CPQ July Newsletter
Grand Conversation highlights and more!
While we won’t start lessons for another month, and most of my prepping is done, I’m shifting to a different type of planning. I will take some time to write out some prayers and consider how I can draw near. I also reread this article every summer. Reflecting on these things has become part of my summer rhythm, and it is always fruitful.
How will I respond when my plans hit the fan? Will I bend beneath the weight of His wind, or will I plant myself firmly and resist? How will I deal with heart issues, including my own, when they arise? Am I ready to set aside the books and tend to the relationships? Will I have the discernment to know when we need to reset with a kitchen dance party? Or when I need to pull back on my talking and let the silence minister to us as we escape on a nature walk? What does “Mommy loves Jesus more” look like for me in this season? What habits do I need to work on?
There’s a direct correlation between our days being “smooth and easy” with our children and our relationship with the Lord.
There were seasons where my bible laid open on the counter and all I could do was read a verse as I walked by with a crying baby in my arms. There was a season when I was hanging on by a thread, I just couldn’t read, but I stood in the center of my kitchen with my arms outstretched and sang with tears pouring down my face. I find myself now in a season where I can spend a good chunk of time in scripture most mornings. As kids have gotten older, mornings have gotten quieter. But I’ve also come to understand all day is my quiet time. I see the Lord in the prairie grass on nature walks, the books I read to my kids, the work in the garden, and even the chores. After all, as Miss Mason reminds us, there is no separation.
I’ve learned I was just as filled with the Spirit when it was a verse at a time with a crying baby in my arms as I am now. Our “quiet time” has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit’s ability to do its good work. Be that as it may, this recognition has a strange way of giving us the desire to pull even closer. We feel our atmospheres change when the Spirit of the Lord is near.
In all your summer planning, remember your atmosphere. More than any printed schedule and the perfectly curated booklist, it is this kind of planning where we can find peace and our children can have the best of us in whatever tomorrow brings.
-Mariah
On The CPQ Blog
Scaffolding Written Narrations
E is for Education is an Atmosphere, Discipline, and a Life
Grand Conversation Issue
Our Grand Conversation issue is getting ready to head to print! This issue is absolutely wonderful. We never tire of reading and re-reading these articles from the time they are submitted through the copyedit phase. There is something for all of us in each article.
Art Middlekauff in his article “Guide, Philosopher, and Friend: The Delightful Commerce of Equal Minds” shares with us the story behind the phrase “guide, philosopher, and friend”:
"I believe Mason was charting a new course that would overturn the harsh cynicism of Dickens [in regards to the idea of a guide, philosopher, and friend]. She had a solution! The teacher could redeem Pope’s phrase by giving her students the freedom of the city of books. Then she would no longer be magistra (teacher). She would be amica (friend).
Three years later at the Training College, Bingley, Mason said: We as teachers depreciate ourselves and our office; we do not realise that in the nature of things the teacher has a prophetic power of appeal and inspiration, that his part is not the weariful task of spoon-feeding, but the delightful commerce of equal minds where his is the part of guide, philosopher and friend."
Anna Maher in her article “Iron Sharpens Iron: Facilitating Conversation” shares with us:
“A Charlotte Mason education, with its broad reading, is perfect training ground for encountering others from different backgrounds and ethnicities. Our kids will more naturally grow their empathy for others who are different than they are when they have encountered many different kinds of people in their books. Wide reading is also a less threatening way to encounter ideas we may disagree with and learn how to handle them wisely and graciously. Then as we have opportunity in our churches and the wider community, we should seek real-life relationships with those different than us.”
Dawn Rhymer in her article “Listening: The Foundation of a Conversation” shares with us:
“So I dug in my heels and committed to listening to my children’s narrations. It was not easy. I often had to ask for forgiveness when they caught me not listening. Still, slowly, over time, I found myself not only listening because I had to, but also because I started to care at a deeper level about what they had to say. It spilled over out of our school day and into the rest of our life.”
And Melissa McMahan gifts us her article “Delightful Conversations: The Rich Promise of Teenage Years” where she shares:
Sometimes a fabulous narration from our teen on an enthralling book she has read will lead into a grand conversation with connections popping like grease from bacon sizzling in a skillet. If that happens, savor the delicious moment. But most of the time, the best conversations quietly simmer up in unplanned times and spaces. These are the conversations we have “when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:7). These are the opportunities for discipleship the Lord gives us that we can never be too busy to take. I would highly encourage you to build margins into your day to allow for these spontaneous moments to develop and bloom. In our family, these often happen around the kitchen table, in the car, and (always, it seems!) late at night. Be willing to linger at the table, turn off the car radio, and respond, “Yes, I’m awake!” as you hop out of bed and pour yourself some coffee.
And there’s so much more. It truly is an issue we will find ourselves returning to again and again.
You can preorder a copy in the shop if you aren’t a subscriber. Just purchase our Grand Conversation issue, and it will ship with the rest directly from the printers in August!
Up Next: Habit of Reading
Did you know Charlotte Mason mentions the love of reading only once in her volumes? She mentions the habit of reading 19 times. We’ll explore what that means for us as home educators, for the children who struggle with reading or those who don’t love it, and be encouraged to persevere with our families towards a delightful reading life.
Are you subscribed?
**The preorder list for our Habit of Reading issue closes on August 31st!
Herbariums (and a free download)
The method of this sort of instruction is shown in Evenings at Home, where 'Eyes and No-eyes' go for a walk. No-eyes come home bored; he has seen nothing, been interested in nothing: while Eyes is all agog to discuss a hundred things that have interested him. As I have already tried to point out, to get this sort of instruction for himself is simply the nature of a child: the business of the parent is to afford him abundant and varied opportunities, and to direct his observations, so that, knowing little of the principles of scientific classification, he is, unconsciously, furnishing himself with the materials for such classification. It is needless to repeat what has already been said on this subject; but, indeed, the future of the man or woman depends very largely on the store of real knowledge gathered, and the habits of intelligent observation acquired, by the child. "Think you," says Mr. Herbert Spencer, "that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of the geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid a million of years ago? The truth is, that those who have never entered on scientific pursuits are blind to most of the poetry by which they are surrounded. Whoever has not in youth collected plants and insects, knows not half the halo of interest which lanes and hedgerows can assume."
Home Education, p.265-266
Earlier this month we shared a reel on Instagram highlighting a notebook Charlotte Mason had her students keep: the Herbarium. This makes a great “afternoon occupation” through summer! As promised, we have a download for you to help you get started.
Get To Know The Editors
What’s Cara…
Reading: Carry On, Mr. Bowditch and Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk
Thinking about: The start of school and how we are really not in control—ever.
Listening to: The Count of Monte Cristo
Eating: Mochi Balls
Watching: a documentary on the fight to save the sturgeon
Learning: About classroom vs home teaching techniques
Drinking: Coffee. Always.
What’s Mariah…
Reading: That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis and If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland
Listening to: Santana’s Supernatural (Remastered) album
Thinking about: How 20 years of marriage has come quickly, yet slowly?
Cooking: Mexican Grilled Enote Corn with fajitas
Watching: Still watching The Great British Baking Show and commenting on baked goods accordingly: “That’s a nice sponge.” or “I’m afraid that has a soggy bottom.”
Learning: About perimenopause. Not so much willingly, but here we are.
Drinking: A Diet Coke while I ignore my emotional support water bottle that is also sitting here.
What’s Sarah…
Reading: Ahimsa by Supriya Kelkar, Beowulf, and People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Thinking about: What to do with my last three weeks of summer vacation…all the chores I planned and then neglected this summer? Or read all the books I bought? Or do something fun with the kids?
Eating: Croissants stuffed with chocolate chips and warmed up over the toaster
Watching: too many IG reels
Cooking: As little as possible. It’s too hot.
Listening to: I’m So Blessed by Cain
Drinking: Coffee…it goes with the croissants
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