Over the years in our Charlotte Mason homeschool I have collected lots of tips on how to implement her ways and philosophy. Here are a collection of them for you. As there are so many they are separated onto 3 different pages, but they are randomly arranged. Enjoy reading through and implementing what you can, when you can.

Charlotte Mason Homeschool Tips - on the outdoors

When I read Charlotte Mason’s “Ourselves” I am struck by how simply she saw her world. Because she was walking daily in thanksgiving to God for the little things, she saw how much He loved her. Look at this quote:

“How good is life, how joyous it is to go out of doors, even in the streets of a city! Surely a pleasant thing it is to see the sun! How good is health, even the small share of it allotted to the invalid! How good and congenial all the pleasant ways of home life, all family love and neighbourly kindness, and the love of friends! How good it is to belong to a great country and share in all her interests and concerns! How good to belong to the world of men, aware that whatever concerns men, concerns us! How good are books and pictures and music! How delightful is knowledge! How good is the food we eat! How pleasant are the clothes we wear! How sweet is sleep, and how joyful is awaking!”

When we look at our days, do we go through it being thankful and praising God for His love towards us? We have houses, families, food, friends and the use of our bodies. All of these are blessings that we ought to acknowledge and see them for what they are. God the Father’s loving care of us.

”The Soul that surveys these and a thousand other good things of our common life is indeed a 'rising soul,' rising to the Father,––who knoweth that we have need of all these things,––with the gratitude and thanksgiving that are forced out of a heart overflowing with love.”

Something to love

I remembered a quote by Karen Andreola in her Charlotte Mason Companion where she says that each child should daily have: “Something to love, something to do and something to think about.” Something to think about is catered for when we read good living books to our children. This is where their thought life is fed – through ideas and imagination. Something to do is easily done as our children learn to do worthwhile work in the home, pursue a business endeavour and learn how to be magnanimous. Our children have something to love in their siblings, parents and pets. Sometimes learning to love and serve those within our homes is harder than loving and serving without, but if we choose to make this our daily “curriculum” we cannot go wrong.

Charlotte Mason Homeschool Tips - myths and legends

The age of myths…not to be dispelled but for idea food for our children! One of my sons favourite story books from his younger years is the Usborne Book of Greek Myths He played out many heroic tales from this book along with great heroes from history.

Charlotte Mason says that we should allow our children to learn about the past when “giants roamed the land” and part of that is allowing our children access to stories like fables, myths and legends.

There is often some concern from Christian parents that children need to rather learn these things later on when they are more fully grounded in the truth from the Bible. This is indeed a concern for a family who perhaps does not allow God’s truth to be the centre of their homes, but for us we have found that our children have always been able to discern the difference between myth and truth as they have been alongside us and see our faith being worked out before them.

Myths, legends and fables in the Charlotte Mason homeschool are wonderful idea food for children’s play times. Dressing up and role play when children are young is one of the primary tools for learning in a homeschool home. Allowing children access to these genre of writing before they are in the self conscious older years and no longer keen on dressing up is a great way for them to develop relationship with the characters they have learnt about.

Charlotte Mason Homeschool Tips - child training

“Let children alone-...the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions - a running fire of Do and Don’t; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose."

The point with this quote is that we need to first secure that they will go the right way, and then we can stop the intense training. A while back I despaired one day when I felt like I had been working on a specific child training situation for long enough. My bother was “But I have been dealing with this same issue in my child for months and it is still not resolved!”

Some discipling of our children seems to stick much faster than others and there are those days when we tend to just be handing out the instructions left, right and center. A few years ago

when we considering an olive farm and we were doing our research we were told not to expect a yield for 7 years. Gosh, I remember thinking that sound just like a parenting analogy in the making!

So when I was despairing over this particular issue God reminded me that my children all still have “Under Construction” signs on them as do I!

Charlotte Mason Homeschool Tips - Science of relations

Charlotte Mason often talked about the science of relations that our children develop when they are exposed to a liberal curriculum which encompasses great thoughts, beautiful art, worthy people and other such uplifting ideals.

These things are part of our children’s everyday lives as we choose to give them a large life experience. But at the same time there are other things that our children form relationships with – some that we may introduce and others that come into their lives through friends and other contacts.

As parents we have the ability to begin creating appetites in our children which seem harmless but as the relationship develops we notice the fruit is not good. This is when we need to not turn the other way but rather be sure to address these appetites in our children. More on this in the next section…

Charlotte Mason Homeschool Tips - her way - my way – your way – His way

The Charlotte Mason principles are so broad that often moms don’t know where to start with implementing her ideas. 7 or 8 years ago I would have identified myself so strongly with her ideals as I tried to implement training in habit, living books, nature study, art appreciation, music appreciation and others into our homeschool.

As the Lord has led me over these past few years I have begun to identify more with who I am in Him and less with what I do in my home. So while all of Miss Mason’s ideas are wonderful and enriching, they are not the be all and end all in our homeschool.

So if you are a mom who wants to start out, begin by implementing some of the ideas that you can manage and ask the Lord to guide you in your choices. There really is no right or wrong way to do this...there is only His way.

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