This week I’m writing + filming about a hallmark This week I’m writing + filming about a hallmark of the Charlotte Mason method: narration. Have you ever heard of it? What would you like to know? 

I’m focusing heavily on how we use narration in our homeschool, but if you have specific questions about it, I would love for you to 1. Take the poll in my stories, and 2. Ask any questions you may have about narration in the comments so that I can answer them in my video! ❤️
Happy Mother’s Day! I especially want to encoura Happy Mother’s Day! I especially want to encourage those who are intentionally making a better life for their children than what they may have experienced as kids. It is not easy to change the cycle, but it’s well worth the effort. 

In the words of Louisa May Alcott, “A woman's happiest kingdom is home, her highest honor is the art of ruling it not as a queen, but a wise wife and mother."
📚 We are moving right along with term three of 📚 We are moving right along with term three of our school year. Slow but steady, we will finish up mid June and I’ll begin prepping for next school year in July and August! 📚

Here’s some of my random old and new tips + what I’ve been doing to help keep organized with the CMEC. 

01. Keep a regular day for nature outings or field trips. We have two days a week where I intentionally plan a hike or museum visit, etc. One is usually at the middle of the week and the other is at the end. It offers great variety to our weeks.

02. Notebook! I have had the girls consistently notebook this year, and it’s been such a delight to go back and see my form 1b student’s progress! I have a video coming out about how we notebook and why you should try it very soon! 

03. To stay on track with our morning timetable I’ve been writing the time we end each lesson in my logbook. It’s really changed how productive I am in making sure we get everything on our timetable done for the day. (I have a video on my logbook if you’re interested in learning more about that!)

04. And 05. Popsicle sticks! Friends, if you’re already a CMEC family, use these to help you choose which activities you review! I have on these for old singing games, French songs, folk dances or Swedish drill routines. I’ll share more on what I have on ours, specifically, but it’s fun because the girls and I get to be surprised rather than me choosing what we review!

06. Art instruction. Originally I had us doing three art lessons per week in the afternoon, but it didn’t allow for enough free choice, so we’ve reduced it down to one formal lesson a week for six weeks, then we change the method. So right now we are in week two of our chalkdrawing lessons. After six weeks we will switch to brush drawing instruction for the remainder of the term! As Charlotte Mason recommends, we draw from memory, model, and from imagination. 🌞

I hope this was helpful to you! So many of you guys are using @the.cmec next year! I am SO excited to see all of you at the online form meetings this coming year! 👏🏻 #thecmec #thecmecform1 #charlottemason
Do you keep your spices in a cabinet, on a shelf o Do you keep your spices in a cabinet, on a shelf or in a drawer? This drawer is right next to my stove and it’s my favorite way to store my spices! I reuse these little jars and fill them every couple of weeks with my bulk @azurestandard spices. 🧂
Are you planting a garden this year? What are you Are you planting a garden this year? What are you growing? Containers and raised beds? Or in ground? What do you plan to grow? Veggies? Flowers? We are doing a little bit of everything. 😍

It’s my third year growing food. (And ironically, our third house 😅) We just got our @greenstalkgarden planter, several @smartpots, and six raised beds that are ready to be filled next weekend. Really looking forward to this gardening season! 🥕🥬🥦🌽🌶🫑🫐🍓🥔
“Let then once get in touch with nature and a ha “Let then once get in touch with nature and a habit is formed which will be a source of delight through life.” -Charlotte Mason 

My kiddo had a birthday this past weekend. We do one main gift and a couple of small gifts; typically they’re  things they can use outdoors. Bikes have been a popular birthday item around here! My eldest wanted an apple tree last year. ☺️ But this year we got N a mud kitchen! Some friends of ours had one they built, and it inspired us. My kiddos have been playing on the forest floor in the mud for years now, but it’s exciting for them to have a little space in our garden for mud play. 🌳 What are some fun outdoorsy gifts you’ve purchased for your kids?
📚 When should I teach my child to read? How sho 📚 When should I teach my child to read? How should I teach my child to read? What does Charlotte Mason say about reading lessons? How did she teach children how to read? What curriculum do you use to teach your child how to read? 📚
These are all questions I answered in my blog post and video, “teaching reading the Charlotte Mason way” 📚 you can also swipe over to see some of my favorite CM quotes on teaching reading! 📚

I also shared what I do with my 3-year-old (which is very minimal) if you have younger children. You can view the post at the link in my profile! Are you up children school-aged? What do you use to teach reading?
I needed to accomplish a lot today. There was more I needed to accomplish a lot today. There was more unpacking and organizing to be done, pictures to be framed, meal planning to do, laundry that needed folding, bike rides to be had, meals to be prepared, sourdough to be prepped and lesson planning + pre-reading to do. Oh and dishes. So many dishes. 😅

I do essentially all of the inside housework aside from taking out the trash + recycle, but for a season my husband helped out while N was small by doing dinner dishes and sometimes even preparing dinner so I could nurse her after we ate. But as of late, I’m trying something new where I don’t ask my husband to clean up after dinner and instead I do it myself. I don’t mind it, and since my girls are old enough to get their own pj’s on now, I’ve been doing dinner clean-up (as well as lunch and breakfast clean-up and prep!) before I head upstairs to tuck them in, read them a story and sit with them while they fall asleep. Call me old fashioned, but I’m happy to do it, and I delight in my husband being able to enjoy some time with the girls after dinner instead of clean up a mess after a long day of working.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this post - I’ve felt pulled in so many directions today and it’s something I feel often, (and I’m sure so many of you can relate) but after five months without a home to care for and nurture I simply can’t feel frustrated or annoyed at my list of 10,000 things I need to do. Instead I pray my way through each task. I sip tea in between. I light a candle and wear my great-grandmother’s apron as I work. I read notes like the one my six-year-old left for me this morning and I weep tears of gratitude and joy. Happy Sunday, my friends. ❤️ 
.
(swipe to read her note 🥰 + a transcription in the comments!)
Remember that word we heard so often when we were Remember that word we heard so often when we were parenting infants? Attachment.  What comes to mind? Breastfeeding on demand. Co-sleeping. Babywearing. All of those things that come pretty natural to us when taking care of a baby. But did you know that attachment doesn’t just end when your child gets bigger? Attachment is actually necessary THROUGH adolescence. 😳

Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté is a brilliant book that stopped me in my tracks. The book addresses the severe lack of attachment to parents that is incidentally replaced by an attachment to peers. I wrote all about it on my blog, but if you swipe over you can see a few passages that I underlined, highlighted, and wrote down in my notebook. 

Peer culture is more prevalent than ever. Not only because our society now prefers it that way, but because of social media’s ability to unite our youth in an unprecedented way. What we need is a shift in how we pass down culture to our kids from a horizontal attachment (peer to peer) back to a vertical attachment (family to child). I’ve often felt this long before I read this book, but we prioritize our Children’s friendships and relationships with others before we prioritize their relationships with us. We don’t value the family unit the way we used to decades ago, and it’s to the detriment of our children. 

I will gift this book to every new parent I meet from now on because of the wisdom the authors share. I wish all parents would read it so we could be on the same page as a society and those of us who choose to hold on to our kids wouldn’t be going against the grain. So this is my plea to you. If anything I’ve said piqued your interest, or struck a chord, please read Hold On To Your Kids! ✨

(For those of you who have read it! Share your thoughts with us! Help me convince everyone to read it! 👏🏻)
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Motherhood, Product Reviews, Sustainability, Uncategorized • May 13, 2016

Cloth Diapering | Five Reasons To Consider Cloth

Did you know that the average baby will use 6,000 disposable diapers from birth to potty training?! You probably read in this post a bit about why I decided to switch over to cloth diapers. I get tons of questions about why I cloth diaper, and why I should convince a new mom to start, so I wrote about it below! There’s also a Q&A at the end of this post with questions from real mamas in my Mom Tribe (my super exclusive mommy group on Facebook!) Click here to join!

Using cloth reduces your carbon footprint (and your baby’s too!)
I’m a teacher, so I am all about learning by example. I want Grace to know the reasons I decided to cloth diaper versus using disposables. The best way for her to see how much I care about our Earth and the environment is for me to show how I tried to live sustainably. Maybe she’ll use cloth on her babies someday to keep the tradition, who knows? But what it really comes down to is when you cloth diaper, human waste is going where it’s supposed to… not in a landfill.
Charlie Banana Fluff Love | Charlie Banana The Kate
It’s better for baby.
I’ve expressed my desire to reduce the chemical exposure for me and Grace too. Disposable diapers have tons of chemicals in them, including dioxins, TBT, and Sodium Polyacrylate (those little crystals you seen in the diapers when they’re left on too long). Sodium Polyacrylate is what freaks me out most… they removed it from tampons due to toxic shock concerns, however the effects of this chemical have not yet been researched when it comes babies. This is so frustrating to me.
Charlie Banana ‘Hello’ diaper

Cloth is easier than disposables.
This is an opinion thing, but in my post about how to wash cloth diapers I go through my process of how I wash and dry them. It probably takes me a total of 5-10 minutes of work three times a week… the washer does everything for me! Yes, the #2 diapers can be a bit messy, but most of the time they are not that bad. These are so much cleaner and we don’t have a trash can or dumpster of stinky, chemical-y disposables each week! Seriously, the mix of waste with chemicals is so disturbing.

Charlie Banana Fluff Love diaper
You save money when using cloth.
You really do. Here’s a bit of a personal breakdown for you. We were spending around $40-$50 a month on disposables before we switched over. That’s around $1800 for three years of diapers. We paid around $500-$600 for our cloth diaper stash of around 40. We get to reuse these year after year and don’t have any monthly diaper expenses other than our water bill, which has literally no significant change! (My hubby can vouch for this…he was impressed!)
Charlie Banana ‘Hello’ diaper

Cloth diapers way cuter than disposables.
You know I’m a fashion lover, so when I find a cute diaper that matches Grace’s outfit (or my outfit) I get super excited it! Charlie Banana has so many cute prints for boys and girls! Plus, they hold their value – cloth is reusable and re-sellable! You can sell them on the Facebook Buy, Sell, Trade pages!

Charlie Banana Fluff Love 3 pack | Or singles: Fluff Love | The KateQ&A:

 

  • Why do YOU cloth diaper?
  • I decided to start using cloth when Grace turned four months old. I had been using disposable diapers for a while and wasn’t happy with them for a number of reasons. I loved the idea of reducing my carbon footprint, and with a few diaper rashes, and the discomfort I saw from the rough, papery diapers, I decided it was time to make the switch. PLUS, the prints are absolutely darling!
  • What are your favorite kinds of cloth diapers?
  • I use Charlie Banana almost exclusively. These are pocket diapers and I prefer them because I can tailor the absorbency (amount of inserts) based on the need! I also have used organic prefolds (although they are a bit messier to wash) and I use flour sack towels or hemp inserts with pockets at night with my Charlie Banana covers.
  • How do you clean them?
  • Refer to my post on “How I Wash and Store Cloth Diapers” for this info 🙂
  • How do you get started?
  • The easiest way to start cloth is to buy a stash of 3-5 or so, then use them for one to two days and see how you like it. Do tons of research too! Fluff Love University is one of my favorite resources!
  • Favorite overnight diapers?
  • We use a Charlie Banana cover and a flour sack towel (folded origami style) with one insert in pocket overnight and it’s proven to work out really well. I also have hemp inserts that we use for long trips or overnight. These are so much more foolproof than the flour sack towels/aka daddy friendly!
  • What are your favorite newborn diapers?
  • I love the Charlie Banana newborn diapers – they are adjustable for different sizes, and the newborn ones are so tiny! On May 18th, Charlie Banana is doing a sale on their newborn packs of two! They are 20% off with code XSmall20.
  • What do you do with them when you’re out and about?
  • Great question! Here’s a link to a post I wrote called “Cloth On The Go” 🙂
  • All the acronyms… what do they mean? I’m curious about inserts, and the types of different diapers?
  • AI2: All-in-Twos. An AI2 diaper has a set of snaps that attach the absorbent layer (like an insert) to the inside of the diaper. 
  • AIO: All-in-Ones. An AIO diaper consists of only one piece. These are a bit more foolproof, but take FOREVER to dry, so I’m not a huge fan.
  • CD: cloth diapers.
  • Diaper Cover: When using a pre-fold, flat, or fitted diaper you may want to use a diaper cover to keep wetness contained. Covers are usually made of plastic, vinyl, waterproof polyester material, fleece or wool. Diaper covers are budget friendly and work great for many families. Diaper covers may be one-sized or sized. The most popular brands are Thirsties and Flip diaper covers.
  • Fitted: A fabric diaper with no waterproof layer is a fitted diaper. Fitted diapers are usually cotton (or other natural fiber like hemp or bamboo) that goes on your baby with snaps. A fitted diaper requires a diaper cover to contain wetness and is great for nights, naps, or heavy wetters. The Charlie Banana covers work well as a cover!
  • Flat: A flat diaper refers to a large flat piece (usually a single layer) of fabric (usually cotton, hemp, or other natural fiber) that can be folded and used as an insert in a cloth diaper. 
  • Insert: Inserts are the absorbent part of the cloth diaper. They are usually rectangular-shaped and fit inside a pocket diaper, cover, or shell. The most popular material is a microfiber/microterry material (a synthetic). Inserts may also be hemp, bamboo, organic cotton, or minky. Microfiber/microterry should not be placed directly next to your baby’s skin (instead it may be placed inside a pocket).
  • One-Size: Used to refer to a diaper that fits most babies from birth through potty training. A one-size diaper can be adjusted to fit different shapes and sizes of babies from 7lbs to 40lbs and more. To adjust most one-size diapers use snaps or elastic and can easily adjust to fit your growing baby at any size.
  • Pocket: these have a pocket opening between the outer shell layer and the inner layer that touches baby’s skin. You can place the absorbent material (insert) inside this pocket opening. Pocket diapers are the #1 choice style for cloth diapering families.
  • Pre-fold: rectangular pieces of cloth that have a thicker middle layer. These also require a cover.
  • PUL: PUL stands for polyurethane laminate. PUL is the waterproof material used to make outer shells of many popular brands of diapers and diaper covers. PUL requires a chemical bond to attach to the back of fabrics. It can feel shiny or sticky.
  • Stash: A collection of cloth diapers. 
  • Stripping: A way to remove built-up residue from cloth diapers. (source)
  • What’s up with wool for overnights? Is it worth the hassle?
  • I actually do not have experience with this as we have never had issues with leaks overnight, but check out this post here about wool & cloth. I do love my hemp inserts for overnights though! They soak up so much.
  • Is it really cheaper than disposables?
  • Here’s a bit of a personal breakdown for you. We were spending around $40-$50 a month on disposables before we switched over. That’s around $1800 for three years of diapers. We paid around $500-$600 for our cloth diaper stash of around 40. We get to reuse these year after year.

Let me know if you have any other questions! Leave a comment below and I will reply.

 

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!
GIVEAWAY TIME!
So, I want to practice what I preach… this means finding a way to help you try out cloth! Charlie Banana and I have teamed up to gift one of my readers with a three pack of Charlie Banana diapers! It comes with three covers, and six inserts! Perfect for trying out cloth for a day! Here’s how to enter:
 
1. Follow @lovecharliebanana and @livingincolorstyle on Instagram
 
2. Simply post a photo of your baby on Instagram with the hashtag #LivinginColorCBGiveaway and tag me (@livingincolorstyle) in the caption!

3. Optional: Share this post on Pinterest, Facebook, or Twitter using the buttons below!
 
Winner will be selected five days from now, and contacted within 24 hours later! Good luck, mamas!
Be sure to check out these other posts about cloth diapering:
How To Wash, Store, and Care For Your Cloth Diapers | Cloth on the Go & Dressing a Baby Who Wears Cloth
xo.

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Filed Under: Motherhood, Product Reviews, Sustainability, Uncategorized Tagged With: baby products, Charlie Banana, Cloth Diapering, Love Charlie Banana

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Comments

  1. Renee says

    May 13, 2016 at 7:57 pm

    Thanks for the chance! Shared on Twitter and pinterest 🙂

    Reply
  2. Emmy Jake says

    May 13, 2016 at 8:15 pm

    This was so interesting to read!

    Emmy Jake NYC

    Reply
  3. Lindsay Rutland says

    May 15, 2016 at 2:29 am

    This was really informative! I've thought of going cloth, but feel like it would be so much easier if I was home with Harper all week. I'm not sure how my parents would feel about dealing with cloth haha! Maybe for baby 2 down the line

    Reply
  4. Blogger says

    November 15, 2016 at 9:12 pm

    I have just downloaded iStripper, so I can have the hottest virtual strippers on my taskbar.

    Reply

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  1. Five EASY Ways To Live More Sustainably This Year - Living in Color says:
    March 9, 2017 at 5:47 am

    […] a more sustainable lifestyle. As you know, we have already started this by eating a vegan diet, or cloth diapering, and recycling, but I want to be better. I want to start a compost, and try to reduce the amount of […]

    Reply

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I'm Larissa. A mama to daughters and wife to my college sweetheart. I am passionate about sustainable fashion, whole foods recipes, and Charlotte Mason home education. I also love being outdoors with my family. You can usually find me sporting a wide-brimmed hat, with a baby on my back.

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This week I’m writing + filming about a hallmark This week I’m writing + filming about a hallmark of the Charlotte Mason method: narration. Have you ever heard of it? What would you like to know? 

I’m focusing heavily on how we use narration in our homeschool, but if you have specific questions about it, I would love for you to 1. Take the poll in my stories, and 2. Ask any questions you may have about narration in the comments so that I can answer them in my video! ❤️
Happy Mother’s Day! I especially want to encoura Happy Mother’s Day! I especially want to encourage those who are intentionally making a better life for their children than what they may have experienced as kids. It is not easy to change the cycle, but it’s well worth the effort. 

In the words of Louisa May Alcott, “A woman's happiest kingdom is home, her highest honor is the art of ruling it not as a queen, but a wise wife and mother."
📚 We are moving right along with term three of 📚 We are moving right along with term three of our school year. Slow but steady, we will finish up mid June and I’ll begin prepping for next school year in July and August! 📚

Here’s some of my random old and new tips + what I’ve been doing to help keep organized with the CMEC. 

01. Keep a regular day for nature outings or field trips. We have two days a week where I intentionally plan a hike or museum visit, etc. One is usually at the middle of the week and the other is at the end. It offers great variety to our weeks.

02. Notebook! I have had the girls consistently notebook this year, and it’s been such a delight to go back and see my form 1b student’s progress! I have a video coming out about how we notebook and why you should try it very soon! 

03. To stay on track with our morning timetable I’ve been writing the time we end each lesson in my logbook. It’s really changed how productive I am in making sure we get everything on our timetable done for the day. (I have a video on my logbook if you’re interested in learning more about that!)

04. And 05. Popsicle sticks! Friends, if you’re already a CMEC family, use these to help you choose which activities you review! I have on these for old singing games, French songs, folk dances or Swedish drill routines. I’ll share more on what I have on ours, specifically, but it’s fun because the girls and I get to be surprised rather than me choosing what we review!

06. Art instruction. Originally I had us doing three art lessons per week in the afternoon, but it didn’t allow for enough free choice, so we’ve reduced it down to one formal lesson a week for six weeks, then we change the method. So right now we are in week two of our chalkdrawing lessons. After six weeks we will switch to brush drawing instruction for the remainder of the term! As Charlotte Mason recommends, we draw from memory, model, and from imagination. 🌞

I hope this was helpful to you! So many of you guys are using @the.cmec next year! I am SO excited to see all of you at the online form meetings this coming year! 👏🏻 #thecmec #thecmecform1 #charlottemason
Do you keep your spices in a cabinet, on a shelf o Do you keep your spices in a cabinet, on a shelf or in a drawer? This drawer is right next to my stove and it’s my favorite way to store my spices! I reuse these little jars and fill them every couple of weeks with my bulk @azurestandard spices. 🧂
Are you planting a garden this year? What are you Are you planting a garden this year? What are you growing? Containers and raised beds? Or in ground? What do you plan to grow? Veggies? Flowers? We are doing a little bit of everything. 😍

It’s my third year growing food. (And ironically, our third house 😅) We just got our @greenstalkgarden planter, several @smartpots, and six raised beds that are ready to be filled next weekend. Really looking forward to this gardening season! 🥕🥬🥦🌽🌶🫑🫐🍓🥔
“Let then once get in touch with nature and a ha “Let then once get in touch with nature and a habit is formed which will be a source of delight through life.” -Charlotte Mason 

My kiddo had a birthday this past weekend. We do one main gift and a couple of small gifts; typically they’re  things they can use outdoors. Bikes have been a popular birthday item around here! My eldest wanted an apple tree last year. ☺️ But this year we got N a mud kitchen! Some friends of ours had one they built, and it inspired us. My kiddos have been playing on the forest floor in the mud for years now, but it’s exciting for them to have a little space in our garden for mud play. 🌳 What are some fun outdoorsy gifts you’ve purchased for your kids?
📚 When should I teach my child to read? How sho 📚 When should I teach my child to read? How should I teach my child to read? What does Charlotte Mason say about reading lessons? How did she teach children how to read? What curriculum do you use to teach your child how to read? 📚
These are all questions I answered in my blog post and video, “teaching reading the Charlotte Mason way” 📚 you can also swipe over to see some of my favorite CM quotes on teaching reading! 📚

I also shared what I do with my 3-year-old (which is very minimal) if you have younger children. You can view the post at the link in my profile! Are you up children school-aged? What do you use to teach reading?
I needed to accomplish a lot today. There was more I needed to accomplish a lot today. There was more unpacking and organizing to be done, pictures to be framed, meal planning to do, laundry that needed folding, bike rides to be had, meals to be prepared, sourdough to be prepped and lesson planning + pre-reading to do. Oh and dishes. So many dishes. 😅

I do essentially all of the inside housework aside from taking out the trash + recycle, but for a season my husband helped out while N was small by doing dinner dishes and sometimes even preparing dinner so I could nurse her after we ate. But as of late, I’m trying something new where I don’t ask my husband to clean up after dinner and instead I do it myself. I don’t mind it, and since my girls are old enough to get their own pj’s on now, I’ve been doing dinner clean-up (as well as lunch and breakfast clean-up and prep!) before I head upstairs to tuck them in, read them a story and sit with them while they fall asleep. Call me old fashioned, but I’m happy to do it, and I delight in my husband being able to enjoy some time with the girls after dinner instead of clean up a mess after a long day of working.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this post - I’ve felt pulled in so many directions today and it’s something I feel often, (and I’m sure so many of you can relate) but after five months without a home to care for and nurture I simply can’t feel frustrated or annoyed at my list of 10,000 things I need to do. Instead I pray my way through each task. I sip tea in between. I light a candle and wear my great-grandmother’s apron as I work. I read notes like the one my six-year-old left for me this morning and I weep tears of gratitude and joy. Happy Sunday, my friends. ❤️ 
.
(swipe to read her note 🥰 + a transcription in the comments!)
Remember that word we heard so often when we were Remember that word we heard so often when we were parenting infants? Attachment.  What comes to mind? Breastfeeding on demand. Co-sleeping. Babywearing. All of those things that come pretty natural to us when taking care of a baby. But did you know that attachment doesn’t just end when your child gets bigger? Attachment is actually necessary THROUGH adolescence. 😳

Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté is a brilliant book that stopped me in my tracks. The book addresses the severe lack of attachment to parents that is incidentally replaced by an attachment to peers. I wrote all about it on my blog, but if you swipe over you can see a few passages that I underlined, highlighted, and wrote down in my notebook. 

Peer culture is more prevalent than ever. Not only because our society now prefers it that way, but because of social media’s ability to unite our youth in an unprecedented way. What we need is a shift in how we pass down culture to our kids from a horizontal attachment (peer to peer) back to a vertical attachment (family to child). I’ve often felt this long before I read this book, but we prioritize our Children’s friendships and relationships with others before we prioritize their relationships with us. We don’t value the family unit the way we used to decades ago, and it’s to the detriment of our children. 

I will gift this book to every new parent I meet from now on because of the wisdom the authors share. I wish all parents would read it so we could be on the same page as a society and those of us who choose to hold on to our kids wouldn’t be going against the grain. So this is my plea to you. If anything I’ve said piqued your interest, or struck a chord, please read Hold On To Your Kids! ✨

(For those of you who have read it! Share your thoughts with us! Help me convince everyone to read it! 👏🏻)
I promised I would share how I teach foreign langu I promised I would share how I teach foreign language the Mason way✨

When my oldest (now 6) was younger we loved and used @theculturedkid but since beginning formal lessons we’ve switched to this wonderful book by @cherrydalepress. 

Mason recommends that students learn 5-6 new French words a day and that they use them frequently. She writes in Home Education, “…children should learn French orally, by listening to and repeating French words and phrases; that they should begin so early that the difference of the accent does not strike them, but they repeat the French word all the same as if it were English, and use it freely…” (p. 80) she then writes about how important it is to employ the use of French vocabulary words during time out-of-doors. My kids and I have taken this to heart, because it isn’t uncommon for us all to be walking along the hiking trail, singing our French folk songs together. It’s something I’ll remember that we do together for many years. 

The Cherrydale Press program allows the child to learn common phrases, orally, a bit at a time. Along the way, they learn common verbs and vocabulary. 

Each “series” lasts about 2 weeks.
So here is the process we go through in that time:

01. We practice and memorize the English phrases. 
Here’s an example: 
I take the book.
I open the book.
I close the book.
So we say the phrases as we ACT THEM OUT, which is crucial to this method of learning French and retaining it! It’s helped me tremendously as a non-native speaker.

02. We then learn the French verbs from those phrases in French: je prends, j’ouvre, and je ferme. We memorize how to say them and act them out!

03. We learn the whole thing in French as we act it out. 
Je prends le livre.
j’ouvre le livre.
je ferme le livre.

After my daughter can say/act them without error, on her own, we move on to the next series!

Thanks to The Living Page, I keep a French notebook where I record the phrases or words we learn! (That’s what I shared in my stories the other day!)

In addition to this program, we have two French folk songs, one French vocabulary song per term (we sing daily) and a story we listen to in French, thanks to @the.cmec and their support!

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