FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS

Somewhere in the last few months I lost my mojo. There are specific reasons for this loss of focus, and I will not bore you with those, but my lack of motivation, center of attention, sweet spot, nerve center... (see other synonyms here)...has finally bugged me enough. But no matter, as the Good Book says, God uses everything for good and this is refocusing me. I realized that I have left the roots I found a year or so ago- Charlotte Mason! Well- my primary roots are in the Bible but CM fits that well. I've been going to, and fro.. and taking my eye off the goal. So back we go.

Today I started to re-look at the CM principles and writings. There is so much to read that I picked randomly by topic from this page and found a gem; Lessons as Instruments of Education.

She must ask herself seriously, Why must the children learn at all? What should they learn? How should they learn it? If she takes the time to give serious consideration to these questions, she will then be in a position to direct her children's education. At the same time, she will be surprised to find that three quarters of the time her children have been spending on their lessons has been a waste of time and energy.

I often find myself thinking, we should be studying matter, or bugs, or Abraham Lincoln but why??? When we take the time to think about the WHY then the WHAT and the HOW comes more naturally. I came about this re-focus because I am reading The Organized Homeschooler. It isn't a 'how to' so much as a heart issue book. I am reading a chapter each Sunday and then trying to focus on that the rest of the week. This week was on setting goals- not only for the child / student but also for the parent / teacher. We have been randomly completing our lessons. I have a lesson plan which we follow (more or less) but I don't have a long range dart board set up that includes goals OTHER than academic or development. If you answer the WHY then the curriculum will naturally fall into place...as will all the other activities such as field trips and such. My goal for this week is to outline a general list of goals for Andrew AND for myself.

I have quite a few more 'thoughts' on the information contained in the link above. Instead of putting it all here I am going to try and blog briefly daily this week on how this section of CM ties in with my desires for Andrew's education.