His character––the efflorescence of the man wherein the fruit of his life is a-preparing––is original disposition, modified, directed, expanded by education; by circumstances; later, by self-control and self-culture; above all, by the supreme agency of the Holy Ghost, even where that agency is little suspected, and as little solicited.

Charlotte Mason (Parents and Children, p. 23)

…the formation of character is the ultimate object of education…

Charlotte Mason (Parents and Children, p. 83)

Two friends and I are narrating our way through Parents and Children to each other, and we’re just at the part where Charlotte Mason begins to get into habit formation and the physicality of thoughts. So many of the ideas I’ve come across in her books over the years are lightbulb moments for me, and her thoughts on habit formation definitely fall within this category. So much of it just makes sense.

Tucked before the part in which she dives into neural pathways, however, she offers the first little blurb above. This section is about inherited disposition and it being what we’re born with, but then goes on to talk about how disposition can be “modified, directed, expanded by education.” In essence, education can actually shape who we are, not just what we know.

The first time I came across this idea, it wasn’t just a simple lightbulb for me; it was a football stadium jumbotron after a touchdown. It was a paradigm shift. It completely changed how I think about education. Before this, I subscribed to the common belief that education is for facts. We learn about the world in which we live so that we know things. Because it’s important to know them. Because everyone else knows them. Because we can’t get a job unless we know them.

As Mason says, however, “Information is not education.” When we think of education only for utilitarian purposes, we’re cutting it, ourselves, and our kids short. We are not using it to its full potential and not allowing our kids to reach theirs. On the flip side, when we see it as a way to grow not only their knowledge but also their character, it becomes a whole new thing. Ideas are suddenly more important than facts, and who they end up being when they graduate from high school is a better gauge of what they learned than an SAT score. Of course, the SAT score is important, but their character, the things they care about, and who they are as a person are of far more significance.

I am keeping this in mind as we begin another year of learning together. Every new grade offers new opportunities to expose them to ideas, whether through biographies, historical readings, art, music, math, or science, that can grow their character. I think about this as I select their books, listen to their narrations, and interact with them every day. When they are done with their schooling with me, my prayer is, of course, that they’ve done well in terms of grades and test scores, but more so that the ideas they’ve been exposed to over the previous 18 years of their life will have formed their character into something beautiful.

As I’ve done the last few years, to celebrate the beginning of a new school year, I’m offering a free printable with an inspiring quote from Charlotte Mason! This year’s theme is education as the formation of character. It’s a good idea on which to meditate. You can download the print for free through next Tuesday, September 15th, by entering your email address in the form below! After that, it will be available for purchase in my shop.

(If the form isn’t loading for you, you can also sign up here.)

The post Education as Character Formation (+ a free printable for the new school year!) appeared first on a humble place.

Please note that I have linked to the book lists on the AO website to respect their licensing terms and the hard work they’ve put into such an amazing curriculum that they offer for free. Books that use affiliate links here are not listed on the AO website.)

It is much to be wished that thoughtful mothers would more often keep account of the methods they employ with their children, with some definite note of the success of this or that plan.

CHARLOTTE MASON (HOME EDUCATION)

My daughter entering Year 7 marks the milestone in my homeschooling career when both of my kids are past the midway point of their lower education. I am trying not to think about this too much. As I said in my son’s planning post, this year I promised myself I wouldn’t offer a lament about how time is slipping through my proverbial fingers or share my sadness over how quickly this has all gone by. So there. I’m not doing that.

Year 7, take 2! I remember when my son made the jump to Year 7, and it just felt so huge! But as is the case with second children, it hasn’t felt nearly as huge with my daughter, and at times, I’ve had to remind myself throughout the summer that this milestone was coming. She’s in Form 3 now. The equivalent of junior high (where that still exists). She will be a teenager this year. I should refer myself back to the previous paragraph.

As we are entering these upper years of AmblesideOnline, I am following the practice I began with my son last year and starting with the Lite version of the year, substituting with books that I want to include from my own reading or that were recommended elsewhere, and then perusing the full AO schedule for this year to see if there’s anything from that list I also want to add. I made a spreadsheet of all the subject and book slots for each term and only brought a book in if I took one out, and I think that will help keep our schedule more manageable this year than it was when I did the full schedule with my son. Here’s to hoping!

She’ll be diving into Form 3-4 Sabbath Mood Homeschool Science Guides this year, which means she’ll do most of her science on her own. She also began RightStart Level G last year, which means she’s now doing math on her own. I also gave her quite a few more individual readings to do on her own this year just so I have fewer to do with her, and I feel like we have a good schedule laid out so that we won’t have to do anything into the summer. The last few years, both kids have finished their assigned readings by the end of the school year, but I wasn’t able to finish the readings I was doing with them, so I hope to avoid that going forward.

In the spring, I registered her for a local year-long, one-day-per-week equestrian/agricultural program that was supposed to begin this fall. We toured the ranch, and it looked absolutely fantastic, but then the very next day, the Colorado Congress completely disemboweled homeschool enrichment funding. As a result, the horse program, though it tried to sputter along for a little while, ended up shutting down because the new regulations are extremely challenging for statewide programs to follow, especially given how little time they had to try to meet them. I did try to look around for alternatives, but horse-related activities are very expensive, and the majority of our homeschool budget is already paying for her brother to attend a weekly CAD/CAM class, which will be good for his high school transcript (and we’ll look again for something for her when she is in ninth grade).

I was also honestly a little concerned about the increase in her workload for this year and her only being home four days per week to get it all done, so this is probably actually a good thing (for us, anyway). But it does mean that she doesn’t have any extracurricular activities this year (other than those related to our homeschool group), as she opted not to return to the weekly PE class she was in last year. I’m considering getting her involved in one of the local 4-H programs in October, but we’ll see how things are then. For now, she’s content to care for our quail and publish her own monthly magazine for our friends and family.

We actually started the year on August 10th, and it has been, by far, the least prepared I’ve ever been for a school year. I partially blame the legislation changes. That upheaval was frustrating not so much because of the lack of funding (I’m fine not taking government funds for our homeschool) but more because the legislation passed so late in the year and both kids were already registered and set for programs for this school year, so I had to try and find alternatives when I should’ve been planning other things. I’m not sure why I thought I was further along in the planning process than I actually was the weekend before we were scheduled to start, but I spent, literally, all of that weekend doing last-minute school prep. This is my eleventh time doing this planning… maybe someday I’ll figure out how to do it well.

A Note About the Course Hero Summaries

I added a few more links to some of the subjects this year in the form of Course Hero summaries. I learned about this website several years ago from my friend Dawn, but only started really using it toward the end of last year. I try to pre-read all the books my kids read on their own each year for school, and in the past, I usually did this just before the week these readings were assigned. As my kids have gotten older, that reading load has gotten heavier and heavier, and the time it took to pre-read became unmanageable. So, a few years ago, I switched to doing as much of it as possible over the summer, which helped. The downside is that I forget a lot of details when it’s time for them to narrate a passage from a book I read several months earlier (or, in my daughter’s case, mostly several years earlier, when I read it with her brother). So, I print out these summaries and quickly read through them during my weekly planning to refresh my memory, and that has helped our discussion. I also use the AO Cheat Sheets group (worth registering for and free!) for this, as their summaries are extremely thorough and include things like people mentioned, locations, and definitions of specific terms, but there aren’t as many of these for the upper Forms, so in Year 7, I’m using a mix.

And another note for the lists below: wherever I mention that she’s reading something on her own, she is still narrating that reading to me either verbally or in writing.

And now on to the plans for Year 7!

Morning Time

Our Morning Time routine has changed very little in several years, which I think is a good sign that it works well for us. The same is true for this year. Last year, I included a reading from George Washington’s Rules of Civility as my Year 9 son was reading about the colonial/Revolutionary era in US history. When I was going through my annual year-end reflection in June, in the section on helping my kids understand their duty to God and others, I was reminded that I at some point found a Parents’ Review article that suggested including in our day the part of the Anglican Catechism that talks about these two duties (the article includes a modified version):

My duty towards God is to believe in him, to fear him, and to love him, with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength; to worship him, to give him thanks, to put my whole trust in him, to call upon him, to honour his holy Name and his Word, and to serve him truly all the days of my life.

My duty towards my Neighbour is to love him as myself, and to do to all men as I would they should do unto me: To love, honour, and succour my father and mother: To honour and obey the [civil authority]: To submit myself to all my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters: To order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters: To hurt nobody by word nor deed: To be true and just in all my dealing: To bear no malice nor hatred in my heart: To keep my hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue from evil-speaking, lying, and slandering: To keep my body in temperance, soberness, and chastity: Not to covet nor desire other men’s goods; but to learn and labour truly to get mine own living, and to do my duty in that state of life, unto which it shall please God to call me.

Anglican Catechism

So, in place of George Washington, we’ll go through this line by line, discuss each point, and then recite it every day.

While we did not finish Created for Work last year, it was a great read for us, so we’ll finish it this year. When we’re done, we’ll start on How to Be Your Own Selfish Pig, which used to be on the AO Year 7 Spiritual Formation schedule, but is now listed as a Free Read.

As I mentioned above, my son will be gone one day per week for a full-day CAD/CAM class, so on those days, my daughter and I will continue reading Between Us Girls, which we started last year and have enjoyed. When we’re finished with that, we’ll read Stepping Heavenward, a book one of the other moms in our homeschool group is reading with her daughter.

I also want to be more intentional with our time reading Wild Life on the Rockies this year as we’ve really enjoyed that book but haven’t made as much progress as I would’ve liked. I wish I had found Enos Mills years ago, as I equate him with a Colorado version of Dallas Lore Sharp, and while I still love Sharp, reading more about our own backyard through a turn-of-the-20th-century naturalist’s view has been so fun. I hope to read more of his books in the coming years.

Bible and Spiritual Formation

For our Bible readings, we’ll continue what we’ve done the last few years by following the Bible schedule for my older student (Year 10). I will read the passage to them; they’ll take turns narrating, and then we’ll follow up with discussion or reading further from one of our commentaries or my study Bible. This is honestly one of the best changes I have ever made in our school time, and it works so well for us!

For Spiritual Formation, she’ll be reading Bright Valley of Love and More Than A Carpenter on her own. I own Saints and Heroes and sometimes include that in our Morning Time Feast Day readings, but I will not assign any of those readings to her.

History & Biography

She will be learning about the Middle Ages (800 to 1485) this year, and I am excited as I love this time period in history. I read Arnold-Forster’s A History of England (instead of Churchill) with my son for his Year 7 history spine, and I’ll do the same for her, as it’s a great book with engaging and interesting readings. I’ll also read Daughter of Time with her in Term 3, as there are some references early in the book that I edit on the fly. She’ll do all the other readings, including the historical documents and biographies (so excited for her to read Twain’s Joan of Arc!), on her own.

Literature

CheatSheet Group/Course Hero Summaries

I’ll begin reading History of English Literature for Boys and Girls with her this year, which I really enjoyed reading with my son, and we’ll continue that through ninth grade. I’ll also read The Age of Chivalry and A Taste of Chaucer to her (using this schedule). She’ll do all the other scheduled readings on her own, except we’ll skip book 2 of Once and Future King due to content.

Shakespeare

We are lining up our Shakespeare plays with a few other families in our homeschool group this year, so we won’t follow the AO schedule except in the last term. I’m looking forward to going through new ones as none of us have done any of these before!

Poetry

We’re following the full schedule for our poetry readings, beginning with Middle English selections in Term 1. We learned so much about the English language when I did this year with my son, and I’m glad to be able to do this again with my daughter! The YouTube playlist linked above makes these readings particularly enjoyable.

In Term 2, for Tennyson, I’ll read through portions of Idylls of the King with her, though we definitely won’t make it through all of it. There’s so much King Arthur this year!

Language Arts

Copywork

She’ll continue writing for ten minutes each day for her copywork time. She usually begins with her recitation pieces and then moves on to one of our poetry books or whatever reading she happens to find interesting in the moment.

Dictation

We usually do one dictation lesson per week from Spelling Wisdom Book 1. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to finish it this year, but if we do, we’ll move on to Book 2. She says dictation is one of her favorite subjects, so I think that means it’s going well!

Grammar and Composition

We are nearing the end of Junior Analytical Grammar, so at 25 minutes per week, we should be able to finish it by the end of this year. We’ll then move on to the Mechanics book. We’ve been using these books since Year 4, and they worked extremely well for both kids, so I will skip the AO-recommended grammar books for her.

Recitation

For Recitation, she’ll be following the recommendations from Maria Bell’s guide for Form III. I’ll share what she learns at the end of the year in my recap post.

Foreign Language (Spanish)

I think we’ve finally, after many years, hit a good rhythm with Spanish. Peuntes worked extremely well for us last year. During the school year, they met weekly with their teacher over Zoom, and then through the summer they met every other week, to keep it fresh, and both kids will be taking the test for the first book in the next few weeks. I supplement that time with a daily activity from the Repertorios from Under the Manzano, and I’ve seen good progress in her pronunciation and comprehension using these resources.

Geography

She’ll be reading The Brendan Voyage because it’s so good and one of my favorite books of our AO readings over the years. She’ll also fill out maps of Ireland and the North Atlantic as we work through the book. I read Where the Heather Grows with her brother (at least most of it), and neither of us enjoyed it all that much, so I am offering it to her as a free read (which she has already taken advantage of).

For our map drills, we started doing the Seterra map quizzes for ten minutes each week last year, and both kids always looked forward to that time. I even took my turn when I had time and could see how it really helped my geography knowledge. We also made a lot of use of our Map-by-Map books during the readings we did together for our other subjects (I bookmark whatever map is pertinent to the topic and then leave it open while I’m reading). And I printed out blank continent maps from Seterra on which they labeled locations they read about in all of their subjects.

Citizenship

We begin Ourselves this year, which we’ll read together! As I wrote in my son’s planning post, it’s a wonderful book, and everyone should read it (in my humble opinion). I ended up getting her her own copy so both kids will have one to take with them when they leave the nest. I really appreciate this book so much.

Plutarch

We are lining up our Plutarch readings with other families in our homeschool group, so that is slightly different than the AO schedule as well. We’ve never done Publicola, which is sometimes suggested as the first Life to do, so it’ll be nice to start the year with an “easier” one.

Government and Economics

AO Year 7 Lite Government and Economics Booklist

We will read Whatever Happened to Penny Candy together, as I think the concepts can be a little more complicated, and it will be good to discuss it all.

Current Events

She’ll begin current events this year by writing one narration each week, mostly from World Teen News, but sometimes from Newsela. We’ll also continue The World from A-to-Z with Carl Azuz, which we watch at the end of our school time each day. Our World Teen subscription ends in November, so we may try Student News Daily then, since it’s free.

Science

We have not followed the AO science schedule as written since Year 4, when I began using the Sabbath Mood Homeschool science guides. This year we’ll continue that practice, and she’ll move up to the Form 3-4 guides, which, as I mentioned above, are meant to be done primarily on her own. Over the course of the year, she’ll be studying biology, so I’m having her read a biography of the Greek physician Galen. She’ll also study Chemistry in Term 1, Geology in Term 2, and Physics in Term 3. This felt like a lot when my son first started it, but he handled the load so well, and I think it prepared him well for Novare science in high school. We’ll also be doing some of the experiments with other families in our homeschool group during our group science days (which I will be leading for Form 3).

Because all the narrations are expected to be written in the Sabbath Mood Homeschool Form 3-4 science guides, I got her the same science notebooks from Cognitive Surplus that I got for her brother. I absolutely love that we have these now, as they’re such a fun way to have a record of what they learned.

Besides this, she’ll be reading The Life of the Spider and Great Astronomers on her own, but we will not be doing any of the other AO-assigned readings.

Nature Study

We’ll continue what we began last year by doing nature study with our homeschool group during our weekly hikes, following the newest level of the Sabbath Mood Homeschool Nature Explorers guides.

Math

Math is another subject she will now be doing on her own, as she’s moved up to the first of the last two books in RightStart. There is a teeny-tiny part of me that is a little sad that I’m not really needed for math anymore for either of my students, but it’s also so nice to have that break for myself after Morning Time, Bible readings, and poetry, as I schedule both of them to work on math at the same time. She will be finishing book G this year, and then we’ll move on to book H. I feel that RightStart prepared my son very well for Algebra I (once we found the right curriculum for him), so I feel good about her continuing along this path.

Logic

I’m looking forward to reading The Fallacy Detective with her! This was a fun book to read with my son, and I think she’ll enjoy the challenges at the end of each lesson also.

Art

She’ll begin Janson’s The Story of Painting this year. We’ll also continue with our brushdrawing videos one afternoon per week from the Bloom and Brush Brushdrawing Course, and then once we finish that, we’ll return to the watercolor course from Lily and Thistle’s Nature’s Art Club.

Picture Study

So….I don’t have all of our picture study artists picked yet. You can see how getting ready for this year really was a mad scramble. I opted not to go with the AO artist schedule because we did Norman Rockwell several years ago with our old co-op. We’ve also done several Impressionist artists over the years, so we’re skipping Auguste Renoir as well. We will stick with Ruisdael in Term 3, since we haven’t covered many landscape artists and he’s a great option. I entertained the idea of M.C. Escher, and I also like to include one female, non-Western, or artist of color in our rotation, so I will explore those options and report back in June!

Music

Composer Study

We are straying somewhat from the AO Composer Study schedule. I’m keeping Bernstein in Term 1 (he reminds me of a music major friend from college), and as much as I love Debussy’s melancholic tunes, we also covered him several years ago with our co-op, so I replaced him with Maurice Ravel. We have covered Bach once before, but he’s on the AO schedule twice, so we’ll follow that example and explore more of his pieces, especially as both kids were quite young when we learned about him before.

Hymns and Folksongs

Hymns

Folksongs

These were chosen by two of the moms in our homeschool group, so we’ll be learning the same songs with a few other families. These are the same families that we visit a local assisted living facility with once per month, and we usually end up singing these songs with the residents, so it helps to learn them at home first.

* I’ll probably also add a Christmas carol from the AO schedule for the month of December.

Health and Physical Education

She was in a weekly homeschool PE class last year and enjoyed it but chose not to go back this year. We’ll continue the weekly hikes (usually around 2-3 miles, sometimes longer) with our homeschool group, and I have added nightly walks to our family schedule.

Life and Work Skills

She made a doll last year and started working on clothes for it, but only got through one outfit (mainly because I couldn’t find time to go to Hobby Lobby ), so she’ll continue working on that at least through Term 1. We also looked at taking embroidery classes through Creative Bug (free through our library!), so I’m keeping that on the back burner if she decides she wants to try something else.

Free Reads

Lots of good Free Reads this year! I’ve already pulled all the ones we own off our bookshelves and added them to our free reads shelf. I’ll post a list of what she makes it through at the end of the year!

The post Our Charlotte Mason Homeschool Seventh Grade Plans (take 2!) appeared first on a humble place.

Please note that I have linked to the book lists on the AO website to respect their licensing terms and the hard work they’ve put into such an amazing curriculum that they offer for free. Books that use affiliate links here are not listed on the AO website.)

It is much to be wished that thoughtful mothers would more often keep account of the methods they employ with their children, with some definite note of the success of this or that plan.

CHARLOTTE MASON (HOME EDUCATION)

Year 10! This year I promised myself I wouldn’t offer a lament about how time is slipping through my proverbial fingers or share my sadness over how quickly this has all gone by. So there. I’m not doing that.

So, year 10! I went with the practice I began last year of starting with the Lite version of our year on AmblesideOnline, substituting with books that I want to include from my own reading or that were recommended elsewhere, and then perusing the full AO schedule for this year to see if there’s anything from that list I also want to add. I made a spreadsheet of all the subject and book slots for each term and only brought a book in if I took one out, and I think that will help keep our schedule manageable this year. Last year was definitely better than previous years, but we still had some readings into the summer (all the ones I did with him – he finished his assigned readings by the end of the school year), so I want to avoid that as much as possible.

Despite the Colorado Congress completely disemboweling homeschool enrichment funding in May and having to scramble to find a different program for him over the summer, I managed to get him into a 1-day-per-week CAD/CAM program in early August, just before we started, so his schedule looks very similar to last year. I am thankful for this, as I think it was good for him to be out of the house once a week, answer to someone besides his mom, and be around kids his own age. Last year, he had a friend from our homeschool group in the same class, but this year he doesn’t know anyone, so this is another opportunity for growth.

We actually started the year on August 10th, and it has been, by far, the least prepared I’ve ever been for a school year. I partially blame the legislation changes. That upheaval was frustrating not so much because of the lack of funding (I’m fine not taking government funds for our homeschool) but more because the legislation passed so late in the year and both kids were already registered and set for programs for this school year, so I had to try and find alternatives when I should’ve been planning other things. I’m not sure why I thought I was further along in the planning process than I actually was the weekend before we were scheduled to start, but I spent, literally, all of that weekend doing last-minute school prep. This is my eleventh time doing this planning… maybe someday I’ll figure out how to do it well.

A Note About the Course Hero Summaries

I added a few more links to some of the subjects this year in the form of Course Hero summaries. I learned about this website several years ago from my friend Dawn, but only started really using it toward the end of last year. I try to pre-read all the books my kids read on their own each year for school, and in the past, I usually did this just before the week these readings were assigned. As my kids have gotten older, that reading load has gotten heavier and heavier, and the time it took to pre-read became unmanageable. So, a few years ago, I switched to doing as much of it as possible over the summer, which helped. The downside is that I forget a lot of details when it’s time for them to narrate a passage from a book I read several months earlier. So, I print out these summaries and quickly read through them during my weekly planning to refresh my memory, and that has helped our discussion. I used to use the AO Cheat Sheets group for this, as their summaries are extremely thorough and include things like people mentioned, locations, and definitions of specific terms, but there aren’t as many of these for the upper Forms, so Course Hero is my source for this now, and I’ve been very pleased with it!

And another note for the lists below: wherever I mention that he’s reading something on his own, he is still narrating to me either verbally or in writing, except in the case of Les Misérables, which I mention below.

And now on to the plans for Year 10!

Morning Time

Our Morning Time routine has changed very little in several years, which I think is a good sign that it works well for us. The same is true for this year. Last year, I included a reading from George Washington’s Rules of Civility as my son was reading about the colonial/Revolutionary era in US history. When I was going through my annual year-end reflection in June, in the section on helping my kids understand their duty to God and others, I was reminded that I at some point found a Parents’ Review article that suggested including in our day the part of the Anglican Catechism that talks about these two duties (the article includes a modified version):

My duty towards God is to believe in him, to fear him, and to love him, with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength; to worship him, to give him thanks, to put my whole trust in him, to call upon him, to honour his holy Name and his Word, and to serve him truly all the days of my life.

My duty towards my Neighbour is to love him as myself, and to do to all men as I would they should do unto me: To love, honour, and succour my father and mother: To honour and obey the [civil authority]: To submit myself to all my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters: To order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters: To hurt nobody by word nor deed: To be true and just in all my dealing: To bear no malice nor hatred in my heart: To keep my hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue from evil-speaking, lying, and slandering: To keep my body in temperance, soberness, and chastity: Not to covet nor desire other men’s goods; but to learn and labour truly to get mine own living, and to do my duty in that state of life, unto which it shall please God to call me.

Anglican Catechism

So, in place of George Washington, we’ll go through this line by line, discuss each point, and then recite it every day.

While we did not finish Created for Work last year, it was a great read for us, so we’ll finish it this year. When we’re done, we’ll start on How to Be Your Own Selfish Pig, which used to be on the AO Year 7 Spiritual Formation schedule, but is now listed as a Free Read.

I also want to be more intentional with our time reading Wild Life on the Rockies this year as we’ve really enjoyed that book but haven’t made as much progress as I would’ve liked. I wish I had found Enos Mills years ago, as I equate him with a Colorado version of Dallas Lore Sharp, and while I still love Sharp, reading more about our own backyard through a turn-of-the-20th-century naturalist’s view has been so fun. I hope to read more of his books in the coming years.

Bible and Spiritual Formation

For our Bible readings, we’ll continue what we’ve done the last few years by following the Bible schedule (this year is for my older student’s AO year). I will read the passage to them; they’ll take turns narrating, and then we’ll follow up with discussion or reading further from one of our commentaries. This is honestly one of the best changes I have ever made in our school time, and it works so well for us!

For Spiritual Formation, he and I will read The Cost of Discipleship together. He’ll be reading God’s Smuggler on his own, and I also added in The Practice of the Presence of God in Term 1 (I read this book a few years ago and really appreciated it), Let Go by François Fénelon in Term 2 (another book I read a few years ago that offers great insight), and On Loving God in Term 3 for him to read on his own.

History & Biography

Course Hero Summaries

This year, he’ll be learning about the time period between 1815 and 1902. Continuing what we started last year, I’ll be reading Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People as our history spine to him. This book has worked very well for us and leads to good discussion. He’ll be reading Arguing About Slavery on his own. I haven’t decided if we’ll include Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee yet. It’s listed as optional on the Lite schedule, but not scheduled until Term 3 on the full schedule, so I will most likely try to pre-read it before then.

For biographies, I will have him read Sterling North’s Abe Lincoln instead of the ones recommended by AO because it’s a Landmark and on my shelf. He’ll read the other two biographies scheduled on his own. I’m also considering adding The Story of Thomas Alva Edison by Margaret Cousins, since it’s another Landmark we already own and, given his interest in electronics and technology, I think he’d find it interesting. I know the Landmark books are generally considered better for younger ages, but his load is already pretty heavy, so I thought a few lighter books in place of other heavier books would be a good option.

Literature

Course Hero Summaries

He will be doing most of the literature readings on his own. I read Dr. Jekyll a few years ago and pre-read Frankenstein this summer, and I was looking forward to the contrast between the two that The Deadliest Monster (listed in Term 3 as optional and not included in the weekly schedule) supposedly offered. However, after reading the first chapter in that book and sifting through posts on the AO forums about it (which I wish I had done before I bought it!), I decided it was not for us, as it’s more of an exploration of worldviews (and very specifically the author’s narrow opinion on worldviews) than a literary exploration of the two books. And since we weren’t going to be reading that, I decided to also drop Dr. Jekyll as I felt like this year was already dark enough (he’ll still be reading Frankenstein, though). I replaced the Dr. Jekyll slot with The Practice of the Presence of God in Spiritual Formation.

We’ll be reading Invitation to the Classics together. I originally planned to skip this book because it was $20+ anywhere I could find online, and AO offers an alternative schedule to continue with The History of English Literature for Boys and Girls, which we’ve been reading (and enjoying!) for the last three years. However, I also perused posts on the AO forums about Invitation to the Classics, and one mom mentioned that it covers authors from around the world instead of just English authors, which was appealing. I kept checking prices and finally found it for under $20, and I’m so glad I snatched it up, as the intro has been excellent!

Otherwise, he will be reading the other books, essays, and short stories as scheduled. I am not requiring narrations for Les Misérables since it’s listed as “optional” on the schedule, but I am putting the weekly readings for it on his assignment sheet.

Shakespeare

We are lining up our Shakespeare plays with a few other families in our homeschool group this year, so we won’t follow the AO schedule except in the last term. I’m looking forward to going through new ones as none of us have done any of these before!

Poetry

It’s a good year of poets! I am especially looking forward to reading E. Browning, Emerson, and Whitman with him!

Language Arts

Copywork

We’ll continue with what we did last year in “copywork,” and he will collect at least one entry per week to put into his commonplace notebook. This mostly worked well last year. There were a few weeks when he struggled to find something to copy, but overall he did well, and it’s a good habit to build.

Dictation

Last year I was on the fence about continuing dictation, but it was listed on the AO schedule. I decided this year that I wanted him to have that time to read instead, and his spelling is already very strong, so we are done with dictation!

Grammar and Composition

He finished his mechanics book last year, so we’re also officially done with grammar. I’m aiming for one lesson per week in The Art of Composition as he did not finish it last year. If he finishes it this year, I may switch to one of the AO-recommended writing books.

Recitation

For Recitation, he’ll be following the recommendations from Maria Bell’s guide for Form V. I’ll share what he learns at the end of the year in my recap post.

Foreign Language (Spanish)

I think we’ve finally, after many years, hit a good rhythm with Spanish. Peuntes worked extremely well for us last year. During the school year, they met weekly with their teacher over Zoom, and then through the summer they met every other week, to keep it fresh, and both kids will be taking the test for the first book in the next few weeks.

I supplement that time with a daily activity from the Repertorios from Under the Manzano, and then my son and I spend ten minutes either listening to or taking turns translating to each other one of the Simple Stories from Small Town Spanish Teacher. I highly recommend these, but also offer a note in that they do have some references to modern entertainers, so if that is a concern for you, you may want to skip the ones that include those. We enjoy most of her stories and her personality, as she obviously loves teaching Spanish!

Geography

I almost dropped Eothen because I couldn’t find much information on it and, honestly, it sounded obscure and strange (why that suddenly bothered me this summer, I’m not sure, since it’s been true of other AO books we still read and enjoyed). I managed to get a copy on interlibrary loan and read the introduction and the first chapter to give it an honest shot. It reminded me of an older version of Richard Halliburton’s Royal Road to Romance (which we read last year), and we both enjoyed that book, so it’s now on the schedule!

I also added three chapters from Prisoners of Geography (in the slot for One Race One Blood – more on that below) that he’ll be reading over the course of this year (one each term), and then the rest of the chapters through Years 11 and 12. This was inspired by two friends who are doing or have done the same with their high school students. I appreciate that it includes more modern geography.

For our map drills, we started doing the Seterra map quizzes for ten minutes each week last year, and both kids always looked forward to that time. I even took my turn when I had time and could see how it really helped my geography knowledge. We also made a lot of use of our Map-by-Map books during the readings we did together for our other subjects (I bookmark whatever map is pertinent to the topic and then leave it open while I’m reading). And I printed out blank continent maps from Seterra on which they labeled locations they read about in all of their subjects.

I’m debating including The Oregon Trail from the full Year 10 schedule in Term 2, but I’m going to try to pre-read it and see how the load is after Term 1 before I do that. I’ll list it in my year-end recap if we use it.

Citizenship

Course Hero Summaries

We’ll continue reading Ourselves together because it’s a wonderful book and everyone should read it (in my humble opinion). I also pre-read Amusing Ourselves to Death over the summer, and it was so good and thought-provoking, so he’ll be reading that one on his own. I haven’t read 7 Men Who Rule the World from the Grave, and it received “okay” reviews on Goodreads from some of the people I follow there, so I will try to read at least a little bit of it before it’s scheduled to begin in Term 2. A friend read Sesame and Lillies a few years ago and praised it, so he’ll read those essays as scheduled also.

We are skipping One Race One Blood, mainly because I wanted a slot for Prisoners of Geography (as mentioned above), and partially because I am wary of Ken Ham. I found a few posts on the AO forums in which others expressed some hesitancy about using this book (one offered insight into possible inaccuracies), so I dropped it since I couldn’t find a compelling reason to keep it. We’re also skipping the David Barton video.

Plutarch

We are lining up our Plutarch readings with other families in our homeschool group, so that is slightly different than the AO schedule as well. We’ve never done Publicola, which is sometimes suggested as the first Life to do, so it’ll be nice to start the year with an “easier” one.

Government and Economics

AO Year 10 Lite Government and Economics Booklist

He’ll be reading The Law on his own, but I am looking forward to discussing Bastiat’s ideas with him! I’m also considering including On Liberty from the full Year 10 schedule in Term 3 as we own it, but we’ll see how his load is then.

Current Events

We’ll continue with him reading and writing narrations for two news articles each week, mostly from World Teen News, but sometimes from Newsela, and he’ll also write a narration on one of the topics covered on The World from A-to-Z with Carl Azuz, which we watch at the end of our school time each day. Our subscription for World Teen ends in November, so we may try Student News Daily then, since it’s free.

Science

We have not followed the AO science schedule as written since Year 4, when I began using the Sabbath Mood Homeschool science guides. We used those through Year 8, and last year we began using the Novare Science texts, beginning with Introductory Physics. This year we’ll continue with the Novare recommended sequence for high school science and dive into Biology. We’ll also, again, be doing some of the experiments with our homeschool group (including dissections) about once per month throughout the year.

Last year, I used the lesson plan Novare provided with the digital downloads that came with the books and that was extremely helpful for keeping us on schedule and preparing my son for the quizzes and exams. He did very well with that program, so I’ll use the same thing for Biology. I’m also interested to see how he likes The Apprentice’s Companion as it includes things like sketching from nature and collecting commonplace quotes.

He won’t be reading any of the books on the AO science schedule except Microbe Hunters. This is normally scheduled over several years on the AO schedule, but he’ll read it in its entirety over the course of this year to accompany his Biology studies. I’m looking forward to discussing this with him as well!

Nature Study

Course Hero Summaries

He will read Walden on his own, and we’ll continue what we began last year by doing nature study with our homeschool group during our weekly hikes, following the newest level of the Sabbath Mood Homeschool Nature Explorers guides.

Math

Jacobs’ worked very well for us last year, so we’ll continue with the geometry book this year. We did fall behind in Algebra I last year, partially because we ended up switching math curricula six weeks into the year, and partially because he sometimes allows himself to be distracted during his math time. This year, after weighing different options to keep us on track, I’m going to use the lesson planner that comes in the geometry teacher guide to give him a goal page number he needs to reach by the end of each week. According to the book, each lesson should take 45 minutes to an hour, so this isn’t an outrageous goal. Charlotte Mason advocated short lessons and limited time for each subject, but this is up for interpretation (and could potentially be broken up over two time slots during each day), especially as students get older. In the modern world, also, the time they used when she was writing the programmes in the early part of the 20th century is not practical considering that he needs to earn so many math credits in order to graduate high school and get into college. 30 minutes per day is not going to get us to where we need to be. Art Middlekauff has an excellent talk related to this that I found very encouraging at the Charlotte Mason Educational Retreat this past February.

Logic

We dropped How to Read a Book a few years ago due to needing to free up more time, and will not continue this year, so we have no logic books scheduled for this year.

Art

We’ll continue with our brushdrawing videos one afternoon per week from the Bloom and Brush Brushdrawing Course, and then once we finish that, we’ll return to the watercolor course from Lily and Thistle’s Nature’s Art Club.

I also chose to switch him from Janson’s The Story of Painting, which we’ve been reading for the last three years, to Hendrick van Loon’s The Arts (using this schedule) because I picked up a copy at a book sale a few years ago, and it covers a wider range of art than Janson.

Picture Study

So….I don’t have all of our picture study artists picked yet. You can see how getting ready for this year really was a mad scramble. I opted not to go with the AO artist schedule because we did Norman Rockwell several years ago with our old co-op. We’ve also done several Impressionist artists over the years, so we’re skipping Auguste Renoir as well. We will stick with Ruisdael in Term 3 as we haven’t covered many landscape artists and he’s a great option for that. I entertained the idea of M.C. Escher, and I also like to include one female, non-Western, or artist of color in our rotation, so I will explore those options and report back in June!

Music

Composer Study

We are straying somewhat from the AO Composer Study schedule. I’m keeping Bernstein in Term 1 (he reminds me of a music major friend from college), and as much as I love Debussy’s melancholic tunes, we also covered him several years ago with our co-op, so I replaced him with Maurice Ravel. We have covered Bach once before, but he’s on the AO schedule twice, so we’ll follow that example and explore more of his pieces, especially as both kids were quite young when we learned about him before.

Hymns and Folksongs

Hymns

Folksongs

These were chosen by two of the moms in our homeschool group, so we’ll be learning the same songs with a few families in our group. These are the same families that we visit a local assisted living facility with once per month and we usually end up singing these songs with the residents, so it helps to learn them at home first.

* I’ll probably also add a Christmas carol from the AO schedule in for the month of December.

Health and Physical Education

We’ll continue the weekly hikes (usually around 2-3 miles, sometimes longer) with our homeschool group, and I have added nightly walks to our family schedule.

Life and Work Skills

As I mentioned above, he’ll also be attending a local full-day CAD/CAM program one day each week that can lead to certification and future apprenticeship opportunities, and that’s the plan… for now. Due to recent legislation passed in the Colorado House, many homeschool enrichment programs are precarious right now. Because we are in an umbrella school, we are paying for the classes ourselves in a separate part of the program, but the main part of the organization that runs it relies on state funding, so we’re crossing our fingers that it will be able to keep existing. In the class, he will be working on 3D design, 3D printing, PC building, designing and prototyping products, coding, and learning product marketing, which I feel covers “Life and Work skills” well (as long as it continues!). He also has a thriving garden in our backyard, and continues to program and build electronic gadgets for around our house (and quail coop).

Free Reads

So many good books on the Free Reads list this year! I’ve already pulled all the ones we own off our bookshelves and added them to our free reads shelf. I’ll post a list of what he makes it through at the end of the year!

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The Charlotte Mason approach to homeschooling is a wonderful way of teaching language arts to your students. As with so many aspects of my children’s education, this part of their learning looks wildly different from my own school years, particularly spelling, but I have seen that it really works, and works in a living way. Whereas I remember memorizing lists of disembodied words before being tested on them, these days, we read passages from classic literature when we begin our spelling lessons.

This is only part of how they learn language arts skills, though. Of course, there is copywork beginning with young children, and the addition of written narrations, dictation (or spelling), and grammar for older students.

But I feel the most significant part of learning “language arts” and general writing skills for us has come from following a main Charlotte Mason educational principle: exposure to rich language through the use of living books. As Ms. Mason says:

They must grow up upon the best. There must never be a period in their lives when they are allowed to read or listen to twaddle or reading-made-easy. There is never a time when they are unequal to worthy thoughts, well put; inspiring tales, well told.”

Charlotte Mason (Parents and Children)

Charlotte Mason language arts goes beyond the mechanics. When we present our children with rich language (even before they begin formal lessons) through living ideas, they will inevitably assimilate it, and it will become part of their vernacular. I have seen this many times, not only in their school work, but also in their creative writing endeavors. I have often been surprised at how much they understand and how many “big” words (correctly used!) pop out of their mouths. It’s fun to see.

I’m breaking this category down into the parts of our homeschool that I feel fall under the “Language Arts” banner but are specific to the Charlotte Mason method of education, including transcription (or copywork/handwriting), reading instruction, written narration, grammar, dictation (or spelling), and recitation. You can see AmblesideOnline’s overview of Language Arts here.

Charlotte Mason Language Arts

Transcription (or Copywork/Handwriting)

Value of Transcription -The earliest practice in writing proper for children of seven or eight should be, not letter writing or dictation, but transcription, slow and beautiful work, for which the New Handwriting is to be preferred, though perhaps some of the more ornate characters may be omitted with advantage.

Transcription should be an introduction to spelling. Children should be encouraged to look at the word, see a picture of it with their eyes shut, and then write from memory.

Children should Transcribe favourite Passages. – A certain sense of possession and delight may be added to this exercise if children are allowed to choose for transcription their favourite verse in one poem and another. This is better than to write a favourite poem, an exercise which stales on the little people before it is finished. But a book of their own, made up of their own chosen verses, should give them pleasure.

Small Text-Hand – Double-ruled Lines – Double ruled lines, small text-hand, should be used at first, as children are eager to write very minute ‘small hand,’ and once they have fallen into this habit it is not easy to get good writing. A sense of beauty in their writing and in the lines they copy should carry them over this stage of their work with pleasure. Not more than ten minutes or a quarter of an hour should be given to the early writing-lessons. If they are longer the children get tired and slovenly.

Charlotte Mason (Home Education)

My son began copywork in his kindergarten year very simply with me printing out the free copywork pages from Simply Charlotte Mason. This gave me a good idea of what copywork should look like, so later, when I wanted him to work on passages not found in the SCM download and more specific to us, I made my own formatted copywork pages from Worksheetworks.com. I started with only two lines from his monthly poem, the hymn, or the folksong we were learning, as seen in the image above. This is all I asked him to do that year, and into the first part of the next year.

At the end of Year 1, we started working on cursive using the A-Z Cursive Handwriting Sheets linked above and then moving on to the Free Cursive Alphabet Worksheets. Once he finished those, I went back to the Worksheetworks.com generator, slowly adding more lines over time, and through Year 3, he did his copywork in cursive. Beginning in Year 4, he switched back to print (per his request), I moved him to regular notebook paper, and he worked on copywork for ten minutes each day, which is what he did through Year 8.

My daughter went a slightly different route as letter formation was a problem for her in the beginning, so in Year 2, I opted to go through the full course of Getty-Dubay handwriting books with her in place of her copywork, and she did this through Year 4. This worked extremely well as she learned print, cursive, and italic writing, and once she finished the books, she moved on to the same kind of copywork her brother had been doing.

As I mentioned above, we started with copying their monthly recitation poem, hymn, and folksong. When they were copying enough that those weren’t enough to cover their copywork time, I started using the AO Copywork files. Eventually, they began copying passages from the books they were reading for school to fill up the ten minutes. Since my son entered high school, I no longer require the ten minutes, but instead, he now copies at least one commonplace entry from his readings per week into a Moleskine journal I bought for him specifically for this purpose.

Reading

(You can see Charlotte Mason’s methods for the first reading lessons here, but we did not use this approach.)

I was always of the mindset to wait on formal reading instruction until my kids were ready for it (and there is evidence that waiting is a good thing). My son was very hesitant to learn to read, so we waited until he was older, and now he is a voracious reader. My daughter was chomping at the bit to learn how to read and was working on chapter books by the end of first grade. Every child is different!

Beginning in Year 1, we went through all of the lesson plans in the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons book. I ended up dreading this part of our lesson time each day because this book is incredibly tedious, but it does what it says it will. These short lessons are tedious, but they are easy, and both of my kids were fluent readers even before we finished the book.

To break things up a bit, and because it was only 100 lessons, I opted to do three days per week with one lesson per day (or fifteen minutes, whichever was shorter) and then went through a Bob book on Thursdays (at the time, we went for a hike or attended our co-op or nature group on Fridays so we had no reading time on those days).

When we finished 100 Easy Lessons, we started the Treadwell Readers (each one includes short stories or excerpts from a living book) the first three days of the week, then continued with the Bob books on Thursdays. When we finished the Bob books, we started the Little Bear Books on Thursdays and then moved on to the Frog and Toad books while we finished the Treadwell Readers the first few days of the week.

After they finished all of the early reader books, through Year 3, I had them read something from a chapter book (usually one of the AO free reads for their year) for ten minutes a day to me. Then in Year 4, they began doing some of the assigned readings on their own. I have found that this is one of the best ways for them to not only gain confidence in their reading, but also help them develop a love for great books.

I have seen that 100 Easy Lessons doesn’t work for every family, but I would choose to do it again if I had more students.

Written Narration (Composition)

Narrating is an art, like poetry-making or painting, because it is there, in every child’s mind, waiting to be discovered, and is not the result of any process of disciplinary education. A creative fiat calls it forth. ‘Let him narrate’; and the child narrates, fluently, copiously, in ordered sequence, with fit and graphic details, with a just choice of words, without verbosity or tautology, so soon as he can speak with ease. This amazing gift with which normal children are born is allowed to lie fallow in their education. Bobbie will come home with a heroic narrative of a fight he has seen between ‘Duke’ and a dog in the street. It is wonderful! He has seen everything, and he tells everything with splendid vigour in the true epic vein; but so ingrained is our contempt for children that we see nothing in this but Bobbie’s foolish childish way! Whereas here, if we have eyes to see and grace to build, is the ground-plan of his education.

Charlotte Mason (Home Education)

I wrote more about narration in general in my How to Get Started with Charlotte Mason Homeschooling post, so you can read more about it and see resources there. In a nutshell, oral narration is the telling back of whatever has just been read to or by the student in their own words and serves as a type of oral composition. Generally, this is done through Year 3, and then beginning in Year 4 (or Form II), students also start doing written narrations (while continuing oral narration), which helps build their composition skills.

For both kids, I waited until Year 5 for written narrations when they started with one per week. That number increased every year, including handwriting his narrations for science in notebooks specifically for that purpose. After he took a typing course beginning in Year 6, I allowed him to type out some of his narrations, which increased his enthusiasm.

In high school, he now does one written (typed) narration per day, with one of those being written two days after he did the reading. We’re also using The Art of Composition to improve his writing skills and learn the basic mechanics of writing papers by editing his written narrations from the week before. AmblesideOnline (AO) also offers some suggestions for writing resources in each year, and once we finish the first Art of Composition book, I will switch him to using those resources.

I’ll add that if you’re new to narration of any kind, including written narration, I can’t recommend Know and Tell enough. Karen Glass included many examples of oral and written narrations from different students that can give you a good idea of what most Charlotte Mason students are doing at a given age.

Grammar

Of grammar, Latin and English, I shall say very little here. In the first place, grammar, being a study of words and not of things, is by no means attractive to the child, nor should he be hurried into it. English grammar, again, depending as it does on the position and logical connection of words, is peculiarly hard for him to grasp… Because English grammar is a logical study, and deals with sentences and the positions that words occupy in them, rather than with words, and what they are in their own right, it is better that the child should begin with the sentence, and not with the parts of speech; that is, that he should learn a little of what is called analysis of sentences before he learns to parse; should learn to divide simple sentences into the thing we speak of, and what we say about it––’The cat––sits on the hearth’––before he is lost in the fog of person, mood, and part of speech.

Charlotte Mason (Home Education)

We began grammar instruction in Year 4 with Junior Analytical Grammar per the recommendation of my friend Jennifer, who used it with her kids. I like this program because it feels more conversational than the grammar lessons I grew up with, and each unit has a writing practice lesson called “playing with words.” My son is a reluctant writer, so this was a good introduction to writing for him.

We went through the books very slowly, doing only about 1-2 lessons per week at 25 minutes per lesson, and this took us through the beginning of Year 9 when he finished the second book. My daughter is following the same path. Because we chose to do this separate grammar program and it worked well for us, I have not done any of the AO recommendations for grammar as it felt redundant.

Dictation

Dictation lessons, conducted in some such way as the following, usually result in good spelling. A child of eight or nine prepares a paragraph, older children a page, or two or three pages. The child prepares by himself, by looking at the word he is not sure of, and then seeing it with his eyes shut. Before he begins, the teacher asks what words he thinks will need his attention. He generally knows, but the teacher may point out any word likely to be a cause of stumbling. He lets his teacher know when he is ready. The teacher asks if there are any words he is not sure of. These she puts, one by one, on the blackboard, letting the child look till he has a picture, and then rubbing the word out. If anyone is still doubtful he should be called to put the word he is not sure of on the board, the teacher watching to rub out the word when a wrong letter begins to appear, and again helping the child to get a mental picture. Then the teacher gives out the dictation, clause by clause, each clause repeated once. She dictates with a view to the pointing, which the children are expected to put in as they write; but they must not be told ‘comma,’ ‘semicolon,’ etc. After the sort of preparation I have described, which takes ten minutes or less, there is rarely an error in spelling. If there be, it is well worth while for the teacher to be on the watch with slips of stamp-paper to put over the wrong word, that its image may be erased as far as possible. At the end of the lesson, the child should again study the wrong word in his book until he says he is sure of, and should write it correctly on the stamp-paper.

Charlotte Mason (Home Education)

We also began dictation in Year 4 with Spelling Wisdom from Simply Charlotte Mason. I like these books because they include a collection of passages from living texts which the child is meant to look at, as outlined above, so there is nothing for me to prepare. I’m not sure what “stamp-paper” is, but the Post-it page markers have worked well for us to cover up the misspelled words.

We begin by reading through the passage, either together for younger students, or on their own for older students. During this reading, we or they look for words that might be problematic, then we write them on a whiteboard to focus on them, and then they close their eyes to try and visualize the word in their minds. Then I cover or take away the passage and read it aloud to them, usually breaking it up by punctuation (e.g., giving them a section between commas or periods).

While they’re writing, I follow what they put down on the paper, and any misspelled words are covered with a Post-it while we go through the entire passage. It’s then uncovered, or I give it back to them, they study the words they missed, then the passage is covered or taken away again, and they try those words a second time.

If they make punctuation errors, I do not cover these, but when we’re done correcting the misspelled words, we’ll also correct the punctuation errors as well.

We have done dictation through Year 9, but I think this is really something that can be determined on a student-by-student basis as some kids just need a little more help with spelling than others do.

Recitation

Recitation and committing to memory are not necessarily the same thing, and it is well to store a child’s memory with a good deal of poetry, learnt without labour. Some years ago I chanced to visit a house, the mistress of which had educational notions of her own, upon which she was bringing up a niece. She presented me with a large foolscap sheet written all over with the titles of poems, some of them long and difficult: Tintern Abbey, for example. She told me that her niece could repeat to me any of those poems that I liked to ask for, and that she had never learnt a single verse by heart in her life. The girl did repeat several of the poems on the list, quite beautifully and without hesitation; and then the lady unfolded her secret. She thought she had made a discovery, and I thought so too. She read a poem through to E.; then the next day, while the little girl was making a doll’s frock, perhaps, she read it again; once again the next day, while E.’s hair was being brushed. She got in about six or more readings, according to the length of the poem, at odd and unexpected times, and in the end E. could say the poem which she had not learned.

Charlotte Mason (Home Education)

Before each term begins, I look for recitation pieces for both students using the guidelines from the download linked above. For Bible passages, I look through whatever Bible readings we have assigned that term on the AO schedule and pull out the ones I think are especially good to know. For poetry, I ask my students what they’d like to learn for recitation or pick something from a poet we have assigned for that term (from the AO poetry schedule).

Once per day, each child stands in front of me and reads from their text for that day (Monday – Old Testament, Tuesday – New Testament, Wednesday – Psalm, Thursday – poem, and we also sing our hymns and folksongs twice per week during Morning Time). The goal of Recitation is not necessarily memorization (though that does sometimes happen), but by reading these every week and getting to know the text intimately, the students can read them clearly, well, and with emotion, which has been a very neat part of our lesson time!

Language arts has been such a rich part of my kids’ education, and I’m so thankful for the gentle but effective way Charlotte Mason has laid it all out for us!

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What we need is a habit of taking our minds out of what one is tempted to call “the domestic rag-bag” of perplexities, and giving it a good airing in something which keeps it “growing”… Is there, then, not need for more “Mother Culture”?

“MOTHER CULTURE” PARENTS’ REVIEW – VOLUME 3

For the first time in a few years, after a few months of overwhelming busyness, we are actually having a quieter summer. And it has been a wonderful respite.

In April, my husband traveled for his business for the first part of the month at the same time that my son had a full week of activities for his STEM/Aerospace class, which also ended later in the month. It was such a great opportunity for him, and I’m so glad we did it this year. Unfortunately, the Colorado Congress changed funding for homeschool enrichment programs, so I’m not sure he’ll have a chance to participate again. My son also continued the weekly Friday counselor training sessions for our annual horse camp.

In May, we took an 8-day trip to New York to visit my husband’s mom. We have been planning this trip (or another one to visit her down in Arizona where she used to live part of the year) for a few years now and even had reservations made at one point, but then something would always happen at the last minute (usually travel for my husband) which kept us from being able to go. This year, it finally happened!

On the way, we stopped in Nebraska to visit my mother, a few national parks (Indiana Dunes and Cuyahoga Valley), the Mississippi River (which was a big deal for me as I used to drive over it every day and have been wanting to introduce my kids to it for a long time…..I may or may not have gotten a little emotional), and my kids experienced ticks for the first time (fortunately, not attached to them). Our time in New York was awesome as we reserved an Airbnb on a lake that offered kayaking and was right next to a little wooded area beside a wetland, so there were so.many.birds (which is what I dorkily happily sat and observed while everyone else was kayaking)! We also drove up to Niagara Falls and took the Maid of the Mist into the falls, something I’ve been wanting to do for years, and it was such a neat experience. On the way back, we stopped at the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and rode to the top, so I was able to add a few more stickers to my water bottle and a few more trees to our map. It was our first “big trip” since we went to California in 2023, and aside from a stressful morning involving the smoke alarms going off nonstop at home and having no way to turn them off, it was a good trip, and I’m so glad we were able to go! At the end of May, my husband had another work trip, but was fortunately able to come back just a few days before I left for my trip in June!

In June, just after we “finished” our school year (we’re still doing things into the summer, so that’s a loose definition), I went to the AmblesideOnline 25th Anniversary Celebration Conference with several friends and had such a good time. It was so neat to be able to say hello in person to several people I’ve only known online over the years, see other friends I haven’t been with in a while, and meet so many of you who came to say hi! I was so glad to meet all of you!

The day after I got home was our annual horse camp. This year, I didn’t volunteer, so I actually thought I had a full week of mornings after dropping off my kids in which I could walk with a good friend who also had her daughter in the camp, as well as catch up on work things and start school planning. This did happen the first three days (plus a trip to the History Colorado Museum to see the Freedom Plane documents!), but then my daughter got sick (again) on Thursday and missed the last two days of the camp (as well as the year-end celebration for our homeschool group, which was so sad for all of us), so I stayed home with her. Fortunately, she was well enough (and got permission from the camp director) to perform in the show on Saturday, which was a gift amidst all the disappointments, but I was sick at that point, so I wasn’t able to go. It was a rough start to the summer, but we’ve had a few weeks to recover and get into our summer routine, and I’m praying we have several more weeks of low-key activities, and even more time than that of good health!

Read (or Finished Reading)

For Me

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 6 and Vol. 7 by Beth Brower. Still so enjoyable, but I took a break after Vol. 7 as I think I was a little Emma’d out (don’t hurt me, local friends who love her!). I do need to finish it soon, though, as Beth Brower has hinted that she’s nearing the end of writing Vol. 8!

Rembrandt is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith by Russ Ramsey. For the Art Book Reading Challenge. If people already know that I have an art history degree, or after they learn that I do, this is the book that most Charlotte Mason moms recommend to me (followed by Art and Faith by Makoto Fujimura, who, ironically, wrote the foreword for this book). I had tried listening to it on audio, but didn’t get far into it until I knew there would be things I’d want to commonplace. I then got a copy from the library, but it was an interlibrary loan, and I am a slow reader, so I knew the six weeks I had with it wouldn’t be enough. After several more people recommended it, I finally just bought the darn thing and read it cover to cover. As ironic as it sounds, I struggle with books written about art, because sometimes interpretations of paintings are presented as fact, even though there is no indication anywhere that the artist intended that interpretation at all. Because of this, I was a little worried when I started reading it (and maybe that’s why it took me so many tries) that Ramsey would be like that, too. Thankfully, for the most part, I don’t believe he was. I don’t agree with everything he said about Caravaggio’s work, but I don’t think he went off the deep end, as some authors have when it comes to art. What I appreciated the most, though, was the special care he took with Vincent van Gogh. I am especially fond (and probably more than a tiny bit protective) of van Gogh, and Ramsey treated him with gentleness and, I think, saw through the mental instability that is so often the default “fact” about him, to the deeply thoughtful and sensitive soul that he was. I also love that he included Henry Ossawa Tanner (another favorite) as well, as he is so often overlooked in favor of the many giants of late 19th-century art.

Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell. I read this per the recommendation of two good friends who both loved it. I’m still thinking about it. There is a level of Victorian histrionics that I find annoying in almost any book written in this time period. That aside, though, it was such a sad and thought-provoking story, and I wanted to hug Ruth and tell her that she was loved (and how amazing are the Bensons? I want to hug them, too). It was a beautiful example of self-sacrifice and, obviously, there is Jesus to be found in that as well.

Hard Times by Charles Dickens. Pre-read for AmblesideOnline Year 10, the Read Your Bookshelf Challenge, and another recommendation from the friends mentioned above. Another sad one with some pretty awful people in it (described in true Dickensian tongue-in-cheek humor), but there was also redemption and a more….happy? ending than Ruth.

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy. Pre-read for AmblesideOnline Year 9 and the Read Your Bookshelf Challenge. I remember enjoying this in high school and seeing the musical version when it came to town, but I couldn’t remember the plotline at all before I started this re-read. It was a fun story, and I enjoyed it again. But is Percy extremely handsome and quite large? And is Marguerite extremely beautiful and quite tiny? She didn’t really talk about that much…

A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society by Eugene Peterson. For my Fruit of the Spirit books (patience). Even though the title does not mention patience, I felt like it radiates the spirit of patience. It was a journey through the Songs of Ascent (Psalm 120-134), and the timing worked out well, as I was reading these Psalms with my kids during our Bible lessons at the same time. Though it didn’t end up being quite so much about patience as I thought it would be, Peterson offered many good ideas and thoughts that I want to return to often in the future.

Becoming Sage: Cultivating Meaning, Purpose, and Spirituality in Midlife by Michelle VanLoon. This was a gift from my friend Dawn to the other CMER team members at this year’s retreat. It addresses the things experienced as we enter midlife, and though I am probably not yet the target demographic (I felt like it was geared more toward older women whose kids are out of the house, which makes sense as the other team members are all at least six years older than me and have at least two kids out of the house), I’m not too far away and there were very helpful ideas and things I hadn’t considered about what’s coming. I will probably want to read it again when I’m there.

For School

(Unlinked books are on the AO website to respect their licensing. Linked books are not on the AO schedule.)

Richard Halliburton’s Book of Marvels: the Orient by Richard Halliburton. For AO Year 6. My last time through Halliburton! What a fun book to experience with both of my kids.

The Iliad for Boys and Girls by Alfred J. Church. For AO Year 6. It’s funny to me that I never read the Iliad or Odyssey in any form until I started homeschooling. These are such fascinating stories, and I appreciated being able to get to know all of these often-referenced characters better both times that I read these books with my kids.

Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot. For AO Year 9. This was an interesting follow-up to Jungle Pilot in year 8, though I admit that I was really dreading reading about January 8th from the perspective of a wife who was there. I think my favorite part was the two Epilogues, one from 1958 and one from 1981. It was interesting to see how her perspective had changed in the years between, and it made me want to read Becoming Elisabeth Elliot, which friends have recommended and I’ve had on my shelf for a few months.

Common Sense by Thomas Paine. For AO Year 9. He convinced me.

For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time – A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics by Walter Lewin. For AO Year 9. I added this as a science “biography” for my son as he made his way through physics. I found it fascinating, but a lot of it was over my head. B enjoyed it also.

The Royal Road to Romance by Richard Halliburton. For AO Year 9. This was a last-minute geography addition after we finished Longitude in Term 1, and I decided not to move on to Undaunted Courage as I had originally planned. This was such a fun little trip down memory lane and so fitting as I was reading Halliburton’s Marvels books with my daughter at the same time, and many of the stories in both books just happened to line up.

Currently

I pick up a few more books in the summer when I (theoretically) have more time. Right now, I’m working through Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success, and (listening to) Les Misérables. For my morning liturgy, I’m reading The Poetry of Robert Frost and Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes. I’m also intermittently reading Parents and Children with my local Charlotte Mason book group.

With my son, I’m reading The Two Towers, and with my daughter, I’m reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Reading Challenges

Follow along with my reading adventures on Storygraph and Goodreads!

Commonplaced

Some favorite quotes from this quarter’s finished books:

Rembrandt is in the Wind

A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

(There were a lot!)

Becoming Sage

Made

Food Garden

There was obviously food made this quarter, but there was also a lot of eating out and convenience meals because it was just so incredibly busy. After having let my milk kefir grains die earlier this year (or maybe last year?), I did manage to revive some grains that have been in my freezer since last year, so that’s an ongoing project again. Otherwise, my kitchen goals included finding some kind of food to put on the table every day, and lofty goals beyond that were tossed out the window.

The big project the kids and I have been working on for the last few months is the garden. When we’re done with our regular school year, we switch to our summer schedule in which we spend a half hour outside in both the morning and the afternoon (with more outside time optional during their free time). We either start seeds earlier in the year, or get starts from Azure in May, and after those go in the ground or our raised beds, our outside time is spent tending the plants and weeding. So.much.weeding. But I enjoy this time as we work together, chat, and make our yard a better place. We have a lot of ideas for things we’d like to do, and this hour each day helps us work toward those goals.

From last year, my lavender, bergamot, echinacea, parsley, and comfrey (so.much.comfrey) all came back. This year, I planted basil, marigolds, rosemary, sage, thyme, chamomile, peppermint, plantain, lemon balm, and yarrow. I also planted garlic in the fall, which is coming up nicely and should be ready to harvest soon. Yarrow and plantain grow wild here, but I like having a little patch in my backyard. My hope with all of these is not only to have fresh herbs for cooking but also to make herbal remedies. C planted flowers and blackberries, and B is, once again, handling all the vegetables and strawberries.

Project 333

At the end of June, I pulled out all of my clothes and did my first summer wardrobe switch since I began Project 333 last September. Next quarter, it will have been a year since I started this project, and I think it has gone well. I put away the rest of the “cold weather” clothes that I kept out because spring can sometimes be chilly in Colorado, donated a few others (I turn the hangers around at the turn of the quarter and see what I never pulled off the rack), and reduced it quite a bit. I don’t have a lot of “hot weather” clothes because, honestly, I’m really uncomfortable in shorts and generally avoid wearing them in public. I want to invest in some longer skirts and dresses as an alternative, but my wardrobe budget is pretty tight right now, so they will have to wait until next year. I did have a credit on thredUP that was expiring, so after I had gone through everything and had my final count of items, I found a t-shirt, a tank top, a button-down double-cotton gauze shirt, and some hiking pants. The gauze shirt and the hiking pants didn’t work out, so that leaves me with:

26 items. I’m still not a fashionista in any way, shape, or form, but I appreciate that this gives me a wardrobe of items that I actually like to wear. I’d still like to find a button-down shirt to wear with the tank top, so I’m keeping an eye out for that, and of course, dresses. I also have some wiggle room with only 26 items, so if I see anything else I’d like to add, I feel like I have the freedom to add a few more things. Of course, as usual, this does not include loungewear or hiking gear, and in the fall, I might take on the extra challenge of including my loungewear because I wear it so much, but we’ll see how hectic life is.

Moved

I made such good progress in March on getting back into a good walk/workout routine, and then fell off the bandwagon again as busyness and (yet again) sickness took over. Our family has never gotten sick or had weird medical things happen in the past as often as we have this year so far, and I’m really ready for it to be done.

Aside from sickness, our hiking group has missed a few weeks, and we’ve had some travel as well. I mentioned above that we went to New York to visit my husband’s mom in May, and then I went to the AmblesideOnline 25th Anniversary Conference at the beginning of June (I was happy a friend asked to go for a walk between talks so I could keep my Strava number-of-weeks-straight streak alive!), but there are a lot of blank spots in my totals above.

I also finished the NML beginner workout plan in April and then began her Strong 20 program (with the plan of spreading it out to 2-3 times per week until I finished it), but because I took so much time between workouts (May 11th to June 22nd), I was extremely sore after that second workout and barely got through it, so I might actually go back to the beginner plan again and try to get back into a good rhythm. As I always say, hopefully next quarter will be better!

On the Blog

Mother Culturing: First Quarter 2026

6 April 2026

Free Printable 2026-2027 Calendar for Homeschoolers!

20 April 2026

Our Charlotte Mason Homeschool Ninth Grade Recap

22 June 2026

Our Charlotte Mason Homeschool Sixth Grade Recap (take 2!)

29 June 2026

New in the Shop

Auguste Renoir Picture Study

Options Auguste Renoir Picture Study

Nature Sightings

Sadly, as with so many things, I’m behind on my lists, so I only have them partway through May. I’m hoping to catch up soon. Here are new wildflowers and birds since the first quarter, including the ones I saw on our trip to New York:

The post Mother Culturing: Second Quarter 2026 appeared first on a humble place.

Please note that I have linked to the book lists on the AO website to respect their licensing terms and the hard work they’ve put into such an amazing curriculum that they offer for free. Books that use affiliate links here are not listed on the AO website.)

It is much to be wished that thoughtful mothers would more often keep account of the methods they employ with their children, with some definite note of the success of this or that plan.

CHARLOTTE MASON (HOME EDUCATION)

See our plans for the year from August here.

It was a different kind of year for us in many ways, but it was a good year of stretching and trying new things. I think, overall, it was a good close to Form 2 (and AmblesideOnline Year 6) before my daughter takes the jump to Form 3 next year. It’s hard to believe she’s already here. I am thankful that we had time together – just the two of us – each Tuesday while my son was at his weekly STEM/Aerospace class. She and I have never really had that, and it was fun to plan a day where she could be my sole focus. I picked up a copy of Between Us Girls for us to read together, and I think it was a good springboard for us to talk about things that might not otherwise come up. I appreciated that the book has me sharing memories with her and also asks her pointed questions, so we can talk about those things. There were no brothers and usually no dads around, so it was a special time for us.

She had her first out-of-the-house activity this year in the form of a weekly homeschool PE class with a few friends, which she enjoyed. It was different for me, as I’m not used to having to be at multiple places at certain times during the week, so making a schedule around these activities was also a new experience for me. But I liked how it all worked out, as I got extra time with two friends whose kids were also in the class, and she got the experience of… well… a PE class!

I went into the year scheduling more independent readings for each kid, as I knew I couldn’t keep up with reading together, and she did very well getting them done. There were a few weeks when I had to remind her to do something from the previous week, but she was fairly dutiful in going through her assigned tasks and giving each one a specific day to complete. I’m hoping these are laying the groundwork for good habits that continue into adulthood, like seeing what needs to be done and allotting time for it.

Next year is going to be a pretty big jump for her, but I’m happy that I get to make that jump with her and can help her along the way. I don’t know if I’ll have another day alone with her, but I’m thankful for the time we did have together this year.

Morning Time

As I mentioned at the beginning of the year, we’ve found a good rhythm with our Morning Time, so it hasn’t changed much in a while, and this year was no different. As I mentioned above, because my son was gone every Tuesday, it looked a little different that day when it was just my daughter and me, which was a nice time for us together.

I have a detailed layout of our Morning Time in my planning post. The only change I made was to add a reading from George Washington’s Rules of Civility each morning, as my son was in the American Revolutionary War time period this year. We also dropped Land of Little Rain mid-year and switched to Wild Life on the Rockies by Enos Mills, as it’s specific to Colorado. We didn’t finish it, but we really enjoyed what we read so far, so we’ll continue that next year.

Bible

AO Year 9 Bible Schedule
Bible Resources
The Bible Knowledge Commentary
SPCK Bible Atlas

We did our Bible readings all together, so my daughter joined us for the AO Y9 schedule, which worked out so well. I really enjoy hearing their thoughts and ideas about the passages that we read.

On her own, she was reading through Exploring the Bible: A Bible Reading Plan for Kids, though she ended up not caring for it. At Easter, I got her Loved and Cherished: 100 Devotions for Girls, and now she is reading that along with the Bible reading plan I printed out for her a few years ago.

History & Biography

I went along with my plan for history, except for the giant omission of Vinegar Boy, which I completely forgot to add to the schedule in Term 2. I’m not sure how it didn’t make it into the schedule, but obviously, I need to read my own plan throughout the year! I haven’t decided whether to try it again as a Morning Time read during the Easter season or offer it as a free read.

C said her favorite book from this subject was Augustus Caesar’s World. She struggled with Story of Mankind, which I think is understandable, as even the few chapters we read in that book are pretty dense. We also had good discussions about Story of the World, even though that wasn’t her favorite.

The Story of the Greeks and The Story of the Romans condense a lot of history into short chapters, and though she sometimes struggled with names and exact storylines, I again believe this gives a good overview of those civilizations’ histories, which is essential to understanding our own.

I also supplemented with a few more free reads related to history (or just literature from the time periods we were learning about), including these:

• Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
• The House of Sixty Fathers by Meindert DeJong
• Todos iguales : un corrido de Lemon Grove by Christy Hale
• Twenty and Ten by Claire Huchet Bishop
• Rascal by Sterling North
• The Golden Bull by Marjorie Cowley
• D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths

Literature

As with her brother, her favorite literature reading, by far, was The Hobbit. We started listening to the audiobook a few years ago on a road trip to Utah, but never finished it, so I think she was glad to complete the story. Not long after she finished, during another recent road trip, we began The Fellowship of the Ring, and it was good for her to have that backstory.

I forgot to mention in the planning post that I actually went with the old AO schedule for our Age of Fable readings, since we began with that schedule in Year 4 before they changed it. It’s also a dense book, but I think Bulfinch gave a great summary and overview of several different storylines in ancient mythology, and it really is key to understanding not only much of what we read in our school lessons, but also the references that are often made in the world at large.

Shakespeare

This is a category I neglected to include in my planning post. We did not follow the AO Shakespeare schedule this year, as we collaborated with a few other families in our homeschool group to align our Shakespeare plays as much as possible so that we could perform a scene together at our Christmas and end-of-year celebrations. We originally scheduled Coriolanus (I think this might be my favorite Shakespeare play), Hamlet, and The Merchant of Venice. We did not end up finishing Hamlet during Term 2, so we continued it into Term 3 (and into the summer…), and we’ll do The Merchant of Venice at another time. She’s not a big fan of his tragedies, so neither of these was a favorite of hers.

Poetry

We enjoyed all three of our poets this year, but I think Langston Hughes resonated with her the most.

Language Arts

Copywork

She continued with 4 ten-minute copywork sessions per week, beginning with copying her recitation pieces, hymns, and folksongs. Then she either chose poetry from Favorite Poems Old and New or copied articles from her Nature Friend magazine.

Dictation

Dictation (or spelling) ended up being one of her favorite subjects this year, which was a surprise, as I don’t think it normally makes anyone’s top lists! We did one lesson per week from Spelling Wisdom Book 1 which is slower than the pace the book recommends, but it worked just fine for us.

Grammar and Composition

On the other hand, grammar was one of her least favorite subjects, but she is still progressing well in it. The Junior Analytical Grammar books, with approximately one lesson per week, have worked so well for both of my kids, and I’m disappointed that they don’t make them anymore.

Recitation

Here are the pieces she learned for recitation:

Old Testament

New Testament

Psalms

Poetry

Foreign Language

Spanish went really well this year! Both kids met together on Zoom one hour per week with their teacher from The Spanish Institute of Honduras throughout the year and made good progress. Four days per week, we also did one of the lessons from the Repertorio, Cuna in Term 1 (as she did not release any more this year, I made my own extremely rough versions in Terms 2 and 3 that were adequate but not ideal – I’m hoping she releases more for next year!).

Geography

This was the first year we used Seterra for our map drills, and it went extremely well. It was one of the things she asked to do every week, even when we cut back on other things.

She also enjoyed the rest of Halliburton (which means I’m done with Halliburton ) along with the videos we watched for each location. The David Livingstone biography wasn’t as much of a hit, and she felt like Long’s was written for a younger audience. But with all of the resources together, we did make good progress in her geography knowledge this year.

Scouting

We got through the unit on Observation with our homeschool group, but decided to just stick with our Nature Explorers lessons for the rest of the year.

Citizenship

While her brother and I really enjoy our Plutarch time each week, she still sometimes struggles with following everything that’s going on in the readings. Next year, we’re planning to go with some easier ones we haven’t read before, so I’m hoping that helps.

Nature Study and Science

Nature Study

For nature study in the weekly hikes with our homeschool group, we used the Nature Explorers guide from Sabbath Mood Homeschool. During our Morning Time before the hike, we would watch the video for that day’s lesson, and then talk about our goal (or what we were looking for – usually whatever we learned about in the video) just before the hike. Because we were respecting Nicole’s licensing for using the guide in groups, we did not each have a copy, but I think I might buy my own for next year so I can have access to her book lists for each section, as I have always found her book recommendations so helpful.

Both kids also completed weekly entries in their nature journals, usually during our hikes. Sadly, I didn’t end up using the Bloom and Brush nature journaling prompts as I had planned at the beginning of the year. I had inserted them into the schedule just before we were leaving for our hike, but it never worked out that we actually watched them. I still think they’re a great resource and plan to try again next year in a better timeslot!

Science

Science is always the subject in which we deviate the most from the AO schedule. Since Year 4, we’ve been using Nicole Williams’ science guides, and those have worked so well for us. This year, C learned about chemistry, weather, and energy.

We did read a few of the AO-schedule books, including The Elements and the three science biographies (which she enjoyed, for the most part – Einstein was a struggle). However, I replaced It Couldn’t Just Happen with Bruce and Stan’s Guide to How It All Began, and we’ll read The Mystery of the Periodic Table next year with Nicole’s guide. And because my son read it in Year 6 on the old schedule (which doesn’t appear to be available anymore) and really enjoyed it, I scheduled The Sea Around Us Young Reader’s Edition for her as well. However, after Term 1, it wasn’t resonating with her as well, and I felt we already had enough science readings, so I decided to drop that one. AO changed it so that the regular version of The Sea Around Us is scheduled in Year 9, so we may revisit it then.

Math

She finished RightStart Level F and is now doing math on her own with RightStart Level G, which means I am not doing math with anyone anymore. I’m available during that time for her or her brother when they need help or checking answers, but this is the first time in ten years that I haven’t been going through a math lesson with someone. It’s a little weird…

We’ll be working on Level G through the summer and into next year.

Art

For art creation, one afternoon every week, both kids spent about 20 minutes going through the instructional videos of the Bloom and Brush Brushdrawing Course, and that worked extremely well for us!

Picture Study

We had a lovely range of artists this year and even made it to the Denver Art Museum in Term 1 to see the Pissarro exhibition, which included two pieces we learned about. I always love seeing the paintings in person, especially after having studied them. There are just certain things that prints can’t recreate, and being able to see brushstrokes in person is a gift.

C said her favorite artist from this year was Albert Bierstadt. I’m a little partial to him myself.

Music

Composer Study

We enjoyed all of our composers this year, and they offered a great range of musical styles. I used our Milton Cross for Delius and Mendelssohn, and Heather Suemnicht made a very helpful guide for Scott Joplin, which was a fun option for Term 2.

Hymns and Folksongs

Hymns

Folksongs

The favorite folksong this year was definitely “On Ilkla Moor Baht ‘at!”, and “Awake, My Soul, and With the Sun” was a really great song to begin our days. We also sang a few of these with the residents at the assisted living facility we visit once per month, so it helped to include them in our Morning Time.

Physical Education

As I mentioned above, she participated in a weekly local PE program for homeschoolers with some friends for the first time this year and enjoyed it, though she decided she will not be doing it again next year. We also continued our weekly hikes (usually at least 2-3 miles), and she may join her brother and me for our attempt at another 14er this summer.

Handicrafts

Making a doll was the perfect handicraft for her, and it went so well! The only hang-up was making sure I had all the supplies on hand when she needed them, which caused delays. She did manage to make two separate dolls, underwear for each, and two outfits. She’ll continue this project through the summer.

Free Reads

She read quite a few of the books on the free reads list either previously or during the school year, including these:

• Jack and Jill by Louisa May Alcott
• Little Men by Louisa May Alcott
• The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens
• Blue Willow by Doris Gates
• Letters from Rifka by Karen Hesse
• The Call of the Wild by Jack London
• A Little Brother to the Bear by William J. Long
• School of the Woods by William J. Long
• Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
• Snow Treasure by Marie McSwigan
• Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
• Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen
• The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth Speare
• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
• The Winged Watchman by Hilda Van Stockum
• The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria Von Trapp
• Ben Hur by Lew Wallace
• The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss

We’ll keep working on the ones she hasn’t gotten to yet over the summer! And that’s a wrap for Form 2!

The post Our Charlotte Mason Homeschool Sixth Grade Recap (take 2!) appeared first on a humble place.

(Please note that I have linked to the book lists on the AO website to respect their licensing terms and the hard work they’ve put into such an amazing curriculum that they offer for free. Books that use affiliate links here are not listed on the AO website.)

It is much to be wished that thoughtful mothers would more often keep account of the methods they employ with their children, with some definite note of the success of this or that plan.

CHARLOTTE MASON (HOME EDUCATION)

See our plans for the year from August here.

And so we have finished our first year of high school. Honestly, it wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be, which I hope is an encouragement to others! My only real complaint is how fast it went by, which I think is going to become only more and more of a problem over the next three years. But I know I’ve moaned many times about my kids growing up fast, so I’ll refrain from doing so yet again. (But I am a little sad….)

Anyway…

It was a good year, and I think my plan of starting with AmblesideOnline Year 9 Lite and then adding to it, rather than starting with the detailed Year 9 list and removing from it (which honestly never really happens), worked wonderfully for us. There were some readings that we didn’t get all the way through, and the important ones we’re finishing up over the summer, but that was more because I scheduled too many readings for us to do together. On his own, my son had a just-right amount of work across all the tasks he needed to complete each week.

We did have some growing pains early on – primarily in math (more on that below) – which we had to adjust as the year went on, but nothing that threw us for a complete loop and derailed everything. I feel like the nine years of homeschooling I did before we entered this year have prepared me well for these inevitable hiccups, and it’s nice to have the mental tools I need to tackle them when they pop up.

I was nervous about the once-per-week STEM/Aerospace program he did for the first time this year, and it was a little more work for us to get him there and back every week (or even to some of the farther-away field trips), but it was very worth it. He really enjoyed his time there, learned many new things, had some amazing new experiences (helicopter ride! indoor skydiving!), got some time answering to someone besides me, and thrived. My daughter and I also enjoyed the day for just the two of us, so it worked out really well overall. I have more about what we’ll be doing with that next year in the science section below.

I also did extensive research on high school transcripts and grades. I ultimately decided to use the diploma program offered by our umbrella school, which also gives us official transcripts from a private school. A friend who has graduated two of her kids said that having an “official” transcript when applying to colleges does make things a little easier, so that’s where we are.

And now on to the recap!

Morning Time

As I mentioned at the beginning of the year, we’ve found a good rhythm with our Morning Time, so it hasn’t changed much in a while, and this year was no different. Because my son was gone every Tuesday, it looked a little different that day when it was just my daughter and me, which was a nice time for us together (I’ll write more about that in her recap post).

I have a detailed layout of our Morning Time in my planning post. The only change I made was to add a reading from George Washington’s Rules of Civility each morning, as my son was in the American Revolutionary War time period this year. We also dropped Land of Little Rain mid-year and switched to Wild Life on the Rockies by Enos Mills, as it’s specific to Colorado. We didn’t finish it, but we really enjoyed what we read so far, so we’ll continue that next year.

Bible & Spiritual Formation

We did our Bible readings all together, so my daughter joined us for the AO Y9 schedule, which worked out so well. I really enjoy hearing their thoughts and ideas about the passages that we read.

My son and I read Mere Christianity together while watching the CSLewisDoodle YouTube channel, and as this was not his favorite book to read, it was a helpful way to go through it. Lewis brings up quite a few controversial and not-easy topics (I’m looking at you, Book 3, Chapter 5), but we had good conversations about these topics, and I was glad we were talking about them together.

We both liked Through Gates of Splendor, which was a good follow-up to reading Jungle Pilot from Year 8, and I especially appreciated what Elisabeth Eliot wrote in the Epilogue.

History & Biography

As I mentioned in my planning post, we went with Paul Johnson’s History of the American People for our spine, and that worked very well for us. Johnson offers ideas I’ve never considered before, which I appreciated and that sparked good conversations, especially when comparing them to our other readings.

I think my favorite book this year was Miracle at Philadelphia, as it provided such a thorough account of the Constitutional Convention. Admittedly, I knew very little about it before reading this book, and the parallels between it and the other history books we were reading all fit together so well. We also learned later in the year that the Freedom Plane was stopping in Denver, so we were able to see some of the documents that were related to that meeting, which was a fun way to end the year!

B said that his favorite history reading from the year was Lord Chesterfield’s letters, which we did together, and that was another great source of conversation (and some amusement)!

We also read all of the original source documents listed in the Lite schedule. He read Founding Father on his own, and we read Founding Brothers together, which also made for good discussion. We ended up skipping The Story of Napoleon just to lighten the schedule, but I did offer it to him as a free read.

Literature

We mostly stuck to the AO schedule in Literature, except we skipped Gulliver’s Travels (you can read why in the planning post), and I offered Pride and Prejudice and Rasselas to him as free reads. We read all of the books together except The Count of Monte Cristo, only part of which is scheduled over the course of the year because it’s so long. Despite its length, he really liked it and finished reading it on his own, not long after our school year ended.

I had intended for us to do three Shakespeare plays this year (Coriolanus, Hamlet, and The Merchant of Venice), but we only got through Coriolanus and about half of Hamlet (which we’ll finish over the summer). This is the first year that we haven’t finished three plays, and the perfectionist part of me is pretty annoyed, but the I-love-homeschooling side of me is appreciative of the fact that I had the flexibility at the end of Term 2 to say we were going to keep going with Hamlet, and that felt good. We’ll try again for three next year.

Poetry

No changes here! I read the poetry aloud just after Morning Time, then asked what he pictured as I read and what stood out to him. This worked well for us.

Language Arts

Copywork

Switching from a page of copywork every day to just one commonplace entry per week worked well for us. He wasn’t always able to find a quote to put in his book, but it was interesting to see which ones stood out to him when he did.

Dictation

I debated including dictation in the schedule this year, but I decided to keep it in when I saw that it was on the scheduling matrix for his Form, I kept it. I think this will be our last year doing it, though, as his spelling is very good, and I want to lighten the schedule where I can.

Grammar and Composition

We finally finished the second of our two Junior Analytical Grammar books this year, and he then moved into The Art of Composition. I thought we might finish it by the end of the year, but we didn’t, and I’m fine with that, as I wasn’t sure we’d be moving on to the rest of the books in the series anyway.

I required him to do one written narration per day (one written two days after the reading), and the rest narrated orally. Using the lessons in the book, he then edited those written narrations. I appreciate this because Karen Glass goes over specific editing ideas in each lesson, which gets him thinking about how to improve his writing. We’ll continue with this book next year.

Recitation

Here are the pieces he learned for recitation:

Old Testament

New Testament

Psalms

Poetry/Shakespeare

Foreign Language

Spanish went really well this year! Both kids met together on Zoom one hour per week with their teacher from The Spanish Institute of Honduras throughout the year and made good progress. Four days per week, we also did one of the lessons from the Repertorio, Cuna in Term 1 (I made my own extremely rough versions in Terms 2 and 3 as she did not release any more this year that were adequate but not ideal – I’m hoping she releases more for next year).

To supplement my son’s Spanish time for high school credit, we also listened to, narrated, alternated reading aloud, and translated several of the stories from Simple Stories in Spanish. This allowed him to work on his comprehension and pronunciation.

Geography

In my planning post, I mentioned that we would read Dava Sobel’s Longitude in Term 1 and then switch to Undaunted Courage in Terms 2 and 3. We did make it through Longitude (which he enjoyed). However, after considering how long Undaunted Courage is and reading through content concerns on the AO forums, I discovered that Richard Halliburton’s Royal Road to Romance used to be scheduled in Year 9, so I used that instead (and he enjoyed that one as well).

Ironically, I was reading Halliburton’s Book of Marvels: Orient concurrently with my daughter in Year 6, so it was fun to compare the readings as many of them lined up. It was pretty neat to feel like we were coming full circle with Halliburton, as my son remembered several of the stories from Book of Marvels.

This was the first year we also did ten minutes of Seterra map drills every week, and both kids really enjoyed that. He made it through the 50 states and Europe, and is now working on Africa.

We also filled out maps along with other subjects; e.g., for his news articles, I printed maps for each continent, and he labeled the places mentioned in the stories.

Scouting

We got through the unit on Observation with our homeschool group, but decided to just stick with our Nature Explorers lessons for the rest of the year.

Citizenship

We read The Universe Next Door together, and it was very challenging for both of us, but we persevered and learned a lot. Later in the year, I was talking to a friend whose daughter is a year ahead of my son in AO, and she mentioned they made a chart with all the answers to the “basic questions” for each worldview, which helped. There’s a chart in the back of the book that does that as well, so I think I may rely on that more if/when I read this with my daughter. It was hard, but thought-provoking.

Plutarch is always so interesting, leads to great discussion, and B says these lessons are his favorite of his citizenship readings. I’m glad he’s a part of our week.

And, of course, Ourselves is a book that everyone should read regardless of their age! We read this one together and, again, it results in great discussion!

Government and Economics

We enjoyed Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (he convinced me!) and the essays on economics. I also added Richard Maybury’s Are You Liberal, Conservative, Confused? from the non-lite booklist, as I feel this is an important topic given our current political tumult. Maybury is very opinionated and is obviously not for everyone, but the beauty of reading books like his and then having my son narrate is that we can talk about these ideas that come up and weigh them against other things we’ve read.

Current Events

You can read the original plan for current events here. I did let my World Teen News subscription lapse in October and tried to just use Decaf, but ended up renewing it because the way we were doing it before worked better for us. I also used a few articles from Newsela Lite throughout the year.

Science

I was nervous about science this year as it was the first year he’d be using a more textbook-like book for a subject (you can read why we did this in the planning post), but it went so, so well! Introductory Physics was written in an instructive, yet conversational way, and the concepts were explained in very understandable language. My son spent a lot of time each week on physics, doing the readings, working through the problems, completing the quizzes, and going through the weekly review guides, but I think it was just the right amount of work for him to understand the ideas as well as prepare him for higher-level science classes.

We also did the five experiments with three other boys in our homeschool group, with one of the moms leading those activities, and though we didn’t often get the results we expected (especially with the truck), they were still able to work through the calculations, see the differences, and discuss why the results were different than their predictions. Overall, I was very pleased with how it went and his progress in physics. Next year we’ll be tackling biology!

I didn’t use as many of the Paul Hewitt videos as I thought I would, but it ended up being fine because the book explains the concepts very well.

He also read For the Love of Physics and part of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (we were not able to finish it during the school year, but he plans to finish it on his own over the summer), both of which he enjoyed.

He also completed a local year-long, one-day-per-week STEM/Aerospace program for homeschoolers and really liked that as well. I had planned to continue him in that program over the next three years, but our state congress changed the funding rules for homeschool enrichment programs (and especially for students in umbrella schools, as we are) in May, so this is up in the air, sadly. They are scrambling to ensure they are compliant with the new rules and are also trying to come up with an option for kids in umbrella schools, but very few details have come out, so I’m not sure what it might look like. Hopefully, if that doesn’t work out, we can find an alternative, as I think it was beneficial for him in so many ways.

Nature Study

We did not end up reading any of the books on the book list for our nature study. I did start reading Land of Little Rain during our Morning Time, but as I mentioned above, I later decided to drop it in favor of Enos Mills’ Wild Life on the Rockies, which is about Colorado.

For nature study in the weekly hikes with our homeschool group, we used the Nature Explorers guide from Sabbath Mood Homeschool. During our Morning Time before the hike, we would watch the video for that day’s lesson, and then talk about our goal (or what we were looking for – usually whatever we learned about in the video) just before the hike. Because we were respecting Nicole’s licensing for using the guide in groups, we did not each have a copy, but I think I might buy my own for next year so I can have access to her book lists for each section, as I have always found her book recommendations so helpful.

Both kids also completed weekly entries in their nature journals, usually during our hikes.

Math

You can read about this year’s math drama in the planning post as well. We began the year with Art of Problem Solving (as recommended on the RightStart website for high school) and soldiered on for six weeks before we knew it really wasn’t for us. Jacobs’ Elementary Algebra was another one on the list, and two of my good friends have used it with their students, so I borrowed a copy from one of them, and it was lightyears better. He has thrived in that program and made excellent progress, so it was a very good switch for us. I’m also very happy with how well RightStart prepared him for Algebra!

Logic

As I mentioned in the planning post, we dropped How to Read a Book last year for time constraints. He did read the essay “Love is a Fallacy” at the end of the year and found it amusing.

Art

We continued reading Janson’s The Story of Painting this year, just in Term 2. It’s a good crash course in art history, and I think supplements picture study well.

For art creation, one afternoon every week, both kids spent about 20 minutes going through the instructional videos of the Bloom and Brush Brushdrawing Course, and that worked extremely well for us!

Picture Study

We had a lovely range of artists this year and even made it to the Denver Art Museum in Term 1 to see the Pissarro exhibition, which included two pieces we learned about. I always love seeing the paintings in person, especially after having studied them. There are just certain things that prints can’t recreate, and being able to see brushstrokes in person is a gift.

Music

Composer Study

We enjoyed all of our composers this year, and they offered a great range of musical styles. I used our Milton Cross for Delius and Mendelssohn, and Heather Suemnicht made a very helpful guide for Scott Joplin, which was a fun option for Term 2.

Hymns and Folksongs

Hymns

Folksongs

The favorite folksong this year was definitely “On Ilkla Moor Baht ‘at!”, and “Awake, My Soul, and With the Sun” was a really great song to begin our days. We also sang a few of these with the residents at the assisted living facility we visit once per month, so it helped to include them in our Morning Time.

Health and Physical Education

For our physical education requirements, we continued our weekly hikes (usually at least 2-3 miles) and will attempt another 14er this summer. He also participated in my daughter’s weekly homeschool PE class when he didn’t have his STEM/Aerospace class.

Life and Work Skills

I opted not to schedule anything specific in this area this year, since he built a remote-controlled plane and a drone in his STEM/Aerospace program. However, he has also taken charge of our garden this spring, which fits in this spot nicely. During our group science days, he also worked on stained glass and a leather Bible cover.

Free Reads

I just looked through the list and realized that we didn’t get to any of the free reads for Year 9. We did finish a few from previous years that we had never gotten around to, but apparently never made it to this list. We’ll keep them in mind for the future!

The post Our Charlotte Mason Homeschool Ninth Grade Recap appeared first on a humble place.

I’m excited to announce that the latest version of my free calendar is now available for download! This simple, minimalist monthly calendar is a great way for homeschool moms to plan the homeschool year, assign tasks for older children, keep attendance records, write out the weekly schedules, and more! I have ours attached to a wall grid in our homeschool space, and I highlight days with different colors to keep track of when our terms begin and end, field trips, days off from school, feast days in the liturgical calendar, birthdays of friends and family, and events with our local homeschool group. Best of all, it’s completely free!

To give you a little background on this particular download, during my son’s first-grade year, our math program, RightStart Level B, introduced calendars in one of the lessons. Of course, he knew what a calendar was before then, but this was more thorough instruction as he memorized the months of the year, how many days were in each month, and learned how to find and read dates. I decided I should probably include a calendar somewhere in our school area so we could cross off school days and he could get used to using one.

I wanted something simple, clean, and useful. Something that would be easy for him to cross off each day, as well as being fairly gender-neutral. I did a few searches online for free printable homeschool planners that included a calendar, or even just a standalone free printable calendar, but I couldn’t find any I liked among the various free resources. So, I decided to make my own and share it with other homeschool families!

This May 2026 to July 2027 printable calendar includes 15 calendar pages and is designed to be printed on 8.5×11—or approximately A4-sized paper, but I’m sure you could make it fit on other sizes. Before the school year begins, I like to print mine on cardstock so I have all the months ready to go as they come.

Each calendar page features the name of the month and year in large, cursive letters and numbers; a small hand-drawn illustration that I tried to match to the season (for those in the Northern Hemisphere); the days of the week; and numbered squares. They do not include holidays, and the starting day of each week is Sunday. These are black-and-white and contain very little detail to save ink and keep things simple. (And it also matches the Printable Homeschool Assignment Charts we use for weekly assignments!)

You can print off a copy to hang in your homeschool area, another one to keep in your own planner, and one for each of your children to use as a weekly planner or assignment sheet, or use it in any way that is most helpful to you. You can even use it for events outside of your homeschool, such as creating a menu plan or keeping track of appointments. Feel free also to color it in if you’d like – my kids have enjoyed doing this each month!

At the end of the year, I make a copy of each month for both of my children and include it in their school archive 3-ring binder. This way, we have a record of everything we did that year, which is extremely helpful for future reference.

I try to have the newest calendar up by the beginning of May every year, and since it is one of my favorites among the free printables I have available, I do plan to offer it well into the future. Enter your email address in the form at the end of the post to get your copy of the free printable homeschool calendar!

(If the form isn’t loading for you, you can also sign up here.)

The post Free Printable 2026-2027 Calendar for Homeschoolers! appeared first on a humble place.

What we need is a habit of taking our minds out of what one is tempted to call “the domestic rag-bag” of perplexities, and giving it a good airing in something which keeps it “growing”… Is there, then, not need for more “Mother Culture”?

“MOTHER CULTURE” PARENTS’ REVIEW – VOLUME 3

You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
I the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
I went to show you how to make it stay,
If that was your idea, against the breeze,
And, if you asked me, even help pretend
To make it root again and grow afresh.
But ’twas no make-believe with you today,
Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clovers.
‘Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasting flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their sight
And too much world at once—could means be found.
The way the nest-full every time we stirred
Stood up to us as to a mother-bird
Whose coming home has been too long deferred,
Made me ask would the mother-bird return
And care for them in such a change of scene
And might out meddling make her more afraid.
That was a thing we could not wait to learn.
We saw the risk we took in doing good,
But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it; so built the screen
You had begun, and gave them back their shade.
All this to prove we cared. Why is there then
No more to tell? We turned to other things.
I haven’t any memory—have you?—
Of ever coming to the place again
To see if the birds lived the first night through,
And so at last to learn to use their wings.

The Exposed Nest by Robert Frost

I know there was a winter somewhere. We heard news reports of many, many feet of snow on the East Coast and flooding in other areas. But none of it made its way here, and so spring has begun, but I don’t think fall, aside from a lack of pretty foliage, ever really ended. There’s still hope that the snowstorms Colorado tends to spit out in April and May will make an appearance. This girl, who grew up with feet of snow in Minnesota all winter long, can dream. Also, our reservoirs and aquifers can dream.

A busy few months! In January, my daughter turned 12 which means I almost have only teens. Just a few years ago, the idea of having one teen was terrifying, and here I am close to having two. Hopefully, we all survive!

At the beginning of February, we held our annual Charlotte Mason Educational Retreat. This was our tenth anniversary, and to celebrate, we added an extra day with a full morning immersion of various subjects. I taught picture study and Shakespeare, which I enjoyed! During the main retreat, I led a workshop on Charlotte Mason in the early years, a topic close to my heart, as I often want to tell moms with younger children to slow down. Please. And so I got a chance to do that, and I enjoyed the discussions and interaction I had with each one of the moms who attended. I love this retreat and am so honored to be part of it.

In March, my son began his counselor training for our annual summer horse camp. I will not be volunteering again this year, as I have the past three years, which is both sad and a relief. I have so many things on my plate that I decided it was in the best interest of my family (and my sanity) to sit this year out, and it was a good decision. Other than that, everything feels status quo, but status quo is so, so busy. There is probably a lot more to write about, but I’ll just leave it at these things.

On to the culturing!

Read (or Finished Reading)

For Me

The Art of Advent: A Painting a Day from Advent to Epiphany by Jane Williams. I enjoyed this one much more than the Lent version!

A Radiant Birth: Advent Readings for a Bright Season edited by Leslie Leyland Fields. I had high hopes for this one, but it wasn’t quite what I hoped for.

Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley. This was our selection for the book discussion at the Charlotte Mason Educational Retreat this year, and it was my second time reading. I usually enjoy books about books, and this is a fun little diversion.

The Keeper of the Bees by Gene Stratton Porter. It’s been years since I read a Gene Stratton Porter book, but this one was chosen for the moms in our homeschool hiking group, so we read it together. It’s not my favorite of the porters, but there were definitely aspects of it (bees! country life! gardens!) that I appreciated.

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 3, Vol. 4, and Vol. 5 by Beth Brower. Really, the audiobooks of this series are just perfect for listening to while doing chores, cooking supper, or driving places by myself. They’re so entertaining!

The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction by Adam S. McHugh. I don’t normally pick a word for the year, as some do, but this year I felt the desire to really focus on my ability to “listen.” I feel like I could use a lot of improvement in this area, so I began listening to this on my morning walks. There was a lot to take away, a lot to ponder, and a lot to put into practice. Some of it was challenging, and I don’t know that I necessarily agree with some aspects (I was reading Bonhoeffer at the same time, and they seem to contradict each other on the idea of dying to self if I interpret correctly), but I really appreciated his overall message. I plan to pick up a copy so I can do some commonplacing.

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi. So many of my friends have absolutely loved this book, and because of this, I don’t think it could have possibly lived up to the very high expectations I had for it. I will say that it was an enjoyable read, and I liked the story, especially the twist at the end.

For School

(I’ll write more about these in my school year-end recap posts in June.)

The Modern Age: From Victoria’s Empire to the End of the USSR by Susan Wise Bauer

Miracle At Philadelphia by Catherine Drinker Bowen

She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith

Currently

I am currently reading (or listening to) Rembrandt is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith; Ruth; When People Are Big and God is Small: Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man; and The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 6. I’m reading Parents and Children with my Charlotte Mason book group. And for my morning liturgy, I’m reading The Poetry of Robert Frost and A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society.

With my son, I’m reading The Two Towers, and with my daughter, I’m reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Reading Challenges

Commonplaced

Some favorite quotes from this quarter’s finished books:

A Radiant Birth: Advent Readings for a Bright Season

“The unmeasured mercies of God are indeed unsettling, dangerous.” (Leslie Leyland Fields)

“It’s not difficult to remember or experience, with our baptized intellects or imaginations, times of new understanding about the almighty. The Bible is full of metaphors that reveal God in images such as a rock, a banner, a mother hen, a lover, and artist. But all too often I have felt “in the dark” about God himself—unable to see him. Even though Jesus came close to us in the incarnation, it all seems so long ago. I long for the immediate, unmistakable knowledge of his presence now, the smell, the sight, the touch of him.” (Luci Shaw)

The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction

“A loud, overcrowded, hyperactive life is the antithesis of the listening life. The hyperactive life is so often trying to prove its worth, make its mark and justify its existence. The listening life waits, quietly and humbly, for God to make his mark on us.”

“In those rare moments when we are able to sit in the quiet, release the noise and the anxieties that drive us into noise, and attune ourselves to God, we are training, preparing ourselves to be listeners in all of life.”

“What I am on a quest for is the heart of a listener. When the Lord asked King Solomon what he wanted, Solomon asked for what is usually translated as an ‘understanding heart’ or ‘discerning mind,’ but in the Hebrew it is literally a ‘listening heart’ (1 Kings 3:9). That is my prayer as well—for a listening heart. The most gifted teacher cannot give you a listening heart. Those who develop a listening heart are those who want to be a particular kind of person. That is why I care less about the what of listening and more about the who. Who do I have to become in order to have the capacity to listen? Who is the person who makes for a great listener?”

“I believe that true listening wars against the entrenched selfishness of the human heart. The listening heart is one that seeks to give, to learn, to welcome, to serve. In a small but real way, listening imitates the self-emptying act of Jesus, who voluntarily released his claims on ruling in order to serve and give his life. The listening heart strives to put away control, all the ways we can manipulate a conversation for our gain. It is able to stop in the middle of a thought and say, ‘You’re right.’ The heart of a listener is one that submits, that begins to live out Paul’s exhortation to ‘be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ’ (Ephesians 5:21). The listening heart seeks to be present, to be focused on something other than itself and to give its attention away.”

“The who of the listening life is not limited to the listener. As strangely commonsensical as this sounds, we must remind ourselves that we are listening to people. Good listening blows away the straw man. People are complex, layered, multifaceted, beautiful, wounded, contradictory, beloved image-bearers of the Creator. They are minds, hearts, souls and bodies, spilling over with dreams, passions, hurts, regrets and fears. As H. Jackson Brown puts it, ‘Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something.’ Philo of Alexandria is believed to have said, ‘Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.’ We ought to tread carefully and gently, and focus on hearing the hearts, not just the words, of people in our lives.”

Made

Food

No major food projects this quarter, but I’m hoping that changes in the second quarter. I’d like to get back into a good Cook Once Eat All Week routine (she also has another book coming out in August that I’m excited for!), but this quarter was just so, so busy that I never got to it. It’s ironic that when I need those extra meals the most, I don’t have the time to make them.

My son has started his garden plans and seeds are in the grow light trays, so I did pull out Everything Worth Preserving to see what I can make this summer based on what he’s planning to grow.

Project 333

At the end of March, I pulled out all of my clothes and did my first spring wardrobe switch since I began Project 333 last September. Before I did my last switch in December, I bought an Ikea Frakta bag (inspired by Simplifying the Satherns) to store all the clothes I’m not using for the current season, and this was also the first time I got to pull everything out. There were several things I had forgotten I owned, which was kind of fun! I put away a few pairs of jeans, some sweaters, two dresses, and some of my winter hiking gear, and pulled out some cropped jeans and short-sleeve shirts. I still have a few pieces from Short Story Box that are polyester, and I’d like to replace them with natural fibers eventually, but they fit really well, so they’re hanging up in the closet for now. I also got another short-sleeve t-shirt (mine was storm blue) and a new dress (I have been so happy with everything I’ve gotten from Quince!). Aside from hiking clothes and lounging clothes, which I don’t count as part of my 30 items, I ended up with:

29 items!

I noticed that I tend to have a lot of dark-colored items because I believed for a long time that lighter colors don’t look good on me. Now that (I think) I have a clearer idea of my color palette, I may try softer shades for the warmer months. I may also aim to upgrade my loungewear so I can wear it out of the house and include it in my 30 items, but I’ll have to budget for that.

I plan my wardrobe switch weeks the same week that I have my closet on the cleaning schedule, so it has worked well to purge everything and then give the closet a thorough cleaning. It’s a nice way to start a new season, and I love that I’m more intentional with my wardrobe now and have more outfits I can wear when going out of the house, but less clothing overall.

Moved

March was definitely the best month in terms of movement this quarter. January started well, but as I got closer to the Charlotte Mason Educational Retreat in February, almost everything else was pushed aside as I prepared for it. The random day of ice skating at the end of January was my daughter’s birthday party. Other than that, I wouldn’t have had anything that week.

After the retreat, we went through several weeks of sickness for various people and animals in my family, and my husband traveled quite a bit, so it was hard to get back into a good routine. In March, though, when everyone was mostly feeling better, I started up the Nourish Move Love beginner workout plan (3 days/week) again and got more walks in, and I feel like I’m back into a good rhythm. I’m at the point where I don’t necessarily look forward to workouts, but I appreciate how I feel afterward and know the benefits are good. It also helps to have friends who are motivated to move as well!

On the Blog

Lenten Art Devotions and Fine Art Prints for Families

26 January 2026

Charlotte Mason Bible Lessons Resources

9 February 2026

Charlotte Mason-Inspired Kindergarten Curriculum (+ free booklist!)

23 February 2026

2026-2027 AmblesideOnline Picture Study Free Printables!

9 March 2026

Charlotte Mason Homeschool Co-op Lite

23 March 2026

New in the Shop

Messiah: Lenten Art Devotions and Art Prints Volume VII

Options Messiah: Lenten Art Devotions and Art Prints Volume VII

Nature Sightings

As the first quarter included the beginning of spring in March, I restarted my lists for the year. Not many wildflowers yet, but definitely quite a few birds!

The post Mother Culturing: First Quarter 2026 appeared first on a humble place.

Being able to homeschool in community has been something I’ve been overwhelmingly thankful for at various stages of our homeschooling journey. Over the years, we’ve been part of a large, very structured and organized Charlotte Mason homeschool co-op with moms teaching specific subjects to all the kids, which I wrote about a few years ago. After that ended, we were on our own for school subjects, but we joined a group that met in parks a few times a month to socialize.

Both groups had their advantages and disadvantages, but in recent years, I discovered they were not the only options! In this post, I’m sharing the “lite” version of a homeschool co-op we’ve been part of for the past year, and how this happy hybrid has been just right for us.

How it Began

This group actually began as a hiking/nature study group between two homeschooling moms who had known each other for several years. They decided to meet weekly for an afternoon hike and nature journaling to hold each other and their kids accountable for this part of a Charlotte Mason education that often gets skipped over.

After they had been meeting for a few months, a chance encounter at a local Charlotte Mason book group the three of us attended led them to invite my kids and me to join their weekly excursion. Admittedly, I was hesitant at first. When I was told it was weekly, that felt like a lot, especially since the most we had met with any of our other homeschool groups was once every other week. I wasn’t sure I could commit to something that often.

On the other hand, however, we were at a kind of turning point in our homeschool community experience. I had spent the previous seven years driving an average of 45 minutes or more down to Colorado Springs to participate in the other groups we were part of. While I love that area of Colorado, and have zero regrets about our time with our friends down there, the time we had to spend in the car just to get to one event was eating up more of our schedule than I liked. There were several women in the group who have become very good friends, and I am so thankful for that. But because it was a more casual group, we never knew which families we would see, and the kids my kids had connected with sometimes didn’t go when we did. Between that, the distance between our homes, and busy schedules, maintaining those friendships for my kids had always been challenging.

At the same time, another family, whom we had grown very close to over the previous two years and had done many things with, was getting ready to move across the country, so we would be losing an enormous part of our community when they left. I was honestly feeling a little panicked about my kids’ (and my own!) social life as it felt like it would be minimal or non-existent once their moving truck left the state.

So, I swallowed my apprehensions and said we’d join this new group the following week. I really wasn’t sure what to expect, as I didn’t know the other moms very well and hadn’t met any of the kids. But honestly, I felt a little desperate to find more of a local community and thought this might be it, as their invitation came just as I was praying for this very thing.

And it really was an answer to prayer. We joined them at the end of August 2024 and have been meeting with them almost weekly ever since. At first, we continued with just the weekly hiking group, but have slowly been adding more activities together (and a few more families!) along the way, until it has become something of a hybrid between a full co-op and a more casual social group.

As I’ve had experience with both, this really has been the happy medium for me that is just right for our family. I don’t have the extra work (which, at times, felt like a lot) that comes with being part of a larger, more structured co-op, but we also share several subjects and other activities with some of the families in our group, so our kids have those common experiences.

Charlotte Mason Homeschool Co-op Lite

Because I’m a list-maker, I’m going to lay out the various elements of our group and how we organize and structure the things we do together. It is really very simple, and I think that’s why it works so well for us!

Weekly Hikes

The weekly hike is the heart of our group and, as I wrote above, how it all started. This, along with coming to the hikes at least a few times per month and doing nature journals during the hikes, are also the “requirements” the families who have come together to form this group have agreed to commit to.

We meet at 1:30 at a local trail or park, review our nature study lesson and goal for the week (more on that below), then hike or walk halfway through the trail (sometimes all the way) before we stop to make an entry in nature journals (the moms sometimes update their lists) for around 15 minutes. Then we continue on the hike, or return the way we came.

One of the amazing (and organized!) moms in our group created and maintains a spreadsheet for us with a row for each week of the year. She has a column for:

• the date
• the location/meeting place with a link to a Google map of that location, usually the parking lot where the trail begins
• the meeting time – this is usually the same every week, but on the weeks we meet at our assisted living facility (more on that below), we meet later for the hike, and in the summer, we meet earlier
• the goal – this comes from the Sabbath Mood Homeschool Nature Study Curriculum (we’ve gone through Level 1, Rotation A this year, and it has worked very well for us! Nicole has information about licensing in a group setting on her FAQ page)
• the lesson – this also comes from the Sabbath Mood Homeschool Nature Study Curriculum and includes a link to the video for that week’s lesson that the families watch at home before we meet for our hike (we do ours during Morning Time the day we go on our hike)
• the trail – this is a link to the specific trail we’ll be doing that week on AllTrails
• notes – for any additional information, for instance, if the location isn’t clear or if it’s a longer hike, suggestions for packing a lunch or bringing swimming gear

At least two of the families have met consistently nearly every week in this way for almost two years now. There are a few exceptions:

• When our hiking day happens five times in a month, we use the last week for a narration/game day. Usually, the organized mom in charge of the spreadsheet reserves a room at a local library, the kids bring written narrations from home, and read them to each other before spending the rest of the time playing board games together.
• We don’t normally balk at inclement weather, but there have been a few times when it’s been bitterly cold (I think the last time we did this, it was around 3℉ in the afternoon). We usually make a last-minute decision on those days and either don’t meet or gather at one of our homes for an afternoon of play.
• When most of the families can’t come due to unexpected events or illness, the remaining families decide whether they want to still meet. When life is particularly busy, it has been nice to mutually decide to take a break that week (we actually just did this last week).

For our hike locations, we try to stick to a few favorites each month so we can see how they change throughout the year. However, we will also throw in other locations at random times, especially during certain times of the year, like summer, when we can drive further away from home and do longer hikes, and autumn, when specific locations have good fall foliage.

We keep a steady pace on hikes and generally only stop to do our nature journals, so we are usually able to return to the parking lot in a decent amount of time, even on longer hikes. When we’re done at the park, nearly every week, a few of the families will visit a local ice cream parlor together (we have specific ice cream places for specific hikes), and sometimes make our way to another park where the moms sit (or walk) and chat and the kids play (this is especially nice in the summer!) for a little longer.

Subjects

While the only thing we actually do together on a weekly basis is the hike, and we don’t all use the same curriculum (we currently have a mix of A Delectable Education and AmblesideOnline), a few of the families have also chosen to line up some of our subjects. So while we don’t teach these things when we’re together, our kids are doing the same Shakespeare play, Plutarch life, hymns, and folksongs at home. We also have some overlap with our composer and artist studies, loosely based on the AmblesideOnline rotation.

To plan for this, last summer, those of us interested in participating in this aspect of the group agreed on three plays and three lives to do throughout the school year. One of the moms then chose six hymns and six folksongs (two for each term), also from the AO rotation. This schedule is open to any family that wants to use it, but it’s not required to be part of our hiking group. It’s just a fun way for our kids to do school “together,” and we sometimes find the girls singing their folksongs while we hike (On Ilkla Moor Baht ‘at has been a favorite this year).

Group Science/Handicrafts

Some of the families meet approximately once per month throughout the year for kids from various forms to do their science experiments together. The younger students are following the Sabbath Mood Homeschool Form 2 and Form 3/4 science guides at home, so those moms decided which specific science subjects they wanted their kids to do over the year. These guides generally have quite a few experiments scheduled, so they don’t do all of them together, but combine as many as they can.

For our high schoolers, most of the students participating in the group science days are doing the Novare Introductory Physics Program, which includes five experiments over the course of the year. When we meet, they do these together, guided by another one of our moms who takes copious notes and does a fantastic job of leading them through the experiments. This has been a huge benefit for us as these experiments are much better done in a group setting.

We usually meet fairly early in the morning on these days at the home of one of the families (who also generously takes coffee orders via text as we all make our way there!), with each form having a designated spot and a teacher/mom in the house to complete their experiments. When experiments are done, or for younger kids or those without an experiment scheduled that day, the grandmother of the hosting family usually has a handicraft activity planned. We’ve done things like stained-glass creations and leatherwork, and this has been a huge hit with the kids!

Assisted Living Facility

A few of the families began this tradition last year after we listened to The New Mason Jar Podcast episode that outlined this idea. One day per month, before our hike, we spend about an hour at a local assisted living facility visiting the residents. The kids recite Bible passages and poetry, then we sing folksongs and hymns together. After this, we pass out art prints to the residents, and the kids and moms sit with them while they all talk about the piece together. Originally, we were going to do a more traditional picture study session, but because this is a memory care facility, we’ve found it’s more enjoyable to just look at the art together. There have been a few occasions when we’ve had some time to ask the residents more questions about themselves after we look at the art together, and we’d like to do that more often.

Celebrations

An idea I brought over from our old groups was a time of celebration for our families together. We do this twice per year, near Christmas break, and then again when our school year is done, at the home of one of the families. The event includes food, recitations of the pieces the students learned in the previous term, a performance of a scene from our Shakespeare play, displays of handicrafts, and just having fun!

Other Activities

We are fortunate in that there are quite a few extra-curricular offerings for homeschoolers in our area, and we have intentionally planned for our kids to participate in some of them together. These include a once-per-week, hour-long homeschool PE program; a once-per-week, full-day STEM/Aerospace program; a speech and debate program that meets throughout the month and offers competitions year-round; and local sports programs.

And very randomly, last summer, several of us, along with some of our kids, also drove west in the wee hours of the morning to hike Mount Sherman, one of Colorado’s peaks over 14,000 feet in elevation. It was an awesome experience, and we plan to repeat it this summer at a different location!

Things for Moms

Because Charlotte Mason suggested that, “If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for their children…, we should have happier households,” we have taken her advice to “Let the mother go out to play!”

We started these traditions by forming our own little book group. Each mom takes a turn picking out three book titles; then the group chooses one, and we spend a few months reading that book together. Spontaneous discussions come up during hikes, and we have even planned a moms’ night out where we watched the movie version of the book after we had all read it.

We also visit local large, semi-annual book sales in our area. This actually includes our extended Charlotte Mason homeschooling family network, and we have been known to call across the book-sale room to each other when we find a book we know the other will need for a specific year or that they’ve been looking for. I used to really not enjoy going to book sales on my own, but this has become so much more enjoyable with friends!

The trips to the book sales could also fall under the category of moms’ nights out, as we usually get a meal before or after (sometimes both) the visit to the sale, but we also periodically do this outside of book sales as well. Usually, we get dinner together, go for a walk, get ice cream or coffee, and/or visit a bookstore afterward (of course).

And that is our happy hybrid homeschool group as it stands! We’ve bounced around ideas for other things to share, like book discussions for the kids, but for now, this system is just about right.

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