Charlotte Mason Book Study

Hi, Rachel –

Hooray for starting your own group! Your meetings can be a reflection of you and your group’s personality and needs at each season of life as you journey together. There’s no one right way to facilitate meetings, but I know it can be helpful to glean ideas from others. So I asked Laura, the leader of the CM group that I go to, to share some of her thoughts to pass along to you. Here are some ideas from both a leader’s and an attendee’s point of view with our group.

• You are off to a great start! It’s good to set a certain amount of pages as homework to read before coming to the meeting. (We usually assign about 20 pages for our group for each month’s meeting.) That way you keep moving forward in the book.  It also encourages attendees to be prepared to contribute to the discussion. We do not make the reading assignment a requirement but simply encourage all who can to do it. Life is crazy and sometimes getting to the meeting is hard enough!
• Laura usually leads the discussion/study by giving her own narration of each section covered. Sometimes you can move through this quickly, other times the material is rather “heavy.” So the pace during the meetings may vary.
• It really helps to have some questions ready to ask as you are going through your narrations. This will help draw others into the discussion as well as keep you moving and on topic. Questions like, “How can we apply this in our home?” or “What would this look like for you?” As the leader, Laura has found that a key to this is to be willing to share from your heart. Openness coming from you (even if it is about a struggle or something you consider to be a fault) will set the example for everyone. Your transparency will demonstrate a teachable spirit and show that all of us are always learning.
• Our discussion/study time is slotted for an hour, then we take a break (coffee, snacks, bathroom, etc.) before moving on to a Q & A time or finishing up the discussion portion.
• It is great to have some Q & A time, whether focused on the passage for the meeting or sometimes open-ended. Another popular event with our group is to ask people to bring and share their favorite CM resources pertaining to the topic at hand. Again, set the tone and let grace abound as you all learn together.  Q & A often leads into the practical application of the methods, so having a quick reference type book on hand might be helpful since you are still learning. A Charlotte Mason Education would be a good one to keep close by.
• It is important to value the attendees’ time and be committed to dismissing them at the agreed time. One thing that we have discovered really helps is to give a formal “closing” announcement. That way whoever needs to leave has the freedom to do so and those who want to stay can linger as they wish.
• Laura usually sends out an e-mail reminder about a week before the meeting date that includes the date, time, and place for that month’s meeting. It mentions the pages that will be discussed and any helpful information about what we will be doing or what they might want to bring along.
• Sometimes we do a special type of meeting just to keep variety. For example, last December we had just finished discussing art instruction and nature notebooks. So Laura invited a lady in our group, who is an artist, to lead us in trying our hand at some watercolor techniques. Our ladies like to have a handicraft option after the break sometimes just for something different. They can chat as they work and gain ideas for their own children’s handicraft times. At this particular meeting, Laura provided the watercolor paper (cut into postcard-size sheets) and some paints and brushes that she had but also invited everyone to bring any watercolors and brushes they had.

I hope our experience provides some seeds of ideas that you can cultivate to fit your group too.