But I think teaching them that learning is not doing this worksheet or going trough this text book and they are done. Learning, it's a life style, it's a way of life. Giving them a calming, safe, atmosphere to be who The Lord God created them to be. Preparing them to be confident in who they are In Christ.

 -The Preface in the Home Education-

Mother's duties to her Children. 

 "The women receives from the Spirit of God Himself the intuitions into the Child's character, the capacity of appreciating  its strength and it's weakness, the faculty  of calling forth the  one and sustaining the other, in which lies the mystery of education, apart from which all it's rules and measures are utterly vain and ineffectual. We have a high calling mamas and God created you with everything you need to guide your children. Blessings to you.

              

August Hello!

Good evening friends,

  It has been a while since my last post. This summer has been wonderfully busy. Gardening, exploring God's creation, spending time with family. We tryed doing some school, but nothing formel.  I have been thinking of all of you, wondering what summer is like for you, what have you observed over the summer?! I can't believe it's August already and soon we will be back to a regular routine. Wishing you the most out of the rest of your summer. I will be returning soon with more details of what's to come this  upcoming school year for us!

 Oh, the Charlotte Mason book study is going wonderful, so encouraging. God is good! 

     Blessings to you and your family.

The Love Of Birds and a little Music

  Hi Friend, 

 Hope you had a wonderful day today!

I woke up to our newly four year old, franticly saying come to the living room mom and see the birds at the bird feeder, mom you've got to see this!!! Their are so many birds on the bird feeder and I don't even know their name. What a sweet boy! I love him so much.

  I never thought I would be a bird watcher.... Ever... But this last year the sound of birds singing by our window had been so beautiful, how can you not be so blessed by their lovely song?!!  Maybe it was just a long winter for me, because I was so excited to see a spring bird and to hear the new sound of hope, spring is around the corner it would chirp at me... So, first things first we got a bird guide and some bird feeders, we started to visit our local Metropark to get to know the birds at there feeders. And now our children as well, as our daddy enjoy watching the lovely birds at our window. 

 This post was actually ment to be about music.. And here I am talking about bird love. 

 I will mention, that we had a great time visiting the Cleveland Orchestra with our two older ones today, and we all really enjoyed ourselves. To see their faces enjoy the orchestra brought warmth and joy to my heart. 

   I love music and I appreciate good music. Music that lifts you up and has a history about it.. Anyway a little ramble about our day. Hope you have a spectacular day tomorrow! 

  I leave you with a poem by Victor Hugo

  Be Like the Bird

 Be like the bird, who

Resting in his flight

On a twig too slight

Feels it give way beneath him,

Yet sings

Knowing he has wings. 

Photo update of our adventures!

              

As we visited our local farm, I couldn't help my self, but admire all that was around us! Including some lovely Beehives. My dream one day.

   John my husband had taken a few days off of work this week due to a small burn on his fingers. It's a lot better now and the salve I made a month a go came into good use!! 

Anyway,it was nice to have him home so I could catch up on a few things I needed to get done. Like clean out all the winter clothes. Fun job!!!! Just kidding.. My least favorite thing to do. But it needed to be done.  So a little field trip  after cleaning was a must. Plus we were out of eggs! 

      

      

 Alex enjoying this lovely baby chick. 

    

 

       Teaching Benjamin to be gentle.

He loved every minute with these babies.

   

   New life!! So precious. 

   

    This beauty was found on our Mother's Day trip to the metropark.  It really warmed my heart to see this male Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. Watching the kids explore in the creek and watching my husband enjoying nature was the greatest gift any natural mama could ask for ;)

      

   Look at this! Breathtaking, isn't it?!

  

    Follow the leader.

  

   They insisted on a under bridge photo.

  

      Exploring is what they know.

      

    The Majesty of My Lord!

      

       Observing the world around her.

  Beehives at our local farm! 

  So that was a little picture update of our weekend. Can't wait for this coming weekend! I'll be sharing more pictures and sharing what we have learned along our journey.

   I leave you with a fun poem called 

   The Optimist

   By: Anonymous

   The optimist fell ten stories,

 And at each window bar

He shouted to the folks inside:

Doing all right so far!

         Blessings to you my friend.

The Love Of Reading

Hello Dear friend,
  I have been away for some time, and am happy to be back!
Since spring is officially here. We have been busy gardening and reading and exploring spring life!
  I am learning more new things about my Favorite Charlotte Mason, my book study is going wonderful and I'm so blessed to have ladies that are also so eager to learn about all the wonderful things that Miss.Mason suggest. If you haven't read my past posts, I started a Charlotte Mason book study group. We are going through the book by the lovely, Karen Andreola. A Charlotte Mason Companion. This year, since I have been reading lots about Charlotte Mason I have been wanting to implement some of her ways in our school days. We started with Living books. And it's such a blessing to us. Even my little guy who is 20 months old loves books. It's a wonderful gift to give to your children.The love of books that is.To share with them GOOD BOOKS. I recently was asked by an Instagram mamma how do I read with my little ones? Well, I love to be very Enthusiastic, and sometimes even a little theatrical. Now, I would be a little Embarrest  to read like that in front of other people, but the children enjoy it and it gets their attention. Another thing that helps is the books that we read. I love real living books, Biographies, character building books, such as the Lamplighter series. Books about real people. I find that my children can relate more to these types of books. They will say things like, I can't believe that so and so would do such a thing to Mary. Or can you please read one more chapter. The older children can sit through a great deal of chapters when I read, the other two little ones fidget and sometimes interrupt, I then stop and find something quiet for the little ones to be busy with while we finish with the older two. We also read one on one. I sit down with a book to each child's ability and I follow each word with my finger as I read a few sentences and then my child,  also following with their finger. I help at the words that are difficult for them to read. 
  Reading has been a big struggle for my oldest who will be ten in July. I can say with joy that this year has changed so much about how he feels about reading. We still struggles at times,but we see much improvement and it's all glory to Our Lord. I am so so blessed to have such wonderful writings and teachings by Charlotte Mason. It is truly a gift and a breath of fresh air. 
   
 We also love Audio books and poetry. 
 So far this year reading had been our focus, even though we worked on other things, such as math and writing ect. Reading was something that needed much work. I have great plans for the upcoming school year and want to implement a lot more of the lovely Charlotte Mason way. Tell me about your reading story, have you always loved to read? What kind of books do you read?! 
  It's always a blessing to share a little of our joy with you.May you be blessed. Happy Happy Mother's Day to all you wonderful mamas!
   
All Things Bright and Beautiful 

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.
     
Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colors,
He made their tiny wings.

The purple-headed mountains,
The river running by,
The sunset and the morning
That brightens up the sky.

The cold wind in the winter,
The pleasant summer sun,
The ripe fruit in the garden,
He made them every one.

The tall trees in the greenwood, 
The meadows where we play,
The rushes by the water, 
To gather every day.

He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell
How great is God Almighty,
Who has made all things well.

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small, 
All things wise and wonderful:
 The Lord God made them all.
          ~ Cecil Frances Alexander~