When Homeschooling IDEALS Collide with the REALITIES of a Large Family

Hi Jess,

I don’t know if you answer emails like this since you aren’t active on your blog, but wanted to tell you I took your advice to heart and am not blogging. It was the best decision. I had my fourth baby, and I would’ve had to lay down priorities in caring for my family to continue. Not worth it when an eternal perspective is considered!

Our oldest is beginning our official homeschool journey this fall once the summer craziness of gardening and canning slows. I randomly saw you were part of Charlotte Mason Soiree group on Facebook, at least in the past, as I was using the search bar to find info. […] I found Charlotte Mason as I searched for a method of homeschooling that wouldn’t put him in the standard American educational box, because I don’t want him to be set up for failure, I want him to love to learn. I love the living book based approach, narrating instead of fill in the blank tests, nature study, etc etc.

I wondered if you implemented this in your home? We have 4 children and desire more, they come about every 2 years. Charlotte Mason is a lot more Mom-intense, as I will be curating our own curriculum. […] Thanks for any time you have, and I understand if you can’t respond. I’m also glad to poke around on your blog and see what I can find there.

Blessings!
K-

Hi K-
I’m glad to hear from you and glad things are going well.

As far as Charlotte Mason… well, I started out homeschooling with my 4-year-old, 13 years ago, with Sonlight Curriculum. One of the “big ideas” I took away from using their materials was to treat our chosen homeschooling materials like a buffet, rather than like a forced/precise meal.

So I’ve brought that same attitude as I read and learn about Charlotte Mason’s approach. One of the things I’ve noticed about moms who rigorously use CM-style learning (this is not a judgment; I admire it– just an observation!), is that those I know (this is not to say everyone, but all the ones I know in real life) have something like 2-5 kids who are, say, 2nd/3rd grade and up.

They aren’t still also in the baby years, for the most part. Their life and demands are simply different from mine. We’re juggling different loads.

So then, for me, I need to be realistic and do what I can do. With these real demands in my real life.

The last 4 years, as I’ve tried to import some of those ideas into our real life, that has meant that we do as many read-alouds as I can muster, SOME nature notebooks (poorly filled in, and sporadically but still better some than none). And when I can’t do nature notebooks, we watch a lot of Planet Earth and farming/animal husbandry videos. We choose the best books we can– no twaddle, and no fact-heavy drivel. We choose to talk through the books/ideas together as a group, rather than doing an exact one-on-one “dictation” model like CM suggests.

Like you point out, some of the ideals of CM are more “mom-intensive” than I can seem to manage, given my real-world responsibilities.

And that is OK. I don’t have to scrap the whole thing. But I do need to take the “ideals” in my head, or from a book or Facebook group, and then adapt them to my actual life. In some cases, that will be possible and in some ways it will not.

We use Teaching Textbooks math, for example, because it’s easiest for me. (No grading, and they know to re-do any lesson/grade where they get lower than 80%. They often choose to redo if it’s lower than 90%.) For this season, easy & DONE beats “best approach.”

{I also want to say, I chose this approach to math because– so far– I didn’t have a child who seems to be uniquely gifted in math. For this season, with the particular children God has given us, easy & DONE wins. Now that I have a teen exhibiting a deeper interest in math, such that he/she might pursue a career in math/accounting/actuarial fields, we are using another method for him– trying Khan Academy for now, and may add in other things later.}

So, yes… I like to read and fill my mind with Charlotte Mason ideas… I browse CM lists when choosing our book list each year… because it is an approach that I regard as beautiful and beneficial. There are many aspects about it that I admire and want to move “toward” whenever I can.

And then I treat it like a buffet… “eating” what we can eat, doing the parts we can do, and not feeling guilty for the things we can’t do.  

Confidence in God’s sovereignty helps me in this aspect. God has custom-built our family the way He has, and it’s not an accident. He’s given us the ages of kids we have in our home. He’s allowed me to encounter different ideas/approaches as I go along.

I don’t have to be a carbon-copy of anyone else in their homeschool…

…and we will never have a “perfect” system.

{Note: I wrote this response 1 year ago, and then did not publish it because life got busy & our then-3-month-old son started having trouble gaining weight. My NOT-mom-intensive homeschooling plan allowed for me to focus on that physical demand that I did not anticipate.}

The other thing you should know is that this next year I am going to (for the first time ever) have 3 little ones 3 & under, in addition to my whole crew (11th, 9th, 7th, 5th, 2nd, and K students)… and so my plan is:

• help the 2nd grader get his teeth around reading (he’s been my slowest yet, but is making progress now.)
• keep everyone moving along in math
• We will do Mystery of History on Audiobook format
• instead of *ME* reading aloud all the books, I have checked out and downloaded a heap of excellent read-aloud books from the library (probably 20 and counting at this point), and am going to let the kids “listen” for hopefully an hour each day, with them all at the table (perhaps drawing or quietly holding something while they listen)
• our oldest 3 will again be doing speech & debate which (with the topic for the year) encompasses history, politics, government, economics, and speech communication… it also forces them to learn to research and write briefs/cases, which will (for me, for this year), “count” for their writing assignments.

Unlike years in the past, where I had more to give, or could use naptime to gain ground, or was young enough to have enough energy to manage that many children while carving out 90-minutes for the oldest one’s K/1st years… for THIS year, I just knew that there is no way I can count on *me* to be the one that keeps all the wheels spinning.

So we’ll have a system for the math (a schedule using the comp), a set time for listening, and a system for the computer for those doing research for debate.

The only thing this year that (ultimately) depends on me to be actively doing it is:

• getting the 2nd grader moving in reading.

And that is enough. I am 38 and tired 🙂 and my kids need me in other ways (to help coach their character, and talk through debate ideas with them, and listen to plans for buying a car, and what their lines are for the church play, etc.).

For this year, this plan is enough.

I hope it comes across clearly that *** I am not trying to advocate for my specific choices this year to be anyone else’s specific choices.*** In fact, due to life circumstances this year,

• my son’s weight dipped- which put me back nearly in newborn-breastfeeding-mode at the start of the school year,
• we packed up our house in December/January,
• we moved across the country in March,

this last year of homeschooling was a different year from any other year before, and probably from any that will come after.

But these basic principles could help any of us, perhaps, as we go along:

• Consider your own level of “margin” as the homeschooling mother (what you are capable of in general, what you can anticipate about the upcoming year, the demands of your environment/church & community involvement, what commitments will you be able to keep throughout the year, your ratio of big kids to little kids, etc.)
• Consider the actual kids in front of you (how they are built, the trajectory they seem to be on, if they are obedient and responsive to you, the interests they have, the struggles they have)
• Consider the counsel/input of your husband
• Consider your finances and what you can afford to see through
• Consider the goals you have & outcomes you desire
• And whatever else comes to mind as you begin your planning.

We don’t all have to make the same choices, but we want to make sane choices that work for our family, for our year, that move us– step by step– in the direction we mean to go.

So – to sum up – I would say… the biggest “idea” that has helped me as an idealistic homeschooling mom of a large family is to treat each year as its own unique “thing” (sometimes even each month/semester can look different, depending on what the year holds)… and to treat the curriculum suggestions/big-picture ideas as a “buffet” while realizing that I just can’t “eat” everything, and that is (truly!) OK.

Hope this helps.
Jess