Twaddle-free!

This is a great, simple list of twaddle-free books grouped together by grade level.  It's a good start for my friends who are waiting, ever so patiently, for me to get my master list online!  Love you guys!

Source: charlottemasonhome.com via Dawn on Pinterest

(Just click on the picture)

Charlotte Mason Help

Here's an additional post to the Literature Series I had posted over the summer.  This topic is ALWAYS on my mind:


I've been scouring websites and blogs for Charlotte Mason inspiration as we enjoy these beautiful first weeks of our new school year;  going on nature walks, studying Leonardo da Vinci, pulling out the time-lines and maps, snuggling together with our favorite picture books, having great discussions about our Bible lessons.

I like to use Charlotte Mason methodology as much as I can.

In addition to Ambleside online and other curriculum sites (listed in a previous post) that use a literature approach, I've found some incredibly helpful blogs.  Just click on the pictures below to visit each site.

Simply Charlotte Mason is a valuable resource (full of book recommendations, organizer/planners, a blog, articles, and curriculum helps).   This is at the top of the list!    (picture credit:  from SCM website)

Charlotte Mason Home Education is a wonderful one.  It's packed full of tips, how-to's, and freebies.  (pic from CMHE)

Handbook of Nature Study blog.  She gives many free downloads, and nature study challenges.  She also posts lots of pics of their family's nature study finds.  Good stuff!  (pic from HNS)

Practical Pages (blog).  Every post includes a printable download.  Lots of practical tutorials notebooking, copywork, art appreciation, etc.  (pic from PP)

Click this link to access a nicely done "Living Books" book list at Charlotte Mason Home Education.  (pic from CMHE)

A Charlotte Mason-style Education

A curriculum that follows Mason's recommendation of centering education around good literature looks very different from the typical curriculum used in American public and private schools. In Educating the WholeHearted Child, Clarkson states that, "Instead of lifeless, pedantic textbooks and workbooks that expected children only to remember the right answer, she insisted on reading only living books that made literature, history, geography, and science come alive, and that focused more on insights and ideas about the subject than on dry and lifeless facts."

According to Andreola, in her book A Charlotte Mason Companion, whole books are ones "that are written by a single author who shares personally his favorite subject with us, and we pick up his enthusiasm." Along with learning the above-mentioned subjects through whole books, Mason's students learned through nature studies. Nature studies consisted of long walks in the outdoors observing nature and wildlife, collecting specimens, and keeping a nature journal of their observations.

The key points of Mason's philosophy are that children are persons; children love to learn; children need a supportive atmosphere for learning; orality is essential to literacy and learning, living ideas are the natural food of the mind; active involvement is vital to learning; and that the formation of effective habits leads to a productive life.

Who is Charlotte Mason?

Charlotte Mason (1842-1923) was a British educator during the turn of the century. She became a highly respected voice in education in England; and she had great influence on British education in her time. After teaching for about a dozen years, she began traveling, writing, and lecturing about a new way of education. Since her ideas arrived on the heels of the British Industrial Revolution and Victorian English thought, they contrasted greatly to the perspective of the day. At a time when most British saw children as cheap laborers, or at least, lesser citizens than adults, Charlotte Mason challenged their thinking. She proposed that, instead of thinking that "children should be seen and not heard in a culture that viewed children as sub-persons that needed to be formed and civilized," they were in fact "a whole, maturing person with an active intelligence and an enormous capacity for learning".

Before finishing her career teaching in the school she founded in Ambleside, England, she published some popular geography books, Home Education, and the six-volume The Original Homeschooling Series. By the time of her death in 1923, almost every public school in Gloucester County and several other areas in Great Britain were using the Mason method.

The strengths of Mason's approach are an emphasis on living books; fine arts, music and poetry; verbal and writing skills; self-motivated learning; real life; and dignity of the child. Her way of educating emphasizes character development; basic learning skills, which were reading, writing, and arithmetic; the reading of many living books; the study of the fine arts (art, music, poetry); and learning through real life experiences like nature and museums.

(Quotes taken from Educating the WholeHearted Child, by Clarkson)

Curriculum for a Literature Approach

Here are some links to websites that offer literature based homeschool curriculum:

Ambleside

Sonlight

Heart of Dakota

Truthquest

Greenleaf Press

Love of Lit Series

I will be writing a series of posts over the summer about the Love of Literature. So many friends have sent me questions about reading aloud, book lists, and resource ideas on homeschooling with a literature approach. I would like to post some of those resources for you.

Using a literature approach, either partially or exclusively, in your homeschool can be extremely rewarding. The method uses "classics" and other "real" books, written by quality authors. The typical standardized textbooks, lectures, and simplified reading passages are replaced with quality literature to be read by and to the student. There is more to this method than just the reading itself, but I will touch on those ideas in later posts.

The two most highly recommended books about Charlotte Mason's educational style, which is most often the model in a literature-based homeschool, are pictured below...

Susan Schaeffer Macaulay's, For the Children's Sake



Karen Andreola's, A Charlotte Mason Companion