Charlotte Mason's feast spreads to include the subject of architecture. A Delectable Education podcast this week is an interview with Sandra Zuidema who has discovered the joy of exploring the ideas in architecture, its history, people, structures and culture and shares ways she has introduced this to her children.

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"But any sketch of the history teaching in Forms V and VI in a given period depends upon a notice of the 'literature' set; for plays, novels, essays, 'lives,' poems, are all pressed into service and where it is possible, the architecture, painting, etc., which the period produced." (Vol. 6, pp. 177-178)

"We do what is possible to introduce children to Architecture; and we practise clay-modelling and the various artistic handicrafts, but there is nothing unusual in our work in these directions." (Vol. 6, p. 217)

"I shall touch later upon the burning question of a curriculum which shall furnish children, not with dry bones of fact, but with fact clothed upon with the living flesh, breathed into by the vital spirit of quickening ideas." (Vol. 3, p. 124)



If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.

An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education (Volume 6), Book I, Chapter 10, Section II: Art



Filippo's Dome, Rockwell

Story of Architecture, Waterhouse

Child's History of Art, Hiller

Architecture Shown to the Children, Wynne

Concise History of Western Architecture, Jordan

(Contains affiliate links)



In a Large Room Retreat

Golden Hours of Delight Retreat

Charlotte Mason Institute

The Duomo, Florence

Chartres Cathedral

Flying Buttresses

Rose Windows

Amiens Cathedral

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

This podcast addresses listener questions about implementing a Charlotte Mason education. How do we teach multiple children at different levels, keep up with all the books being read, teach the subject of recitation, get our children to talk about what they're learning?

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"When a child is reading, he should not be teased with questions as to the meaning of what he has read, the signification of this word or that; what is annoying to older people is equally annoying to children. Besides, it is not of the least consequence that they should be able to give the meaning of every word they read. A knowledge of meanings, that is, an ample and correct vocabulary, is only arrived at in one way––by the habit of reading. A child unconsciously gets the meaning of a new word from the context, if not the first time he meets with it, then the second or the third: but he is on the look-out, and will find out for himself the sense of any expression he does not understand. Direct questions on the subject-matter of what a child has read are always a mistake. Let him narrate what he has read, or some part of it. He enjoys this sort of consecutive reproduction, but abominates every question in the nature of a riddle. If there must be riddles, let it be his to ask and the teacher's to direct him the answer. Questions that lead to a side issue or to a personal view are allowable because these interest children––'What would you have done in his place?'" (Vol. 1, pp. 228-229)

"Long ago, I was in the habit of hearing this axiom quoted by a philosophical old friend: "The mind can know nothing save what it can produce in the form of an answer to a question put to the mind by itself." I have failed to trace the saying to its source, but a conviction of its importance has been growing upon me during the last forty years. It tacitly prohibits questioning from without; (this does not, of course, affect the Socratic use of questioning for purposes of moral conviction); and it is necessary to intellectual certainty, to the act of knowing. For example, to secure a conversation or an incident, we 'go over it in our minds'; that is, the mind puts itself through the process of self-questioning which I have indicated. This is what happens in the narrating of a passage read: each new consecutive incident or statement arrives because the mind asks itself,––"What next?" For this reason it is important that only one reading should be allowed; efforts to memorise weaken the power of attention, the proper activity of the mind; if it is desirable to ask questions in order to emphasize certain points, these should be asked after and not before, or during, the act of narration." (Vol. 6, p. 17)

"A small English boy of nine living in Japan, remarked, "Isn't it fun, Mother, learning all these things? Everything seems to fit into something else." The boy had not found out the whole secret; everything fitted into something within himself." (vol. 6, pp. 156-157)



If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.

Home Education, Part V, Chapter VIII



Recitation: The Children's Art, Arthur Burrell

In A Large Room Retreat

TruthQuest History

Charlotte Mason included handicrafts in the curriculum and this podcast will explore the reasons. It is not an optional activity or filler, but what is the purpose? Furthermore, what sorts of things are included in this subject and how can a mother who feels inadequate possibly fulfill this requirement?

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"Points to be borne in mind in children's handicrafts are: a) that they should not be employed in making futilities such as pea and stick work, paper-mats and the like; b) that they should be taught slowly and carefully what they should do; c) that slipshod work should not be allowed; d) and, that, therefore, the children's work should be kept well within their compass." (Vol. 1, pp. 315-316)

"Small children finish anything set for them to do alone very quickly as a rule, and I find it a great help if they can have some easy handicraft to be picked up in spare moments." (Parents' Review, "Notes and Queries", Vol. 44, p. 480)



If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.

Home Education (Volume 1), Part V, Chapter XXI

School Education (Volume 3), pp. 355-359



Paper Sloyd for Primary Grades

(Contains affiliate link)



Paper Sloyd for Primary Grades

Golden Hours of Delight Retreat

This episode highlights the relevance of a Charlotte Mason education for children who have unique differences as persons in one way or another, needs that affect how they relate to and respond to their education. Is Mason's method possible for children with special needs?

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"Greatness and littleness belong to character, and life would be dull were we all cast in one mould..." (Vol. 2, pg. 71)

"The best public schoolboy is a fine product; and perhaps the worst has had his imagination touched by ideas; yet most of us recognise that the public school often fails, in that it launches the average and dull boy ignorant upon the world because the curriculum has been too narrow to make any appeal to him." (Vol. 3, p. 246)

"Let me add that the appeal of these principles and this method is not to the clever child only but to the average and even to the 'backward' child; indeed we have had several marked successes with backward children. Just as we all partake of that banquet which is 'Shakespeare' according to our needs and desires, so do the children behave at the ample board set before them; there is enough to satisfy the keenest intelligence while the dullest child is sustained through his own willing effort." (Vol. 6, p. 245)

"The teachers underrate the tastes and abilities of their pupils. In things intellectual, children, even backward children, have extraordinary 'possibilities for good'--possibilities so great that if we had the wit to give them their heard they would carry us alog like a stream in spate." (Vol. 6, p. 52)

"This is what we have established in many thousands of cases, even in those of dull and backward children, that any person can understand any book of the right calibre (a question to be determined mainly by the age of the young reader); that the book must be in literary form; that children and young persons require no elucidation of what they read; that their attention does not flag while so engaged; that they master a few pages at a single reading so thoroughly that they can 'tell it back' at the time or months later whether it be the Pilgrim's Progress or one of Bacon's Essays or Shakespeare's plays; that they throw individuality into this telling back so that no two tell quite the same tale; that they learn incidentally to write and speak with vigour and style and usually to spell well. Now this art of telling back is Education and is very enriching." (Vol. 6, pp. 291-92)

"People are too apt to use children as counters in a game, to be moved hither and thither according to the whim of the moment. Our crying need to-day is less for a better method of education than for an adequate conception of children,––children, merely as human beings, whether brilliant or dull, precocious or backward. Exceptional qualities take care of themselves and so does the 'wanting' intelligence, and both of these share with the rest in all that is claimed for them in the previous chapters. Our business is to find out how great a mystery a person is qua person. All action comes out of the ideas we hold and if we ponder duly upon personality we shall come to perceive that we cannot commit a greater offence than to maim or crush, or subvert any part of a person." (Vol. 6, p. 80)



Parents' Review article on Backward Children

This Charlotte Mason podcast episode is the conclusion of a two part interview with Richele Baburina on math in the upper forms. Her research and experience, wisdom and love will not only calm your anxieties, but will reveal a glimpse of the wondrous possibilities and beauty awaiting you and your child as you explore the mountainous heights of an awe-inspiring subject, including valuable tips for traversing it with direction and confidence.

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"In the things of science, in the things of art, in the things of practical everyday life, his God doth instruct him and doth teach him, her God doth instruct her and doth teach her. Let this be the mother's key to the whole of the education of each boy and each girl; not of her children; the Divine Spirit does not work with nouns of multitude, but with each single child. Because He is infinite, the whole world is not too great a school for this indefatigable Teacher, and because He is infinite, He is able to give the whole of his infinite attention for the whole time to each one of his multitudinous pupils. We do not sufficiently rejoice in the wealth that the infinite nature of our God brings to each of us." (Vol. 2, p. 273)

"Supposing we are willing to make this great recognition, to engage ourselves to accept and invite the daily, hourly, incessant co-operation of the divine Spirit, in, to put it definitely and plainly, the schoolroom work of our children, how must we shape our own conduct to make this co-operation active, or even possible? We are told that the Spirit is life; therefore, that which is dead, dry as dust, mere bare bones, can have no affinity with Him, can do no other than smother and deaden his vitalising influences. A first condition of this vitalising teaching is that all the thought we offer to our children shall be living thought; no mere dry summaries of facts will do; given the vitalising idea, children will readily hang the mere facts upon the idea as upon a peg capable of sustaining all that it is needful to retain. We begin by believing in the children as spiritual beings of unmeasured powers––intellectual, moral, spiritual––capable of receiving and constantly enjoying intuitions from the intimate converse of the Divine Spirit." (Vol. 2, p. 277)

"Girls are usually in Class IV. for two or three years, from fourteen or fifteen to seventeen, after which they are ready to specialise and usually do well. The programme for Class IV. is especially interesting; it adds Geology and Astronomy to the sciences studied, more advanced Algebra to the Mathematics, and sets the history of Modern Europe instead of French history." (Vol. 3, p. 294)



If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.

Towards a Philosophy of Education (Volume 6), Book I, chapters 8 & 9



The Story of Charlotte Mason, Chomondeley

Mathematics: An Instrument for Living Teaching

First Step in Euclid

Practical Exercises in Geometry

Lessons in Experimental and Practical Geometry



Paper Sloyd

Episode 30: The Way of the Will and The Way of Reason+

This Charlotte Mason podcast explores the upper reaches of the hike up the math mountain. If teaching algebra and geometry are daunting to you currently, or for the future, please enjoy the first of this two-part interview with Richele Baburina, a fellow CM researcher and practitioner who has explored the wondrous reaches of mathematics as a living subject in the Mason feast.

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Principles 16-19 from the Preface to the Home Education Series:

16. There are two guides to moral and intellectual self-management to offer to children, which we may call 'the way of the will' and 'the way of the reason.'

17. The way of the will: Children should be taught, (a) to distinguish between 'I want' and 'I will.' (b) That the way to will effectively is to turn our thoughts from that which we desire but do not will. (c) That the best way to turn our thoughts is to think of or do some quite different thing, entertaining or interesting. (d) That after a little rest in this way, the will returns to its work with new vigour. (This adjunct of the will is familiar to us as diversion, whose office it is to ease us for a time from will effort, that we may 'will' again with added power. The use of suggestion as an aid to the will is to be deprecated, as tending to stultify and stereotype character, It would seem that spontaneity is a condition of development, and that human nature needs the discipline of failure as well as of success.)

18. The way of reason: We teach children, too, not to 'lean (too confidently) to their own understanding'; because the function of reason is to give logical demonstration (a) of mathematical truth, (b) of an initial idea, accepted by the will. In the former case, reason is, practically, an infallible guide, but in the latter, it is not always a safe one; for, whether that idea be right or wrong, reason will confirm it by irrefragable proofs.

19. Therefore, children should be taught, as they become mature enough to understand such teaching, that the chief responsibility which rests on them as persons is the acceptance or rejection of ideas. To help them in this choice we give them principles of conduct, and a wide range of the knowledge fitted to them. These principles should save children from some of the loose thinking and heedless action which cause most of us to live at a lower level than we need.



If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.

Towards a Philosophy of Education (Volume 6), Book I, chapters 8 & 9



Strayer Upton Practical Mathematics

Mathematics: An Instrument for Living Teaching

First Step in Euclid

Practical Exercises in Geometry

Lessons in Experimental and Practical Geometry



Richele's Overview of Math Instruction based on the PNEU practice with amendments for 21st century requirements

Paper Sloyd

Episode 30: The Way of the Will and The Way of Reason

This week's Charlotte Mason podcast addresses math in the elementary years. How much should be covered? How should it be presented? How do we build confidence, competence, and progress?

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"The Principality of Mathematics is a mountainous land, but the air is very fine and health-giving, though some people find it too rare for their breathing. It differs from most mountainous countries in this, that you cannot lose your way, and that every step taken is on firm ground. People who seek their work or play in this principality find themselves braced by effort and satisfied with truth." (Vol. 4, p. 38)

[A child should know at 12 years old:] "...g) in Arithmetic, they should have some knowledge of vulgar and decimal fractions, percentage, household accounts, etc. h) Should have a knowledge of Elementary Algebra, and should have done practical exercises in Geometry." (Vol. 3, p. 301)

"[Mathematics] should give to children the sense of limitation which is wholesome for all of us, and inspire that sursam corda which we should hear in all natural law." (Vol. 6, p. 231)



If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.

Home Education, Part V, XV

Ourselves, Book I, pp. 38; 62-63

Towards a Philosophy of Education, Book I, Chapter 10, Section III



Strayer-Upton's Books--helpful for mental arithmetic/story problems

(Contains affiliate links)



Richele Baburina's Mathematics: A Guide for Living Teaching

Benezet's Article on informal math instruction in the early years

Parents' Review Article on "Number"

How in the world did Charlotte Mason approach the subject of math? This podcast episode explores that question and addresses our qualms and insecurities in teaching math to our children. How do we avoid fears, tears, pushing and pulling, and reach to its infinite beauty as an instrument in acquiring knowledge of the universe?

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"Arithmetic, Mathematics, are exceedingly easy to examine upon and so long as education is regulated by examinations so long shall we have teaching, directed not to awaken a sense of awe in contemplating a self-existing science, but rather to secure exactness and ingenuity in the treatment of problems." (Vol. 6, p. 231)

"...the use of the study in practical life is the least of its uses. The chief value of arithmetic, like that of higher mathematics, lies in the training it affords to the reasoning powers, and in the habits of insight, readiness, accuracy, intellectual truthfulness it engenders." (Vol. 1, p. 254)

"Never are the operations of Reason more delightful and more perfect than in mathematics...By degrees, absolute truth unfolds itself. We are so made that truth, absolute and certain truth, is a perfect joy to us; and that is the joy that mathematics afford." (Vol. 4, p. 63)

"Let his arithmetic lesson be to the child a daily exercise in clear thinking and rapid, careful execution, and his mental growth will be as obvious as the sprouting of seedlings in the spring." (Vol. 1, p. 261)

"Mathematics depend upon the teacher rather than upon the text-book and few subjects are worse taught; chiefly because teachers have seldom time to give the inspiring ideas, what Coleridge calls, the 'Captain' ideas, which should quicken imagination." (Vol. 6, p. 233)

"There is no must be to him he does not see that one process, and one process only, can give the required result. Now, a child who does not know what rule to apply to a simple problem within his grasp, has been ill taught from the first, although he may produce slatefuls of quite right sums in multiplication or long division." (Vol. 1, p. 254)

"...'nearly right' is the verdict, a judgment inadmissible in arithmetic." (Vol. 1, p. 255)



If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.

Home Education, Part V, XV

Towards a Philosophy of Education, Book I, Chapter 10, Section III



Number Stories of Long Ago

String, Straightedge and Shadow

(Contains affiliate links)



Our very favorite resource for Mathematics teaching

This Charlotte Mason podcast episode is another Q&A. As we implement the method, challenges arise: what adjustments need to be made when I come to the method late, how should I organize my home differently, and what about the only child's needs, are this week's focus.

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"It is not an environment that these want, a set of artificial relations carefully constructed, but an atmosphere which nobody has been at pains to constitute. It is there, about the child, his natural element, precisely as the atmosphere of the earth is about us. It is thrown off, as it were, from persons and things, stirred by events, sweetened by love, ventilated, kept in motion, by the regulated action of common sense." (Vol. 6, pg. 96)

"No artificial element [should] be introduced...children must face life as it is; we may not keep them in glass cases." (Vol. 6, pg. 97)



The Conquest of the North and South Poles (Landmark Book), Russell Owen

(Contains affiliate links)



Episode 4: Three Tools of Education

The Education of an Only Child, Mrs. Clement Parsons. The Parents' Review, Volume 12, p.609-621

Foreign language was a major component in Charlotte Mason's curriculum. This podcast addresses the reasons for foreign language study and how mothers of one tongue can still faithfully include it in their homeschool.

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"All educated persons should be able to speak French." (Vol. 1, p. 300)



If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.

Home Education, Part V, Chapter XX

An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education, Book I, Chapter 10, Section II: Languages



Carry On, Mr. Bowditch

(Contains affiliate links)



http://theulat.com/ORIGIN.HTM

http://www.thespanishexperiment.com/

http://www.thefrenchexperiment.com/

http://www.theitalianexperiment.com/

http://www.thegermanexperiment.com/

http://cherrydalepress.com/

What are Charlotte Mason's thoughts on grammar and composition? Listen to this podcast to hear some of her rationale for these subjects, to dispel myths about the Charlotte Mason method and the subject of writing, as well as these moms' experience with teaching these technical and creative written skills.

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"[G]rammar, being a study of words and not things, is by no means attractive to the child, nor should he be hurried into it." (Vol. 1, p. 295)

"Children will probably be slow to receive this first lesson in abstract knowledge, and we must remember that knowledge in this sort is difficult and uncongenial. Their minds deal with the concrete and they have the singular faculty of being able to make concrete images out of the merest gossamer of a fairy tale." (Vol. 6, p. 210)

"But a child cannot dream parts of speech, and any grown-up twaddle attempting to personify such abstractions offends a small person who with all his love of play and nonsense has a serious mind." (Vol. 6, p. 210)

"Our business is to provide children with material in thier lessons, and leave the handling of such material to themselves...They should narrate in the first place, and they will compose, later, readily enough; but they should not be taught 'composition.'" (Vol. 1, p. 247)

"It is not enough that a child should learn how to write, he must know what to write." (Vol. 6, p. 234)

"In fact, lessons on 'composition' should follow the model of that famous essay on "Snakes in Ireland"––"There are none."" (Vol. 1, p. 247)

"If we would believe it, composition is as natural as jumping and running to children who have been allowed due use of books." (Vol. 1, p. 247)

If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.

Home Education (Volume 1), Part V, XIII

An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education (Volume 6), Book I, Chapter 10, Section II: Knowledge of Man: Composition & Knowledge of Man: Grammar



The Bedford Handbook

The Elements of Style

(Contains affiliate links)

This episode marks the one year anniversary of this Charlotte Mason podcast. Over the past year, we have received dozens of questions from our listeners and this Q&A is exemplary of the requests we receive and our attempt to address widely varying topics, namely this week: where to find out-of-print living books, the relevance of Charlotte Mason today and the practice of "scaffolding" lessons.

This podcast explores what Charlotte Mason had to say about the skill of writing. Why do the children need to write? What writing must they do? How can they be taught penmanship, spelling, punctuation, and style? Join us in working through this incremental and crucial school subject.

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"I can only offer a few hints on the teaching of writing, though much might be said. First, let the child accomplish something perfectly in every lesson--a stroke, a pothook, a letter. Let the writing lesson be short; it should not last more than five or ten minutes. Ease in writing comes by practice; but that must be secured later. In the meantime, the thing to be avoided is the habit of careless work." (Vol. 1, pp. 233-34)

"[T]here is no part of a child's work at school which some philosophic principle does not underlie." (Vol. 1, p. 240)

"The gift of spelling depends upon the power the eye possesses to 'take' (in a photographic sense) a detailed picture of a word; and this is a power and habit which must be cultivated in children from the first." (Vol. 1, p. 241)



If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.

Home Education (Volume 1), Part V, Chapters X-XII



Writing to Learn

(Contains affiliate links)



The New Handwriting

This week's podcast illuminates the Charlotte Mason method as it is being practiced in its country of origin: The United Kingdom. Emily interviews, Leah Boden, who discovered Mason and has been implementing her method in her own life and, like us, is working to support and encourage home educators in the knowledge and practice of Charlotte Mason.

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Handbook of Nature Study

Our Island Story

Trial and Triumph

(Contains affiliate links)



Leah's Instagram

Leah's Blog

The Charlotte Mason Show

Leah's Facebook Page

Leah's Periscope Channel

http://www.charlottemasonhelp.com/

Join the HomeschoolLibrary Yahoo Group if you'd like to learn more about starting a lending library!

This week's Charlotte Mason podcast focuses on the all-important task of teaching our children to read. No other subject holds such promise and so many anxieties for the teacher who embarks on teaching this fundamental skill. The ladies share their own experiences and what Mason had to say to help us in the reading lesson.

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"But, as a matter of fact, few of us can recollect how or when we learned to read: for all we know it came by nature." (Vol. 1, p. 200)

"Probably that vague whole which we call 'Education' offers no more difficult and repellent task than that to which every little child is set down--the task of learning to read. We realize the labor of it when some grown man makes a heroic effort to remedy shameful ignorance, but we forget how contrary to nature it is for a little child to occupy himself with dreary hieroglyphics--all so dreadfully alike!--when the world is teeming with interesting objects which he is agog to know." (Vol. 1, p. 214)

"'What a snail's progress!' you are inclined to say. Not so slow, after all: a child will thus learn, without appreciable labour, from 2-3,000 words in the course of a year; in other words, he will learn to read, for the mastery of this number of words will carry him with comfort through most of the books that fall in his way. Now, compare this steady progress and constant interest and liveliness of such lessons with the deadly weariness of the ordinary reading lesson. The child blunders through a page or two in the dreary monotone without expression, with imperfect enunciation. He comes to a word he does not know, and he spells it; that throws no light on the subject, and he is told the word; he repeats it, but as he has made no mental effort to secure the word, the next time he meets with it the same process is gone through. The reading lesson for that day comes to an end. The pupil has been miserably bored, and has not acquired one new word. Eventually, he learns to read, somehow, by mere dint of repetition; but consider what an abuse of his intelligence is a system of teaching which makes him undergo daily labour with little or no result, and gives him a distaste for books before he has learned to use them." (Vol. 1, pp. 206-207)

"We must remember the natural inertness of a child's mind; give him the habit of being read to, and he will steadily shirk the labour of reading for himself; indeed, we all like to be spoon-fed with our intellectual meat, or we should read and think more for ourselves and be less eager to run after lectures." (Vol. 1, p. 228)

"He should have practice, too, in reading aloud [from the books] he is using for his term's work. These should include a good deal of poetry, to accustom him to the delicate rendering of shades of meaning, and especially to make him aware that words are beautiful in themselves, that they are a source of pleasure, and are worthy of our honour; and that a beautiful word deserves to be beautifully said, with a certain roundness of tone and precision of utterance." (Vol. 1, p. 227)

"The attention of his teachers should be fixed on two points--that he acquires the habit of reading, and that he does not fall into slipshod habits of reading." (Vol. 1, p. 226)



If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.

Home Education, pp. 199-222)



Better Late Than Early, Raymond Moore

Reading-Literature Series

Thirty Million Words, Dana Suskind

(Contains affiliate links)



Montessori Small Moveable Alphabet

Reading-Literature series on MainLesson.com

This week's podcast episode on the Charlotte Mason method of education--the delectable education--is a question and answer session. Listen to this lively, animated, and slightly controversial discussion of short lessons, nature study, free time, and Bible lessons.

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"Five of the thirteen waking hours should be at the disposal of the children; three, at least, of these, from two o'clock to five, for example, should be spent out of doors in all but very bad weather. This is the opportunity for out-of-door work, collecting wild flowers, describing walks and views, etc." (From "Suggestions" accompanying Programme 42)

"The Children's Day will, on the whole, run thus: Lessons, 1 1/2 to 4 hours; meals, 2 hours; occupations, 1 to 3 hours; leisure, 5 to 7 hours, according to age." (From "Suggestions" accompanying Programme 42)

"Children between 6 and 9 should get a considerable knowledge of the Bible text. By 9 they should have read the simple (and suitable) narrative portions of the Old Testament...and [the Synoptic] Gospels." (Vol. 1, p. 249)



The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling

(Contains affiliate links)



Episode 20: Nature Study

Episode 22: Interview with Cheri Struble

John Muir Laws' Website

Episode 41: Interview with Jack Laws, Part 1

Episode 42: Interview with Jack Laws, Part 2

Episode 17: Bible, The Living Book

Living Books Library post on Electronics

Parents' Review Article: Imagination is a Powerful Factor in a Well-Balanced Mind

A Delectable Education's Schedule Cards

This week's Charlotte Mason podcast focuses on language. Mason's method was based on a child's nature, and this is most apparent in observing how her method runs along the line of a child's natural acquisition of language skills.

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"Many persons consider that to learn to read a language so full of anomalies and difficulties as our own is a task which should not be imposed too soon on the childish mind. But, as a matter of fact, few of us can recollect how or when we learned to read: for all we know it came by nature." (Vol. 1, p. 200)



Thirty Million Words, Dana Suskind

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The Teaching of Mathematics: The Story of An Experiment

This week's Charlotte Mason podcast is another Q&A session with Emily, Nicole, and Liz. It is inevitable, as we implement the feast, that questions of presentation and content arise about details not mentioned in the designated episodes on those subjects, and here are some of the latest ones.

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"Never be within doors when you can rightly be without>" (Vol. 1, p. 42)

"There is no selection of subjects, passages, or episodes on the ground of interest." (Vol. 6, p. 244)



Anne White's Plutarch Books can be found here

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Nancy Kelly on Plutarch

Anne White's Study Guides free online

Overdrive Media Console

Charlotte Mason knew nature study is critical to the good life and fundamental to education. This week's podcast is the second interview with contemporary naturalist John Muir Laws (Jack) in which he inspires, encourages, and explains to us not only what to do when we go outside, along with many how-to practices we can implement to make the most of that nature study, but how we can change our motivation and focus to experience a rich and rewarding relationship with nature.

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Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv

The Nature Principle, Richard Louv

The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling, John Muir Laws

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Jack Laws' Website

Jack Laws' Nature Journal Suggested Supplies List

Nature Journaling Club Curriculum

Jack's Blog Post on his favorite blue pencil

CMPeoria "The Field Before Us" Regional Retreat

This Charlotte Mason podcast episode is an interview with John Muir Laws (Jack), inspiring naturalist and scientist. Join Nicole to hear how expertise and aptitude are not key to making strides in discovering the world of nature and science, but that, as Mason asserts, curiosity and willingness to explore are. If you as mother and teacher, or your child as student, are intimidated by the field of science, this interview will set you free to thoroughly partake of this part of the educational feast, and if you are intrigued with the field of science, make you aware of how much more you can enjoy it.

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"Marks, prizes, places, rewards, punishments, praise, blame, or other inducements are not necessary to secure attention, which is voluntary, immediate and surprisingly perfect." (Vol. 6, p. 7)

"Let them get at the books themselves, and do not let them be flooded with a warm diluent at the lips of their teacher. The teacher's business is to indicate, stimulate, direct and constrain to the acquirement of knowledge, but by no means to be the fountain-head and source of all knowledge in his or her own person. The less parents and teachers talk-in and expound their rations of knowledge and thought to the children they are educating, the better for the children." (Vol. 3, p. 162)



John Muir Laws' Website

A Curiosity Framework

This week's Charlotte Mason podcast addresses listener questions. Nicole, Emily, and Liz combine their wisdom and experience to address some very frequently asked concerns.

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Rascal, Sterling North

Owls in the Family, Farley Mowat

My Side of the Mountain, Jean Craighead George

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Charlotte Mason and Classical Education

More on Charlotte Mason and Classical Education

The Charlotte Mason method applies to many teaching situations beyond traditional classrooms and the homeschool. This week's podcast is an interview recorded at the CMI national conference with Jeannette Tulis of Chattanooga, TN, who has been offered a unique opportunity to open the world of one family's children using the Mason model of education.

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The Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv

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Grace to Build Retreat

CHarlotte Mason Institute Conferences

In this week's podcast, we discuss why Shakespeare was always included in Charlotte Mason's curriculum. What is the value of Shakespeare as part of the study of literature, and how can we who have little experience with his works enter in and enjoy his feast?

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"Just as we partake of that banquet which is 'Shakespeare' according to our own needs and desires, so do the children behave at the ample board set before them; there is enough to satisfy the keenest intelligence while the dullest child is sustained through his own willing effort." (Vol. 6, p. 245)

"We probably read Shakespeare in the first place for his stories, afterwards for his characters, the multitude of delightful persons with whom he makes us so intimate that afterwards, in fiction or in fact, we say, 'She is another Jessica,' and 'That dear girl is a Miranda'; 'She is a Cordelia to her father,' and, such a figure in history, 'a base lago.' To become intimate with Shakespeare in this way is a great enrichment of mind and instruction of conscience. Then, by degrees, as we go on reading this world-teacher, lines of insight and beauty take possession of us, and unconsciously mould our judgments of men and things and of the great issues of life." (Vol. 4, p. 72)

"This is what Shakespeare, as great a philosopher as a poet, set himself to teach us, line upon line, precept upon precept. His 'Leontes,' 'Othello,' 'Lear,' 'Prospero,' 'Brutus,' preach on the one text––that a man's reason brings certain infallible proofs of any notions he has wilfully chosen to take up. There is no escape for us, no short cut; art is long, especially the art of living." (Vol. 6, pp. 314-15)

"And Shakespeare? He, indeed, is not to be classed, and timed, and treated as one amongst others,––he, who might well be the daily bread of the intellectual life; Shakespeare is not to be studied in a year; he is to be read continuously throughout life, from ten years old and onwards. But a child of ten cannot understand Shakespeare. No; but can a man of fifty? Is not our great poet rather an ample feast of which every one takes according to his needs, and leaves what he has no stomach for?" (Vol. 5, p. 224)



Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury

The Winter of Our Discontent, John Steinbeck

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

Roller Skates, Ruth Sawyer

The Wonderful Winter, Marchette Chute

Tales from Shakespeare, Charles and Mary Lamb

Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare, E. Nesbit

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Interview with Nancy Kelly

Chronological List of Shakespeare's Plays

American Shakespeare Center

Poetry was a deep love of Charlotte Mason's, and this week's podcast explores that wonder and delight as it can unfold in your school day and life. Are you nervous, intimidated, worried, or resistant to teaching poetry? Listen to this laid back interview between Liz and our good friend, Bonnie Buckingham, veteran homeschool mom who learned to love poetry by teaching it.

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"Poetry is, perhaps, the most searching and intimate of our teachers...Poetry supplies us with tools for the modeling of our lives, and the use of these we must get at ourselves." (Vol. 4, p. 71)

"Heroic Poetry Inspires to Noble Living––"To set forth, as only art can, the beauty and the joy of living, the beauty and the blessedness of death, the glory of battle and adventure, the nobility of devotion––to a cause, an ideal, a passion even––the dignity of resistance, the sacred quality of patriotism, that is my ambition here," says the editor of Lyra Heroica in his preface." (Vol. 2, p. 141)



If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.

Parents and Children (Volume 2), Chapter 14

Ourselves (Volume 4), Book II, Section II, Chapter 12

Towards a Philosophy of Education (Volume 6), Book I, Section II (b)



For the Children's Sake

Favorite Poems Old and New

This Singing World

Luci Shaw

Wendell Berry

Billy Collins

Now We Are Six

Emily Dickinson

The Iliad

The Odyssey

Beowulf

Song of Roland

Book of Heroic Verse

Longfellow

Tennyson

Roman Poets

Seamus Heaney

Christina Rossetti

Samuel Coleridge

Richard Wilbur (Contains affiliate links)



Bonnie Buckingham

Charlotte Mason Institute, Western Conference

Grace To Build Retreat

Charlotte Mason Institute

A Delectable Education: Episode 13: Discussion of Charlotte Mason's narrative poetry on the Gospels

What is Poetry? from the Parents' Review

On the Teaching of Poetry from the Parents' Review

The Teaching of Poetry from the Parents' Review

The Teaching of Poetry to Children from the Parents' Review

This week's podcast focuses on Charlotte Mason's ideas for the study of literature. Wait, isn't every subject literature with her use of living books? How does the study of literature fit into her curriculum from the earliest age?

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"Except in Form I the study of Literature goes pari passu with that of History." (Vol. 6, p. 180)

"It is a nice question whether the history of a country makes its literature or its literature the history!" R.A. Pennethorne, Parent's Review, Volume 10, 1899, p. 549

"To adapt a phrase of Matthew Arnold's concerning religion,––education should aim at giving knowledge 'touched with emotion.'" (Vol. 3, p. 220)

"I know you may bring a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. What I complain of is that we do not bring our horse to the water. We give him miserable little text-books, mere compendiums of facts, which he is to learn off and say and produce at an examination; or we give him various knowledge in the form of warm diluents, prepared by his teacher with perhaps some grains of living thought to the gallon. And all the time we have books, books teeming with ideas fresh from the minds of thinkers upon every subject to which we can wish to introduce children." (Vol. 3, p. 171)

"The 'hundred best books for the schoolroom' may be put down on a list, but not by me. I venture to propose one or two principles in the matter of school-books, and shall leave the far more difficult part, the application of those principles, to the reader. For example, I think we owe it to children to let them dig their knowledge, of whatever subject, for themselves out of the fit book; and this for two reasons: What a child digs for is his own possession; what is poured into his ear, like the idle song of a pleasant singer, floats out as lightly as it came in, and is rarely assimilated. I do not mean to say that the lecture and the oral lesson are without their uses; but these uses are, to give impulse and to order knowledge; and not to convey knowledge, or to afford us that part of our education which comes of fit knowledge, fitly given." (Vol. 3, p. 177)



If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.

Home Education, Part V, Chapter VIII

School Education, Chapters XV and XXI

Towards a Philosophy of Education, Book I, Section II (b)



Beowulf

The Odyssey

The Iliad

Ivanhoe

T.S. Eliot's Essays

To Kill a Mockingbird

Pride and Prejudice

The Red Badge of Courage

English Literature for Boys and Girls

Honey for a Child's Heart

Read for the Heart

Realms of Gold

Five Years of Children's Literature

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Top 10 Books about Books