I think my oldest son was around two years old when I bought our first ‘school book’. I needed to top up an Amazon order so that I could get free shipping, and they had a copy of Our Island Story in their warehouse deals. It’s been floating around our house for years now, only…
I’ve been doing a morning time routine with my kids for a few years now. After breakfast, we gather and enjoy music, poetry, and books together. Over that time, I’ve noticed one thing: morning time only runs smoothly when all of the books and resources are actually in the basket. Nothing derails morning time faster…
After a long time enjoying gentle and quiet early years, my six year old son has started more formal lessons. In a Charlotte Mason homeschool, providing a broad and generous curriculum is a huge priority. This begs the question: how do you fit it all in? The answer? A lot comes down to scheduling. In…
Charlotte Mason’s first ten principles cover a lot of ground. In a few sentences, she covers the nature of a person, the role and limitations of authority in education, and the tools of education that respect personhood. She asserts that children are not sacs to be filled, but have living minds. They cannot be produced…
Do you find that when you think about habit training, you usually think of all the habits that aren’t going well? That’s my own typical reaction. I read Charlotte Mason’s writing on the topic, and I come away resolved to do better – a little overwhelmed with all the habits I want to address within…
In the previous post in this series, I addressed a lie prevalent in our culture: that knowledge is only valuable to us as far as we are able to make use of it. If you weren’t convinced, just consider the messages our culture sends: A mother who ‘just’ wants to stay at home is wasting…
‘Mom, where are my socks?’‘I can’t find my t-shirt.’‘Where did my screwdriver go?’‘Mommy, drink?’I always thought my mom’s ability to know the location of every missing item in our house was a superpower. Now that I have my own husband and kids, I know that’s not quite right. It’s not a superpower as much as…
Sometimes, I find motherhood is a bit mind-numbing. Maybe it’s particularly related to having young children: there is a lot of repetition. Repeating instructions, repeating tasks, repeating stories, repeating games. It is a special sort of exhaustion. It is hard to do the same thing, over and over again. It’s little wonder that when the…
If there is one false impression I took from the enormous stack of Christian marriage books that I read during my engagement, it’s that getting married puts you on the fast track to sanctification – and there is nothing else you need to do. Becoming more Christlike will happen as you and your spouse learn…
I am approaching my sixth year of motherhood, and if there is one thing that I’ve learned, it’s to recognize the rub of sanctification in my heart. I sit down with a book and a cup of tea, the toddler down for a nap, my eldest decides he needs three knots tied in a piece…