CPQ January Newsletter
I had the privilege this month of spending a few days with a friend. She moved out of state a few years ago, which was a rough blow to our family. But luckily, she has rental property here, and her family comes back from time to time to manage it. She asked me if I’d like to help her clean up an apartment so we could chat more. So, there we were, scraping a stove that probably hadn’t been cleaned in ten years (why are people gross?), laughing, chatting, and bonding over messes.
We started talking about motherhood. Our oldests are both now adults. From this place, we can now see things. We see mistakes we’ve made. We see how everything is ok despite those mistakes. Yet we found ourselves discussing our mothering with some heaviness, worried that the mistakes we’d inevitably make in the future may not turn out okay. We talked about trusting God from this middle place of seeing, yet not seeing the whole, and volleyed back and forth truths that we know to be true—yet here we were, needing to hear them again.
Finally, my friend said, “You are the mom, mistakes and all, that your kids need.” And that message, though I’ve heard it many times before and know it to be true, hit me afresh, and I was at peace.
It reminded me of Pestalozzi’s quote Charlotte Mason puts in the beginning pages of Home Education, “The mother is qualified, and qualified by the Creator Himself…”
This qualification includes the mistakes I may make and those you may make along the way. Maybe, no matter where we are in our mothering, we never grow tired of needing to hear this.
-Mariah
On The CPQ Blog
A Tale of Two Schedules {or for the love of individualized learning}
Crafting Your Own Timetable {or on playing with Post-its}
Hate to Love Them, or Love to Hate Them? {making a timetable that works for the teacher, too}
Behind the Scenes
Fortitude has shipped!
Upper Years is in layout
Personhood articles are heading to copyedit
Goodness main article writers have been contacted
Did you know you can be a part of CPQ? Visit our website to find out how to submit photography, writing, and content pieces from your kiddos.
Snapshot Giveaway!
As our Fortitude issue begins landing in mailboxes next month, let’s have some fun! Snap a picture of your CPQ happy mail, share it on Instagram, and don’t forget to tag us. At the end of the month, we’ll pick a lucky winner to receive a free back issue out of our shop!
We traditionally have had four main articles in our publication, but we will have six for this one. This is an important time, for us and our children, and it calls for more encouragement.
In this quarterly, we will be talking about:
the breadth and balance of the upper years
little things done faithfully
cultivating atmosphere in the upper years
principles for the upper years
expectations, testing, and what really matters
a CM education and STEM
All of our regular columns will be in there, too. This will be a jam-packed issue to encourage you as you get closer to that finish line—whether it’s your first or your last you’re graduating.
Subscribe to CPQ now through the end of February, and our Upper Years issue will be your first happy mail from Common Place Quarterly!
Are you new to Common Place Quarterly?
Welcome to Common Place Quarterly! CPQ exists to encourage homeschool families in the practical application of the Charlotte Mason method by creating a place outside of the internet where timeless ideas regarding Mason’s principles can be shared. We offer a quiet growing place for parents in a digitally saturated world.
Each quarterly’s Christ-centered and parent-focused content is gathered to encourage readers as they strive to get from here to there, that “(they) may know what (they) are about and may come thoroughly furnished to (their) work.” (V.1, p.3)
As we study Charlotte Mason’s methodology for content inspiration, we aim to look beyond the person she was and the time in which she lived, intentionally striving to bring her philosophy forward into the 21st century.
We’re glad you’re here!
Get To Know The Editors
What’s Cara…
Reading: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Farewell to Manzanar, Always on My Mind by Beth Moran
Listening to: Voxer messages from the CPQ ladies
Eating: hamburger soup and Time Market baguettes
Watching: Carter and a whole lot of kids’ gymnastics and high school soccer
Creating: backyard design plans that my daughter just agreed will probably never come to be
Drinking: coffee!
Learning: consistently keeping short lessons allows for more learning than I thought possible
What’s Mariah…
Reading: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Twain, When You Are Old: Early Poems and Fairy Tales by Yeats, and Mattimeo (Redwall #3) to the boys
Creating: a plate rack on my wall and adding a painted archway to my stair landing in the color: Italian clay.
Listening to: songs I’m putting into a playlist for my friend as she goes through cancer treatment
Eating: homemade chicken tortilla soup
Watching: Mary Shelley: The Life That Inspired Frankenstein with my daughter
Learning: all good things are simple, yet nothing good is, at all, all that simple. I’m unsure how that works, but I’m learning it just the same.
Drinking: green tea
Thinking about: how I agreed to speak next month at a women’s retreat. I’m sure it’ll be fine…
What’s Sarah…
Reading: About Grace by Anthony Doerr and A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park
Listening to: Lydia Laird on repeat
Creating: more organized to-do lists in my pretty new planner and my first ever quilted wall-hanging
Worried about: February. It’s the longest, shortest month when I start to wonder if I should enroll my kids in school because we’ll never learn all the things we need to learn in time. In time for what? I don’t know. But I’m worried about it all the same.
Eating: homemade baba ghanoush and pita bread
Watching: Planet Earth 3 and Much Ado About Nothing
Learning: I can’t preread my older student’s work too far in advance because my memory just isn’t what it used to be…
Drinking: hot apple cider with Jägermeister