My husband and I used to ride tandem bicycles around Chicagoland. We would throw on our biking clothes and go for miles on the Rails to Trails paths. During our bicycling days, I learned two very important lessons. First, I’m most apt to lose my balance when I’m riding uphill. Those climbs can throw off […]

Charlotte Mason’s original six-volume series is a wealth of ideas, encouragement, and good humor. The books are not easy reading, but they are rich reading. You will gain much insight and confidence if you spend even ten minutes a day reading and then narrating to yourself what you have read. I often get asked, “Which […]

Balance is a needful, but often elusive, state. We yearn for it, yet often we don’t consciously think about it until it’s gone. When life is humming along smoothly, we don’t usually focus on possible tweaks and changes we may need to make. It’s when we lose our balance and things get wobbly, or come […]

We are so excited to announce a new living history book for the whole family: A Castle with Many Rooms: The Story of the Middle Ages! Now you and your children can follow the fascinating story of the Middle Ages from the Fall of Rome to the Renaissance, Reformation, and Scientific Revolution. From Europe to […]

There’s something about looking closely and carefully at a historical object that makes that era become more real in your mind. Taking your time to observe in detail the treasures that people of the past created seems to help you form a stronger relation with them and the time period in which they lived. The […]

The other day I heard someone describe Shakespeare’s plays as the “sitcoms of the 16th and 17th centuries.” At first I thought that was a trivial comparison; but the more I ponder it, the more sense it makes. Shakespeare’s plays were the entertainment of the day. They were the TV and movies back then, if […]

I love Charlotte Mason’s “permission” to simply enjoy poetry. The weekly happy opportunities to read a poem with my children have enriched my own spirit. There is something refreshing about having the freedom to make my own relations with the poems, to notice for myself certain lines and turns of phrases that speak to my […]

One of the great things about a Charlotte Mason education is the wide variety of subjects the students get to enjoy: history, geography, Bible, science, math, and language arts; plus music study, art, nature study, picture study, handicrafts, singing, poetry, foreign language, and those wonderful family read-alouds. (more…)