One of the questions that comes up frequently among minimalist homeschoolers, is how to “spread the feast,” while keeping things simple and stress-free. Luckily, if you can adjust your mindset a bit, there are a 4 key ways to combine spreading the feast like Charlotte Mason and minimalist homeschooling simplicity.
This post is part of the Minimalist Homeschooling Mindset Series in which I address each of the Minimalist Homeschooling Mindset Hacks from the book in more detail.
The 12th Hack is: Don’t do everything at once.
The book offers instruction into how format your homeschool so that you don’t have to do everything at once, so I am not going to reinvent that wheel here. Instead, I want to spend some time talking about how this can apply to combining Charlotte Mason and Minimalist Homeschooling.
OK. Soooo, we’re talking about spreading the feast, and I chose the “don’t do everything at once” mindset hack as our starting point. Perhaps you already have a glimpse of where I’m going to go, but stick with me. I have a lot to say…
1. Don’t force-feed your child.
Imagine the last feast that you had. It was probably a holiday, and it was probably delicious. At Thanksgiving, we had so many options that I couldn’t possibly eat all of them. I chose one type of meat, and a few side dishes. I did have two servings of dessert, but there were at least 4 options available. I did not have a serving of everything. I didn’t even try a bite of everything. Honestly, some things didn’t look too appealing. Other things I planned to eat on my second plate, but I was so full after the first helpings that I simply didn’t have any room for more.
Does the fact that I didn’t eat some of everything make the feast a failure? Not at all.
I appreciated all of the dishes that were made and all of the options. I especially enjoyed being able to choose what to eat and how much of everything I could stuff in my face before I couldn’t eat another bite. Was the meal a failure because there were leftovers? Certainly not – it was an indication of our abundance!
Can we approach our homeschool feast the same way? Can laying out the options be enough, even if you don’t get a chance to eat a full serving, or even try them all? Yes. It’s ok to live in such abundance that you have educational leftovers.
Too often we feel like homeschool failures when everyone doesn’t eat from every single option. We force our kids to put some of everything onto their plates, and to finish it, regardless of how “full” they are, or whether they enjoy it. Let’s start focusing more on laying out options, and less on whether it is ALL consumed.
2. Sample the Feast.
Let’s talk about portion sizes. Again, during your last feast experience, did you take a full serving of everything? I didn’t. There were some things I wanted to try just a bite of at first, and then I thought I would get seconds if I really enjoyed it. It’s hard to commit to filling valuable stomach space with the unknown, when you have been waiting months for the stuffing that you already know is amazing.
Similarly, children instinctively don’t want to risk filling up their days with items they don’t love as much as others. Don’t serve huge portions of the mediocre or unknown stuff, at the expense of the space for the things your child loves and has been looking forward to. For this reason, I suggest “sampling” items for your feast, rather than requiring a full serving. You know what I mean: read one short book – not all three of the books that the homeschooling world says are awesome – on a subject. There will always be the option to go back for seconds if you enjoy it.
If your child samples a bite and doesn’t like it, fill their plate with other options, or with big servings of things they do like. Keep offering bites over the long-term. Do I put a bite-sized sample of unknown dishes on my child’s plate every Thanksgiving? Yes. So too, you can come back and sample those items again at a later date.
Combining Charlotte Mason and Minimalist Homeschooling means that we’re ok with offering our children a small, bite-sized sample BECAUSE we respect that they really want to save room for what they know they love. It means that we trust that they will go back for a second (larger) helping if they enjoy what they have tasted.
3. Avoid making the feast routine.
How often do you serve feasts? Every day? Every week? Yeah. Me neither. Why? Because they’re a lot of work! And, because they are special occasions.
It’s ok to trust that you will have another feast, and another, and another… Fortunately, homeschool feasts are not tied to specific holidays and do not require as much money, preparation, and forethought. You can have homeschool feasts more than once a quarter, but it is very difficult to combine Charlotte Mason and Minimalist Homeschooling if you feel like the entire feast needs to be served every day (or every week) all the time.
The pressure that homeschoolers feel to spread the feast daily, or weekly can be very overwhelming. Here’s what I propose: If you treat it more like a special occasion, it will feel more like a special occasion (and less like a chore).
Children will be more appreciative, and you will be more motivated. Everyone will be more excited. Ultimately, it’s the “special” that we want to promote in the learning experience. We want that sense of satisfaction after a great meal. When the “feast” is routine, special becomes ordinary, and its preparation becomes a chore.
4. Don’t do it all right now.
Now, let’s talk about the dishes served at the feast: you have to make some decisions. If you have ever looked for a recipe online, you know that the options for dishes a person could possibly serve are endless. So too, are the options for teaching our children (thank you, Pinterest). One Easter, we had a feast of Mexican food because it best suited our resources, and who was participating. Other Easters we have had more traditional ham dinners. On Christmas Day every year, my little family makes our own pizzas for dinner. I am trying to illustrate that each feast has its own flavor.
We could not possibly serve every dish that is known to man at a single feast, nor do we ever even set that as a goal. And so, I would suggest that you make some decisions for your homeschool feast, as well. How do you decide what to serve at your meals? Usually we consider our resources, and who is attending. We consider how much preparation the items will take, and make sure to include some family favorites. Sometimes we pick just a couple new items to try-out this time. We balance the options to ensure some variety. We ask other people to bring their favorite dish. Can you use the same criteria to pick and choose your homeschool feast?
When combining Charlotte Mason and Minimalist Homeschooling, people sometimes feel like they can’t pick and choose: they have to do it all, exactly the way that other people do it. If everyone’s feasts were exactly the same every holiday, maybe I would agree. But, everybody’s feasts are not the same. You are spreading the feast over a lifetime, and your children will continue (hopefully) to take part in feasts long after they have moved out. You don’t have to prepare every dish right now, or even this year. Maybe there will be things your children don’t sample until they are raising their own children – just think about all of the things you experienced for the first time as an adult. Minimalist homeschoolers trust that there is plenty of time to accumulate knowledge and experiences… because we’re actively making the time!
As a bonus, I’m including a printable menu for you to create (or for your children to create) for your next feast. Enjoy choosing what will be served. Print extras knowing that you will have lots of feasts to come…
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So there you have it: Ways to combine Charlotte Mason and Minimalist Homeschooling when you’re spreading the feast. What do you think? How do you keep the feast from overwhelming you? Share in the comments below…
Disclaimer: This article should NOT be considered “pure” Charlotte Mason homeschool advice. I know there are a lot of people that strictly adhere to Charlotte Mason philosophies and frown upon tweaking it. I am not one of those people. I’m more of a “nothing works exactly the same for everybody, so let’s make it work” sorta gal. I happen to think tweaking your mindset won’t prevent you from spreading an amazing and satisfying feast, but will take the pressure off. Either way, you get to decide how you’d like to school.
Another disclaimer: We, as parents, get to decide what we think is best for our children. That may mean letting children make all of their own choices, and that may mean structuring some of your child’s education for them. State and national requirements also contribute to our decisions. I am not here to advocate for any point along that spectrum. You choose. “Spreading the feast” refers to providing variety in a child’s education, and is usually associated with subjects that are commonly considered “enrichment” (not core, every day subjects).
This post is part of the minimalist homeschooling mindset series, which goes into more detail for each of the mindset hacks in the book Minimalist Homeschooling: a values-based approach to maximize learning and minimize stress.
There is a group of homeschoolers on facebook who are on a mission to minimize their stress while maximizing the learning. Won’t you join us?
Wishing you all of the simple things,
Zara
Thanks for this post. I think it’s very much needed among CM homeschoolers. I recently found an old schedule when I was sorting through some things. I wish I would have kept it, because it had something like 6 or 7 daily subjects plus two loops of 4 items each, plus a set of extracurricular activities, all for one week!! Sure, I was hitting most of the CM subjects, but at what cost? And with older children, lessons are simply longer, and you don’t have time to do all-the-things. I found it absolutely necessary to pare down by the 6th grade, and even more this year for the 7th. But my daughter is still getting a liberal arts education. Your book helped me a lot with prioritizing our values and subjects. I want to add that as a Catholic, I must prioritize the teachings of the Church on education and family life over any method, and there absolutely are areas where CM is not in alignment with Catholic teaching. I had to do a lot of research and read the Church encyclicals and such before I could apprehend the potential problems with CM for Catholics. My conclusion is that I can take those portions from CM which align with the Catholic Faith, but I can’t use her philosophy and method full-on. That knowledge freed me to embrace a framework of traditional Catholic work-texts upon which to build the feast, and to give myself permission to follow the classical principle of “multum non multa.” Organizing a course of study around chronological, history-based unit studies was a great solution for me.
Thanks for your great comment, Rita. Agree, and agree! Have you seen Mater Amabilis? I appreciate that that exists as a starting point for investigating resources. I have a goal to read for my faith (in addition to Scriptures) daily, and I think reading more encyclicals would be good for me. Thanks for the inspiration!
“On the Christian Education of Youth” is a good place to start with the encyclicals. You can find it for free online. I usually look at Mater Amabilis when I’m doing my planning for the upcoming year. I sometimes get a few ideas, but honestly, it’s just too overwhelming. I’m so glad we can inspire one another! Merry Christmas!!
Thank you for the tip. Merry Christmas!