Homeschool Day in the Life: Leah, homeschooling mom and Charlotte Mason supporter
A homeschool day in the life looks different almost every day, right? Over on our Instagram page, we love to give you a peek into lots of homeschool days regardless of how they change day to day.
Today, we’re going to give you a peek into the homeschool day in the life of Leah, homeschooling mom and leader of the largest community of Charlotte Mason home educators in the UK!
We can all learn and be inspired by one another, regardless of our homeschool approach. It’s not about looking good for social media, it’s about the connection going on inside our homeschool walls and sharing with others what works for us.
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We might all homeschool a little differently, but we can always look for ideas from each other that inspire, encourage and equip us in our own homeschool days. So each week we create blog posts for you to access later of each of those “days in the life”. We hope you keep coming back for more inspiration. Keep going, mama! These days at home are so worth it!
Meet Leah
Leah Boden @modernmissmason is a long-time student and practitioner of Charlotte Mason’s educational ideas. As well as home educating her own four children (two now pursuing careers and further education) in Coventry – England, she pioneered, leads and supports the largest UK community of Charlotte Mason home educators. Leah founded “Modern Miss Mason” which encourages parents and educators to find their own freedom within the philosophy. She does this via her online community, a weekly podcast, one-to-one coaching and the Charlotte Mason Unboxed course. Leah is signed with Tyndale Publishing to write the book “Modern Miss Mason” which will be in bookshops January 2023. She loves being outdoors, reading books and poetry of all kinds, writing whenever possible and learning how to tend her garden.
Leah and her husband Dave are Associate Pastors of Mosaic Church, Coventry. They live on the edge of a city park surrounded by squirrels and trees with their two sons, two daughters and a rescue dog called Eli.
Good Morning!
Good morning Learning Well Community! It’s good to be back with you today. I’ll be sharing a few snippets from our homeschooling life here in sunny England. It’s a glorious spring day; half my family are out of the door already by this time of the morning, at work or college. We are almost 15 years into our home educating journey, and I have two left at home who are (almost) 13, and 10.
Here’s a corner of our learning space, but as I’m sure you do, we use the whole house/garden/park/world to learn in!
Today is slightly different as we’re going on an afternoon adventure with our nature group to a National Trust house and gardens.
Our Learning Rhythm
Our learning rhythm generally works in four blocks:
Gathered Learning
Going Solo
Group Learning
Get outside ?
Which could be interpreted as, ‘Morning Time’, independent study, subject work and afternoon shenanigans. ?
I firmly believe there’s freedom within format. I plan and we have a rhythm, but there’s plenty of wiggle room in our family! Do you lean more towards tightly planned or loosey-goosey (or somewhere in between)? No judgment here!
Freedom in Homeschooling
The beauty of homeschooling is the freedom to put down the books, and explore local landscapes, especially when the sun shines ☀️
Today our nature group gathered at Calke Abbey in Leicestershire to picnic, walk, admire gardens, climb trees, and run in wildflower meadows! It was glorious.
Preparing Lessons
I’m preparing for tomorrow and taking great delight in choosing which Raphael picture we’ll spend time with! We study an artist over a 6 week period – 1 piece a week. The children spend some concentrated time looking in detail at the print, then they narrate what they saw. Sometimes they’ll sketch, draw or paint to “remember”, but mostly they orally narrate.
I hang (stick) the prints in our learning space, and we visit galleries when we can. There’s no getting away from beautiful art in our home!
Longevity in Homeschooling
Here’s the whole crew! All growing, changing and emerging into the world in their own unique ways. Nurturing our children and facilitating their education is an absolute privilege and one I don’t take for granted, even after all these years.
If I could offer you any advice for longevity in homeschooling today it would be, stay consistent, find community, and establish courage for the journey! It has been delightful spending time with you in this space today, come over and visit me over at @modernmissmason.
Thank you so much to Leah for sharing your family’s day with us!
If you want to see more Day in the Life photos and videos, be sure to check out our Instagram profile. There are highlights of each takeover at the top.