CMP Review 2026-01-29

January 29, 2026

I studied French for six years in junior and senior high school, but I didn’t continue in college. As an adult I looked for a way to restore and sustain some knowledge of French, and I settled on doing my daily New Testament reading from a French translation of the Bible.

I started easy, with the Parole de Vie version. After getting comfortable with its limited vocabulary and tenses, I moved up to La Bible en Français Courant. More recently, a Canadian friend referred me to La Bible du Semeur which I have been reading for the past year or so. I’ve found that reading a familiar text in a less familiar language has proven to be an effective way to preserve (and perhaps enhance) my working knowledge of French.

At the same time I have been watching with great interest as Charlotte Mason France has been diligently translating Charlotte Mason’s Home Education Series into French. Just a few weeks ago I received volume 3. The beautiful volumes rest on my shelf waiting… for something…

The sign-up for the next Idyll Challenge opens on June 30. This will be the sixth challenge, which means I’ve read the volumes five times over the past ten years. (And I’d read through it a couple of times in the years preceding.) Surely the text is somewhat familiar to me now.

Here’s the question … when I do the sixth Idyll Challenge, should I try to read it in French? It would layer for me a challenge on a challenge… what do you guys think?

@artmiddlekauff