Charlotte Mason Homeschooling 101

When my first baby was six months old, I came across a blog of a homeschooling mom. I had known homeschooled children growing up, but I had never thought about taking the plunge myself. And it did seem like it would be a plunge, especially once I started searching for more information and discovered the world of Charlotte Mason homeschooling.

Charlotte Mason’s ideas, and the vision cast by the many blogs I read, caught my attention. Homeschooling no longer seemed like a vague possibility. I could see it: nature study, living books, narration, the works. I also wanted to give my kids a living, respectful education.

It didn’t take long to take the plunge.

If you are here, I wonder if you are standing on the edge, contemplating the waters. Maybe you’ve caught a bit of the vision from others. Perhaps circumstances have resulted in homeschooling, and you’re trying to find your way. Or maybe, like me, you’ve just happened upon the seed of an idea, and you want to examine it further.

You’re in the right place. 

All About Charlotte Mason Homeschooling

Since I first came across those blogs ten years ago, the world of Charlotte Mason homeschool bloggers, writers, businesses, and social media accounts has exploded. It is one thing to head to Pinterest and Google and find a handful of blogs and books to read. It’s another to find an endless amount of books, videos, and podcasts to wade through (not to mention Charlotte Mason’s own writing).

I’ve written this post as an information hub – all the info you need about Charlotte Mason homeschooling, in an organized way, to help you get your mind wrapped around the essential information.

Whenever I swim in a new lake or at a new beach, I always do research first. Are there currents? Tides? Rocks? Does the water suddenly get deep? Is there a place to get a drink and a snack afterward? Where can I park? I might be keen to take a plunge, but practicality requires that I find out what I can before I enter the water.

This post will help you research what’s under the surface of Charlotte Mason homeschooling – before you dive in.

And if you’re interested in getting started with Charlotte Mason, you might like my course Charlotte Mason Essentials. In eight days, I’ll help you get going with the basics of the method. You can get the course (which includes a workbook with reading assignments and a mini podcast) when you subscribe to my email newsletter.

Navigating This Guide

Long post alert! This guide covers a lot of information about Charlotte Mason homeschooling. Use the table of contents to navigate to the parts of the post most relevant to you!

Who was Charlotte Mason?

Before we wade into living books or nature study, let’s establish who Charlotte Mason was.

To put it briefly, Charlotte Mason was an education reformer who lived and worked in England. Born in 1842, her life covered the late Victorian/early Edwardian era. She saw a lot of change in the world before her death in 1923!

Charlotte Mason trained as a teacher as a teenager before finding work in a school. A heart condition, however, resulted in her leaving her teaching role. At this point she took a position training teachers (less strenuous than working directly with children!). She also wrote a series of geography books for children. 

Changing education

By this point, Charlotte was asking herself: why isn’t education more effective? If education should help children grow in knowledge and character, why do children forget so much of what they learn? And, for that matter, why do their character faults only seem to increase? Through her experience with children and teachers, alongside her extensive reading and study of education, Charlotte began to formulate some answers and solutions.

What Charlotte needed now was a platform. She found this when her church was raising funds for a new parish hall, and offered to give some lectures to mothers in exchange for donations. The lectures were a hit and were soon published as her first volume, Home Education.

This volume caught the attention of others and, soon, Charlotte and a few others established the Parents’ National Education Union. This group encouraged parents to discuss and implement educational topics (“A mother owes her children a thinking love,” she wrote in the beginning of Home Education). It also became clear that these thinking parents would need governesses trained in Charlotte Mason’s ideas.

Training others

This need became the springboard for Charlotte to move to Ambleside, a village in England’s Lake District, and establish a teacher training college. Charlotte lived the rest of her life in this hilly, heather-filled corner of the world. Her students went out as governesses and teachers. The PNEU began to publish curriculum and oversee student exams sent in by post. Charlotte wrote for and edited the group’s magazine, the Parents’ Review.

Charlotte went on to publish four more volumes (and countless articles), discussing educational ideas. She completed her sixth volume, Towards a Philosophy of Education, just before her death. It was published posthumously.

The Outstanding Charlotte Mason

Charlotte stands out in a crowd of education reformers for two reasons. First, she articulated her philosophy clearly. Twenty educational principles (more below) might seem like a lot – but compare that to those who never managed to write any.

Second, her methods were implemented at scale and with relative rigor. Governesses and teachers were trained, sent out, and taught children, often using PNEU curriculum. The children’s exams were evaluated by Charlotte and a few others in Ambleside. During World War I, several schools began using Charlotte’s methods and curriculum as well. When we read what Charlotte has to say about education, especially later in her life, there is a sense that her knowledge is truly robust.

Learning more about Charlotte Mason’s life and work is a fun rabbit trail. Her biography has recently been republished (referral link) and is a good place to start. I also give an overview of Charlotte’s life in my webinar, Intro to Charlotte Mason’s Home Education Series.

What is the Charlotte Mason method of homeschooling?

We’ve learned a little about Charlotte’s life and work. Now let’s consider what made her ideas distinct and appealing in her time and ours.

Throughout her work, Charlotte reached past tradition and looked for the connection between natural law and science to form her method. She didn’t do anything because it had always been done that way. Instead, she worked from Scripture, her observations of children, and recent (to the age) scientific developments about neurology and habits.

Remember, Charlotte had noticed the lackluster results of educational efforts in both the home and school. Yet she would not offer the world empty promises of amazing results.

Education: A Method or a System

In the first few pages of her first volume of essays, Charlotte declares that education is a method, not a system. 

• A method, she wrote, implies “a way to an end, and a step by step progress in that way.”
• A system, however, “pledge(s) to more definite calculable results. By means of a system certain developments may be brought about through the observance of given rules.”

I’ll put it another way. A system of education promises that a child will turn out a certain way at the end of the program. A method of education makes no such claim because a teacher can’t control the growth of a child. This holds true whether we think about intellectual, spiritual, or physical growth. The role of parents and teachers is to keep the end goal in mind as they navigate their present circumstances.

Principles THEN Method THEN Curriculum

We live in a world that operates on the promises of systems. Buy this, use this, do it this way and achieve X results. If you are considering homeschooling the Charlotte Mason way, one of the first points to recognize is that her method does not operate like this. The growth of a child is not linear, predictable, or controllable. There are no guaranteed outcomes.

But despite this truth, education is not reactionary, but proactive. Remember there are two parts to method: the end goal in sight, and a route to get there. To navigate the route, though, will require more than popping our destination into Google Maps and turning on the GPS. Rather than a digital friend telling us exactly what to do (a system!), we need to internalize a few principles. 

These guiding principles help us to apply the Charlotte Mason method. Principles remind us of the end goal and also help us figure out what to do now in order to get there. 

I’ll share some of Charlotte’s key principles in the next section. Before I move on, though, I want to point out that there is a hierarchy in the Charlotte Mason method: our principles inform our method and our method informs practical choices like books, scheduling, and curriculum. Don’t jump ahead to curriculum until you’ve grasped the starting principles!

On this topic, I love this post on whether you are using Charlotte Mason’s ideas as a method or a system.

Charlotte Mason’s Key Principles

Charlotte Mason wrote twenty educational principles. 

Twenty.

Fortunately, you don’t need to memorize them before you launch your Charlotte Mason homeschool. In fact, Charlotte points out that all twenty principles flow from two essential principles. 

Children are born persons.

Before we can educate children, we need to know what they are like. There were some interesting theories in Charlotte’s day, suggesting that children were like cogs to be shaped or empty boxes into which facts and ideas must be carefully placed and connected.

When Charlotte looked at children, though, she didn’t see lumps of clay to be formed, but active, curious minds. She could see that children begin learning, for themselves, from birth. You can’t stop them. They naturally learn about their families, how to speak, how the physical world works, and much more.

All of Charlotte’s philosophy flows from this. In a Charlotte Mason homeschool, learning is the work of the children. The teacher doesn’t cajole, force, or create learning in the child. Instead, the teacher trusts and expects learning to happen when a child is given the good ideas to think about. This is like how we expect a child to grow big and strong when they are given healthy meals to eat.

Education is the science of relations

We trust and expect children to learn and grow. But what is learning?

Charlotte Mason gives us the answer in her twelfth principle and her second essential point: “Education is the science of relations.” Children (and human beings more generally) have an intuitive and natural ability to build relationships between themselves and new ideas, as well as between ideas.

I think about this principle in two ways. First, the point of education is for a child to build relationships. Over the course of a child’s education, the child should grow familiar and even affectionate with a wide variety of people and subjects. Education isn’t about cramming in ideas, regurgitating them for an exam, then forgetting them all. Instead, it’s about cultivating affection – a relationship.

Second, education is about connecting ideas. Charlotte recognized that when we connect new ideas to what we already know, we are much more likely to remember what we’ve learned. This idea holds true on the neurological level as our synapses themselves knit themselves together as our ideas become more connected. Any time your child says “This reminds me of…”, you are seeing education happen.

What is the difference between Charlotte Mason and (Insert Alternative Homeschool Style Here)?

While you can get a flavor of the Charlotte Mason method by reading over her principles, her ideas become clearer when you compare them to other methods of homeschooling. What makes the Charlotte Mason way different, and where is there overlap?

I can’t cover every homeschooling style in this post, but here is a quick overview. Keep in mind that my experience and study has been within the Charlotte Mason method, so my first-hand knowledge of other homeschooling methods is limited.

Charlotte Mason vs. Traditional Homeschooling

Traditional homeschooling looks a lot like school-at-home. Think worksheets, textbooks, quizzes, and tests. This makes me think of children at desks (or probably the kitchen table), working diligently through their assignments.

My kids also have a schedule and a set amount of work to do each day. It is fairly structured, and that structure is largely set by me, the teacher.

However, that structured time is not spent in reading textbooks and filling in worksheets. Instead, the Charlotte Mason method makes use of living books and narration. I choose engaging, interesting books which I read aloud or my children read to themselves. After that, I ask my children to tell me back what they have read.

This quick activity encourages my kids to keep their attention engaged, helps them to remember what they’ve learned by practicing recall, and lets me know where they need some help understanding the new material. The goal is never to simply finish a worksheet or pass a test. Instead, we are always looking for the child to think about and engage with ideas for themselves.

Charlotte Mason vs. Classical Education

Classical education has tones of rigor to it – and busts of Greek philosophers. At least in my imagination! While there has been quite a bit of debate about what classical education really is (ages and stages? Something else?), it definitely appears to be tried and true. For ages, children have been educated in the classics, in Latin, and the liberal arts. The aim here is not to launch a child into a career as an adult, but to help a child think and communicate well, and to help them grow in virtue. Classical education is about character development.

When you read Charlotte Mason’s writing, though, you begin to see that she was very interested in the same ideas. She published a volume called Formation of Character. Those unimpressive results in education at her time? They were largely around the failure to help children grow in virtue.

There are mixed opinions on this within the Charlotte Mason world, but I definitely see that Charlotte Mason is in conversation with the philosophers who went before her. She picks up their ideas about the purpose of education, and gives a practical approach. So while you might notice plenty of differences in a classical homeschool, the aims are the same. For more on this, check out Karen Glass’s excellent book, Consider This. (referral link)

Charlotte Mason vs. Montessori

Charlotte Mason and Maria Montessori were contemporaries. As Charlotte lived and worked in Ambleside, Montessori’s ideas began filtering into the United Kingdom and caught Charlotte’s attention.

Charlotte didn’t particularly like what she saw, and was concerned to the point that she wrote letters to the editor for publication in a national newspaper. In these letters, she argued against Montessori’s underlying philosophical approach, and presented her own ideas. 

One of the more important differences is that Montessori adjusted a child’s environment to fit the child. Think child-sized tools and furniture. Charlotte Mason believed that a child needed far more than the perfect physical environment, but that they needed ideas to think upon and to encounter the world as it really is – not an artificial version arranged just-so for the child.

This is one example. For more, I recommend reading comparisons from Educational Rennaisance and Letters from Nebby for more information. If you want to go further down the rabbit trail, you can also read one of Charlotte’s letters to the editor about Montessori.

Charlotte Mason vs. Unschooling

One side effect of the Charlotte Mason method is realizing just how amazing our children are. We notice (again) how they are wired to learn, how curious and capable they are. Their minds really are wonderfully made. Charlotte writes that the natural response to this is humility. What does a teacher provide if children do the work of learning themselves?

The answer to this question is how we draw a line between the Charlotte Mason method and the unschooling approach. Both start from an acknowledgement that children are amazing learners. The difference is in the role of the teacher. An unschooling approach sees the parent/teacher as a support to the child, facilitating their natural curiosity and interests. 

Charlotte Mason, however, views the teacher as a guide and as an authority figure. The parent/teacher is more mature and further ahead in life than the child. He or she has more insight into life, knowledge, character, and virtue. They are there to help the child learn and grow as much as possible. This means that the teacher makes sure that the child gets a wide variety of ideas in many different subjects – not only the ones that interest them.

(By the way, Charlotte Mason believed that children should still have plenty of time to follow their own interests – see my notes on scheduling further down the post.)

For more of my thoughts on Charlotte Mason and unschooling, you can read this more detailed post.

How to Homeschool the Charlotte Mason Way

We’ve covered who Charlotte Mason was, her key ideas, and what sets her apart from other homeschooling approaches. Let’s move on to the practicalities! What can you expect to find in a Charlotte Mason homeschool?

Living Ideas

Charlotte Mason firmly believed that children could only learn if they engaged with living ideas. This phrase is a little vague. How do we know an idea is living? Where do they come from? 

A living idea is one that makes us think. It reminds us of other things. We are able to put it into our own words and share it. It catches our attention and inspires us. Life is full of these ideas and our children will come across them naturally, but in our homeschools we want to give them a good healthy dose. 

In our lessons, we make use of living books. Living books are books that communicate living ideas. These books will always be well written, using rich and vibrant language, and will often be driven by a narrative, with the author telling a story or speaking directly to the child. Now our children won’t necessarily love every single school book (does a child love every single vegetable?), but we should see our children connect with the ideas in these books.

Narration is incredibly powerful and a key part of the Charlotte Mason method. This simple process asks a child to sift through what they have read, synthesize it, and present it in their own words. Narration allows the child to engage with ideas for himself – without the pressure of needing to get the right answer. I highly recommend Karen Glass’s Know and Tell (referral link) for more on living ideas, learning, and narration.

Broad and Generous Curriculum

A Charlotte Mason homeschool is more than a stack of books. The subjects those books cover is also essential. Just as we don’t feed our children the same food every single day, we give our children a variety of intellectual food. 

The reason for this parallels the reason we give our children a varied diet: we don’t know the precise combination of nutrients, minerals, vitamins, and calories our children need to grow healthy and strong. Their bodies will take what they need from what they eat, so we cast a wide net and provide different sorts of food. 

Intellectually, we don’t know exactly what our children need either. They need ideas that inspire and motivate them. Our children also need ideas that develop their moral view of the world, as well as ideas that connect them to their physical world, people from history, and their fellow man. Education is relational, and children have a lot of relationships to make!

Broad and generous, though, doesn’t mean infinite. Charlotte Mason had three main areas of knowledge that curriculum should cover:

• The Knowledge of God (which includes studying the Bible as well as theology)
• The Knowledge of Man (history, literature, economics, languages, art, and music)
• The Knowledge of the Universe (science, geography, mathematics, handicraft, physical education)

Short, Varied Lessons

The main strategy for covering such a broad curriculum in a Charlotte Mason homeschool is to keep lessons short and varied. 

The foundation for any relationship – whether it’s another person or an idea in a book – is attention. In lessons, we want our children to give their attention to the ideas in front of them. Narration helps with this. When we know we will be asked to tell back, we attend better.

Attention, though, is a muscle, and we want to arrange our school day with a view to exercising this muscle well. This leads to a few guidelines for lessons.

1. A lesson ends before a child struggles with attention
2. Lessons do get longer as a child gets older and more practiced
3. We switch up the type of lesson so that attention gets consistent, refreshing breaks throughout the school day. We don’t read one book after another – we read, then do handwriting practice, read, then review math facts, read, then a map drill. Variety keeps things interesting, and interest secures attention!

Options for Charlotte Mason Curriculum

I’ve written a book on how to start using Charlotte Mason’s ideas in your home before you ever type “Charlotte Mason curriculum” into a search engine. At some point, though, curriculum becomes necessary. I don’t mean that you have to buy anything (see below for more about the DIY option!), but you will want to develop an idea of what you want to cover with your children over a certain amount of time. Remember that Charlotte Mason is all about method: step-by-step progress toward a goal. Curriculum is one way to make that progress.

DIY

It’s entirely possible to put together your own Charlotte Mason curriculum. For this option, you will want to have a good handle on Charlotte’s thoughts about curriculum and what to cover. A good place to start is to read the tenth chapter of her sixth volume, which is called The Curriculum. This long chapter will give you a good idea of the scope and sequence covered in Charlotte’s curriculum.

After this, you might find inspiration in other educators’ booklists, as well as what is covered in other curricula, like Ambleside Online or Simply Charlotte Mason. You can piece together what you like, and go searching for other options. For an example of one mom who does this, you can read Heather’s series on creating her own Charlotte Mason curriculum.

PNEU Programs

Another option is to sift through the curriculum programs put together by the Parents’ National Educational Union. This is the group that Charlotte founded after she published Home Education. The books on these programs are now in the public domain and many of them can be found on Archive.org.

Personally, I think that these programs are interesting and can be helpful to look over them if you are putting together your own curriculum. However, I don’t think it is necessary to use the programs in order to have an ‘authentic’ Charlotte Mason homeschool. Charlotte herself was far more concerned with people getting the principles right than following a prescription for curriculum.

Ambleside Online

One of the first modern Charlotte Mason curricula that an internet search will bring up is AmblesideOnline. This option, put together by a group of homeschool moms, is freely available online. Ambleside is the curriculum that I came across in the beginning of my homeschool journey, and perusing their site convinced me that the Charlotte Mason way was for me.

I started my eldest son in Year One the month after he turned six. He is now wrapping up Year Five, and I have two other boys in lower years. I’ve found this curriculum to be nothing but a blessing. It is thoughtfully put together, freely given, and the support of the creators and users is generous and loving. 

Other AmblesideOnline users include Brandy Vencel from Afterthoughts and Rebecca from A Humble Place. I highly recommend reading their posts to get the flavor of AO.

Other Options – CMEC, A Gentle Feast, Simply Charlotte Mason, Alveary

The choice of Charlotte Mason curricula continues to expand. There are comprehensive options like Simply Charlotte Mason, A Gentle Feast, the CMEC, and Alveary. There are also places to find support for specific subjects, like CM Simple Languages or Copywork Cave. I also appreciate that you can find people republishing works that were used in Charlotte Mason’s schools, like Charlotte Mason Beehive or Living Books Press.

In fact, there are so many resources that I can’t offer first hand insight into many of them – especially the comprehensive options! Reviews of some of these curriculum options can be found on Cathy Duffy. Letters from Nebby also has a post comparing various curricula.

Creating a Charlotte Mason Homeschool Schedule

Even if you use an off-the-shelf curriculum, you still have some work to do to bring that plan to life. While some people might shudder at the word, I would argue that every homeschool will benefit from a schedule. 

Bear with me. Charlotte Mason homeschooling is structured. We have a sense of what we want to cover, how, and over what amount of time. If we add to that short and varied lessons, then we even have a strategy that will help us navigate our daily school days. 

This doesn’t mean that a homeschool has to be strict and never deviate from the plan. In fact, I think that having a schedule gives freedom to be flexible, because you have a sense of how the pieces of your curriculum fit together, how long they take, and how important they are. So when life happens (and life always happens), you can make decisions about how to navigate that situation.

At a minimum, I think that most homeschoolers will benefit from deciding:

• Which days are school days
• When you want or need to take breaks from school 
• How frequently you will need to read each book or study a particular subject

These decisions will help you look at your curriculum choices and adjust your approach to your reality.

My personal preference is to have a detailed, daily schedule that we follow (emphasis on preference!). You can read a lot more about my process in these posts.

Charlotte Mason IRL

Charlotte Mason homeschooling isn’t easy, but I love giving my children a respectful, intentional, living education. Our days include some bad attitudes. Sometimes math is really hard, or Mom’s tired, or no one seems to hear the morning poem.

Yet for all the challenges, there is so much beauty in what we do: the inside jokes that started with Shakespeare, the excitement in spotting a painting from an artist we studied two years ago, the joy in sharing in another person’s interests because every day we practice being interested. 

Charlotte Mason offered no guarantees for her method. She did not promise that if you do things her way, your children will turn out ok. She knew that education does not work like that, and neither do children. Yet she saw, time and time again, that her approach to teaching helped children flourish as human persons. Educators who apply her methods continue to see the same thing. I’m certainly one of them. What remains is for you to explore her ideas and see if they are worth trying out for yourself.

Where to Go From Here

Five thousand words (the length of this post), is not enough to really get anyone started with Charlotte Mason homeschooling. I hope, however, that it’s given you a rough outline of Charlotte Mason as a person, her main ideas, and what a Charlotte Mason homeschool can look like. The next step, then, is to learn a bit more in order to add some detail to that outline. 

If you are brand new to Charlotte Mason, I recommend:

• Reading a more in depth introduction to Charlotte Mason. Many people begin with For the Children’s Sake. In Vital Harmony is also a good option. (referral links)
• Dipping your toe into one of Charlotte Mason’s volumes. My personal suggestion would be to read Chapters 1-9 of Towards a Philosophy of Education. If you have younger children, though, you might like to start with Home Education. (I have a webinar to help you get started).

I won’t get into the numerous podcasts, Facebook groups, or social media accounts about the Charlotte Mason method. By all means, head down the Charlotte Mason rabbit trail! But take time to ground yourself in what Charlotte Mason wrote as you explore the warren. 

Finally, take time to find community and mentors. Reach out to people in your area who are following the Charlotte Mason way. Join a forum or group for your curriculum. Attend a conference. Be sure to enjoy the journey with other people at your side!