
What are you Doing when you DO CM?
What are you DOing when you DO CM? This is a question that I often get –in various forms. When you are new to CM, it is difficult to know what to ask. What question should I be asking that I don’t know to ask? When you are ‘old’ to CM, it is difficult to answer, because there is so much yet so little. The … Continue reading What are you Doing when you DO CM?
Picture Study Quotes
Selected quotes from Charlotte Mason on Picture StudyAnnotations in [ ] by Real Living Life. “The Palace of Art.—We take pleasure, too, in the arrangement and colouring of a nice room, of a nice dress, in the cover of a book, in the iron fittings of a door, when these are what is called artistic. This brings us to another world of beauty created for … Continue reading Picture Study Quotes

Which is It? Original or Word Perfect Narration?
Here are two quotes from Charlotte that don’t seem to line up. On the one hand, Charlotte often says that narration is an individual telling back, that is is not verbatim, but given back with the student’s own words and workings. Here is one of the several quotes where she talks about this output of narration: “These narrations are never a slavish reproduction of the … Continue reading Which is It? Original or Word Perfect Narration?

Picture Books All Around!
In my library I have many (many) picture books.In my earlier days, picture books used to be a mixed bag of feelings and purpose. I loved the wonderful picture books for the early years… Corderoy, The Puppy Book, Make Way for Ducklings, The Big Red Barn, Obadiah, Curious George, Smudge… good stories, good pictures, good for sitting-on-mama’s-lap-reading. By definition a picture book is “a book … Continue reading Picture Books All Around!
Condensed Volume 6 Book 2 Chapter 4 Part 1
THE BASIS OF NATIONAL STRENGTH A LIBERAL EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT KNOWLEDGE IKNOWLEDGE Educationally, we are in a bad way…Why? we ask… a lamentable want of knowledge—lack of education; he appears to have little insight, imagination, or power of reflection. The tendency in his class is that “dangerous tendency which we must all do our best to resist”…“the spirit of the horde,… is being … Continue reading Condensed Volume 6 Book 2 Chapter 4 Part 1
A Philosophy of Education Volume 6 Book 2 Chapter 4 Part 1
THE BASIS OF NATIONAL STRENGTH[1] A LIBERAL EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT KNOWLEDGE I KNOWLEDGE WE have from time to time given some attention to the failure of our attempts to educate “The Average Boy,” and it may be useful to look into one or two fundamental principles upon which this question and others seem to me to depend. For if our conceptions of education … Continue reading A Philosophy of Education Volume 6 Book 2 Chapter 4 Part 1

Just Narrate, Don’t Compare
One day I ran across Appendix II in the back of Volume 3 – and it sent me into stress overwhelm. Here you will find pages of narration examples from students in Charlotte’s Parents Review school. It threw me into complete panic. And why should that be? Because I began to compare. I knew my kids were not and could not narrate like the examples. … Continue reading Just Narrate, Don’t Compare
Condensed Volume 6 Book 2 Chapter 3
THE SCOPE OF CONTINUATION SCHOOLS Not only in Prussia but throughout western Europe there was a more or less active intellectual renaissance, but, whether because the times were not ripe or the peoples were not worthy, the high ideals of the early days of the century were superseded by the utilitarian motive. When the ‘Continuation School’ movement revived, envy of the commercial and manufacturing successes … Continue reading Condensed Volume 6 Book 2 Chapter 3
A Philosophy of Education Volume 6 Book 2 Chapter 3
THE SCOPE OF CONTINUATION SCHOOLS A HUNDRED years ago, about the close of the Napoleonic wars, there was such another stirring among the dry bones as we are aware of to-day. All the world knew then, as now, that war was the outcome of the wrong thinking of ignorance, and that education was the nostrum for minds diseased. Prussia led the way; not the children … Continue reading A Philosophy of Education Volume 6 Book 2 Chapter 3
Why Not Read Charlotte’s 1881 Elementary Geography online for free?
Yes absolutely you sure can. That’s what we did when I first started. There are also reprints out there of the 1881 version. However we used it one time and then I shelved it. I had no desire to go through that book again with another child. We had tears in our family using the old 1881 version. It nagged at me though. How could … Continue reading Why Not Read Charlotte’s 1881 Elementary Geography online for free?