There seems to be a lot of Charlotte Mason podcasts at the moment. CiRCE has The Mason Jar by Cindy Rollins, A Delectable Education, Simply Charlotte Mason, Your Morning Basket by Pam Barnhill. I know there are others, but these are the ones I've been listening to currently. I had to delete some because I was running out of storage on my phone. I also follow a lot of CM homeschoolers on Instagram. Wild + Free has a lot of good materials including their Wild Explorers Club program. Celsete Cruz http://joyouslessons.blogspot.com/is a big inspiration with her #keepingcompanycm along with CharlotteMasonLiving IG account. There are also lots of periscopes now including Julie Bogart. I think CM followers can gain a lot from her encouragement especially with poetry tea times. She has a new website dedicated to this poetryteatime.com

A nice update for anyone interested in the club, but perhaps put off by the expense of purchases badges each month: If you were a part of the Wild Explorers Club before March 31, watch your mailbox this month for a limited-edition logo patch. We also just instituted one free patch per account at each animal level for everyone who joins the adventure!

Alright Rosie, I bit the bullet. I printed the First Grade CSMP worksheets. Could you tell me more about it? I think the minicomputers are what is throwing me off. I know I need to read more on the site. Robby finished Singapore 1A and I want him to do something else before we dive into 1B. I guess I am nervous about doing multiplication, etc. "early" compared to my 1990s public school elementary education.

I just have to say that I love seeing your individualized curriculum map. Robby is currently drawing diagrams of his payload to launch a scientific weather balloon with a GoPro camera, etc. I might need to talk to you in a few years. :)

Not to add another option, but what about Emma Serl's Primary Language Lessons? It is written for 2nd and 3rd grade.

What about instead of Baldwin's 50 Famous Stories (which is on many CM primary schedules) using Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans? Memoria Press has a nice updated publication of this title.

Have you looked at FLL 1 and 2? There is a lot of overlap. These are gentle but thorough programs for early grammar lessons. I don't know the abilities of your kids, but I bet you could just use FLL2 for both 2nd and 3rd grader. Pick up the cd for extra review. Somedays we do two lessons or spend an extra 5 minutes reviewing poems for fun.

A Toad for Tuesday

I keep looking at my camera roll to view the picture of myself with Jim Weiss and Susan Wise Bauer from today. It really seems surreal to me. I have such an enormous amount of respect and gratitude for these champions of education. Hi Gail!

My husband made a Leitner box after he read a foreign language book called Fluent Forever. We made one for Robby to use as review of homeschool materials. Robby calls it his Lightning Box. Before we do our scheduled readings (mostly those in AO Year 1) we will pick a vocabulary word or words from the selection. We review these before our reading and ask Robby to be on the look out for those words during our read aloud time. Sometimes those words will be in our copywork or get added to the leitner box. At the beginning of the school year I was having him illustrate the definition on and index card that went into his box. I got a copy of Wordly Wise Book A and I have been picking a few words here and there and adding them to his box as well.

We also had a cheap one that I picked up at Goodwill. It worked. It had slides and other materials in the kit. It broke pretty quickly. We replaced the light bulb, etc., but we could not get it to work correctly again. My son received a Brock from us for Christmas this year. It is sitting on a shelf near our nature corner in our playroom. We've looked at salt, ladybugs, snake skin, shells, etc. My three year old girl is a wild girl and I'm glad that I don't have to worry about her breaking it. I like that it is compact enough that I can pack it for nature outings this spring. I plan on taking it to the beach with us and more. I really do enjoy this very much, but it is not a stereo microscope. I think we will invest in one of those in middle school. There are also microscope attachments for smart phones that are REALLY inexpensive. I think one of those might be a great stocking stuffer for a homeschool mama. Imagine having a microscope in your purse or diaper bag at all times. :)

Thank you, ElizaG. I appreciate all your research and insight so very much. Here is a blog post using recitation in the way I was referencing (as a skill in reading aloud): http://livingcminca.blogspot.com/2009/12/recitation-childrens-art.html My husband had an Oxford professor in our undergraduate college (WV Wesleyan). This professor always who had small section courses where the students had to prepare the lessons. He assigned the students individual readings and the student needed to read it and be able to present it and lead the discussion/question. They always called these classes "seminars." The professor was always there for assisting the discussion and helping to explain something if they didn't understand it correctly, but he didn't lecture the class.

I second TX Pilgrim; these are all excellent choices! Hunter has a free curriculum she has been working on. Her first level has some great read alouds listed along with corresponding work in McGuffey, Harvey, Drawing Textbook, Poetry (Longfellow), Bible, Arithmetic, and more. This or Ambleside Online's year 0 would all be great and exactly what I've done for K. I would also encourage you to find a rhythm during K. We try to bake Mondays, poetry tea time Tuesdays, paint (art and classical music) Wednesdays, nature Thursdays, science experiments Friday/Saturday. This has been our routine for years. It started in preschool and the kids all know what we are doing in our days. Library outings, play dates... have fun!

He could be a page. I don't think there are many restrictions on age for that.

https://www.amblesideonline.org/PR/PR01p092RecitationChildrensArt.shtml https://www.amblesideonline.org/PR/PR08p359ReadingRecitation.shtml These are a few of the articles to which I was referring.

I was under the assumption that recitation was both for retention/review and elocution. I am using Memoria Press' Recitation with my first grader. I think I read on Ambleside Online's site (it may have been from Charlotte Mason or another educator) that recitation was also reading aloud not necessarily reciting a memory work fact/poem, etc.

Thanks for your thread y'all. I had Algebra 5+ and Elements on my phone, but Numbers was on his grandma's phone. I had forgotten about it. He's been playing for about 30 minutes now. If you paint them, will you use Miquon/Gattegno with the painted c-rods or will you just use the c-rods as manipulatives for other maths? I think it could be a bit confusing to use different colored rods doing Miquon/Gattegno as written, but I have yet to get to deep into reading the texts.

The Gattegno books are online for free. https://issuu.com/eswi/docs/gattegno-math-textbook-1 Caleb Gattegno is the father of Miquon. If you can get c-rods you can do it with Gattegno Math and Education Unboxed free online videos.

I am homeschooling my first grader and we are using Ambleside Online's history recommendations: Fifty Famous Stories and Our Island Story. I also added in Our Island Saints and Great Americans for Little Americans as additional read alouds. My husband usually reads aloud from one of these texts before bed. Robby narrates the reading and usually we will talk about it for a few minutes. Then later we add to our large map of Great Britain landmarks from our reading. I have SOTW and plan to use the audio cds and activity pages as a fun supplement during breaks. I am also considering getting the few ancient audio books from Simply Charlotte Mason.

I'd love to help! ETA: I live in House Springs, south of St. Louis. If you still need help please message me. Your book was the first one on homeschooling I had read. My boyfriend (Now my husband and father of our three homeschooled kids.) and I read it together in college. :)

Listening in. My six year old asked me the other night if I liked Donald Trump. I guess I've had talk radio on a bit too much. :)

I am talking about the leatherbound kid's classics. I think they are all $10 in store. I have not seen many anthologies. This is what was said on the Ambleside Online forum regarding these books: ::::Yes, I am referring to the beautiful, leatherbond editions published by Barnes and Noble. I am referencing the books that were originally discussed in this thread. Publishers do not have to be honest when publishing a book. They are free to print them as abridged or unabridged. I exchanged numerous emails with the publisher. One conversation even asked why they would abridge classic books and then publish them so beautifully. The woman I spoke with and referenced in an earlier post was clear that the books in this series are abridged. There has been much back and forth about the fact that some of the books may or may not be abridged. They are not marked unabridged, which is the only was to know for sure they book is not abridged. Though they are beautiful, though there may be a few books that are not abridged in the series, to me it is not worth the trouble to have to prove they are unabridged if the publisher is saying they are not. Barnes and Noble has on many occasions abridged books and I do not believe them to be a reputable publisher when it comes to publishing and being upfront about books being abridged or unabridged.:::: and this :::After speaking with different associates at Barnes and Noble stores and not getting a consistent answer. I decided to contact the publisher. To confirm the books in this series are abridged, I had email correspondence Michelle Calabrese of Barnes and Noble publishing. I sent the ISBNs for numerous books in this series to confirm that the books in the children's series are abridged. We exchanged several emails and she confirmed that the series was abridged. Here is the email address: BNMANAGEMENTCLASSIC@BOOK.COM It would be interesting to see if others would get a different response.:::

Bump to see if anyone else has started this program.

I really like the look of these. They really do appear to be well done. I have two books: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Story of King Arthur and His Knights. I almost bought Hawthorne's Greek Myths tonight. I hesitated because I remember reading a thread that said these were abridged. Any information if that is a true claim? Or are they truly unabridged?

I think map blobbing as described in The Core or Charlotte Mason map drills are so simple and effective. Both have been a breath of fresh air to me.