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Home Education

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
Educational Philosophy, Home Education
Circle Time Planning When Everybody’s a Teenager

This past week, I drew up yet another new set of Circle Time plans. It never gets old, really. I can’t help but enjoy the fresh possibilities that come with a new plan. Of course, there are fewer possibilities when you only get three days a week, but beggars can’t be choosers and all that. I make do with what I have rather than planning-as-pretending (in which I overschedule). Here’s what first term of this year is going to look Continue Reading…
July 31, 2021
Educational Philosophy, Home Education
Utilitarianism in Christian Education

Do you know your educational philosophy? Do you know the “why” behind your curriculum choices? Our educational philosophy informs our curriculum choices whether we deliberately choose it to or just “trust our gut.” This subject of Utilitarianism is close to my heart because I feel like I am constantly going against my own instinct to just do what is necessary and cut out”extracurriculars.” It hit me like a train that I was steeped in Utilitarianism while reading about Charlotte Mason Continue Reading…
June 14, 2021
Educational Philosophy, Home Education
Give the Student What He Needs

In The Didascalicon, Hugh of Saint Victor says there are three obstacles to progress in learning — perhaps we might say three categories of obstacles — that students can come up against: carelessness, imprudence, and bad luck. He then goes on to share his solution for these three. I found myself wondering if it could really be this simple: only three? But the more I went around in circles, the more every obstacle I could think of fit into one Continue Reading…
April 14, 2021