Recently I made a trip to the rolling hills of Virginia to meet up with some friends of mine. You might know them as the ladies from A Delectable Education, a popular Charlotte Mason method podcast: Nicole Williams and Liz Cottrill and Emily Kiser. We sat down at the Living Books Library to chat, because I […]
Let’s talk about living books. Now, I can almost hear you saying, “Living books? Again? We talk about them all the time!” And that just proves my point. In a Charlotte Mason home school we spend a lot of time talking about living books: what they are, how to spot them, where to find them, […]
About twenty-five years ago, when I started homeschooling, I didn’t have the Internet. (I’ll pause here for a minute to let that sink in.) . . . I heard about Charlotte Mason at a state homeschool conference and immediately went looking for any books I could find about her methods. One of the first books […]
Reading aloud to your children is a gift that you can give them all year round. If you set up a habit of reading together just one chapter from a good literature book every day, you’ll be giving your children a precious gift. In fact, you might not realize just how valuable that gift is. […]
Have you ever watched a play or a movie in which the actors weren’t that great? They just didn’t do a very good job of delivering their lines or communicating what was happening inside and outside their characters. The actors didn’t write the play or the movie, yet they had an important role in making […]
I can’t state this better than Charlotte Mason already did— “Children must have books, living books; the best are not too good for them; anything less than the best is not good enough” (Parents and Children, p. 279). Living books are a hallmark of a Charlotte Mason education. They are not used in every subject, […]
Today was one of “those” days. It took a Herculean effort just to make sure we accomplished all that needed to be done: meals, vitamins, exercises, beginning reading, copywork, math, groceries, Bible, literature, Scripture memory. Not to mention conference calls, e-mails, writing, and scheduling. I’m sure your to-do list looked just as full and loomed […]
In Charlotte Mason circles, we talk a lot about habits: how God made our brains to form habits automatically through repetition; what kinds of motivation work best; how long it takes to form a good habit; how to replace a bad habit with a good habit. All of this is important, because good habits give […]
We talk a lot about your school schedule and how to make it work for you and your students. But what about that block of time before school starts? That part of your morning can have a big impact on your school day. If breakfast is pleasant, chores get done, and the children gather in […]
For many years now I’ve been on the lookout for the perfect location at which to hold a gathering of all of us, my Charlotte Mason friends (and I count you as one of those friends) and I. Because I wanted this get-together to be very special, I had a long list of requirements for […]
Joan wanted a garden. In her mind this garden would provide colorful, fresh, healthful vegetables for her family. She could picture the lovely yellow peppers, delicious sweet onions, and bright red tomatoes. In fact, she could almost taste the fresh salsa! But Joan was new to this whole gardening thing. She knew it involved putting […]
Using Language Well, Book 3, focuses the spotlight on analyzing sentences. We recommend it for grades 7 and 8, and it is available now! Learning how to analyze sentences is an important skill for your student to have in order to continue to grow in her ability to communicate well. When she analyzes a sentence, […]
A smartphone is a tool. It isn’t good or bad in and of itself. It’s just a tool; it’s up to you how you use it. I encourage you to make sure that you use technology in a way that reinforces the knowledge and the habits that you are trying to instill in your child’s […]
Narration is such a powerful tool when done correctly. The foundational way is simply to retell what you read or heard in your own words. If you’re just getting started with narration, you may need to start with reading only a paragraph or one page in order to retain all of that information, process it, […]
A slip of paper. That’s all. A slip of paper. I find it very interesting that the word schedule comes from the Latin for “a slip of paper.” Can you imagine? When Charlotte Mason homeschoolers talk about schedules, somehow it takes on much more significance than a slip of paper. We read books about how […]
I love how, with the Charlotte Mason approach, you’re done with lessons by lunch time. Younger students in her schools were done by 11:30, middle students by 12:00, and older students by 1:00. It’s so refreshing to focus head-down for a few hours and then relax. The variety of subjects covered during those hours helps […]
I am so happy to announce that the 2019 calendar journal is available, because it combines four things that I like to keep near me during the year. In some ways the year seems to fly by; but in other ways, there is a lot of time and life that passes between January and December. […]
If you’re switching from an unschooling approach to the Charlotte Mason Method, here’s a little advice to keep in mind. If you’re not sure what “unschooling” is, it might help to take a moment and watch the video, Five Flavors of Homeschooling. But if you know what unschooling is, you’ve had first-hand experience with unschooling, […]
Some people think that a Charlotte Mason approach is a unit study approach. But there are some key differences between the two methods. And if you’re making the change from unit studies to Charlotte Mason in your homeschool, you need to understand those differences. Let’s take a look at them by first exploring three tendencies […]
I’m often asked, “Is Charlotte Mason classical?” Homeschoolers can debate that question all day. Here’s my take on it: If by “classical” you mean appreciating and using classic literature; cultivating good character; focusing on what is good, true, noble, and beautiful; and spreading a wide feast that includes art and music and poetry and Shakespeare […]
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