This is the third go around for this post. The first post was that First Reading Lessons were coming. That post has some quotes and such below – that’s the original article. Then I added an Update this summer just in the title – that the lessons are here. Now I’m adding the behind the story peek at what REALly happened….
In the recent re-doing of my site, dates got changed and old blogs got moved to the most recent… not a big deal…but it gave me opportunity to go down memory lane. Some of these old blogs…seem so long ago. So many miles have been walked, crawled…so much learned since those were written. So many miles yet to go. Another post for another time.
But this post in particular struck me because the reading lessons were recently finished this summer. I was curious because I know I didn’t get them done on time. When was it that I actually posted that they would be done?… how long ago was “fall”? I went back through my notes to see.
Since this is REAL Living Life, I thought I’d be REAL with you. I could keep it all to myself, change the date, reorganize this post where it should be, or really delete it -no one would know the difference.
But I’d like to make a point…for those of you who can’t seem to get it all done, for those who are trying to keep up with content output at an expected timely pace, to those who are working hard to stay in the game, to those who have the weight of a truck pushing from behind. Know this, there is a price to everything, there is a cost. Rolling out curriculum, rolling out web sites, rolling out blog posts, rolling out product, rolling out instagram, facebook, content, product, anything, takes time. And there is a finite quantity of time.
So… you see other people, and you ask yourself, ‘How in the world do they get all that done?’ ‘What is the matter with me, that I can’t get all that I want to done?’ Well I’ll let you in on the secret, something gets cut, somewhere, something. There is no way to do it otherwise. I know this from my own life, from watching others, and from being in and around ministry my entire life- for generations, my family and my husbands family. For me the sacrifice, has been time with my kids. There is a sacrifice. No one has more or less time in the day.
Some manage time better than others. I don’t do that particularly well, but, one thing I have managed well… I’ve paced myself. I’m not working super fast. I roll things out slowly. The curriculum, this blog, I’ve been working on these things for years- decade-type-years. Tortoise and the hare. I’m definitely the tortoise. That works against me I’m sure (I know) in this fast-paced, -what’s-the-newest-greatest-talked-about thing out there…..that’s the gamble I take, and the choice I make for my sanity. If I intend to be in this for the long haul, -and I do, -then a slow pace is the only thing I can manage. If I were working at a typical pace, I’d have had these reading lessons done when I originally said they’d be done. That was….Fall of 2019. I’m four years over due. That’s what REALly happened.
So I’d like to send out a pat on the back to those of you who are just not getting it all done, to those who are late, to those who have a vision but need to cut back for the next year, to those who think that they are losers because the pace of the race is just too intense. Maybe you really are a winner, maybe you are choosing well. Maybe the stuff not getting done, is fine to not get done. Maybe it will get done someday, just not now. Maybe you are OK. Maybe you are normal and what you can get done is enough. Maybe learning to slow down, take smaller bites, chew, be patient and content moving at a slow pace….maybe that is the better thing.
Slow and steady wins the race.
__________________________________ Here is the original post from July of 2019. and…FYI- the wooden letters are not done. ______________________________________
“—but grant it, who in the world could get through all the pasting and cutting and general messing preparatory to the great lesson? No; the method of the books may be only second-best, but ready-made books must do for me. I have no time to make my own apparatus.”
I must own that the cutting and pasting was very clumsy, but the lesson served its purpose because it induced a good friend to education [Miss Miller] to have a delightful… box prepared for us, loose words, nice big type, two lines in a bag.” – Charlotte Mason Home Education Volume 1 p.217
I aspire to be Miss Miller… “a good friend to education.”
Back when my second child was age 6, ready for reading lessons, I scoured through Volume 1 looking for Charlotte’s method for teaching reading. With my first child, although I was attempting to do a Charlotte Mason Education, I had not had the time, resources, experience, or knowledge to teach reading in a CM way. For lack of not knowing what to do, I used a popular reading curriculum complete with phonics cards. When my second child was ready to read, my stomach turned at the thought of doing those monotonous cards again. I knew Charlotte had described a way to do reading lessons, but it was so jumbled up within her text. Because I was still learning CM philosophy, I didn’t have a clear vision for how to teach a child to read in a Living way. I didn’t have a grasp of the big picture, and I didn’t know what actually needed to be done in a daily lesson. I combed through the Volume and pulled her words together in a way that I could easily reference each day as I led my child through reading lessons. I found poetry and prose selections to use, did the “cutting and pasting”, and wrote sentences to go along with the words we were learning. The process of teaching this child to read was new, inviting, interesting and so enjoyable.
I’m making the lessons I wrote for my children available to CM users. My hope is that these reading lessons will aid you in teaching your child to read using Charlotte Mason’s philosophy and method. First Reading Lessons will take your child from their first reading steps to the time that they fly on their own into the world of books.
First Reading lessons:
Authentic Charlotte Mason reading lessons taken directly from the instructions Charlotte describes in Volume 1.
Uses literature suggested by Charlotte.
All the “apparatus” and “cutting and pasting” done for you.
Wooden letters will hopefully be available by this fall.
If you are interested, email Lisa to add your name to the contact list when the First Reading Lessons are ready for purchase.
Lisa Osika lisagardener@abbnebraska.com