The Way of Love: Loving your Children
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The Way of Love: Loving your Children

This entry is part 1 of 1 in the series The Way of Love

If I wake early to read my Bible and pray, and have not love when my children interrupt me, I am only a donkey in a lion’s skin. I may hide under a mane of righteous actions, but the bray of self-centered entitlement exposes me. If love is patient and kind, I am anything but…

There is no separation between the ‘practical’, ‘intellectual’, and the ‘spiritual’.
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There is no separation between the ‘practical’, ‘intellectual’, and the ‘spiritual’.

This entry is part 20 of 20 in the series Mother Culture Road Map

Charlotte Mason advocated for children to receive a broad and generous education. While we, as educators, see the importance of setting aside planned, structured time to give our children a ‘feast’ of ideas, it can be more challenging to partake as a mother. There is a tension between the practical demands on our time and…

The Chief Duty of Mothers
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The Chief Duty of Mothers

This entry is part 19 of 20 in the series Mother Culture Road Map

From the last two principles, we see that we have a will, a capacity to make choices about the ideas we accept or reject, and that we also have reason, which justifies the ideas we accept. This brings us to Charlotte Mason’s nineteenth principle: The main responsibility that we have as persons is to accept…

The Way of the Reason (for Moms)
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The Way of the Reason (for Moms)

This entry is part 18 of 20 in the series Mother Culture Road Map

From the last post in the Mother Culture Roadmap, we learned that the will is our means of choosing to do what is right, and that it is easily fatigued. We often try to reason with ourselves in order to work up our will to do the right thing, but this process usually wears us…

The Way of the Will for Moms
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The Way of the Will for Moms

This entry is part 17 of 20 in the series Mother Culture Road Map

In Charlotte Mason’s fourth volume, Ourselves, she describes a country called Mansoul. This country is full of potential – there are fields, natural resources, cities with libraries and art museums. But bounty is not guaranteed. The success of the country depends upon the government, which could just as easily squander its many assets as it…

A mother’s education is more than reading books.
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A mother’s education is more than reading books.

This entry is part 16 of 20 in the series Mother Culture Road Map

Mother culture is about the pursuit of education for ourselves. We recognize that ‘education’ is not something we finished years ago. It’s not something our kids need to go through before they hit adulthood. If education is about the formation of our character, then we are still on the journey, pursuing the same goal as…

In a mother’s education, less is more.
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In a mother’s education, less is more.

This entry is part 15 of 20 in the series Mother Culture Road Map

Does reading broadly, from several living books, on a frequent basis, sound overwhelming? Or to put in another way, does the goal of educating yourself seem so distant that you are reluctant to begin? If we still think of learning as cramming for an exam, answering multiple choice questions, highlighting, and rereading the same chapter…

To self-educate, mothers should narrate.
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To self-educate, mothers should narrate.

This entry is part 14 of 20 in the series Mother Culture Road Map

Once we have brought together a collection of living books that widen our interests, and have carved out a bit of time to read them, what do we do next? How can we engage with our reading in such a way that we are changed people when we put the book down? These questions are…

How to Plan your Mother Culture Time
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How to Plan your Mother Culture Time

This entry is part 13 of 20 in the series Mother Culture Road Map

In the last post in this series, I discussed education as the science of relations. It is right to develop an interest in a wide variety of knowledge and hence to have many ways of knowing and loving God and His creation. But how are we to obtain that knowledge? How do we set a…