[00:00:00] Sonya Shafer: Even her foundational tenet of the child is a person, that was a radical idea back then, that the child has all aspects of personhood in them and we need to help them develop as a whole person. That’s the goal of education, is to help them grow as a person. That was a radical idea.

[music]

[00:00:31] Gretchen Roe: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this session of The Demme Learning Show. I am so, so excited to welcome Sonya Shafer to have this conversation. I’ve been waiting well over a year to have this conversation with her. We were sort of ships passing in the night, and then I just became a pest [laughs] because she has so much wisdom. Charlotte Mason is not just– it’s a philosophy, it’s a lifestyle. It is so much depth and breadth. I had the privilege of having a Charlotte Mason-esque academic experience for my own children, and I would not have changed it. Today, Sonya is going to share with you how amazing this program is, what brought her to this, and then all the wonderful things that you can get from participating in this kind of experience. With that, I’m going to turn this over to Sonya.

[00:01:33] Sonya: Thank you, Gretchen. It is a joy to be with you all. I’m glad you pestered me, got me in here because I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. I started homeschooling about 30 years ago. That was back before the internet. Gretchen, you know those days as well, but we’ll let that sink in to all the listeners and viewers.

[00:01:55] Gretchen: I still had a dictionary on my table that was this big that every night we accessed it.

[laughter]

[00:02:05] Sonya: I wasn’t going to homeschool. My husband encouraged me to do it. With my preschoolers, I just naturally was teaching them their ABCs, and we were counting, and we were singing, we were going for walks, the stuff you naturally do anyway. When it came time for my oldest to go to kindergarten, my husband said, “Well, we can’t afford a private school, and I know you don’t want to send her to a public school. Why don’t you just keep doing what you’ve been doing for another year and then we’ll see?” That was the start of 30 years of homeschooling. [laughs] I’m grateful that he tricked me into it. I wasn’t ever going to homeschool. I only knew one other family who did homeschool, and they were weird. I was not going to do that, but thankfully–

[00:03:01] Gretchen: You know, I didn’t realize this, Sonya, but we have a very similar background. I got dragged kicking and screaming into the homeschool world as well. [laughs]

[00:03:10] Sonya: Yes, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything now.

[00:03:12] Gretchen: Yes, indeed.

[00:03:13] Sonya: Not at all. It’s been such a rewarding journey. The thing that made it rewarding is that at the end of that kindergarten year, I went to my first homeschool convention there in Chicago area. At the convention, there was a speaker who said, “You have options. Homeschooling does not have to look like school at home.” She went through five different teaching styles and learning styles that you could use, approaches to education. One of those was the Charlotte Mason approach. She didn’t do much. She probably gave a paragraph on that approach, but what she said just resonated with my heart.

I knew immediately that’s what I wanted to do with my kids, but no internet. What do you do then? Well, you run to the exhibit hall, and you look for any books you can find on that particular approach. I found a couple of books there, and so I started reading and implementing, and then reading and finding out what I was doing wrong and go back and change it again.

Just little by little over the years, as I kept learning and trying and fine-tuning and tweaking, that’s what has made our homeschool a joy over these years, was finding all those wonderful gems in the Charlotte Mason approach and learning more and more about it. Until, fast forward, when my oldest was in her teens, I started getting a lot of questions from other homeschoolers.

Now I knew quite a few homeschoolers and new homeschoolers, and they were all asking questions about the Charlotte Mason method. I would answer as best I could. I had learned a lot of things over the years. A lot of times they would ask, “What books do you recommend for this particular subject and this grade?” I couldn’t remember all of that. After all those kids, your brain cells start to get full. There’s only so much capacity there.

I remember sitting down with friends of ours, the Smith family, Doug and Karen Smith, and she had been doing Charlotte Mason as well. We sat down together, and we said, “Doug, we need a website.” That was what he did for a living. We said, “We need to put our brain on the web now that it’s around and people are accessing it. That way, we don’t have to remember all these things. We can just remember the URL and direct them to there, and then they can find it.” I remember specifically sitting at the dining room table and telling Doug, “I only need five pages. That’s all I need. Our website will only be five pages long.” Yes, they helped get that off the ground and running, and the rest has become simply Charlotte Mason, which I tell everybody is a hobby that has gotten out of control.

[00:06:28] Gretchen: Yes, but it is a beautiful hobby. If anyone has ever had the opportunity to see you all at a conference, it’s like walking into the most gorgeous library, to walk into your booth, to spend time there. What I love about the people who support parents like me who come in and ask questions is they ask more questions and listen more than they tell because they’re looking to see how to create that experience for families. I don’t know about you, but I think Charlotte Mason was so far ahead of her time.

[00:07:15] Sonya: Oh, absolutely.

[00:07:17] Gretchen: I’m sure she got an enormous amount of pushback for her ideas because I’m sure they were considered radical in her generation because it was so different.

[00:07:31] Sonya: Yes. Even her foundational tenet of the child is a person, that was a radical idea back then, that the child has all aspects of personhood in them and we need to help them develop as a whole person. That’s the goal of education, is to help them grow as a person. That was a radical idea, and many other of her ideas also.

It’s funny, I’ll just sneak peek here. I’m currently working on some podcast episodes that are upcoming that will take different aspects of what Charlotte said 100 years ago, what she wrote and said back then, and we’re looking at modern research and what it says about that, which has been so fascinating. I was working on another episode this morning, and it’s just so interesting to find out she was so ahead of her time. What she said 100 years ago, we finally are getting around to proving why it worked today, but it worked.

[laughter]

[00:08:36] Gretchen: I think that’s really neat, though, to prove that it does work and the freedom that it affords a child to be able to have that confidence that they have the ability to learn and to teach themselves. It’s awe-inspiring. I remember when I watched my children and each one of them took the reins at a different age. Sometimes as parents, we make the misapprehension that each successive child will be like their predecessor. I’m an only child, so I just made that assumption. Boy, was I wrong. [laughs]

[00:09:28] Sonya: Yes, and that’s the beauty, I think, of a Charlotte Mason approach, is that because it is all about the child as a person, it honors the individuality of each child and the methods work. You can tweak them here and there for the different kids, but they work across the board. I use them. I have four kids. My youngest has special needs, autism, pervasive developmental delays, language processing issues, but I’ve used Charlotte Mason methods with her as well and seen her flourish and grow, too. Yes, it’s been a wonderful journey.

[00:10:08] Gretchen: When you began researching the methodology, what compelled you? What did you find so appealing that you said, “Yes, that’s the direction I’m going to go in”?

[00:10:21] Sonya: Basically three things. One was that it used living books, literary-style books. I thought back to my own school experience, my whole childhood, and the books that I remembered were not the textbooks. The books that I remembered were the literary-style books that told the story, and I had a connection with those things. I had a relationship with the people in those stories. Those books had shaped who I became, shaped how I was thinking and behaving. We can dive more into that. I know there were some questions about living books, so we will, but let me just give you the overview here.

It was the living books that really appealed to me. It was also the wide variety of subjects because I didn’t want the same thing every day, and we’re only doing the basics. I wanted art and music and handcrafts and nature study and poetry and all that wide breadth of things, so my kids could experience so much of what’s available in knowledge. They would have a wide base as they communicate with others and as they interact with the world, and they could discover interests of their own. They would not have that opportunity if we were only doing the three Rs and social studies and science, and that’s it.

The wide variety of subjects, the living books, and then the other thing was the emphasis on good habits. That really attracted me because I thought that’s what sets a person up for success in life is the habits that they instill. If we can help them instill those good habits in their childhood, then to use Charlotte’s word picture that habits are like railroad tracks, once we get those tracks, those rails laid down in their childhood, they’ll be ahead of the game. They’ll be able to just run smoothly on those for the rest of their lives. Those were probably the three things that really attracted me.

[00:12:43] Gretchen: Interesting. The habit element, as you say that, I think back to my own academic experiences with a Charlotte Mason style. We used Calvert School for 17 years, and Calvert had a very similar approach. Even our kindergartners, they would talk very explicitly about setting up routines and asking the child to think about, “Okay, how are you going to approach this so that this becomes easy for you so that it becomes part of your practice so you don’t have to think about it?” You didn’t have to go, “Oh, I have to do this first.”

With six children with ADHD, that was amazing because they were able to tailor their academics. The funny part was I’m the daughter of good German parents. I was born a tiny adult. You start a day early, you get it all done. I didn’t give birth to those kids. It was really interesting.

[00:14:05] Sonya: Something went wrong.

[laughter]

[00:14:07] Gretchen: It was so interesting to watch them go, “I got this.” You really have it when you try, and you fail, and then you learn what works for you.

[00:14:21] Sonya: The earlier you can do that in life, the better. When the failures are smaller, not as catastrophic as they can be when you’re a grown-up. I like to think of those habits and even the methods that Charlotte used with the students, those were habits of learning that the kids could then use as adults to learn anything for themselves. They didn’t have to wait for a teacher. They could self-educate.

I often compare those styles of those methods of learning to fork, and knife, and spoon. They’re like eating utensils. It takes some practice to figure out how to use these at first in order to get the good stuff in. We’re going to use this method in order to get that feast into ourselves. At first, that kid’s dumping the spoon. When they’re in the high chair, they’re poking the spoon in their ear. They’re doing all kinds of things. As they practice with them, pretty soon the utensils become invisible.

When I ate lunch today, I did not sit there and stare at my fork and think, “How do I?” No. I was thinking about the food. I wasn’t thinking about the utensils. It’s the same with these methods. As they use them, as they use narration, as they use recording their findings, as they use all the other different methods, those methods pretty soon, with practice, become invisible. That’s just what you do in order to teach yourself something, in order to learn. To your point, that’s just what you do to make your day run smoothly for your everyday habits as well.

[00:16:10] Gretchen: You brought up one of my favorite aspects. Can you talk a little bit more about narration because I think this is brilliant. Even as an adult, well past the homeschooling age, my youngest just turned 21 in July, I use narration, particularly when I’m trying to learn something new or I’m trying to figure out a sequence of events. Sometimes my husband will come in my office and say, “Are you talking to someone?” Yes, me. I’m talking to me.

[laughter] [00:16:41] Sonya: That’s right. Yes, narration.

[00:16:44] Gretchen: Explain that for our viewers because I think it’s just terrific.

[00:16:47] Sonya: It’s a simple method, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to do. It is basically you read something, or you listen to something, and then you try to put it in your own words. That’s basically what it is. Charlotte talked about reading a chapter of a Jane Austen novel before she went to bed at night and then set it aside and try and narrate it to yourself. Then when you wake up in the morning, see how much of it you remember because it really cements it in your mind and helps you remember things.

There’s a push recently about how great it is for a child to teach somebody else what they have learned, that it really helps it stick in their minds. If they’ve learned something, okay, now you teach it to Joey. Well, what he’s doing is he’s putting it in his own words. That’s what narration is. It’s just, “Now you teach it to me.” Sometimes kids can get hung up on narration because they don’t understand the purpose of it.

I don’t know if your kids ever did this, but I talked to so many moms who the first few times they try narration, they’ll read the passage, and they’d say, “Okay, now tell me what I read.” The child looks at them, it’s like, “Weren’t you just listening? You just read that. Why am I telling you?” They need to understand. It’s not for my benefit, it’s your benefit. This is a learning tool that you can use for the rest of your life.

I was doing the same thing, Gretchen. I’m reading a book called Imperial Twilight. It’s about the Opium War and the last golden age of China. It wasn’t on my bucket list. I want to read a book about the Opium War. Someone recommended this one, and it is such a living book. It is fascinating. There was a section in there about how they would skirt the issue of that this was actually illegal to sell opium in China and how this would go here, and then this would go here, and then this would go here, and this would go. When I got done with those couple of paragraphs, it’s like, “Okay, I got to try and tell myself what I just read, so I can actually picture it and get it solidified in my mind’s eye,” and that’s narration.

[00:19:21] Gretchen: Yes. I just had the privilege of reading Theo of Golden, which is such a marvelous book. I would go and listen to a chapter. Actually, I listened to it on Audible. I would listen to a chapter. Then I would turn my Audible app off, and I would just contemplate. What I wanted to do in that process was see if I could remember how the chapter unfolded, but then personify that in my mind. What did it look like as he was sitting staring at the fountain?

The author doesn’t always describe the clothes. Sometimes he describes the clothes beautifully, but not for all of the characters. I wanted to take that and push it into the realms of, “Well, he didn’t describe this character. What do I think that character would look like?” It was really a fun exercise, and it really made the book stick with me in a very different way.

[00:20:29] Sonya: That’s the beauty of narration. We talked about how you can adjust the methods for the different kids. Narration is a natural thing for most children. If your little one is excited about something, they’re going to talk your ear off about it, usually. It is a natural thing, but it’s also an art form. The cool thing is each child, as they do a narration, is going to bring part of their individuality into that narration. You might have said, “And I can picture that person dressed like this in part of your narration.”

It’s such a relationship-building activity, too. I didn’t think about that until I read Karen Glass’s book. The title is Know and Tell. She talks about how this whole, “Now you tell it back to me,” is a way to form and strengthen your relationship with your child because you are giving them your undivided attention. You are inviting them to give you a peek inside their minds and hearts. What resonated with them about what you just read? How do they picture it? How do they envision it? What questions did it rise in their minds? Those types of experiences and conversations are priceless.

[00:21:53] Gretchen: One of my children, when we started this process when she was in kindergarten, was a parrot. Instead of doing a narration, she would return the story to me almost verbatim. I was like, “Yes, but hold on. I want you to tell me the story with your words.” Boy, that was mind-blowing for her.

[00:22:20] Sonya: It was harder.

[00:22:20] Gretchen: It was hard. It was very hard for her. It took her a long time. It probably took her more than a year.

[00:22:29] Sonya: Some things you can do to encourage a child who tends to parrot back is you can mix up how you’re asking for the narration. You can say, “Draw your favorite scene and then tell me about your picture.” Once the children start narrating orally and they keep the oral component all the way through high school, once they get to about 10 years old, you can start introducing written narrations as well. That paves the way eventually for their composition and essays. You could say, “Write five questions that you would ask somebody to find out if they remembered this passage. What five things would you ask them to tell you about?”

You can get creative with it. You can say, “Write a podcast or record. Use an audio recorder and record a podcast about this event, or do an interview as if you played the part of one of the characters.” You can get very creative about it. We’ve got a list of 50 ideas that you can download free on our website. Those are some ways that you can get around if someone is parroting, because just parroting something from memory, memorizing and reciting, regurgitating is a low form of thinking skill, and we want a higher form. We want the essay question, not the short word answer. We want the essay question.

[00:24:10] Gretchen: It’s funny when you said recording because I’m envisioning my middle schoolers walking around my house with cassette players. Back in the day, they had these little portable cassette players, and you could see them. You said at the outset, the only homeschool family you knew was weird. I’m sure that if anybody walked into my house, they would have gone, “These kids are so weird.” It’s really funny because as adults, I had four out of six of my kids here last weekend, and they were laughing about having done that, the three older kids. My youngest, he’s the digital generation. The only thing he remembers doing is saying, “Mom, can I have your phone? I need to do a narration.” [laughs] He’s like, “What?”

[00:25:06] Sonya: We’ll do a video this time.

[00:25:08] Gretchen: “A cassette?”

[00:25:11] Sonya: What’s the cassette?

[00:25:15] Gretchen: Now, could you go into– since we had so many parents and I got a kick out of– it was a typo. I loved it. What is a loving book?

[laughter]

[00:25:26] Sonya: Yes. Living books, it’s very important because it’s almost impossible to narrate a textbook. You have to have a living book in order for a narration to flow naturally. A living book is a phrase that Charlotte used. Basically, it is a book that is written in literary form. That doesn’t mean it’s a historical fiction and that it has little conversations, made-up conversations, and all that. Basically, it tells the story. It gives you a narrative of the events.

Let me tell you how this works with an illustration from my own life. I could give you the fact. I shopped for my groceries at Jewel from 1989 to 1999. For 10 years, I shopped at the Jewel grocery store in Chicago area. That’s a fact. There you go. Do you have any connection with that fact now? Do you have any relation with it?

[00:26:40] Gretchen: No.

[00:26:41] Sonya: No. There’s nothing you can picture in your mind’s eye unless you’ve seen one. Maybe you can see the sign. That’s about it. There’s no emotional connection whatsoever. If I tell you a story related to that, I remember one day I went to Jewel. My oldest was not yet two, still a toddler, in the front of the little cart. We were going down the row there. I stopped, and I turned to pick up something. As I turned back, I heard a little splat, and I saw an egg crash onto the floor. Then I went a little bit further, and I saw another one crash onto the floor. I looked up, and there’s my toddler. She had opened the carton of eggs, and she was learning about gravity and force and all kinds of wonderful things.

I’m mortified, so embarrassed. It’s like, “Okay, I’m not going to say anything when we check out. It’s my fault. I’ll pay for the whole dozen. They don’t have to pay for the eggs my child destroyed.” I went to the checkout counter. As just part of the regular policy, their procedures were, every time they checked out a carton of eggs, they opened it to make sure it all looked okay. The lady grabs the egg carton, she opens it, and there’s two of them missing. I started blushing, and I said, “I’m so sorry. My daughter was learning about gravity. She grabbed them, and you may need to clean up on aisle 6.” She was so gracious. She said, “Oh, no, honey, we don’t want you to get an incomplete dozen.” She sent the bagger to go get me another dozen eggs.

Now, that tells me a lot about the store policies and procedures, what kind of people they hire, how they treat people who come. Those are ideas now that are part of this whole story. Now, do you have some kind of a relation with my 10 years of Jewel shopping? You might have an idea why I stuck there for 10 years. You have a mental picture of me shopping there with my toddler throwing the eggs on the floor. You have an emotional connection with this experience as a fellow human being. You’ve been in experiences similar, probably.

That is a living book. That’s a narrative telling the story of what happened in a way that touches your emotions and fires up your imagination. That’s what helps you remember it more. A living book, especially when it comes to things like history, you don’t just learn a list of dates and events. In a living book, it’s going to tell the story. I have some examples of living books. I often use this example in workshops that I do. Abraham Lincoln by the d’Aulaires, Ingrid and Edgar D’Aulaire. Listen to just the–

[00:30:06] Gretchen: I’m so glad you pronounced that name for me because I have seen that name and I have never been sure how to pronounce it.

[00:30:14] Sonya: Well, I’ve never heard it pronounced. That’s just how I always pronounce it, so I might be wrong. We’ll see.

[00:30:18] Gretchen: No, we’re going to take it as you have enough experience that you’re probably right.

[00:30:24] Sonya: No one’s ever corrected me, so I’m going to assume maybe it’s correct. Anyway, I just want to read. This is a book, a living book on Abraham Lincoln for, I would say, first through fourth grade elementary school students. I’m just going to read you the first page, and you’ll hear what a living book sounds like.

Deep in the wilderness down in Kentucky, there stood a cabin built of roughly hewn logs. It was a poor little cabin of only one room. The February wind tore at the clumsy door and made it rattle on its leather hinges. Just a glimmer of daylight sifted in through the oiled deer hide stretched across the single window frame, but the flames flickered gaily on the hearth. In this cabin lived a man named Thomas Lincoln with his wife and his little daughter Sally. Here it was that his son, Abraham Lincoln, first saw the world on a Sunday morning. It wasn’t much of a house in which he was born, but it was just as good as most people had in Kentucky in 1809.

That’s a living book. You can see it in your mind’s eye. Now, the facts are in there. Kentucky, 1809, February, Abraham was born, but it is couched in this living narrative and beautifully written, well-formed sentences that you can picture in your mind’s eye and that touch your imagination and touch your emotions. I know that there were questions about, “Well, are living books enough as the kids get older?” That’s a valid question.

Here is an Abraham Lincoln living book by Sterling North. If you’ve ever read the book Rascal, that’s him. This one would be for middle school students, your high school, and adults. Here you go. This is a fabulous, fabulous living narrative of Abraham Lincoln. This is only his presidency. This is how he took four of his political rivals and put them on his cabinet to work with them throughout his presidency, but it reads like a living book. It is so interesting. I’ll give you just a little sample of this one.

On May 18th, 1860, the day when the Republican Party would nominate its candidate for president, Abraham Lincoln was up early. As he climbed the stairs to his plainly furnished law office on the south side of the public square in Springfield, Illinois, breakfast was being served at the 130-room Chenery House on 4th Street. Fresh butter, flour, lard, and eggs were being put out for sale at the city grocery store on North 6th Street. In the morning newspaper, the proprietors at Smith, Wickersham & Company had announced the arrival of a large spring stock of silks, calicos, ginghams, and linens, along with a new supply of the latest styles of hosiery and gloves.

It brings in everything that was happening during that time. It makes you realize that this was a real person. This is written by a Pulitzer Prize winner, Doris Kearns Goodwin. It was a number 1 New York Times bestseller, and it was the foundation of a major motion picture that Steven Spielberg produced on Lincoln. He got it from this book. Living books are good and available and effective for all ages. There you go.

[00:34:41] Gretchen: A book that pulls me in visually to be able to see the action and have a sensory experience in the process of the reading, that would be considered a living book?

[00:35:02] Sonya: If it is well written, yes.

[00:35:06] Gretchen: I was thinking when you were reading the passage of Abraham Lincoln, talking about the winter and the cold and the door clapping, the first thing I thought of, of course, was Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter. [laughs]

[00:35:20] Sonya: Yes. That’s a living book, too. Literary style. Some people, when they think literary style, they think only for elementary children. They get stuck with Laura Ingalls Wilder and with historical fiction, but it’s not. It’s just telling the story in a way that helps you connect with that other human being that you can visualize. The other important thing with a living book is that because of the way it’s written, it’s going to contain ideas, not just the dry facts, just as we did in our grocery store example. The example in this book of Abraham Lincoln, that idea of this is where he first saw the world, that, to me, is a powerful idea. That it wasn’t much of a house, but it was just as good as most people had in 1809 in Kentucky.

[00:36:22] Gretchen: I thought that was a very interesting line.

[00:36:24] Sonya: Yes. That’s an idea. Your mind latches onto these ideas and looks for related ideas in your history, already in your mind. As you’re going throughout your day, it’s looking for other ideas that are connected to it. That’s another thing you’re looking for, a well-written book that has ideas, not just facts, that fires your imagination and touches your emotions. Usually, a living book is written by one author who has a passion for that subject. As you can guess, this one, Doris Kearns Goodwin, spent about 10 years researching this copy.

[00:37:07] Gretchen: She did, yes.

[00:37:08] Sonya: It was a passion of hers.

[00:37:12] Gretchen: I have a question then. Can a poem be considered a living book?

[00:37:20] Sonya: A poem is a living literary example. Yes. Charlotte believed that poetry was the highest form of literature. If it is a well-written poem. Now if it’s just, “Apple, apple in the tree, I know you are good for me,” we’ve got problems. That’s not well-written.

[00:37:39] Gretchen: What was coming to mind when you said that was I was thinking of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias, which my kids still talk about to this day, thinking of the sand accumulating around this fallen statue and how– you got to read the poem. I’ll put it in the show notes. You’ve got to read the poem.

[00:38:09] Sonya: Yes. You can summarize a living book. It’s hard to summarize it in just a sentence or two because there are so many relations you have made with it that you could just go on and on and on and on about it. That’s another way you know it’s a living book. Now, the trick with living books is you can’t just go into a bookstore and say, “Hi, I’d like a living book, please,” because they don’t know what you’re talking about. We do have on our website at simplycharlottemason.com, there’s something called a CM Bookfinder that’s free to use. It’s just a database of living books, and you can search for subjects, age levels.

[00:38:50] Gretchen: My goodness, Sonya, did you all build this?

[00:38:53] Sonya: We built it many years ago. We started with our own personal libraries of thousands of books, and the ones that we had actually read and our favorites were in there. Then over the years, we have opened it up to other CM people to enter their favorites. That means then we have not personally vetted every title in there. In the results, you’ll see a little SCM beside the titles that we have personally read and vetted.

In that database, there will be a link to Amazon if they have a copy, so you can give it a one-page test, just like we did with these books that I read, and see if it draws you in and if it’s at the right level for your age students. Then there’s also a link that you can find out if a library near you has a copy. Feel free to use the CM Bookfinder. It’s a great way. Of course, our curriculum is our cream of the crop. These are our top picks that we definitely want your kids to read. That’s all interwoven into our curriculum.

[00:40:07] Gretchen: Well, there was a question that I wanted to ask you because I thought I remember this maybe from a personal capacity because the materials that we used for the vast majority of the years that we home educated were vast and deep. That’s two different things. You can be a mile wide and an inch deep, but we really dug into a lot of things. My question to you is, how do you cover such a broad range of subjects without feeling frazzled? That was the question that was asked. I think that’s a valid question.

[00:40:48] Sonya: It is. One thing, just very practically, have a schedule posted. These are the subjects we’re going to do today. These are the subjects we’re going to do tomorrow. You know which subjects you’re covering on which days of the week and in which order because the order makes a difference.

[00:41:07] Gretchen: Tell me more about that. Why does the order make a difference?

[00:41:10] Sonya: You want to use different parts of the brain in sequence so you don’t over-tired one part of the brain. What you don’t want to do is sit and read and narrate. “Okay, good. Now, next book, read and narrate. Okay, now, next book, read.” The read and narrate part of the brain will get fatigued, and that makes it harder to pay full attention. You want to sequence your subjects so you’re using different parts of the brain. You might do a read and narrate. Now, we’re going to do scripture memory where we’re reciting together. Then maybe we will look at a picture, do a picture study. Then we might do geography where we’re looking at maps together. Then we could do another read and narrate.

You want to make sure that your sequence is setting them up for success. It’s easier to pay full attention longer if you’re not over-fatiguing one part of the brain. Making sure you have a list of your subjects for each day and in what order you want to do them. Then the night before, just look through that list and set out your resources. Put them in the pile in that order where you’re going to use them for your family-together stuff because that’s how I did it.

We combined everybody for most of the subjects. It was only the skill-based math, language arts, upper-level sciences that we needed to do individually at each child’s own pace. Everything else, we could do all together as a family. I put those resources in the correct order, set them either at the kitchen table or at the couch, wherever you’re going to need them. That way, you’re ready to go the next morning.

[00:42:56] Gretchen: I have a wonderful question here, but I want to ask you to elaborate on something before I ask you this question. That is, when you are talking about doing the skill-based, math, language arts, were those individual experiences with each child?

[00:43:19] Sonya: Yes. Those were one-on-one.

[00:43:21] Gretchen: It’s important for our audience to hear you say that because, particularly, I work for a math company, let’s face it. When you put two children together, they don’t have equivalent math skills.

[00:43:36] Sonya: No, they don’t.

[00:43:36] Gretchen: Invariably, somebody ends up feeling less. That has to be an individual experience.

[00:43:44] Sonya: Absolutely. Those things need to be taught in a particular sequence. You have to master one before you move to the next skill and master that before you move to the next reading, writing, math, language arts, and especially upper-level sciences because those involve math. Those need to be done one-on-one at each child’s pace. The topic-based subjects, history, geography, Bible, literature, picture study, music study, nature study, all of those, you can do all together as a family because they’re topics.

[00:44:21] Gretchen: Can you tell us a little bit more about picture study? I know what you mean by that.

[00:44:26] Sonya: Picture study is art appreciation. When you were talking about breadth as opposed to depth, this is where I think you get a good picture of how Charlotte accomplished both. Just once a week, 15 minutes, that’s all it takes. You’re going to hang out with one artist for 12 weeks. Once a week, you’re going to look at a picture. I don’t have any pictures with me, but here’s a picture.

We’ll say our artist is Monet. We’re going to do Monet this time. We’ll do the vertical one of the lady with the parasol. You look at the picture. Everybody looks at it until they can close their eyes and see it in their imagination, in detail. Once they’re ready, we hide the picture, describe the picture to me. You have the students describing from their memories. What they saw. This is a form of narration. Describe the picture to me. After they’ve described everything, now we look at it again to clarify or confirm what they said. Then you can just put that picture on display for the rest of the week.

Next week, same artist. We’re going to do a different picture. We’re going to do the luncheon one. That’s the horizontal one. Same thing. You look at it, hide, describe, look at it again. Sometime, you want to get through about 6 or 8 pictures by Monet during that 12-week course, but it’s only taking 15 minutes once a week. Sometime during those 12 weeks, then if you can find a living biography about Monet, so they get to know the artist as a person, then you read that and have them narrate it to you. You have to be careful with artist biographies because some of these guys were weirdos. We have a picture study–

[00:46:19] Gretchen: This is true. Always a good homeschool advice that you should read ahead. [laughs]

[00:46:25] Sonya: Pre-read, absolutely. Simply Charlotte Mason produces what are called picture study portfolios. Those are by artists. If you want one on Monet, there’s one on Monet. It has eight beautiful prints inside. It has a booklet that has this biography in it. Then it tells you a little bit more about each picture that you can’t know just from looking at it, like some of the background story about it or something like that, that you can also share with your students. It only takes 15 minutes once a week. By the end of those 12 weeks, your child has a really good feel for Monet’s style and who he was as a person.

When you take them to the art museum to see the original of one of those pictures, and they walk into that room, and your little six-year-old gets that look on her face, she goes, “Mommy, it’s a Monet.” You take her little face in your hands, and you say, “Say it louder, honey. Let everybody know what a good mama I am.” [laughs] No, I’m kidding. She has formed a relation with that picture, with that artist.

I do want to mention, I didn’t bring this up when we were talking about living books. Living books were not used for every subject across the board. That’s a misconception some people have. Math was not taught with living books. Grammar was not taught with living books. The living books were basically history, geography, Bible, science in the younger grades, and literature. The rest of the subjects are very much hands-on, guided discovery, experimental, experiential type of learning.

[00:48:19] Gretchen: In these last few minutes, what are the closing words you would add for our audience today?

[00:48:25] Sonya: As you said, Charlotte Mason is very much a lifestyle, but any lifestyle does not just happen overnight. It is a gradual process, and you find your feet as you go. You try something, and it’s like, “Yes, but if we tweak it this way, it might get a little better.” That’s what this is. Charlotte Mason is very much about living a life that honors curiosity at whatever age you’re at, that gives your children practice with the tools to help them learn for themselves so that they can take those tools with them into adulthood and keep learning for themselves their entire lives.

It’s not, “Boy, I’m glad I graduated. I’ll never open a book again.” That’s such a tragic, tragic statement. This lifestyle is going to be a refreshing breath of fresh air. It will infuse joy into your homeschool, but don’t feel pressured to do everything all at once. You have time. You have freedom to make it fit your lifestyle and your family. I know that your heart is to do what’s best for your kids. I’m going to pull you back a little bit rather than push you forward. Okay?

[00:49:56] Gretchen: That quote that says, “Education is not the filling of a cup, it’s the lighting of a fire.”

[00:50:02] Sonya: Lighting of a fire.

[00:50:03] Gretchen: Once they’ve learned the how, you can’t stop them.

[00:50:10] Sonya: As long as you keep that curiosity alive.

[00:50:13] Gretchen: Yes, absolutely. Sonya, I want to thank you today. We will have another conversation because this was just so wildly valuable. It was just amazing. I want to thank you for your time today. Gosh, I feel like I have learned so much. I think I got my next book. I was like, “I’m going to the library this afternoon.” My plan was to wander around until something appealed to me. I think you just–

[00:50:44] Sonya: You’re going to read about the Opium War or–

[00:50:47] Gretchen: Maybe the Opium War on Audible. I think I’ve got to read this Doris Kearns Goodwin. You had me in the first paragraph. I was so absorbed in that book. It sounds just absolutely amazing.

[00:51:01] Sonya: That’s the one-page test. That’s how you know if it’s a good book.

[00:51:06] Gretchen: Tell me before we conclude, let’s talk a little bit about that one-page test, because I think this is helpful for parents to understand.

[00:51:17] Sonya: Yes, I think it’s something Karen Andreola mentioned way back when that if you’re looking at a book and you’re wondering if it’s a living book, open it wherever and give it a one-page test. Read one page. If it draws you in and it’s like you can’t wait to keep reading, you want to see what happens next, what’s it going to say next? You can picture it in your mind’s eye. It’s touching your emotions. You’re drawn into it. It’s probably a living book. If you get to the end of that page, it’s like, “Well, whatever,” then it’s probably not. Simple as that.

[00:51:50] Gretchen: It’s taken me into this age to get to the point where I don’t have to finish every book. I have picked up books and gone, “No, this isn’t for me.” For a number of years, it was like, “Look, you pick this book up. There’s got to be something for you to learn here.” Time’s too short. [laughs] We have to find the good ones. I will make sure that your website is included in the show notes so folks can find their way there. I will separately include a link to the podcast so that they can find their way straight to that so they will be able to hear your words of wisdom more deeply.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. We appreciate you all trusting us to come into your living room. I know that you learned a lot in this conversation because I learned a great deal. It was also a joyful walk down memory lane. Take care, everyone. Have a joyful afternoon. Bye-bye.