Painting by 12-year-old daughter of Penny.

Watercolor painting by April Gardner, age 12.

  • Read living books.

    • “The children must enjoy the book. The ideas it holds must each make that sudden, delightful impact upon their minds, must cause that intellectual stir, which mark the inception of an idea.”
  • Child retells, or narrates, what he/she heard or read. Older students may write their narration.
    • “The simplest way of dealing with a paragraph or a chapter is to require the child to narrate its contents…to perform the act of knowing.”
  • Narrate readings and other learning that occurs in other academic areas, including: Science, History, Geography, and Math.
    • “Books dealing with science… should be of a literary character, and we should probably be more scientific as a people if we scrapped all the textbooks…”
  • Nature studies: Enjoy walks in nature and take time to keep a nature journal. See links to nature sites and books.

    • “We were all meant to be naturalists… and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things.”
  • Art appreciation.
    • “We cannot measure the influence that one or another artist has upon the child’s sense of beauty… He is enriched more than we know in having really looked at even a single picture.”

 

Charlotte Mason, educator

For a more thorough understanding of Charlotte Mason’s approach to education, purchase the Charlotte Mason Study Guide. Consider setting up a Charlotte Mason Homeschool Seminar in YOUR area.