Charlotte Mason believed that children should be seen as individuals with a body and soul. The best way to treat them as such was to educate them in a way that respected that. Education, according to Mason, should be rich and varied and full of beauty. I think many homeschoolers are drawn to this method because these are the very reasons they were drawn to homeschooling in the first place. More and more parents are adopting homeschooling Charlotte Mason and seeing the undeniable benefits for both their children and themselves.Â
“Self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child’s nature.” It is undeniable that using the Charlotte Mason Method in its fullness is more easily achieved in a homeschool environment than in a public school setting. No one-size-fits-all approach will offer your child what a flexible and rich home environment can. Teaching and learning in the way of Charlotte Mason has become popular among homeschoolers looking for a gentle and comprehensive approach to learning. When learning happens outside of an institutionalized environment, then “education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life,” as Mason wrote.Â
“Our aim in education is to give a full life. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests,” explains Mason. This method is child-centered and literature-based. It is flexible, easy to use with multiple grade levels, and adaptable to your children’s interests and needs. How can you best incorporate the ideas of Charlotte Mason into your homeschool? These tips will get you started.Â
 1. Use Living Books
“And all the time we have books, books teeming with ideas fresh from the minds of thinkers upon every subject to which we can wish to introduce children.”
You won’t find many or even any textbooks in a home learning environment based on the writings of Charlotte Mason. Instead, Charlotte advocated that we should offer our children a feast of ideas, a feast that includes books and especially stories. But not just any books! Charlotte knew that the stakes were high when introducing ideas to the children in her care. She didn’t want to muddy the waters with unappealing tales and what she called “twaddle” or foolish silliness, insignificance, or dullness.
Living books are good literature written by authors who have a deep passion for the subject they are writing about. They are engaging, pleasant, and draw you into the story or discussion. They captive your imagination and stimulate contemplation about the subject. In other words, they lead you to love what you are reading about. A living book is one that changes you for the better. And it is upon these books that children should be educated.Â
“We know that young people are enormously interested in the subject and give concentrated attention if we give them the right books. We are aware that our own discursive talk is usually a waste of time and a strain on the scholars’ attention.”Â
 2. Focus on Short Lessons
“To allow repetition of a lesson is to shift the responsibility for it from the shoulders of the pupil to those of the teacher who says, if effect, — ‘I’ll see that you know it,’ so his pupils make no effort of attention. Thus the same stale stuff is repeated again and again and the children get bored and restive, ready for pranks by way of a change.”
Charlotte Mason knew that if a child anticipated repeated treatments of a subject–through multiple readings, several attempts at narration, or a review at the end of several lessons–then there would be less attention paid in the first place. “The power of reading with perfect attention will not be gained by the child who is allowed to moon over his lessons.”
She encouraged short and focused lessons instead. “For this reason, reading lessons must be short; ten minute or a quarter of an hour of fixed attention is enough for children of the ages we have in view, and a lesson of this length will enable a child to cover two or three page of his book. The same rule as to the length of a lesson applies to children whose lessons are read to them because they are not yet able to read for themselves.”
In a homeschool environment, a morning basket can help accomplish this. Reading just part of a each book every day is a built-in way to offer short focused lessons to your children. When working on various subjects throughout the day, be alert to any flagging attention. It may be that you’ve simply spent too much time on that particular object of study. Remove time requirement pressures and be realistic about how much a child can attend to in the time you’ve planned. Reset your own expectations and you will find that your child’s attention capacity improves with shorter and more focused lessons.Â
3. Spend Time in Nature
“An observant child should be put in the way of things worth observing.”
“Never be within doors when you can rightly be without.”
3. Spend time in nature
“Nature knowledge is most important for young children. It would be well if we all persons in authority, parents and all who act for parents, could make up our minds that there is no sort of knowledge to be got in these early years so valuable to children as that which they get for themselves of the world they live in. Let them once get touch with nature, and a habit is formed which will be a source of delight through life. We were all meant to be naturalists, each in his degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things.”
Charlotte Mason wisely understood the importance of learning in the natural world. The wonders of God’s creation are there for the taking for the homeschooled child. In this modern world of screens and distractions, we would do well to heed her advice and allow our children to spend time in nature as the best classroom.Â
“Children are born naturalists, with a bent inherited, perhaps, from an unknown ancestor; but every child has a natural interest in the living things about him which it is the business of his parents to encourage; for, but few children are equal to holding their own in the face of public opinion; and if they see that the things which interest them are indifferent or disgusting to you, their pleasure in them vanishes, and that chapter in the book of nature is closed to them.”
Mason also cautioned mothers to learn themselves about the natural world and how it all works. “Mothers and teachers should know about nature. The mother cannot devote herself too much to this kind of reading, not only that she may read tit-bits to her children about matters they have come across, but that she may be able to answer their queries and direct their observations.” Homeschool mothers are perfect for this job! Every homeschooling mama knows that she learns right alongside her children. I’ve always thought that at the end of the homeschool journey, we should be honored with several PhDs, since we’ve just spent decades researching, discussing, and studying so many subjects.Â
So how do you go about this? Mason explains, “It is infinitely well worth the mother’s while to take some pains every day to secure, in the first place, that her children spend hours daily amongst rural and natural objects; and in the second place, to infuse into them, or rather, to cherish in them, the love of investigation.” Could it be that easy? Just make sure that your children spend time outdoors each day and encourage them to love and learn about what they see? Yes indeed, it can be that simple.
In fact, it may be the only way. ” Every walk should offer some knotty problem for the children to think out — ‘Why does that leaf float on the water, and this pebble sink?’ and so on. “Mason tells us, “The child who learns his science from a text-book, though he go to nature for illustrations, and he who gets his information from object lessons, has no chance of forming relations with things as they are, because his kindly obtrusive teacher makes him believe that to know about things is the same as knowing them personally.”
All children, but especially those who are younger, love to be outdoors. “This is all play to the children, but the mother is doing invaluable work; she is training their powers of observation and expression, increasing their vocabulary and their range of ideas by giving them the name and the uses of an object at the right moment, when they ask, ‘What is it?’ and ‘What is it for?” This outdoor learning can go on year-round. “Children should be made early intimate with the trees, too; should pick out half a dozen trees, oak, elm, ash, beech, in their winter nakedness, and take these to be their year-long friends.”
It’s not enough just to go outside. There is a connection to be made! “As soon as he is able to keep it himself, a nature-diary is a source of delight to a child.” Watching and journaling, drawing, or writing connects the observations to the memory. “Children should be encouraged to watch, patiently and quietly, until they learn something of the habits and history of bee, ant, wasp, spider, hairy caterpillar, dragon-fly, and whatever of larger growth comes in their way.
There is a short-term benefit in the delight of children as they explore the world around them. But there is an even greater long-term benefit. “When children are old enough to understand that science itself is in a sense sacred, and demands some sacrifice, all the common information they have been gathering until then, and the habits of observation they have acquired, will form an excellent ground work for a scientific education. In the meantime let them consider the lilies of the field and fowls of the air.
And it can foster an increase in virtue. “I have seen the young man of fierce passions and uncontrollable daring expend healthily that energy which threatened daily to plunge him into recklessness, if not into sin, upon hunting out and collecting, through rock and bog, snow and tempest, every bird and egg of the neighbouring forest.” This contact with nature builds good habits. “Let them once get in touch with nature and a habit is formed which will be a source of delight and habit through life.”
4. Use narration
What is narration? Simply, narration is retelling back what you just read or heard in your own words. It is a kind of paraphrasing or a recreation of the story or passage you read as you understand it. Charlotte Mason explained that narration is powerful tool to increase a child’s understanding and connection with what was read. “As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children should tell back after a single reading or hearing, or should write on some part of what they have read.Â
A single reading is insisted on, because children have naturally great power of attention; but this force is dissipated by the re-reading of passages, and also, by questioning, summarising, and the like. A second reading would be fatal because no one can give full attention to that which he has heard before and expects to hear again. Attention will go halt all its days if we accustom it to the crutch.”
Narration doesn’t need to take up a great amount of time. In fact, the best use of narration in your homeschool is a short retelling of what was read, not a long exposition of a work of literature. And it shouldn’t feel like a chore to the child. It should be a joyful sharing of a story or a piece of science reading or a bit of geography. “Narrating is not the work of a parrot, but of absorbing into oneself the beautiful though from the book, making it one’s own and then giving it forth again with just that little touch that comes from one’s own mind,” explained Mason.
So how do you accomplish this? Mason gave us some guidelines and these are useful in our Catholic homeschools: “They must read the given pages and tell what they have read, they must perform, that is, what we may call the act of knowing.” A child “must generalize, classify, infer, judge, visualize, discriminate, labor in one way or another, with that capable mind of his, until the substance of his book is assimilated or rejected, according as he shall determine; for the discrimination rests with him and not with his teacher.” She goes on, “‘Let him narrate,’ and the child narrates, fluently, copiously, in ordered sequence, with fit and graphic details, with a just choice of words.”
Narration should not be approached as a punishment or means of control of the child’s learning. Instead, “narrating is an art, like poetry-making or painting, because it is there, in every child’s mind, waiting to be discovered.”Â
5. Add art and music to your homeschool
“Our aim in education is to give a full life. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests.”Â
“Use every chance you get of hearing music (I do not mean only tones, though these are very nice), and ask whose music has been played, and, by degrees, you will find out that one composer has one sort of thing to say to you; and another speaks other things; these messages of the musicians cannot be put into words, so there is no way of hearing them if we do not train our ear to listen.”
“Hearing should tell us a great many interesting things, but the great and perfect joy which we owe to him is music.”
“But Musical Appreciation had no more to do with playing an instrument than acting had to do with an appreciation of Shakespeare, or painting with enjoyment of pictures. I think that all children should take Musical Appreciation and not only the musical ones, for it has been proved that only three percent of children are what is called ‘tone-deaf’; and if they are taken at an early age it is astonishing how children who appear to be without ear, develop it and are able to enjoy listening to music with understanding.”
“The six-year-old child should begin both to express himself and to appreciate, and his appreciation (of art) should be well in advance of his power to express what he sees or imagines.”
“We cannot measure the influence that one or another artist has upon the child’s sense of beauty, upon his power of seeing, as in a picture, the common sights of life; he is enriched more than we know in having really looked at even a single picture.”
“There are always those present with us whom God whispers in the ear, through whom He sends a direct message to the rest. Among these messengers are the great painters who interpret to us some of the meanings of life. To read their messages aright is a thing due from us.”
“When children have begun regular lessons (that is, as soon as they are six), this sort of study of pictures should not be left to chance, but they should take one artist after another, term by term, and study quietly some half-dozen reproductions of his work in the course of a term.”
“As in a worthy book we leave the author to tell his own tale, so do we trust a picture to tell its tale through the medium the artist gave it.”
6. Foster creativity
“Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.”
“Though breeds thought; children familiar with great thoughts take as naturally to thinking for themselves as the well-nourished body takes to growing; and we must bear in mind that growth, physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, is the sole end of education.”
“An observant child should be put in the way of things worth observing.”Â
“Education, like faith, is the evidence of things not seen.”Â
“The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding.”
“Let children feed on the good, the excellent, the great! Don’t get in their way with little lectures, facts, and guided tours!”
“For the mind is capable of dealing with only one kind of food; it lives, grows and is nourished upon ideas only; mere information is to it as a meal of sawdust to the body; there are no organs for the assimilation of the one more than of the other.”
“Wise and purposeful letting alone is the best part of education.”
“Give your child a single valuable idea, and you have done more for his education than if you had laid upon his mind the burden of bushels of information.”
“Let children have tales of the imagination, scenes laid in other lands and other times; heroic adventures, hairbreadth escapes, delicious fairy tales, even where it is all impossible, and they know it, and yet they believe.”
7. Encourage good habits to grow in virtue and character
“Every day, every hour, the parents are either passively or actively forming those habits in their children upon which, more than upon anything else, future character and conduct depend.”
“The formation of habits is education, and education is the formation of habits.”
“The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days; while she who lets their habits take care of themselves has a weary life of endless friction with the children.”
“The habits of the child produce the character of the man.”
“Because certain mental habitudes once set up, their nature is to go on for ever unless they should be displaced by other habits.”
“We all have need to be trained to see, and to have our eyes opened before we can take in the joy that is meant for us in this beautiful life.”
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