The CMP Review — Week of August 5

August 5, 2024

Visiting Claude Monet’s home and gardens in Giverny was a lovely experience. The overflowing flowers and pathway lined landscapes were inspiring. Walking the grounds and seeing the views that served as his muse for his iconic water lily paintings was especially rewarding after studying and visiting his work in museums. I found it interesting to learn how Monet designed his garden, drawing inspiration from Japanese prints, diverting water to create a pond, planting lilies, and adding a wooden footbridge. This visit has deepened my appreciation for the art of gardening and the beauty it brings to our lives.

@tessakeath

August 6, 2024

As countless people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives approach the writings of Charlotte Mason, there is one thing we can all agree on: the world has changed since Mason’s day. One hundred years have passed since Mason’s death, and all who are inspired by her ideas continue to wrestle with a major question: how would Miss Mason think and talk about things differently if she were living in our time?

It is a difficult question to answer because we never knew Charlotte Mason. We were never members of the PNEU. But there is a woman who was, a torchbearer who passed on the torch, a leader who spent her entire life under the umbrella of the PNEU.

Joan Molyneux was born to parents who were PNEU members. She attended PNEU schools and the House of Education, taught at PNEU schools, and eventually led the PNEU School itself. And then she met Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, and offered an in-depth interview in the years leading up to the publication of For the Children’s Sake.

Joan Molyneux knew the world was changing. She believed that Charlotte Mason’s timeless philosophy needed a fresh explanation for a generation that had grown up with the books of C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and Jean Piaget. She was uniquely qualified to connect the 19th century to the 20th century. And in 1971, she did.

That year she published a six-part presentation of the educational philosophy of Charlotte Mason. It was a work of inestimable value. But sadly, it reached the hands of only a small number of subscribers before being forgotten by time.

Until today. The restatement of a philosophy has been rediscovered. Now for the first time since 1971 we are pleased to present the monumental work of Joan Molyneux for free. Find it at the profile link.

@artmiddlekauff

August 7, 2024

What transformation have you undergone as a result of homeschooling?

My biggest transformation has been regaining my sense of wonder. That began when my first child was born and solidified with Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education.

Share your own in the comments!

@rbaburina

📷 @aolander

August 8, 2024

When other CM parents talk about not driving all over the place for sports practices and other lessons, I keep quiet. I admire their ability to provide a quiet growing time for their children. I admire their masterly inactivity.

I wanted to be like them. I sat down over ice cream with my nine-year-old to talk about whether he really needed to be skating so much. I mustered my logic and reason to little effect. He just looked back at me patiently, waiting for me to understand. To accept that he wanted to be the best ice dancer he could possibly be.

Seven years later I watched him compete at Lake Placid where he put all of his hours of practice to work. After his last event it was time to relax and celebrate. There was no more ice and no more coaches, and his skates were finally sealed up in a bag.

A free night at last. I walked out of my hotel only to find my son on rollerblades (!) enjoying the long track outdoors. I tracked him down and asked if perhaps he might want to get some dinner. “I’m not really hungry,” he said, as he cast an eye to his skating friends.

“Maybe mom will go to dinner with you.”

Of course I want to carry out the perfect Charlotte Mason education. But there is something I want even more than that. My son has a dream. And a part of me has to become masterly inactive in order for it to come true.

@artmiddlekauff

August 9, 2024

While visiting my family in Ontario recently, we were playing outside when my little nieces and nephew spotted this exoskeleton on a tree and called me over to look at it.

I’m nearly sure it is of a cicada. (Those of you who experienced the whole cicada event will be able to confirm it for us!)

Here in Manitoba, we haven’t have more cicadas than the usual amount. How about where you live?

@antonella.f.greco

August 10, 2024

“Literature, art, music, all three can begin to be learned in the nursery. All three are a great possession, a possession for life. When the clouds of life drift about your children, these three will lead them through the mists to the mountain tops, and there they will find that the sun they had thought obscured is always shining in the Eternal Heavens.” (V. M. Hood, “Reading in the Nursery”, PR28, p. 532)

@tessakeath

In Luke 10:21, we read that “Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit.” According to James R. Edwards, “Jesus allowed such apertures into his self-consciousness only rarely and on guarded occasions, and only then within the confines of his closest confidants.”

In this moment of joy, Jesus “turned to His disciples and said privately, ‘Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see.’” N. T. Wright explains this moment:

In the same moment of vision and delight, Jesus celebrates what he realizes as God’s strange purpose. If you needed to have privilege, learning and intelligence in order to enter the kingdom of God, it would simply be another elite organization run for the benefit of the top people. At every stage the gospel overturns this idea. Jesus sees that the intimate knowledge which he has of the Father is not shared by Israel’s rulers, leaders and self-appointed teachers; but he can and does share it with his followers, the diverse and motley group he has chosen as his associates. God, says St Paul, chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, the weak to shame the strong.

Charlotte Mason reflected on this moment of joy shared between Christ and His child-like disciples. Read or hear “Happy Ye!” here.

@artmiddlekauff