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One of the first Charlotte Mason philosophies that I learned about was the idea of living books. A living book is generally defined as a book which tells a heartfelt story about a particular topic, often told from first-hand experience or from dedicated research and a genuine love for the topic. It could be a biography, or a fictional story based in a particular place or time period, or a non-fiction book that tells the author’s experiences and findings. Charlotte Mason emphasised the importance of using living books to teach your child, rather than books co-authored by multiple authors that...

When sitting in a mainstream school classroom, children are used to the teacher standing upfront and being centre-stage. The teacher presents the lesson, explains all the information they need to know, re-explains it in different ways if children don't understand and needs to make sure that they keep the children's attention. So they need to be engaging and sometimes even entertaining!  Even in a homeschool setting, the parent often feels like they need to play centre-stage and everything the child learns needs to be filtered through the parent and presented in some easy-to-understand package.  Charlotte Mason disagreed with this view. She felt...

                  In most schools, children are required to spend an hour on average paying attention to a lesson focused on one subject area. At a certain point, most children start getting fidgety or bored, or their attention wanders off simply because the lesson is too long. Charlotte Mason believed that children should only be required to give focused attention to one subject for a short period of time, before taking a break or moving on to a different subject altogether.  For 6-year olds this meant lessons were generally no more than 15 minutes long. As the child got older...

Charlotte Mason would often refer to her curriculum as a "feast". She would say that a child's mind should "feed on ideas". All of this conjures up images of serving your child a massive appetising banquet of a variety of many different and delicious foods and allowing your child to taste, test and try any or all of them.  When we apply this to a home education or school curriculum, the aim is to not limit what your child is exposed to. Expose them to a wide variety of subjects. Learning is not just about the three R's: Reading, Writing and 'Rithmetic. Children are fascinated by...

When doing any kind of schoolwork or activity, children can sometimes be so focused on trying to complete 20 questions or 10 sums or write a long enough essay, that they are focused more on the quantity of work they are doing, than putting in the effort to give the best quality work. Charlotte Mason introduced the concept of "perfect execution", meaning work towards perfection, always giving your best effort. She recommended that a time limit be set on children's work and the child should work at a slow enough pace during that time period to deliver something at the...