A friend of mine made a statement recently that stopped me in my tracks. She was explaining how in the past she hadn’t felt confident deviating from a recommended book list for her Charlotte Mason home school, and she said something like, “That was before I understood the difference between Charlotte Mason’s principles and a […]
It seems like one of the hardest concepts to wrap your head around when you’re homeschooling with the Charlotte Mason Method is the concept of living ideas versus dry facts. Now, we give our children living ideas in several ways; but for this post I’m going to focus on living books, because living books make […]
Today we’re wrapping up our favorite history books series. We’ve covered five history time periods so far: Middle Ages and Renaissance, Early Modern, Modern Times, Ancient Egypt, and Ancient Greece. Today we’ll share our top living books for studying Ancient Rome. I hope these posts have been helpful to you. Leave a comment and let […]
We often talk about homeschooling as a journey, and we can apply that in many different settings. But when you think about it for your homeschool year, a lot of times we like to put things on cruise control and just go through the year. We think if we have our plan, we can just […]
This time of year, as we celebrate the birth of Jesus and look toward the unknown future of the coming year, we can find comfort and confidence in the truth that Jesus is called Immanuel, God with us. Charlotte Mason reminded her readers of that truth of an ever-present Savior, Who is with us in […]
In the last post, we looked at how books can help our children form relations with themselves, and we talked about those books as mirrors. Today, we want to expand on another aspect of that and how books can help our children form relations with others. They’ve formed the groundwork as they get to know […]
The books that we give to our children help them form relations, those important relations that Charlotte Mason talked about so much, relating with God, relating with the universe around us, and relating with people, and that’s the aspect that we want to focus in on today. Joining me for this discussion is my friend, […]
One of the great things about doing Charlotte Mason nature study is that you don’t have to have a bunch of expensive equipment. Just grab your journal and go outside. But sometimes it can be helpful to expand our nature study practices by having some equipment, if we want to. So today we want to […]
Too often Ancient Greece is just tossed into a quick overview of Ancient Times, but there are so many interesting and valuable stories from that time period—and so many great books—that can help us get a clearer picture of what life was like during Old Testament times. That’s why I like to take a full […]
Are you looking for ways to create a more Charlotte Mason atmosphere in your home? Today we want to address a great question, and here to join me are Jenn Faas and Laura Pitney, my friends and coworkers. Sonya: Here’s the question: “Can you give some tips on great ways to create a Charlotte Mason […]
Charlotte Mason used a wonderfully unique and effective method for teaching conversational foreign languages. It’s called a Series Approach, and I’m going to walk you through how to do it. What You Will Need You will need a series. A series is a set of related statements that describe an everyday action. So for example, […]
Has it ever happened to you that you ask your child, “What did you see outside today?” and that child says, “A bird,” and you try to get more information, but the child just says, “Well, I think it was red, or I think it was … it might have had some blue,” and that […]
I really enjoy sharing my favorite living books with you. It’s like introducing delightful old friends that I know will help and support you along your homeschool journey. Today I will give you my top ten picks for studying Ancient Egypt. These are the ten living books that are scheduled into the lesson plan guide […]
I think at some time or other, all of us homeschool mamas have felt like giving up. “I just want to quit.” It’s a great question to discuss today, and Laura Pitney is here joining me: “What keeps you going when you want to quit?” Laura: That’s a very good question, as always. Sonya: Yes, […]
I’m going to venture to say that most of us did not grow up with Shakespeare as a regular part of our education. In my school years, I had only one Shakespeare play introduced to me and that was a last-minute, “Here, let’s watch this movie,” by a substitute teacher. But Charlotte Mason believed that […]
Today we want to dive into a few questions that we’ve received from different home educating parents who have questions about Charlotte Mason’s method of dictation. If you’re not familiar with that wonderful method for teaching children spelling, then take a look at that post, How to Do Dictation. The corresponding video will walk you […]
On my bookshelf I have a copy of a book from the early 1900s that was used in Charlotte Mason’s schools. Many books like this contain an introduction full of helpful comments, but the introduction to this book is so refreshing that I want to share a portion of it with you. Of course, it […]
A new artist has been added to the award-winning Picture Study Portfolios collection: Hans Holbein. Each Holbein picture in the portfolio has an interesting story behind it that will encourage your child to look closely and discover more about the time period when King Henry VIII reigned in England. Picture Study Portfolios are a simple […]
Today, we want to tackle a fun topic: school supplies for a Charlotte Mason education. We already talked about what we consider back-to-school essentials for the mom, and those are more the attitudes that set the atmosphere of your home. But today we want to get down and practical with “What are some school supplies?”—some […]
Today we want to discuss how Charlotte Mason taught English grammar. Grammar analyzes the system and the structure of a language. That’s a heavy concept that requires abstract thinking, so Charlotte did not start formal grammar lessons until the student was about 10 years old. When we talk about grammar lessons, we’re basically talking about […]
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