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Home Education

Home Education
Teaching Must Be Fresh and Living

When I most recently read chapter 25 of Parents and Children, something jumped out at me that I had missed in (or forgotten from) my previous readings: Teaching must be Fresh and Living.— … [W]hatever is stale and flat and dull to us must needs be stale and flat and dull to him. p. 278 It is so common to have the thought that (1) my children don’t like something in our homeschool and (2) they are probably right, because Continue Reading…
November 22, 2021
Home Education
Let Us Think Better of the Children

There is a place in Book One of Ourselves where Charlotte Mason describes sympathy as a lever. I’ve had to read it over and over to even begin wrap my mind around it. The essence of this type of sympathy goes beyond emotions and is a sort of sympathy in greatness. She says that each great work of art offers such sympathy to us, calling us upward, elevating and sustaining us. The great works call to us in sympathy — Continue Reading…
November 10, 2021
Educational Philosophy, Home Education
The Tyranny of the Self

A few years ago at co-op, a peculiar thing started happening during my Plutarch class. Mrs. Vencel? Can I go to the bathroom? Mrs. Vencel? Can I go get my water bottle? Mrs. Vencel? Can I go tell my mom something real quick? It went on and on. My students could think of any reason to leave class. The most interesting thing about this is that I had it on good authority that the students asking these questions loved my Continue Reading…
October 14, 2021
Home Education
Time for a Charlotte Mason Deep Dive

Charlotte Mason’s 16th Principle says this: There are two guides to moral and intellectual self-management to offer to children, which we may call ‘the way of the will’ and ‘the way of the reason.’ If education was only about subject matter, Miss Mason’s principles would have stopped at 15. She goes on to 20 because knowing history, science, and math isn’t the whole story. To Charlotte Mason, education was about character. We can’t just waltz into a room and form Continue Reading…
September 15, 2021