Spreading the feast of the Charlotte Mason method of education through weekly podcasts. Join us for short discussions that provide information, examples, and encouragement to the homeschool parents putting CM's ideas into practice in their homes.
Charlotte Mason valued the child, and the mother, and this week’s podcast episode reveals why. Emily interviews LaShawne Thomas who describes her journey from a full-time professional career, to homeschooling; from Montessori to Charlotte Mason; from one military assignment to the next–homeschooling all the way. Does Charlotte Mason’s method suit every situation?
Charlotte Mason considered musical training an essential, including Solfa in her curriculum. This interview with Heidi Buschbach reveals the purpose of this method of music training, how Miss Mason employed it in her curriculum, and how untrained teachers can take advantage of resources to include this subject in their own lessons.
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“I should like, in connection with singing, to mention the admirable educational effects of the Tonic Sol-fa method.
“Children learn by it in a magical way to produce sign for sound and sound for sign, that is, they can not only read music, but can write the notes for, or make the proper hand signs for, the notes of a passage sung to them. Ear and Voice are simultaneously and equally cultivated.” (1/314-15)
“Certain subjects of peculiar educational value, music, for instance, I have said nothing about, partly for want of space, and partly because if the mother have not Sir Joshua Reynold’s ‘that!’ in her, hints from an outsider will not produce the art-feeling which is the condition of success in this sort of teaching. If possible, let the children learn from the first under artists, lovers of their work: it is a serious mistake to let the child lay the foundation of whatever he may do in the future under ill-qualified mechanical teachers, who kindle in him none of the enthusiasm which is the life of art.” (1/314)
We begin a new year with Charlotte Mason’s birthday by celebrating her life. This podcast episode reviews the timeline of Charlotte Mason’s life, her accomplishments and the progression of her career, and reveals in part the beautiful influence her generous life offers us today.
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“I do not wish my life to be written, it is the work that matters, it will live.” (Charlotte Mason to Elsie Kitching)
“It would seem a far cry from Undine to a ‘liberal education’ but there is a point of contact between the two; a soul awoke within a water-sprite at the touch of love; so, I have to tell of the awakening of a ‘general soul’ at the touch of knowledge. Eight years ago the ‘soul’ of a class of children in a mining village school awoke simultaneously at this magic touch and has remained awake. We know that religion can awaken souls, that love makes a new man, that the call of a vocation may do it, and in the age of the Renaissance, men’s souls, the general soul, awoke to knowledge: but this appeal rarely reaches the modern soul; and, notwithstanding the pleasantness attending lessons and marks in all our schools, I believe the ardour for knowledge in the child of this mining village is a phenomenon that indicates new possibilities. Already, many thousands of the children of the Empire had experienced this intellectual conversion, but they were the children of educated person. To find that the children of a mining population were equally responsive seemed to open a new hope for the world. It may be that the souls of all children are waiting for the call of knowledge to awaken them to delightful living.” (6/xxv)
What would Charlotte Mason say about children coming into the feast late or mid-year, when children refuse to cooperate, or how to get them to be more independent in their school lessons? This month’s Q&A addresses these questions from listeners.
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“They are careful to form habits upon which the routine of life runs easily, and, when the exceptional event requires a new regulation, they may make casual mention of their reasons for having so and so done; or, if this is not convenient and the case is a trying one, they give the children the reason for all obedience––”for this is right.” In a word, authority avoids, so far as may be, giving cause of offence.” (3/22)
“Expect Obedience.––The mother has no more sacred duty than that of training her infant to instant obedience.” (1/162)
“The work not done in its own time should be left undone. Children should not be embarrassed with arrears, and they should have due sense of the importance of time, and that there is no other time for work not done in its own time.” (From “Suggestions” accompanying Programme 42)
This podcast episode of Charlotte Mason in Our Homes features an interview with a mother of six children. Listen to her open and honest tale of how she decided upon a Charlotte Mason education, manages lessons with children in three forms, and some of the encouraging results she has discovered already in only her second year of teaching with this living education.
