Category Archives: podcast

Episode 216: Ourselves, Part II

What do beauty and homeschooling the Charlotte Mason way have to do with one another? This free-form conversation discusses the inborn need to appreciate beauty in everyone, its development, its false counterparts, and how the feast develops this aesthetic sense in children.

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Ourselves (Volume 4), Book I: Part II (pp. 33-80)

“It is no small part of education to have seen much beauty, to recognize it when we see it, and to keep ourselves humble in its presence.” (6/56)

“This brings us to another world of beauty created for us by those whose Beauty Sense enables them not only to see and take joy in all the Beauty there is, but whose souls become so filled with the Beauty they gather through eye and ear that they produce for us new forms of Beauty.” (4/I/42)

“Here people are busy painting, carving, modelling, and what not; the very sun labours here with his photographs, and he is as good an artist as the rest, and better, for the notion in this Hall is that the object of Art is to make things exactly like life. So the so-called artists labour away to get the colour and form of the things they see, and to paint these on canvas or shape them in marble or model them in wax (flowers), and all the time they miss, because they do not see, that subtle presence which we call Beauty in the objects they paint and mould. Many persons allow themselves to be deceived in this matter, and go through life without ever entering the Palace of Art, and perceiving but little of the Beauty of Nature.” (4/I/43)

“…we must make it our business, as much as in us lies, to bring Beauty to places where it is not.” (4/I/55)

“The person who is given to the intoxication of Beauty conceives that Beauty and Goodness are one and the same thing, and that Duty is no more than seeking one’s own pleasure in the ways one best likes. People, too, become excluded….” (4/I/54)

“In the end, he misses the happiness to which the Beauty Sense was meant to minister. For happiness comes of effort, service, wide interests, and, last and least, of enjoyment; and when people put enjoyment, even of beautiful things, in the first place ( and indeed in place of all else), they miss the very thing they seek, and become enfeebled in body and fretful and discontented in temper.” (4/I/55)

“It is essential that the general atmosphere of the school should be right, and that the one unifying aim in the variety of its enterprises should be this quest for beauty. Let us not think that the art periods and the music lessons are the only occasions school offers for training of the beauty sense. [even] Citizenship provides inexhaustible opportunities.” (B.E. Moore, PR 37 pp. 222-23)

“We all have need to be trained to see, and to have our eyes opened before we can take in the joy that is meant for us in this beautiful life.” (4/I/43)

The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Bill Bryson

Mrs. Katz and Tush, Patricia Polacco

Heidi, Spyri

The God Who Is There, D. A. Carson

Waverley, Scott

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ADE at HOME Conference

2020-21 Parents’ Educational Course

Episode 215: Nature Walks

A keynote of a Charlotte Mason education is the nature walk. Would you believe we have never had an episode dedicated solely to this topic? By way of apology for the delay, this episode covers all things nature walk–where, when, how, what preparations, destinations, options for families or groups of families. Spring has sprung, and this episode should inspire you whether you are a beginner or an old hand at nature rambles and hikes.

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“Before the walk commences it is a better plan to have some definite aim to propose to the children; for example, that they should note how many different kinds of flowers they will find in their walk ; how many different kinds of birds they will see, etc.” (Alfred Thornley, PR 19, p. 726)

“It is our personal attitude to the wonders of Nature that both in theory and practice will be of more value to the child than many words.” (Walton, PR 65, p. 70)

“What place does narration take in these lessons? Miss Mason says that a lesson without narration is a lesson wasted.” (V. C. Curry, PR 36 p. 531)

“I know that many parents feel handicapped…by their own defective education in nature knowledge…they must dismiss from their minds any idea that it is the quantity of knowledge acquired that makes a nature student. It is rather the particular habit of mind induced in the act of acquiring such knowledge which is of the most value to us and our children.” (Alfred Thornley, PR 19, p. 722)

Arabella Buckley’s Eyes and No Eyes Series

A Nature Study Guide, Furneaux

Countryside Rambles, Furneaux

Tree Finder (Eastern US), May Watts

Pacific Coast Tree Finder, Tom Watts

Rocky Mountain Tree Finder, Tom & Bridget Watts

Winter Tree Finder, May Watts

(Contains affiliate links)

All Trails App

Sabbath Mood Homeschool Nature Walks Article part 1

Sabbath Mood Homeschool Nature Walks Article part 2

Episode 214: Ourselves, Part I

Charlotte Mason addresses concerns about our body in Ourselves and this week’s lively discussion focuses on the body’s need for rest. Not just our students, but homeschool teachers also need rest. We hope this episode will energize you to consider how to work true rest into your life.

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Ourselves (Volume 4), Book I: Part I (pp. 11-32)

“[this] fellow-servant and brother, Rest, steps in with, ‘It is my turn now,’ and the tired person is glad to sit down and be quiet for a little, or lie on his face with a book, or, best of all, go to sleep soundly at night and wake up refreshed and ready for anything.” (4/I/19)

“The less he exerts himself, the less he is able to exert himself, because the muscles which Restlessness keeps firm and in good order, Sloth relaxes and weakens until it becomes a labour to raise a hand to the head or drag our foot after another.” (4/I/20)

“Once Sloth is ruler in Mansoul, the person cannot wake up in the morning, dawdles over his dressing, comes down late for breakfast, hates a walk, can’t bear games, dawdles over his preparation, does not want to make boats or whistles, or collect stamps, drops in all his lessons, is in the Third form when he ought to be in the Sixth, saunters about the corners of the playing-field with his hands in his pockets, never does anything for anybody, not because he is unkind or ill-natured, but because he will not take the trouble.” (4/I/20)

“If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for their children when these are overdone, we should have happier households. Let the mother go out to play! If she would only have courage to let everything go when life becomes too tense, and just take a day, or half a day, out in the fields, or with a favorite book, or in a picture gallery looking long and well at just two or three pictures, or in bed, without the children, life would go on far more happily for both children and parents.” (3/33-34)

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28, quoted in 4/II/93)

Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, Dr. Wessbluth

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ADE at HOME Conference

Podcast Episode on Rest

Episode 213: ADE Book Club: Waverley

A Charlotte Mason education included the best novels the world had to offer. This episode is a lively discussion of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley, a book Miss Mason referred to in all of her six volumes and one of the first English historical novels. To read it is to understand more about Miss Mason, and ourselves.

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“Waverley by name was wavering by nature, was ever the sport of circumstances because he had not learned in youth to direct his course. He blunders into many ( most interesting) misadventures because he had failed to get, through his studies, the alertness of mind and the self-restraint which should make a man of him. Many pleasant things befall him, but not one of them, unless we except Rose Bradwardine’s love – and when did woman study justice in the bestowal of her favours?–not one did he earn by his own wit or prowess; each advantage and success which came to him was the earnings of another man. The elder Waverley had not only fortune but force of character to make friends, so we are not made sad for the amiable young man for whom we must needs feel affection ; he does nothing to carve out a way for himself, and he does everything to his own hindrance out of pure want of the power of self-direction, but his uncle has fortune and friends, and all ends well. For the sake, no doubt, of young persons less happily situated, and of parents who are not able to play the part of bountiful Providence to sons and daughters whom they have failed to fit for the conduct of their own lives, the great novelist takes care to point out that Edward Waverley’s personal failure in life was the fault of his education. His abilities were even brilliant, but ‘ I ought’ had waited upon ‘ I like’ from his earliest days, and he had never learned to make himself do the thing he would.” (2/63-64)

“These things arrive to us after many readings of a book that is worth while ; and the absurdity of saying, ‘I have read’ Jane Austen or the Waverley novels should be realised.” (5/374)

Waverley, Sir Walter Scott

Kidnapped, R.L. Stevenson

Parents’ Educational Course Reading List

Episode 212: Ourselves, Introductory

Charlotte Mason homeschoolers know that the curriculum feeds the whole person. Miss Mason tackled helping young persons to understand themselves and their place in the world through one of her volumes, Ourselves, to widen their understanding of themselves and the world they live in. This episode gives an overview of the purpose and plan for this book in the feast and is the first of the season 6 podcast series covering topics from Self-Knowledge, the first book of Ourselves.

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