CHARLOTTE MASON FOR ALL

Welcome back friend! We’re so excited to be talking about one of our favorite topics: LIVING BOOKS and all the living ideas that emanate from them.

Join Mariana as she chats with Nicole Cottrell, founder and curator of Stories of Color: a  community-led book recommendation source for diverse, multicultural living books.

SHOW NOTES:

"1. Children are born persons." ~Charlotte Mason, Volume 6

"19. Therefore, children should be taught, as they become mature enough to understand such teaching, that the chief responsibility which rests on them as persons is the acceptance or rejection of ideas. To help them in this choice we give them principles of conduct, and a wide range of the knowledge fitted to them. These principles should save children from some of the loose thinking and heedless action which cause most of us to live at a lower level than we need." ~Charlotte Mason, Volume 6

Resources Mentioned

“For the Children’s Sake“ by Susan Schaeffer MaCaulay

The Parallel Narrative

Heritage Mom Blog

Charlotte Mason City Living

Where to find Nicole

Stories of Color 

@storiesofcolor_

@nicolecottrell_

Hey Friend! Sorry we’ve been a little MIA. ☺️⁣

Join Min as she chats with Sarah Kim, one of the founders of Biblioguides - a brand new, online, living book search platform that has numerous features "to those who believe what you read is just as important as reading itself... Biblioguides gives you the resources and tools to discover the right book for the right person at the right moment."

SHOW NOTES: 

"A good definition of love is sustained, compassionate attention." -- John Muir Laws

"Knowledge is not instruction, it is not information, it is not scholarship, it is not a well stored memory." (What is Knowledge?, by Mary Hardcastle, Parents' Review)

“Knowledge is not a store but, rather, a state that a person remains within or drops out of.” (What is Knowledge?, by Mary Hardcastle, Parents' Review)

"Life in a state of knowledge – is it to be a pleasant saunter? You know enough about life and relationships to deny that. No one can enter the state of knowledge or advance an inch without two things, strenuous effort and reverence. When these two things are present there is joy and delight. I think the state of knowing is man in his wholeness wholly living." (What is Knowledge?, by Mary Hardcastle, Parents' Review)

The CMEC kindly made available this Parents' Review article, click here to access it.

Resources Mentioned

Biblioguides

Life-giving Motherhood

Join Min Hwang as she chats with her fellow Children's Sunday School teacher, Temple Ary.

Temple is a retired NYC elementary school teacher, who heard about Charlotte Mason's philosophy and methods for the first time through Min when she brought it to Pascack Bible Church.

We hope you are encouraged to see that this paradigm of children is truly for all children in every setting, for all children are born persons, made in God's image.

Resources mentioned:

Pascack Bible Church: www.pascackbible.org

A Delectable Education: www.adelectableeducation.com

Charlotte Mason Poetry: www.charlottemasonpoetry.org

It is an absolute pleasure to introduce you to one of the gems at Elements Church where Erika serves as Children’s Ministry Director: Damion Sanders.

Damion is one of the leaders at Elements, serving in just about every ministry they have. In particular, Dame is part of the worship team, in which he worships through song and rap. He preaches periodically and is also a Sunday School teacher.  Although Elements is not a big church, they always say they’re small but mighty, and Dame is a huge part of that “mighty” factor.

We pray you’re encouraged as you hear Damion’s story of how a Charlotte Mason education has changed his entire way of thinking as both father and Sunday School teacher.

Join Erika and Mariana in a delightful conversation on how Erika started implementing CM's method in her own Sunday School.

Erika shares about how her teachers came on board and how the children in her church have enjoyed their Sunday School lessons, including narration, handicrafts and much more.

We hope you'll be encouraged by Erika's story!

Resources Mentioned

Gospel Vision For Children Conference at Pascack Bible Church

A Delectable Education

Charlotte Mason Poetry

ESV Illuminated Bible

A Charlotte Mason Sunday School YEAR 1 curriculum on CharlotteMasonForAll.com is coming soon!

Join our own Min Hwang as she shares the "what" and "how" of her church's Children's Sunday School hour. In addition, she answers a few of the frequently asked questions that have been posed to her over the last several years.

Resources mentioned:

Gospel Vision For Children Conference at Pascack Bible Church, NJ

A Delectable Education

Charlotte Mason Poetry

A Charlotte Mason Sunday School YEAR 1 curriculum on CharlotteMasonForAll.com is coming soon!

Welcome back, dear sisters!

We're so happy to be with you for Season 2 of the Charlotte Mason for All Podcast! And we're super excited to introduce our new co-cost, LaShawne Thomas, a former Navy Pediatrician turned Navy wife and full-time home-educator.

LaShawne truly loves spreading the feast of ideas found in the Charlotte Mason method within her home and with other families as the philosophy touches not only the “three R’s” (reading, writing & arithmetic), but all of life. We're blessed to have her share her experience and wisdom with us at CMFA!

Min, Erika, and Mariana also give some updates on their latest projects, including:

We're honored to be journeying with you again for another new season! Our Father is so good and faithful!

For the King and His kids,

Erika, Min, LaShawne, & Mariana

RESOURCES:

CharlotteMasonForAll.com

Life-giving Motherhood

A Delectable Education

Charlotte Mason Soiree

Art of Color Study

Welcome to our last episode in this first set of CM Mamas From Around the World!

Min had the honor of chatting it up with Amanda Coleman, a Charlotte Mason homeschool mom of 5 beautiful children, and together with her creative husband, a missionary to Ethiopia. As Amanda shares the beauties and challenges of learning and living in their home away from home, may your heart be encouraged to know our God is always at work, raising up a generation after His own heart.

WHERE TO FIND AMANDA:

Subscribe to their prayer newsletter by emailing [email protected].

Find their new website at BlackBlessings.com, designed to educate, inspire, and mobilize Black Americans for cross-cultural missions. 

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Home Education, Vol. 1 

Amber Johnston's blog and Amazing Africa pack: HeritagemMom.com

Language Learning resource that I referenced: CherrydalePress.com

ADelectableEducation.com  

A Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola

For the Children's Sake: Foundations of Education for Home and School, by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay

Amblesideonline.com

SimplyCharlotteMason.com and Charlotte Mason Together Retreat

Life-GivingMotherhood.com

Prayer in the Night, by Tish Harrison Warren

Welcome back to our Charlotte Mason mamas around the globe series!

Today Erika gets to interview a very good friend of ours all the way from the UK! Alberta Stevens is a proud boy mom (or mum, as she would say it), who beautifully implements the Charlotte Mason philosophy in her multicultural home in London. Originally from Sierra Leone, she’s passionate about spreading a life-giving and culturally diverse feast to all families through the wonderful resources she creates, as well through her podcast, "Homegrown Sunshine." She is a kindred spirit who inspires us with her work for the Lord. We are honored to have her share with us today.

WHERE TO FIND ALBERTA STEVENS

Instagram @homegrown.sonshine

Website: https://homegrownsonshine.co.uk

Podcast: Homegrown Sunshine (wherever you get your podcasts)

QUOTES

"In my home, there's 3 cultures, really.  It's British, it's Sierra Leonean, but it's predominantly Christian. That is the biggest part of my identity and Charlotte Mason gives me the space, the tools, the words and, also, the 'how to' to make those things come together and make a life out of it."

PRINCIPLES

1. Children are born persons.

17. The way of the will: Children should be taught, (a) to distinguish between 'I want' and 'I will.' (b) That the way to will effectively is to turn our thoughts from that which we desire but do not will. (c) That the best way to turn our thoughts is to think of or do some quite different thing, entertaining or interesting. (d) That after a little rest in this way, the will returns to its work with new vigour. (This adjunct of the will is familiar to us as diversion, whose office it is to ease us for a time from will effort, that we may 'will' again with added power. The use of suggestion as an aid to the will is to be deprecated, as tending to stultify and stereotype character, It would seem that spontaneity is a condition of development, and that human nature needs the discipline of failure as well as of success.)

PNEU MOTTE: I am, I can, I ought, I will.

SCRIPTURES

"For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do." Romans 7:15

"For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." 2 Timothy 1:7

"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:37-39

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Meet our first “Charlotte Mason Mama Around the Globe,” Angelique Knaup!

Angelique is a globe-trotting wife and mother of three, currently living in her homeland of Zimbabwe. Her two older children have already graduated from their Charlotte Mason homeschool. She is homeschooling her youngest in high school. Join Mariana as we get a peek into God’s call upon Anglelique’s colorful, rich life of “spreading the feast” with her community in Zimbabwe.

FIND ANGELIQUE on Instagram @angeli.knaup 

Resources mentioned:

Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola

For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer MaCaulay

Ambleside Online Helping Hand

Mind’s More Awake by Anne White

Brandy Vencel’s Start Here: A Journey Through Charlotte Mason’s 20 Principles

Quotes:

Principle 4: These principles are limited by the respect due to the personality of children, which must not be encroached upon whether by the direct use of fear or love, suggestion or influence, or by undue play upon any one natural desire. 

Principle 12: "Education is the Science of Relations"; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books, for we know that our business is not to teach him all about anything, but to help him to make valid as many as may be of— "Those first-born affinities "That fit our new existence to existing things." 

In Vol. 6 p. 129, Charlotte wrote that, “the one achievement possible and necessary for every man is character; and character is as finely wrought metal beaten into shape and beauty by the repeated and accustomed action of will. We who teach should make it clear to ourselves that our aim in education is less conduct than character; conduct may be arrived at, as we have seen, by indirect routes, but it is of value to the world only as it has its source in character.”

When writing about the will, Charlotte frequently refers to Joshua 24:15 '... choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ She applies it to the thoughts that we allow in, thoughts that will either serve ourselves, the gods of this earth or the Lord!

“There are two services open to us all, the service of God, (including that of man) and the service of self. If our aim is just to get on, 'to do ourselves well,' to get all possible ease, luxury and pleasure out of our lives, we are serving self and for the service of self no act of will is required. Our appetites and desires are always at hand to spur us into the necessary exertions. But if we serve God and our neighbour, we have to be always on the watch to choose between the ideas that present themselves.” Vol. 6 p. 135

”We owe it to (the children) to initiate an immense number of interests. Thou hast set my feet in a large room; should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking––the strain would be too great–– but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest.” Vol. 3 p. 170