Charlotte Mason advocated short lessons for younger children, growing progressively longer as the child matures. Elementary-age children’s lessons should be no longer than fifteen or twenty minutes on one particular subject before moving on to something else. In this way, the habit of full attention is encouraged and children receive a broad education filled with many varied subjects.

Even though we are using PACEs, I have applied this concept of “short lessons” to our homeschool routine, and the results have been fantastic! Nathan is more motivated and even his handwriting is neater! An added benefit is that he seems to have better retention of new concepts since we aren’t covering so much at one time. Instead, he has several days to practice a new skill before moving on to something else.

Less is more!

Nathan is working on Science PACE 1040, and he’s learning that one way we get minerals into our bodies is by eating vegetables. This PACE includes a fun experiment to prove that vegetables have water and minerals in them.

Here’s how we did it:

We filled two jars with water and then put red food coloring in one jar and blue food coloring in the other jar. (We were generous with the food coloring to make a dark color.) We chose two stalks of celery from the middle of a bunch so they were lighter in color and had more leaves. We cut off the ends to expose the veins, put one stalk in each jar, and then we waited…and waited…oh, yes, this was an exercise in patience, too!

By the end of the day, we could see just a little bit of change in the leaves, and by the next morning, the change was even more obvious! The “blue” celery looked vibrant, and the “red” celery looked dead, but they were both still shades of green. Now, after several days, the new colors have finally taken over! One stalk has red leaves, and the other has blue leaves.

How fun!