(A portion of the plenary speech at the Charlotte Mason Institute’s Annual Conference, June 20, 2015) Like Stella, I remember puzzling over Scripture. Once I read the parable of the sheep and the goats and suffered great anxiety about which of them I was; I also remember wondering whether I was giving someone In need a cup of water,… Read More Vision for Children, Sixth Installment
(A portion of the plenary speech at the Charlotte Mason Institute’s international conference, June 20, 2015) When I read Mason’s thoughts on a child’s sensitivity to the Bible, it reminds me of a passage from Gentian Hill by Elizabeth Goudge, one of the favorite stories of my whole life, of 12-year-old Stella’s inner thoughts during her adoptive family’s nightly… Read More Vision for Children, Fifth Installment
(A portion of the plenary speech given at the Charlotte Mason Institute, June 20, 2015) One powerful example of this I recall is the memory I have of lying on the carpet in our living room, staring at the sun streaks across the floor, listening intently to a Scottish lady reading a story on the radio. I think I… Read More Vision for Children, Fourth Installment
(This is a portion of the closing plenary lecture at the Charlotte Mason Institute, June 20, 2015) Of all my childhood memories, many involve reading. One is lying in my trundle bed, probably I was two or three, listening to my mother read Mother Goose. I still remember those rhymes perfectly, can hear her voice rhythm in Hickory Dickory… Read More Vision for Children, Third Installment
{Read the first installment here} It is imperative, Mason knew, for children to be nourished by story – nourished in mind and heart. Only living stories satisfy their appetite for life, for living, and their books must be living, to feed the soul. This feeding is our duty, she says, : “Here a little, there a little – whence… Read More Vision for Children, Second Installment
Last week I had the joy of returning to the Charlotte Mason Institutes national conference. This annual event is something we look forward to all year long; it is a highlight of our year, a time of refreshment, friendship building, and learning. This year, I had the great honor of being asked to address the 300 attendees on the… Read More Vision for Children, First Installment
If you can imagine this, when I was a child, a little Golden book cost $0.25. My grandmother used to slip a quarter into her letters to our family for me, and it was a treat to go to the local “dime store”(also a phenomenon of past days) to buy a new book. Along with Christmas and… Read More A Library of Their Own
Over the past few weeks I’ve been helping a friend choose books for a comprehensive science curriculum she is writing, a science curriculum depending almost entirely on living books for elementary through middle school. She had been checking out books to preview during her Living Books Library visits and then scouring the internet and public… Read More What’s in a “Living Book,” or, Why We Collect the Books that We Do
If you have read my opinion about children’s literature very often, you know it is unapologetically emphatic in preferring old books over those written in the last 50 years. I subject “new” books to more stringent scrutiny and few meet my standards. For the record, I hold older books to the same standards, but many, many more of them… Read More Old Things Become New
Last January, just 4 weeks before Jonah made his arrival, mom and I had the privilege of being interviewed by Carroll and Andy Smith of the Charlotte Mason Institute. CMI will be publishing this video interview in several installments over the coming months, and here is a link to view the first portion. The interview… Read More CMI Interview with Liz and Emily