A Delectable Education Charlotte Mason Podcast

This week's Charlotte Mason podcast addresses math in the elementary years. How much should be covered? How should it be presented? How do we build confidence, competence, and progress? Listen Now: If you are seeing this message, please make sure you are using the most current version of your web browser: Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome "The Principality of Mathematics is a mountainous land, but the air is very fine and health-giving, though some people find it too rare for their breathing. It differs from most mountainous countries in this, that you cannot lose your way, and that every step taken is on firm ground. People who seek their work or play in this principality find themselves braced by effort and satisfied with truth." (Vol. 4, p. 38) [A child should know at 12 years old:] "...g) in Arithmetic, they should have some knowledge of vulgar and decimal fractions, percentage, household accounts, etc. h) Should have a knowledge of Elementary Algebra, and should have done practical exercises in Geometry." (Vol. 3, p. 301) "[Mathematics] should give to children the sense of limitation which is wholesome for all of us, and inspire that sursam corda which we should hear in all natural law." (Vol. 6, p. 231) If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy. Home Education, Part V, XV Ourselves, Book I, pp. 38; 62-63 Towards a Philosophy of Education, Book I, Chapter 10, Section III Strayer-Upton's Books--helpful for mental arithmetic/story problems (Contains affiliate links) Richele Baburina's Mathematics: A Guide for Living Teaching Benezet's Article on informal math instruction in the early years Parents' Review Article on "Number"

How in the world did Charlotte Mason approach the subject of math? This podcast episode explores that question and addresses our qualms and insecurities in teaching math to our children. How do we avoid fears, tears, pushing and pulling, and reach to its infinite beauty as an instrument in acquiring knowledge of the universe? Listen Now: If you are seeing this message, please make sure you are using the most current version of your web browser: Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome "Arithmetic, Mathematics, are exceedingly easy to examine upon and so long as education is regulated by examinations so long shall we have teaching, directed not to awaken a sense of awe in contemplating a self-existing science, but rather to secure exactness and ingenuity in the treatment of problems." (Vol. 6, p. 231) "...the use of the study in practical life is the least of its uses. The chief value of arithmetic, like that of higher mathematics, lies in the training it affords to the reasoning powers, and in the habits of insight, readiness, accuracy, intellectual truthfulness it engenders." (Vol. 1, p. 254) "Never are the operations of Reason more delightful and more perfect than in mathematics...By degrees, absolute truth unfolds itself. We are so made that truth, absolute and certain truth, is a perfect joy to us; and that is the joy that mathematics afford." (Vol. 4, p. 63) "Let his arithmetic lesson be to the child a daily exercise in clear thinking and rapid, careful execution, and his mental growth will be as obvious as the sprouting of seedlings in the spring." (Vol. 1, p. 261) "Mathematics depend upon the teacher rather than upon the text-book and few subjects are worse taught; chiefly because teachers have seldom time to give the inspiring ideas, what Coleridge calls, the 'Captain' ideas, which should quicken imagination." (Vol. 6, p. 233) "There is no must be to him he does not see that one process, and one process only, can give the required result. Now, a child who does not know what rule to apply to a simple problem within his grasp, has been ill taught from the first, although he may produce slatefuls of quite right sums in multiplication or long division." (Vol. 1, p. 254) "...'nearly right' is the verdict, a judgment inadmissible in arithmetic." (Vol. 1, p. 255) If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy. Home Education, Part V, XV Towards a Philosophy of Education, Book I, Chapter 10, Section III Number Stories of Long Ago String, Straightedge and Shadow (Contains affiliate links) Our very favorite resource for Mathematics teaching

This Charlotte Mason podcast episode is another Q&A. As we implement the method, challenges arise: what adjustments need to be made when I come to the method late, how should I organize my home differently, and what about the only child's needs, are this week's focus. Listen Now: If you are seeing this message, please make sure you are using the most current version of your web browser: Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome "It is not an environment that these want, a set of artificial relations carefully constructed, but an atmosphere which nobody has been at pains to constitute. It is there, about the child, his natural element, precisely as the atmosphere of the earth is about us. It is thrown off, as it were, from persons and things, stirred by events, sweetened by love, ventilated, kept in motion, by the regulated action of common sense." (Vol. 6, pg. 96) "No artificial element [should] be introduced...children must face life as it is; we may not keep them in glass cases." (Vol. 6, pg. 97) The Conquest of the North and South Poles (Landmark Book), Russell Owen (Contains affiliate links) Episode 4: Three Tools of Education The Education of an Only Child, Mrs. Clement Parsons. The Parents' Review, Volume 12, p.609-621

Foreign language was a major component in Charlotte Mason's curriculum. This podcast addresses the reasons for foreign language study and how mothers of one tongue can still faithfully include it in their homeschool. Listen Now: If you are seeing this message, please make sure you are using the most current version of your web browser: Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome "All educated persons should be able to speak French." (Vol. 1, p. 300) If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy. Home Education, Part V, Chapter XX An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education, Book I, Chapter 10, Section II: Languages Carry On, Mr. Bowditch (Contains affiliate links) http://theulat.com/ORIGIN.HTM http://www.thespanishexperiment.com/ http://www.thefrenchexperiment.com/ http://www.theitalianexperiment.com/ http://www.thegermanexperiment.com/ http://cherrydalepress.com/

What are Charlotte Mason's thoughts on grammar and composition? Listen to this podcast to hear some of her rationale for these subjects, to dispel myths about the Charlotte Mason method and the subject of writing, as well as these moms' experience with teaching these technical and creative written skills. Listen Now: If you are seeing this message, please make sure you are using the most current version of your web browser: Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome "[G]rammar, being a study of words and not things, is by no means attractive to the child, nor should he be hurried into it." (Vol. 1, p. 295) "Children will probably be slow to receive this first lesson in abstract knowledge, and we must remember that knowledge in this sort is difficult and uncongenial. Their minds deal with the concrete and they have the singular faculty of being able to make concrete images out of the merest gossamer of a fairy tale." (Vol. 6, p. 210) "But a child cannot dream parts of speech, and any grown-up twaddle attempting to personify such abstractions offends a small person who with all his love of play and nonsense has a serious mind." (Vol. 6, p. 210) "Our business is to provide children with material in thier lessons, and leave the handling of such material to themselves...They should narrate in the first place, and they will compose, later, readily enough; but they should not be taught 'composition.'" (Vol. 1, p. 247) "It is not enough that a child should learn how to write, he must know what to write." (Vol. 6, p. 234) "In fact, lessons on 'composition' should follow the model of that famous essay on "Snakes in Ireland"––"There are none."" (Vol. 1, p. 247) "If we would believe it, composition is as natural as jumping and running to children who have been allowed due use of books." (Vol. 1, p. 247) If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy. Home Education (Volume 1), Part V, XIII An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education (Volume 6), Book I, Chapter 10, Section II: Knowledge of Man: Composition & Knowledge of Man: Grammar The Bedford Handbook The Elements of Style (Contains affiliate links)

This episode marks the one year anniversary of this Charlotte Mason podcast. Over the past year, we have received dozens of questions from our listeners and this Q&A is exemplary of the requests we receive and our attempt to address widely varying topics, namely this week: where to find out-of-print living books, the relevance of Charlotte Mason today and the practice of "scaffolding" lessons.

This podcast explores what Charlotte Mason had to say about the skill of writing. Why do the children need to write? What writing must they do? How can they be taught penmanship, spelling, punctuation, and style? Join us in working through this incremental and crucial school subject. Listen Now: If you are seeing this message, please make sure you are using the most current version of your web browser: Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome "I can only offer a few hints on the teaching of writing, though much might be said. First, let the child accomplish something perfectly in every lesson--a stroke, a pothook, a letter. Let the writing lesson be short; it should not last more than five or ten minutes. Ease in writing comes by practice; but that must be secured later. In the meantime, the thing to be avoided is the habit of careless work." (Vol. 1, pp. 233-34) "[T]here is no part of a child's work at school which some philosophic principle does not underlie." (Vol. 1, p. 240) "The gift of spelling depends upon the power the eye possesses to 'take' (in a photographic sense) a detailed picture of a word; and this is a power and habit which must be cultivated in children from the first." (Vol. 1, p. 241) If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy. Home Education (Volume 1), Part V, Chapters X-XII Writing to Learn (Contains affiliate links) The New Handwriting

This week's podcast illuminates the Charlotte Mason method as it is being practiced in its country of origin: The United Kingdom. Emily interviews, Leah Boden, who discovered Mason and has been implementing her method in her own life and, like us, is working to support and encourage home educators in the knowledge and practice of Charlotte Mason. Listen Now: If you are seeing this message, please make sure you are using the most current version of your web browser: Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome Handbook of Nature Study Our Island Story Trial and Triumph (Contains affiliate links) Leah's Instagram Leah's Blog The Charlotte Mason Show Leah's Facebook Page Leah's Periscope Channel http://www.charlottemasonhelp.com/ Join the HomeschoolLibrary Yahoo Group if you'd like to learn more about starting a lending library!

This week's Charlotte Mason podcast focuses on the all-important task of teaching our children to read. No other subject holds such promise and so many anxieties for the teacher who embarks on teaching this fundamental skill. The ladies share their own experiences and what Mason had to say to help us in the reading lesson. Listen Now: If you are seeing this message, please make sure you are using the most current version of your web browser: Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome "But, as a matter of fact, few of us can recollect how or when we learned to read: for all we know it came by nature." (Vol. 1, p. 200) "Probably that vague whole which we call 'Education' offers no more difficult and repellent task than that to which every little child is set down--the task of learning to read. We realize the labor of it when some grown man makes a heroic effort to remedy shameful ignorance, but we forget how contrary to nature it is for a little child to occupy himself with dreary hieroglyphics--all so dreadfully alike!--when the world is teeming with interesting objects which he is agog to know." (Vol. 1, p. 214) "'What a snail's progress!' you are inclined to say. Not so slow, after all: a child will thus learn, without appreciable labour, from 2-3,000 words in the course of a year; in other words, he will learn to read, for the mastery of this number of words will carry him with comfort through most of the books that fall in his way. Now, compare this steady progress and constant interest and liveliness of such lessons with the deadly weariness of the ordinary reading lesson. The child blunders through a page or two in the dreary monotone without expression, with imperfect enunciation. He comes to a word he does not know, and he spells it; that throws no light on the subject, and he is told the word; he repeats it, but as he has made no mental effort to secure the word, the next time he meets with it the same process is gone through. The reading lesson for that day comes to an end. The pupil has been miserably bored, and has not acquired one new word. Eventually, he learns to read, somehow, by mere dint of repetition; but consider what an abuse of his intelligence is a system of teaching which makes him undergo daily labour with little or no result, and gives him a distaste for books before he has learned to use them." (Vol. 1, pp. 206-207) "We must remember the natural inertness of a child's mind; give him the habit of being read to, and he will steadily shirk the labour of reading for himself; indeed, we all like to be spoon-fed with our intellectual meat, or we should read and think more for ourselves and be less eager to run after lectures." (Vol. 1, p. 228) "He should have practice, too, in reading aloud [from the books] he is using for his term's work. These should include a good deal of poetry, to accustom him to the delicate rendering of shades of meaning, and especially to make him aware that words are beautiful in themselves, that they are a source of pleasure, and are worthy of our honour; and that a beautiful word deserves to be beautifully said, with a certain roundness of tone and precision of utterance." (Vol. 1, p. 227) "The attention of his teachers should be fixed on two points--that he acquires the habit of reading, and that he does not fall into slipshod habits of reading." (Vol. 1, p. 226) If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy. Home Education, pp. 199-222) Better Late Than Early, Raymond Moore Reading-Literature Series Thirty Million Words, Dana Suskind (Contains affiliate links) Montessori Small Moveable Alphabet Reading-Literature series on MainLesson.com

This week's podcast episode on the Charlotte Mason method of education--the delectable education--is a question and answer session. Listen to this lively, animated, and slightly controversial discussion of short lessons, nature study, free time, and Bible lessons. Listen Now: If you are seeing this message, please make sure you are using the most current version of your web browser: Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome "Five of the thirteen waking hours should be at the disposal of the children; three, at least, of these, from two o'clock to five, for example, should be spent out of doors in all but very bad weather. This is the opportunity for out-of-door work, collecting wild flowers, describing walks and views, etc." (From "Suggestions" accompanying Programme 42) "The Children's Day will, on the whole, run thus: Lessons, 1 1/2 to 4 hours; meals, 2 hours; occupations, 1 to 3 hours; leisure, 5 to 7 hours, according to age." (From "Suggestions" accompanying Programme 42) "Children between 6 and 9 should get a considerable knowledge of the Bible text. By 9 they should have read the simple (and suitable) narrative portions of the Old Testament...and [the Synoptic] Gospels." (Vol. 1, p. 249) The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling (Contains affiliate links) Episode 20: Nature Study Episode 22: Interview with Cheri Struble John Muir Laws' Website Episode 41: Interview with Jack Laws, Part 1 Episode 42: Interview with Jack Laws, Part 2 Episode 17: Bible, The Living Book Living Books Library post on Electronics Parents' Review Article: Imagination is a Powerful Factor in a Well-Balanced Mind A Delectable Education's Schedule Cards