I swapped two books this term. I acted out of instinct, without dilemma, because I knew our planned book was not going to work out and I ran across its replacement perusing our living room shelves. I make these kinds of decisions all the time, now.
But I didn’t used to. I used to study the curriculum and buy every book. I tried to fit them all in and I wanted to make sure that we didn’t miss anything. We struggle-bussed our way through many a book that my kids did not connect with. But about four years in, I called a mentor in the homeschool community because my son was strongly resisting lessons with a book that I didn’t think we could bypass. She responded to me, without missing a beat, “Oh! We never read that one. (Even though it was on the list!) We just used a book about that same topic that we already had on the shelf.” Like it was no. big. deal. She had just adjusted the booklist for her own family to meet their needs and circumstances and it was totally fine. She was so calm and I’m pretty sure my brain was having an actual aneurysm.
But that is the day I learned that the point was always to take the booklist and make it your own. That is our freedom and privilege as home schoolers. I just hadn’t learned how to do it yet. I had to grow in my confidence as an educator and in my own knowledge in order to be able to internalize this idea and push it out to all its ends.
Today I see booklists as stacks of concepts or ideas, instead of required titles. I love perusing booklists and curriculums because I know that every concept is covered in more than one book and ideas come from all over the place. I make unorthodox, not curriculum-suggested decisions and it is incredibly freeing and fun. I no longer ask myself, “Are we reading the right books?” Or assume that because a book is on a list, we must read it. Rather, I look hard at what ideas are being presented and I ask if the way they are presented in that particular book is what and how my kids need to learn. If I think we might have an issue, I find a different book that covers the concepts in a different way. An unexpected bonus to this method of choosing books is that my kids have developed a strong sense of how they learn best and with what types of books they connect the most.
Are you an unapologetic book swapper? What’s a Charlotte Mason concept you had to learn the hard way?