CHARLOTTE MASON HOMESCHOOLING YOUR WAY
What does “Charlotte Mason Homeschooling” mean? To me, it means freedom. It means beauty. It means life-giving ideas. It means simplicity. It means nurturing all that is good in life. And most of all, it means flexibility. You see, at its core, the Charlotte Mason method is adaptable.
You, like me, are drawn to this way of educating for some reason, some purpose. Charlotte speaks to you. But why are Charlotte’s ideas so stirring, so validating? Why do they speak to you at your core? I believe it’s because Charlotte Mason’s Principles give us hope. She whispers life-giving ideas and you feel yourself responding:
“Yes, THIS is what true education IS, what it CAN be, what it OUGHT to be. I WILL embrace this.”
A METHOD THAT FITS
And you CAN embrace it! Anyone can! Because educating the Charlotte Mason way is a method and A METHOD FITS YOU. It fits your family. You can mold it and shape it to work for you and your children. YOU CAN DO IT YOUR WAY.
A method is based on certain principles. It isn’t just a set of rigid rules telling how to do this or how to do that. Instead, a method’s principles tell us the WHY behind it. A method is flexible and adaptable to each individual person. But A SYSTEM ONLY HAS RULES with no principles behind them. Or if a system does have principles, they are at odds with the humanity and dignity of a person. Once you grasp the principles involved in Charlotte’s method, you can witness the organic process of how a human being grows, unfolds, and learns.
“The educator has to deal with a self-acting, self-developing being, and his business is to guide, and assist in . . . the preparation of the child to take his place in the world at his best, with every capacity for good that is in him developed into a power.”
Charlotte Mason, Home Education
PRINCIPLES TO GUIDE YOU
Charlotte’s principles guide you and allow you to find the beauty in education that has always been there. And they SIMPLIFY the process for you. They remind you of what is truly important. They allow you to let go of preconceived notions or ideas that don’t work for you. And once known, they become a natural guide in the atmosphere of your daily life:
“A few broad essential principles cover a whole field, and these, once fully laid hold of, it is as easy and natural to act upon them as it is to act upon our knowledge of such facts as that fire burns and water flows.”
Charlotte Mason, Home Education
Read through Charlotte’s principles yourself in my free study guide:
Finding Your Way with Charlotte Mason’s 20 Principles
A METHOD MUST EVOLVE
Charlotte lived more than 100 years ago and any method, even the Charlotte Mason method, must continue to evolve and grow to fit 21st-century families. We each bring modern ideas, modern problems, and modern technology to this method and it must adapt. It can adapt. We adapt it to us.
You can create a modern Charlotte Mason education for your family. An education that serves you is worth having. A system that enslaves you is not. Don’t get stuck on the “What” or the “How.” Instead, embrace the “WHY.” The principles are why you’re here. The Why is what attracted you. The beauty, the noble ideas, the freedom, the room to breathe, the simplicity, that is what speaks to you. The Charlotte Mason method is something worth embracing.
YOU CAN CREATE THE HOMESCHOOL YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED
Keep the principles in mind and you can’t go wrong. You will build an education for your children that is distinctly Charlotte Mason Your Way. You can do it.
I am here to help you make the Charlotte Mason method work for you. I will help you implement Charlotte’s method in a way that is personally meaningful for you and your family. I want to help you apply Charlotte Mason‘s principles in a way that is consistent with your values.
CREATE A CUSTOM CHARLOTTE MASON CURRICULUM FOR YOUR FAMILY
You can create your own custom curriculum easily by using the information in a Charlotte Mason Your Way Curriculum Form Guide:
Then you can choose your books with the Living Books and Resources pages:
And you’ve got a one-of-a-kind curriculum tailor-made for your family!
My goal in creating A Charlotte Mason Plenary is to help you learn how to adapt Charlotte’s method to your family. I will be working hard to do just that by creating helpful articles, resources, videos, and guides for you as well as offering personal consultations. Good things are in store for the future!
Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss any updates! And come chat with me and the rest of The Plenary Community on Facebook! See you there!
This is precisely why I’m so worried about the new laws they’re trying to implement in France. They want to make school mandatory starting at age 3 and if you homeschool, you have to pass out of each level of education during the yearly inspection. They’ve created a list of skills and knowledge they expect at each age group and if they child has not attained those skills, they can be forced back to school. It is sickening how they want to box in kids. And at such a young age. Already, I’ve had to adapt Charlotte Mason to start grammar in Form I, against my better judgement, just to keep the inspectors off my back. But now they want me to basically follow their program (which is pretty much contrary to every Charlotte Mason principle).
And I love that you are helping others realize that you can still be CM without following a specific plan. It’s more a state of mind than an actual step-by-step program.
April, thank you for your comment! I must agree with you! I’m not sure what state you are in, as the homeschool laws are different for every state, but it is such a shame that you have to check boxes for the state when all your child really needs is the freedom to grow and learn and be her own person. I’m so glad you are able to give her that! A lot of CM moms find ways to “check the boxes” within the CM method. After all, the CM method is so beautifully adaptable that a child is learning constantly! You just have to think outside the box sometimes! Feel free to ask how other moms address this issue in The Plenary Facebook Group too! I’m sure you’ll get some good answers! Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CMplenary
Thank you, this so true. Reading through the first album and simultaneously I have enrolled my daughter into a home charter school that allows her to be taught at home by me and also have a certified teacher check in with us every month. Reading through the state standards there is no why just outcomes and that alone has made me feel so sick to my stomach. I don’t know if it’s because of reading Charlotte Mason or not but a child should not be a checklist of tasks to be completed and mastered especially through artificial gains. I understand that they would like to foster this love of learning and reading and comprehension but the truth is that these things are accomplished through much reading and reading a variety of different things not just by saying that a child must learn how to do this or that without saying why and how. There are no examples on how to do this because they don’t know how to do this and they have no way of knowing how other countries can foster such things into their own children, but a child going to school and bombarded with work that he has no use for and then going home and spending his time in freedom and not using what he has learned will obvious tire and end up hating school. I don’t want that for my children. What I find most deplorable is that homeschoolers using these charter schools must adhere to these standards and teach them like they are checking off tasks. Why should a homeschooler who has the time and room to foster and grow each child individually be expected to use tactics meant for the classroom. It’s just disgusting that we don’t even have the room to focus on the individual student as they are without having to say well the child is not doing this so therefore they are not meeting the standard when the standard has no long range outcome to be sought. Is education supposed to be these tall mountains to climb with nothing to accomplish but getting there and then going back down? Supposed experts and teachers were consulted but I’m not sure what they were thinking and obviously such things are not meant to work on a small scale like one would at home. Homeschooled children have always performed better so if it’s not broke, not sure what there is to be fixed or why charter schools that have parents teaching have to conform to these “Standards” (as if us homeschooling parents have none) as a guide when we in depth know our children, know what their lives look like and therefore know how to implement teaching they can actually use everyday.
They are wanting to get your children into the public School system earlier, and they are wanting all children to attend. if they were so interested in the “quality” of the education they are providing then they would not be passing children onto fourth, nineth, even graduation that cannot read and do simple math. The reason they want your children in the public school system is too indoctrinated them and turn them against you and to prevent freethinkers that they will not be able to control in the future.