Combining Charlotte Mason and Thomas Jefferson Education in Your Homeschool

I discovered the Charlotte Mason method of homeschooling early on in our homeschooling journey.  I loved the idea of reading aloud to my children, and did not take a lot of convincing to leave behind most text books and embrace a literature based approach to educating my children.  During the pre-school years we had spent much time enjoying reading together.  Once “real schoolwork” started we, like most new homeschoolers, bought text books and began “teaching”.  Somehow we had less time to read aloud.  I was introduced to the Charlotte Mason method, and enthusiastically bought Karen Andreola’s book “The Charlotte Mason Companion”.  It was like a breath of fresh air, and I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly to this more relaxed approach, and the excuse to schedule reading aloud into our homeschool day.  We began implementing Charlotte’s ideas:

·Reading aloud “living” books

·Narration

·Picture Study

·Music Appreciation

·Learning Science from Nature (although ours is modified from the real CM approach described below)

·Mother Culture

·Self Education

·The Happiness of Habit

After a few years, I came across another homeschooling approach, through a book called the Thomas Jefferson Education, by Oliver Van DeMille.  Like Charlotte, Oliver stresses the importance of self-education.  He says that for learning to take place, the student must take responsibility.  The parent is not a “teacher”, so much as a “facilitator”. 

The other important components of a Thomas Jefferson Education are “Classics” and “Mentors”.

When classic books are read, studied and discussed with a mentor, the student learns to think.  He is not taught “what to think” (as in a fill-in-the-blank or multichoice text book), nor is he taught “when to think” (as in training for a specific job or profession), but “how to think”. 

As the child’s mentor, the parent must think about the book being read and ask herself the questions she will later ask the student.  These questions must be open-ended, and provide meat for discussion with the student.  The student should be guided to think for himself, and not merely parrot off the “correct” answer.