Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival

I’m so thrilled to be hosting the latest edition of the Charlotte Mason blog carnival! We are beginning our 10th year of homeschooling this fall. The very first book I ever read about homeschooling was The Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola. I was captivated by Miss Mason’s ideas and knew that I wanted to bless my children with that kind of education.

Inspiration for a New Year

Barb at Harmony Art Mom explains how families can still use Charlotte Mason principles during High School in her post High School Planning: Reminders from Charlotte Mason.
She shares some quotes from CM Volume 6, which are “a breath of fresh air”. Charlotte wrote, “If we can only allow ourselves to believe it, we really don’t have to manipulate children to learn their lessons. Nature has already taken care of that. If the lessons are the right kind, children will enjoy learning them.” Barb’s encouraging post about atmosphere and establishing habits put me in the mood to get back to school!

I needed those reminders! As I wrote in my post New Year, New Books, I sometimes find it hard to leave summer behind and begin a new school year. My recipe for end-of-summer-blues calls for setting up our new school year bookshelf. An hour or two spent looking at all the great books waiting for us quickly turns my heart toward the joys that lay in store for us. In this post on Countercultural School, I share my audio podcast series The Homeschooler’s Library, which is full of practical ideas and inspiration for choosing living books.

I am looking forward to making audio books a daily part of our curriculum this year. We are currently enjoying the living history books Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall and The Story of the Middle Ages by Samuel B. Harding, which can both be streamed at my new blog My Audio School.

Charlotte Mason’s volume 6 was a popular read this summer! Keri from Sunny Scholars also read it, and she distills Charlotte’s philosophy clearly and succinctly in her post Charlotte Mason in a Box? Using ideas from C.M. Volume 6, Keri shares insight into choosing a course of study the Charlotte Mason way.

Nature Study

I wondered if Heather of Maple Hill Academy might be suffering from end-of-summer-blues, too, when I first read her post about nature study, Winter Fun. As she notes, it may seem odd to mention this topic in the summer, but I found many of her thoughts to be applicable here in Georgia, where the heat threatens to keep us indoors all summer. You’ll want to check out her post for ideas of how to do nature study–both indoors and out–even when the weather is not ideal.

Tammy from Adventures on Beck’s Bounty lets us take a peek at what they’ve been finding on summer nature walks. Take a look at her posts, Nature Walk Discoveries and More Nature Walk Photos. The photos in Tammy’s posts are worth a thousand words. They inspired me to take my own children outside to observe and photograph the flowers and wildlife in our yard.

Jimmie has been using photo-sensitive paper for nature studies. Her fun post Nature Print Paper can be found on her blog Jimmie’s Collage. I know we have some of this paper in our school closet, but we haven’t used it for a couple years. Thanks for the reminder, Jimmie!

Using Living Books for Science and Math

Jimmie also provides some reviews from the wonderful new website The Curriculum Choice. Who would have thought one could study chemistry with living books? Jimmie shares about her wonderful find in the post The Mystery of the Periodic Table. In her Living Math Curriculum Review, Jimmie shares about a math supplement which is “a historical tour through time, looking at the mathematical developments of each period.”

Poetry and Memorization

Jeanne at A Peaceful Day shares about her new experiment with poetry memorization the Charlotte Mason way in her post Memorization and the Man. The quote she shares is well worth reading, and Jeanne is finding Charlotte’s method is working wonderfully in their homeschool. A lovely video clip, along with the text of their chosen poem, The Man from Snowy River, can be found in her post.

Incorporating Notebooking and Lapbooking

Katie from Katie’s Homeschool Cottage shares how her family struggled to implement lapbooking, but eventually found success Combining Notebooking and Lapbooking. You’ll find great tips, lots of photos and tons of great notebooking and lapbooking links in Katie’s helpful post.

Applying Charlotte Mason’s ideas beyond the classroom

Anna from French Kids Don’t Get Fat shares How to Use Masterly Inactivity to Win Your Child to Healthy Eating for Life. I had never imagined applying Charlotte Mason’s ideas at the dinner table before, but Anna gave me lots of “food for thought”!

Click here to view past editions of the Charlotte Mason blog carnival. If you are using Charlotte Mason’s methods in your homeschool, we’d love to read about it in the next blog carnival! Click here to submit a post.