Charlotte Mason Together Retreat 2022 Session Videos

Product Description

Enjoy encouragement and practical sessions from the 2022 Charlotte Mason Together Retreat!

Sonya Shafer, Richele Baburina, Karen Glass, and Karen Smith provide guidance, inspiration, and practical help in these 11 sessions of encouragement, totaling more than 9 hours. Take some time to invest in your home school as you enjoy these recordings from the 2022 Charlotte Mason Together Retreat.

These video recordings stream online from your Simply Charlotte Masom account for convenient access on any device you own.

Enjoy a retreat all your own when you invite these wonderful speakers into your home with their wisdom and encouragement. You might view the sessions with your spouse or with other homeschool friends and start connecting over Charlotte Mason’s methods together.

Sessions Included

Session 1: Portraits of You

What do you see when you look in your “parenting mirror”? Charlotte Mason sketched several portraits of what she saw when she looked at a parent. Join Sonya Shafer for a tour through that beautiful display of how Charlotte pictured you and how those portraits can inspire, instruct, and reassure you in your role as a homeschool parent.

Session 2: Time to Sharpen Our Pencils: Transitioning from Oral to Written Narration

After a few years of oral narration, your children are narrating like pros. When it’s time to begin written narration, you find yourself at square one. It’s supposed to be a step forward, but it feels like a step back. Why don’t the written narrations flow as easily as the oral ones you’re used to hearing? In this talk by Karen Glass, we’ll take a good look at the process of moving into written narration, identify the primary goals of each step of the process, and discuss strategies that will soften the inevitable bumps along the way. You’ll come away feeling prepared to navigate this challenge.

Session 3: Nature Study with Confidence

Do you feel at home guiding your students in nature study? Boost your confidence in this session with Karen Smith. Karen will clarify your understanding of nature study, walk you through several nature studies, and teach you how to use a pocket microscope and a field guide to enhance your observations. Take the next step to doing nature study with confidence.

Session 4: Belonging Together: Managing the Seasons of Community and Fellowship

Cultivating intentional opportunities for children to explore ideas and grow within a community of likeminded learners is a priceless experience. When families are regularly situated alongside others who share their desires for a living education rooted in Charlotte Mason’s principles, they reap the immediate benefits of relational learning. But once homeschool co-ops and groups are seeded, they must be watered and cared for through fruitful and difficult seasons. In this session, Amber O’Neal Johnston discusses how to manage community and fellowship amid various stages of development while maintaining a healthy atmosphere of belonging for yourself, your children, and the families within your community.

Session 5: Living Books and the Dyslexic Learner

Learn how the literature-rich Charlotte Mason style of education—hallmarked by its use of living books across a variety of subjects—helps the dyslexic child progress in listening, speaking, reading, and writing at his own pace and in an enjoyable way.

Session 6: Using Technology Well

We have technology all around us that Charlotte Mason would not have even imagined. So can our modern wonders fit into a CM education? Doug Smith helps us consider that question and explore where technology can help and hurt as we endeavor to give our children an excellent education.

Session 7: Speak Up: Oral Narration Basics

Narration is such a simple, natural method to use in education that it can almost seem too simple. We may feel insecure rather than confident in choosing narration over more conventional methods. In this talk, Karen Glass focuses on why narration works as well as it does, and why it deserves our commitment. Hearing lots of narrations can sometimes be hard work for the homeschool mother, but consistency is the key to the best outcome. This overview of oral narration will increase your resolve to make it happen even when it is difficult.

Session 8: Math as a Beautiful Adventure

Mathematicians are great imaginists with an immense curiosity—the same quali­ties inherent in children. Cultivate a spirit of adventure in your child’s math lesson and see how Charlotte Mason’s approach to mathematics goes beyond symbols and rules to reveal wondrous truths just waiting to be discovered.

Session 9: Decently and in Order: Turning Written Narration into Formal Writing

There is a plethora of writing curricula on the market because “teaching children to write” is one of the things homeschool parents find most daunting. If children narrate orally and in writing for many years, the transition to formal writing can be accomplished with a minimum of curriculum. In this talk, Karen Glass breaks the process down into steps which can be accomplished in the last year or two of high school, or spread out across several years. This process is easier than the transition from oral to written narration, and in this talk, we’ll take a look at some tools and strategies that will help our students find their own voice.

Session 10: Roots & Branches: Pursuing Universal Brotherhood Through Family Heritage

Building authentic relationships across racial, ethnic, and cultural lines requires self-awareness, humility, and a willingness to sit with the tension that often accompanies the melding of different viewpoints or even competing aims. Before children can be expected to thrive in diverse spaces and relationships, they must develop agency through personal identity. Kids (and adults too) find it difficult to honor the humanity of others when they are disconnected from their own personhood. We’ll discuss how we can use family culture and intergenerational history to deeply water our children’s roots as they spread wide branches towards others.

Session 11: 8 Words That Make All the Difference

These eight words are powerful. They are comprehensive. They can refresh you when you’re feeling weary, inspire you when you’re feeling mundane, and encourage you when you’re feeling uncertain. If you (and your children) once allow these words to nestle into your hearts and take up permanent residence in your minds, you will have a strong and constant guide that can change the way you look at life.