Finding Your Feet - Part One

Finding Your Feet Part One
"Can I do this?" I asked myself. I was a young mother. Children's books were not part of my childhood. I was a recent Christian. I had no teacher's training. But I was determined to home-teach.

Catbirds take a bath in our garden teacup daily. 

I felt like a dunderhead. I was, however, a motivated dunderhead. The more I dug, the more enthused I became. Charlotte Mason supplied me with the "how-to" and the "why-to." I recognized that her books in my hands were a gift from God, a generous answer of prayer. Slowly and gradually I grew in understanding. Did I understand everything I read? No. Ideas take time to germinate, time to be contemplated, to be worked-out, to be lived-out. Ideas can't be rushed. Eventually, we find our feet by walking in them. The ideas become a way-of-life. It's the educational life.

Knitting this yoke pattern for Eloise was a dream. It has 8 stitches to weave under the arms and no other seams. 

I've noticed something. Charlotte Mason's principles fit different circumstances beautifully. The people applying them are of different financial means. They have different backgrounds, different personalities, gifts, talents. They even live in different parts of the globe. Some with English their second language.

Miss Mason's principles are not just for the well-to-do or the well-prepared. They aren't solely for the intellectual. My husband Dean told me Miss Mason's principles are basic enough for even simple people (like us) to understand. She reached out to the poorer (less-literate) classes as far back as when she gave her lectures in London in the 1880s, and thereafter. I can relate. I was Less-literate with a capital "L".

Johnny-jump-ups with pansies. Potted herbs behind. Outside the kitchen door. 

Margin
Miss Mason's ideals are high. I craned my neck looking up. But it is a road worth walking no matter what situation you are in at the start. However others carry-out the method today, however well-accomplished the PNEU was in its hey-day of the 1930s, you are left to personally to find your feet. Please give yourself margin my friend. With respect to the person God is making you to be, respect your personal application.

Weigelia and Dianthus along our garage-shed.

On page 38 of School Education Miss Mason invites teachers to recede. Teachers are to make room for students to "feel their feet" with what they are learning.

We inspire. We set-in-motion habits and skills. Then we recede. This way we do not continue to indefinitely "carrying them through their schoolwork." Rather, we give them margin while we set their feet in a land-of-opportunity. Self-education is the result.

The same can be said of mothers.  Home teachers are learners, too. Are you giving yourself margin? Let's be courteous. Let's give each other margin.

Dean says, "The Charlotte Mason Method shines brightest when we allow ourselves the freedom to adapt Miss Mason's philosophy to our own individual domestic circumstance. We are, then, free to be ourselves before God and our children."


Some seek exact recipes. By focusing on the letter-of-the-law, however, we can miss living by the spirit-of-the-law. A mother misses the joy of learning with her children when choosing exact recipe over personal application. Miss Mason's principles are living principles meant to be a blessing.

A Mixed Bunch 

Weigelia and Dianthus along the garage-shed, close up.

We are a mixed bunch of Charlotte Mason followers. I know because I've had the pleasure of meeting some of you through the mail.

One family fills a handful of notebooks on various subjects. You're impressed. Your family started one or two. These notebooks are half-filled by the end of the school year. But they are handsomely half-filled. This will do. Each notebook represents happy days of curious and focused learning.

One mother reads Plutarch annually. Another mom prefers to read a little Plutarch if any, especially as she has shelves of carefully collected juvenile biographies filled with "lives." Such a quantity of lives for children was unavailable in Miss Mason's day. Go for it.

My new little quilt of scrappy "Broken Dishes" beside the Dianthus.

A pastor friend of yours, who lives an hour away, had his children memorize Shakespeare. He sends you an invitation to the performance. You take the drive to "hear" and see his students perform The Tempest. It's thoroughly enjoyable. Your family has appreciated Shakespeare. But directing a full-length play isn't an undertaking for you.

All 5 of a family's children play a string instrument. Even the 4-year-old takes lessons. Private lessons aren't in your budget. But since your eldest babysits she can help pay for hers. The younger children must wait their turn to start. They like hearing Big Sister play and look forward to when they will start their lessons.

One mother's student receives a lesson in Latin from his father daily. You tried Latin but it tipped the scales for you when your 6th child was born. And someone has to get a healthy supper on the table. Your husband isn't likely to teach his children Latin. Even if you ask him. He bought his boys catcher's mitts and enjoys playing ball with them out back. "Just what they need," you're thinking as you watch their energy through the kitchen window, "a good work-out." You offer a prayer of thanks while peeling the carrots.

I enjoyed lining one garden with seashells I beach-combed  years back. 

One mother teaches her little ones Sol-fa. It is important to her that they are brought up to sing well.  An elderly man in church is stricken with A.L.S. Mom, Dad, and the children visit him one or two Saturdays a month. The little ones sing for the man they affectionately call "Grandpa." The tears in his eyes show how touched he is by this gift of friendship. He has no grandchildren of his own to visit him. Your children can carry a tune. It's a joyful noise.


One family has traveled miles to the Creation Museum. The ark was spectacular. They've also taken physical-geography-walks. Their interest in rocks, fossils, dinosaurs, and land formations never seems to wane. They tell you about their experiences excitedly. You're glad for them. But you can't see your family traveling that far anytime soon with a van that needs frequent engine repair. The Nature Trail at the edge of town is a hike your family enjoys. And some books from the library-discard-sale are proving insightful.

Wooden Buttons The Yarn is Noro silk/cotton with slubs.

Keep Your Focus
While you are finding your feet you can't help see what others are doing. But you can open your eyes wider to what you are accomplishing. Look at what you can do. You are faithful to get up every morning to do it. And if it isn't done as seemingly radiantly, or as grandiose, as others. It doesn't matter. Your gifts, talents, interests are being used in your family. They are radiant. Because no effort, no love, no good work, is invisible to God.

My fieldguide says this is a Fleabane Daisy. I learned something new.

Part Two on this topic is upcoming.

Well done my friends.
Karen Andreola