Schooling in 2008 Laura Ingalls Style!

This is my 10th year homeschooling and I’ll admit there is so much to learn. This year, God has decided to take me back to the olden days of school. When children went to a one-room schoolhouse. I began reading over the summer, books by Charlotte Mason. Then I got the opportunity to get another Charlotte Mason book and it began to speak to me. Some of it, I was already doing without even realizing it and some of it I planned on putting in place this school year. Well, as the school year has gone on, I realized my children are learning the best they’ve ever learned. But, there was still something missing. Something very basic it seemed. Then tonight, as I was meandering through the internet looking for what would make some of our harder subjects click, it hit me!

I started to remember what Emily (my youngest) and I had read not long ago in a Little House on the Prairie book. Laura had gone to teach her first school, and they started each day with recitations from their lessons. I couldn’t figure out at first what they exactly meant. I thought how boring to recite so much. My kids would probably shoot me if I made them do it. But I thought I’d do a little research on the subject. I ran across an ebook from Project Gutenberg on recitations by George Herbert Betts. I downloaded it and started reading it immediately. I’m only on part two of the book, but it has changed my mind so far. It really explains the type of recitations they were doing in the late 1800’s – to early 1900’s. Some of it, you already do in school like multiplication fact drills, spelling drills, etc. But, he really goes into detail about how it is so much more than that and how to do it properly and so the student enjoys it.

It appears at the moment God has led me to a missing link to our schoolwork. Who would have thought that God would use a Little House on the Prairie book so quietly to work on our school? So, by Monday I hope to have finished the book and begin putting a little more one-room schoolhouse in my little homeschool. I’ll keep you posted!