Welcome back to Episode 17!

Today we discussing how we are keeping The Fun in our Family and Making the Moments Matter.

“Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life” Charlotte M. Mason

On our last podcast we talked about some changes we made due to circumstances on busy work with no results and children dreading the next thing. Honestly if there is no joy or fun happening while learning, it’s not worth the effort we’re putting in. Our goal is creating a learning lifestyle where our children enjoy learning and being together doing life. Fostering and sparking a love for learning is key in educating our children. When the twinkle goes out we have lost them and we might as well send them on the Big Yellow.

“We all have need to be trained to see, and to have our eyes opened before we can take in the joy that is meant for us in this beautiful life.” Charlotte M. Mason

We certainly know everything we do is not going to be fun and full of joy BUT making mundane things a little more enchanted goes a long way. If there is something your children just can not enjoy, there is sure to be another way of doing it and probably more fun. Just changing how we phrase something changes how children view it. Calling laundry A Folding Party or declaring it Make Your Own Breakfast day. You can make it fun~ it just takes a little joy and effort on our part.

“To introduce children to literature is to instal them in a very rich and glorious kingdom, to bring a continual holiday to their doors, to lay before them a feast exquisitely served. But they must learn to know literature by being familiar with it from the very first. A child’s intercourse must always be with good books, the best that we can find.”

*Setting the feast and they will eat (bird story)

*Talk about the areas we have set up around the house to invite learning

“Look on education as something between the child’s soul and God. Modern Education tends to look on it as something between the child’s brain and the standardized test.”

*Show them beautiful art and listen to beautiful music

*Nature walks

“Never be within doors when you can rightly be without.”

*Picnics (Charlotte Mason quote about being outdoors)

*Learning out on a blanket

*Play outside every day

“Children should have the joy of living in far lands, in other persons, in other times – a delightful double existence; and this joy they will find, for the most part, in their story books. Their lessons, too, history and geography, should cultivate their conceptive powers. If the children do not live in the times of his history lesson, be not at home in the climate his geography book describes, why, these lessons will fail of their purpose.”

*Poetry Teatime

*Listening to audio books at meals or rest: meet on stairs and they tell me what they listened to and something about it. (Snack and story)

*Intentional Playtime: Games

*Movie morning

“Every day, every hour, the parents are either passively or actively forming those habits in their children upon which, more than upon anything else, future character and conduct depend…”
“The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days.”

*Folding Parties (Laundry)

*Friday Morning Cleaning Frenzy

Show Notes:

Simply Charlotte Mason Picture Study

What are some fun things you family does to have fun and make the moments count?

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