Thank you, Charlotte

     As our school year starts to wind down, my brain is already skipping ahead to starting again in the fall.  Actually, we aren't going to take a summer break.  We will continue are lessons with a day off here and there.  I think it's what works best for us.  We will continue using My Father's World curriculum next year and Engineer and Mother Hen will be added to the cycle that Camo Boy is already using.  This year, he is studying exploration to 1850.  Next year, they will be studying 1850 to the present.  We are super excited about studying the Civil War and WWII as we have some history lovers in the house!
     I have to admit, my heart aches because my precious Engineer isn't reading fluently yet.  One day, I am secure in knowing that he will "get it" or it will "click" and then, the next day, I feel like a failure and that I am not doing my job as his teacher.   And yet, I know in my heart that it will happen in God's timing and that we must be patient.  I am currently reading Charlotte Mason's The Original Home Schooling Series and read this tonight.......

http://www.amazon.com/Charlotte-Masons-Original-Homeschooling-Series/dp/1889209007

      "Learning to read is hard work.-  Probably that vague whole which we call 'Education' offers no more difficult and repellent task than that to which every little child is (or ought to be) set down- the task of learning to read.  We realise the labour of it when some grown man makes a heroic effort to remedy shameful ignorance, but we forget how contrary to Nature it is for a little child to occupy himself with dreary hieroglyphics- all so dreadfully alike!- when the world is teeming with interesting objects which he is agog to know.  But we can not excuse our volatile little Tommy, nor is it good for him that we should.  It is quite necessary he should know how to read; and not only so- the discipline of the task altogether is wholesome for the little man.  At the same time, let us recognise that learning to read is to many children hard work, and let us do what we can to make the task easy and inviting."  Charlotte Mason  Home Education  Vol. 1

 
 ....... ahhhh!  Thank you, Charlotte!  Just to let you know, this momma will be a weepy mess when that glorious day comes and he is READING!

In the morning, oh Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.  Psalm 5:3