Who here does some form of Charlotte Mason-style education, using no textbooks, but rather living books and real life?

What do you do?

What program do you use for math?

What do you do for spelling?

Here are my answers:

We are following Ambleside Online Year 3.

Spelling...no real answer yet.

We've been using Singapore Math. I like it, but I'd like to incorporate more "living" math.

We've been doing a more Charlotte Mason type of homeschooling for a few years now.  Except for Math, we are now using Saxon.  My children weren't able to retain things and really need the daily review.  As far as living math, what we did do that helped a lot was to give them a small allowance and then took them to the dollar store.  They were able to figure out how much tax they would need for whatever th ey wanted to buy.

They also learned to play Rummy which helped them learn th eir times tables.   They needed to add up their points and they can tell you how much 4 aces is worth!  :)  We taught some fractions and percents using money and quarters.  They have bank accounts that they make their own deposits in so they get practice adding to a balance.  Baking is another good way to introduce fractions.  You can have them double of halve a recipe.

I followed the "Easy Way" language arts by Cindy Rushton and others, where we would do copywork, dictation and we read aloud all the time.  From this, they developed a good working vocabulary.  I use the things that they write to correct spelling etc, instead of a separate spelling or language arts program.

Everything else that we study is delight directed for the most part.  We work through history in chronological order by reading aloud living historical fiction.  Just now, after 6 years, we are finally letting them pick things to study on their own and then write reports (their decision).  I always wanted them to do notebooks, but it just didn't catch on with them.  Not th eir style I guess.

I hope this helps you to see what can be done.  There are so many great ideas out there.

Jenny