Posts Tagged ‘Charlotte Mason’

Charlotte Mason – Book 3: School Education

Monday, April 23rd, 2012

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Charlotte Mason begins this School Education book by describing authority and docility. A mother should expect her children to obey her. The children are more likely to obey when she smiles and assumes they will obey. A mother must not be angry and autocratic and arbitrary. Instead she must be easy and kind, even in discipline. She must cause the child to obey without thinking, so that there is more effort required to disobey than to obey, which has become the subconscious habit. She should put her child’s good first before her own convenience. She must keep in mind that authority was given to her by God.

Next Charlotte Mason discusses how to use “masterly inactivity” with her children. If you play with your children too much and don’t leave them alone to do their own thing, they will never learn how to make their own fun. Making their own fun is part of imagination, creativity, and intelligence. The mother can read a book while her children play – so that they can have the space to create their own diversions.

Then she goes on to describe duty. If a child doesn’t like to do his math page, he still needs to do it, even if it is not fun, because it is his duty. We shouldn’t prod the child to do it. Instead, we should have him suffer the consequences of dawdling – having less time to do other things that he wants to do. The mother shouldn’t force her child to do it; otherwise she will make the child lazy. The child will choose to do it on his own: he will do it quickly and get on to better things; or he will not do it and spend the whole day in horrible drudgery, staring at his paper, having no time to play. He must always choose what is his duty. It is useless for the mother to stand there and expend energy and get a headache when the responsibility lies on the shoulders of the child.

Oral narration (retelling a summary of a story) is important to Charlotte Mason because, she says, it is more useful in life to be able to speak than to write. Also, a person who can speak well will usually be able to write well.

She says, “Education is a science of relations.” Relationships between a child and a thing or person should have some emotion and effort put into them. Relationships that we work on are always deeper than relationships that are superficial. If we have a passion for rocks and minerals, we will learn infinitely more than if we have no emotion towards rocks. When I was in college, I plunged into each subject with passion so that I could really possess each subject with the knowledge it had to offer. In the same way, with my children, I must excite them about each subject so that it is easy to gain knowledge. It will then come alive, and the child will have a vital relationship with that subject.

Charlotte Mason believes that being able to identify items in nature – whether plant, insect, bird, rock, or whatever – involves classification skills and a great deal of knowledge. Recognition is important and can be developed through nature journals where students draw and paint and describe objects in nature that catch their interest.

At the end of the book in one of the appendices, she has some examination papers that are highly interesting to read. Even young children seem very erudite in the way they articulate their knowledge, being taught under Charlotte Mason’s style of education.

Related product: Using Journals to Teach Writing

Charlotte Mason – Book 2: Parents and Children

Friday, April 20th, 2012

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In this book Charlotte Mason explains to parents how they should teach their children. The most important aspect in the teaching of children is the formation of their character. Character can be taught through the formation of habits. To erase a bad habit, replace it with a good one. For example, if a boy is constantly playing bad tricks on people, excite him with the idea of bringing joy and good surprises to those people. Then devote yourself for a month to the child, making sure that he never falls into his old habits.

Most of what we do in life is done through habit. If we want to improve our lives, we must build good habits into it, one at a time. Then we will mindlessly do the good habit that brings joy to our lives. Well brought-up children are the ones that have been trained to have good habits.

We must also give our children living ideas every day – something that will excite them and deepen their curiosity, and therefore their knowledge of the world. This can be conveyed through nature, living books, the Bible, or an everyday object around the house. Children have a thirst for knowledge, and a day is wasted if it does not have one new idea for them to think about.

Humility is a character quality that we as a society do not understand. We think it means that we put ourselves down and say that we are not good at something. But Christ never put Himself down, and He is our example of perfect humility. To be humble means to not think of oneself at all. We should try to instill this quality in our children. (Charlotte Mason says that children are humble naturally, but I disagree.)

Truthfulness is also important. If a child is not accurate, but embellishes by making up much of the story of what happened, we are to make sure that the child understands the difference between truth and fiction. The child needs plenty of time to play in the fictitious world by reading fairy tales or playing at King Arthur, for example. But then show the difference between truth and fiction, and tell them that when addressing adults about real life, they should stick to the facts.

As far as blatant lying is concerned, we should get to the underlying issue. If they are trying to defend someone else, tell them that defending someone is good, but not at the expense of truth.

Even a baby can be trained in character. If he cries, change his thoughts to something new, like going outside or smelling a flower. Then the habit is set up to not cry for every simple bump in life. Instead he finds something else to interest him, and he takes his mind off the pain.

People sometimes misinterpret logical conclusions as what is morally right. The mind will fix upon an idea and subconsciously follow it to its logical conclusion. This is why people can rationalize sin – it seems like the right thing to do. Only if we are aware that our mind runs subconsciously along a logical course can we stop and throw out those thoughts that are wrong.

This book restates many of the same issues covered in volume one, but it comes at them from different angles, which is useful for understanding the topics that she is dealing with.

Related product: Using Journals to Teach Writing

Charlotte Mason – Book 1: Home Education

Thursday, April 19th, 2012

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Charlotte Mason feels that it is important for children to be outdoors four to six hours a day. The fresh air and sunshine are good for their physical health as well as their mental health. Powers of observation can be developed in the child as he describes in detail a scene that lies before him. The oral narrations (verbal descriptions in this case) lead to good written narrations later. The child can observe insects and other wild animals, which are all part of larger classifications. The child’s familiarity with nature will help him to understand literature and the world in general. A piece of dry ground can serve as an example of the Sahara Desert.

Famous artwork can be viewed in the same way as the outdoor observations. The child can describe a painting in detail, and then it becomes “theirs;” in other words, they remember it.

Keep lessons varied and short (10 or 15 minutes for children under 9.) This way the child’s mind is fresh and can concentrate well. Reading lessons should consist of one lesson of word building, and the next lesson (the next day) on sentence building. She stresses sight reading as the easiest way to learn reading. She says that spelling is visual, and that the child should photograph each word in his mind in order to always spell the word correctly.

Foreign language should be taught every day in such a way that the young child is submerged in the language. This way the grammatical aspects of the language get absorbed easily and effortlessly. The child can be taught foreign language outdoors.

Habits are extremely important to form in the child, even from an early age. The habits of obedience and self-control are the most important, because from them you will be able to teach your child anything. Self-control is having authority of your own will, being able to force yourself to do something that you don’t want to do, because doing it is the right thing, and you want the positive results. For example, I forced myself to pull weeds in the yard, and now the yard is beautiful, and I can enjoy it more. The end results must be kept in mind, especially when you are initially learning self-control.

Habits can also make our lives much easier. To form a new habit, you must force yourself to do the new action over and over again. At first it is hard, but then it becomes effortless. For example, my morning routine includes starting a load of laundry first thing in the morning. Now I do it automatically, and I’m never behind on my laundry. This is one of the positive aspects of having some kind of schedule, because children will be automatically going from one set of studies to another. Even with small children, they are able to concentrate and be well-behaved if you have a schedule. When I was in the hospital giving birth to my third baby, there was no schedule followed for my two toddlers at home. As a result, they threw tantrums the entire day. They were probably exhausted from making decisions, instead of going through one scheduled activity to another in their familiar order. As soon as order was brought back to their day, the tantrums disappeared.

For Bible lessons, Charlotte Mason would like us to read Scripture to the children and not water it down with morals to each story. When children see the consequences of sin or obedience, which are obvious from each story, they will want to be obedient to receive blessing from God.

We must teach our children about God; but how, besides teaching God’s Word? We must teach them what we know is true about God. For example, I know that God is a God of comfort because in my times of deepest anguish, God has given me the peace that passes understanding. Whatever you have experienced in your walk with God, share it with your children. They will believe whatever you live out in your life.

Related product: Using Journals to Teach Writing

Feed My Sheep

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

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Many years ago I took an Old Testament class given by my pastor. We studied one book of the Old Testament per week, and it took a year to get through the Old Testament. I turned in Charlotte Mason summaries for each book of the Bible as it was presented. (Right before I took this class, I had read the six Charlotte Mason books and was enthralled with the idea of written narrations for personal Bible study.) I tried to think of every detail I could remember from each book, and I wrote it down in tiny print in pencil on blank sheets of paper.

Well, study for the class took between 2 to 10 hours a day. (Ten hours only happened once, the day I did Genesis.) I loved splashing into the Word of God and surrounding myself with it. It was my food and my breath. I felt like I was inside the stories.

When the class was over, I asked my pastor to please hand back my papers, because those were my only copies. He said the reason he kept them was so that his secretary would type them up for him, because the summaries gave him a fresh perspective on Scripture. I was honored that a pastor could actually learn anything from me.

After that last class was over, I heard a sermon on prayer. I realized that my prayer life was almost non-existent, and I committed to God that I would learn how to pray. Since I already had at least 2 hours for studying the Bible (usually during nap time for my tiny kids, or during an hour of outdoor play time where I would study my Bible outside on a swing or blanket), I decided that I would set aside one hour to pray before I would be allowed to read the Bible. (You can see how hard that was by reading “The Beginning of a Prayer Warrior.”)

After the month was over, I had no obligations, but I had built a new spiritual discipline into my life, and I considered it highly valuable. Well, my godly mentor rebuked me one day for spending too much time in the Word of God. I needed to spend more time being “present” with my children. She was right.

As I drove alone in the car one day to run an errand, I asked God, “So how much time do You want me to spend in Bible study?” I opened my heart to God and expected an answer. I heard (it was not audible, but an impression on my mind), “Do you love Me?” I said, “What the heck. That’s not an answer.” Then I heard it again, “Do you love Me?” “Of course I love You, Lord. What a ridiculous question.” Again I heard, “Do you love Me?” By this time I was nearly in tears. I was hurt. How on earth could He ask me if I loved Him? And then the words came, “Feed My sheep.” I sat there stunned. The Holy Spirit had confirmed what my godly mentor had said. What I needed to do was abide, and spend more time imparting to the children what I already knew. Yes, I would spend time in the Word, but that was no longer my focus. My focus was to pour the Word of God into my children.

At that point, when I studied the Word of God, it was to prepare to teach my children. (God taught me personally from what I was preparing for my children.) Many years passed this way before God gave me permission to study the Word of God for myself again.