ed5: Homeschooling with Charlotte Mason - Three Moms' Stories
Katie is joined in this episode by three lovely ladies who all homeschool their children following the educational philosophy depicted by Charlotte Mason and embodied by the Ambleside Online curriculum. They share a wealth of wisdom, experience, reassurance, and an introduction to what this life of learning looks like. This conversation encompasses even more than homeschooling ideas, though. They dive into what education really is and they touch on many of the foundational ideas and principles of a true life of learning. Enjoy!
Commonplace Quotes:
“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” (G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, pp 65-66)
"Historians say, ‘The winter of ‘seventy-four to ‘seventy-five was a time of deep depression.’ But historians do not take little children into consideration. Deep depression? To three children on the prairie it was a time of glamour. There was not much to eat in the cupboard. There was little or no money in the father’s flat old pocketbook. The presents were pitifully homely and meager. And all in a tiny house, -- a mere shell of a house, on a new raw acreage of the wild, bleak prairie. How could a little rude cabin hold so much white magic? How could a little sod house know such enchantment? And how could a little hut like that eventually give to the midwest so many influential men and women? How, indeed? Unless, …unless, perchance, the star did stop over the house?” (Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand, pg. 116)
I cannot ope mine eyes,
But thou art ready there to catch
My morning-soul and sacrifice:
Then we must needs for that day make a match.
My God, what is a heart?
Silver, or gold, or precious stone,
Or star, or rainbow, or a part
Of all these things, or all of them in one?
My God, what is a heart,
That thou shouldst it so eye, and woo,
Pouring upon it all thy art,
As if that thou hadst nothing else to do?
Indeed man's whole estate
Amounts (and richly) to serve thee:
He did not heav'n and earth create,
Yet studies them, not him by whom they be.
Teach me thy love to know;
That this new light, which now I see,
May both the work and workman show:
Then by a sunbeam I will climb to thee. (Matins, George Herbert)
“That the mother may know what she is about, may come thoroughly furnished to her work, she should have something more than a hearsay acquaintance with the theory of education, and with those conditions of the child’s nature upon which such theory rests.” (CM, Home Education, pg. 3)
Mentions:
The New Mason Jar with Cindy Rollins
The Literary Life with Angelina Stanford, Thomas Banks, and Cindy Rollins
Busted: 31 Days of Charlotte Mason Myths
In Vital Harmony by Karen Glass