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.
Welcome to Season Eight! Emily, Nicole, and Liz are delighted to bring you up to date on new helps for teaching being offered at A Delectable Education’s site, events to look forward to, and an overview of the great things you can expect in the coming school year on the podcast as they continue to share the riches of the Charlotte Mason feast.
Listen Now:
Parents and Children (Vol. 2), Charlotte Mason: Chapter 25
It’s planning season and we have been busy working to prepare many new products for release today!
First, you’ll notice that our menu has been reorganized to help you find all these new items (and our old ones too): we’ve organized the Teacher Training Videos by type (full-length workshops and shorter demonstration lessons) and all the rest of our products are now grouped under “Teacher Helps.” These are further broken into three categories to help meet you in whichever stage you are at:
Planning the big picture (Curriculum Templates, Exam Planner, Schedule Cards, Subject Planners, etc.)
Forecasting (Things that help break down resources/subjects across your terms)
Lessons (Teacher Helps that you’ll use in your day-to-day lessons)
We know that most families are feeling the crunch of higher prices everywhere, so we’ve also made special bundled prices on several products. Check out the new Reading Bundle, Subject Planners Bundle, the Will Bundle, and bundled prices for each level of Geography resources!
Charlotte Mason encouraged the habit of gratitude. This end-of-year season wrap-up episode is a collection of testimonials from mothers who have experienced the benefits of her method. Emily, Liz, and Nicole are encouraging every mother, before the books are tossed aside for the year, to take time to reflect on the past year of lessons. If you want to end the year with a song instead of a sigh, listen to be reminded of all that’s good.
Listen Now:
“May we recommend the following suggestion to Parents?––
A Mother’s Diary––”Parents and teachers should endeavour to answer such questions as these: When do the first stirrings of the moral sense appear in the child? How do they manifest themselves? What are the emotional and the intellectual equipments of the child at different periods, and how do these respond with its moral outfit? At what time does conscience enter on the scene? To what acts or omissions does the child apply the terms right or wrong? If observations of this kind were made with care and duly recorded, the science of education would have at its disposal a considerable quantity of material from which, no doubt, valuable generalisations might be deduced. Every mother, especially, should keep a diary in which to note the successive phases of her child’s physical, mental, and moral growth, with particular attention to the moral; so that parents may be enabled to make a timely forecast of their children’s character; to foster in them every germ of good, and by prompt precautions to suppress, or at least restrain, what is bad.” (2/105-106)
As with every subject, Charlotte Mason’s method starts with ideas and continues with natural instruction according to her principles. Math is no exception. Guests Emily Al-Khatib and Heather Schultz unpack the underlying principles of Charlotte Mason’s approach to math and reveal a glimpse of the beauty and truth that will be revealed as Miss Mason’s method is applied to mathematics. Emily, Liz, and Nicole touch on the most common questions, concerns, fears, and perplexities teachers have about math with these enthusiastic math teachers.
Charlotte Mason’s counsel on education extends beyond academics to sound parenting advice. It’s wonderful to come to the feast, but what if the learners at the table have such bad attitudes that it spoils the meal? Liz, Emily, and Nicole discuss the reality of facing the challenges of children with bad attitudes and ways of dealing with them.
Listen Now:
“Our part is to remove obstructions and to give stimulus and guidance to the child who is trying to get into touch with the universe of things and thoughts which belongs to him.” (3/188)
“The mind is capable of dealing with only one kind of food; it lives, grows and is nourished upon ideas only; mere information is to it as a meal of sawdust to the body; there are no organs for the assimilation of the one more than of the other.” (6/218)
“There is no way of escape for parents; they must be ‘inspirers’ to their children, because about them hangs, as its atmosphere about a planet, the thought-environment of the child, from which he derives those enduring ideas which express themselves as a life-long ‘appetency’ towards things sordid or things lovely, things earthly or divine.” (2/37)
“They do not give their children the discipline which results in self-compelling power; and by-and-by…the time for training in the art of self-mastery has gone by, and a fine character is spoiled through indolence and willfulness.” (2/64)
“It rests with parents to make low the high places and exalt the valleys, to make straight paths for the feet of their [child].” (2/68)
“To give a child this power over himself — first in response to the will of another, later, in response to his own, is to make a man of him,” (3/20)
“Every day, every hour, the parents are either passively or actively forming those habits in their children upon which, more than upon anything else, future character and conduct depend.” (1/118)
“…it is a mistake to suppose that the greater the number of ‘subjects’ the greater the scholar’s labour; the contrary is the case as the variety in itself affords refreshment.” (6/158)
“Teach them that the Divine Spirit has constant access to their spirits, and is their Continual Helper in all the interests, duties and joys of life.” Point 20 of the Short Synopsis
“It is a happy thing that the ‘difficult’ children who are the readiest to resist a direct command are often the quickest to respond to the stimulus of an idea.” (3/23)
