Homeschooling with Charlotte Mason in the Natural State

Monday, April 22, 2013

The basics....

Short Lessons

Charlotte believed that children should have short lessons which would help them to develop the habit of attention. Because they had short lessons the lesson was only taught once and they were sometimes told to narrate or tell back to the teacher/parent what they have just studied. Therefore the children must pay full attention to what the lesson is about which in turn makes for short lessons.

These time limits for lessons that I follow are below. You'll notice too that as the child(grade) gets older the length of time is longer for each lesson. This is becuase as we all know that a childs attention span is short at the beginning and builds as they get older.

Grades 1 -3     15-20 min

Grades 4 -6     30 min

Grades 7 -9      40-45 min


These times are for each lesson. So for instance, if I have a 3rd grader his/her schedule would look like this in a day. (I'll show the basics only, which if you are just starting out homeschooling in this method its best to start here.)

Reading     15 min
Math         15 min
Writing      15 min
Total          45 min

Next time we'll talk about what order you should do your subjects in...

Do your kids do well with short lessons?

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