When my children were young, we enjoyed many a ramble around our yard and down our country lane, delighting in both the changes and the constants that we observed in the flora and fauna through the seasons. Over time, as I studied Charlotte Mason’s principles, I learned that those rambles had an official instructional name: nature walks.

When we read aloud to young children, we give them access to ideas they could not comprehend on their own and expose them to vocabulary and sentence structure way beyond their abilities to employ in their own writing.

The ancient author Horace wrote an instruction manual for poets and playwrights entitled Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry). In it he said, “Poets wish either to profit (instruct) or to delight.”

As promised, here are a few nuts and bolts helps for planning your Morning Time reading. But, before I do that, I have to say something to those of you who have not started Morning Time with your family yet.

Recently, there was a long thread on the a facebook group in my feed with folks on both sides weighing in on one of the eternal questions among home educators—Is Charlotte Mason classical?

As I look back at our Morning Times from the perspective of years, Tennyson’s brook comes to mind.

Making time for Morning Time will probably require some re-imagining of what “doing school” should look like. If you are new to Morning Time, you will set yourself up for endless frustration if you try to simply add it on top of what you are currently doing—or what you think you should be doing.

I had the absolute pleasure of spending an hour talking with Pam Barnhill of Your Morning Basket about our family's experience with Morning Time over the years.

Many moons ago, as a new homeschooler, I was introduced to Landmark books, a series of history books for children published by Random House in the mid-twentieth century.

From the earliest days of our homeschool (22 years ago!), we spent at least an hour—and sometimes far more!—each day reading aloud, thanks to the influence of folks like Susan Schaeffer-Macaulay  and Sally Clarkson.

As a follow up to Chris Perrin's thoughts on embodied education, I've gathered some inspiration in photos and links for displaying the prints that accumulate over the months and years of Picture Study

Keeping a copybook in the younger years is excellent training for many things, one of which is keeping a commonplace book. Principles and practices for copybook and commonplace book have a great deal of overlap, particularly in the selections to be reproduced.

Picture Study, as Charlotte Mason practiced it, is just as simple as it sounds: “A friendly picture-dealer supplies us with half a dozen beautiful little reproductions of the work of some single artist, term by term.

My sleepy three-year-old is carried from the car to his bed in big brother’s strong arms. He drowsily blinks up at the star studded sky. “Caleb, did you know that God is a Spirit? He doesn’t have a body like men.” My mother’s heart quietly rejoices . . .

When I was expecting my first child, who turned out to be children (twins!), I heard a radio program about homeschooling. My husband and I were immediately convinced — we would certainly home educate our children.