The CMP Review — Week of February 17

February 17, 2025

I previously shared one of the ways I teach my kids to make pocket notebooks, as well as how to make the pages perforated with a rotary cutter. Another fun tool for customizing homemade booklets is a round corner punch. The one I use has three options for different depths of roundness, and I love how it gives a smooth, polished look. It’s a small detail, but it makes such a difference in the final product.

@tessakeath

February 18, 2025

The importance of imagination cannot be overstated. As Ellen Parish warned more than 100 years ago, “The power of reason without imagination tends to make us materialists and unable to understand faith.”

Charlotte Mason developed her program of instruction with an eye towards the cultivation of imagination. Miss Parish understood this and wrote that “rightly taught, every subject gives fuel to the imagination, and without imagination no subject can be rightly followed.”

But something more is needed than a well-designed curriculum. “For the right use of the programmes,” said Miss Parish, “two things are necessary—solitude and independence.”

Find out from Miss Parish herself how to cultivate imagination during lesson time, but even more importantly, how to cultivate it in the rest of life. Read or hear her article here.

@artmiddlekauff

February 19, 2025

Would you say you have a good imagination?

Recently, I listened to an Art of Manliness podcast entitled “The Imagination Muscle—Where Good Ideas Come From (And How to Have More of Them).” The discussion between Brett McKay, and Albert Read is fascinating in its own right, but what makes it particularly interesting is that just yesterday we released Ellen Parish’s 1914 address, “Imagination as a Powerful Factor in a Well-Balanced Mind.”

Listen to both to see how the ideas align between a graduate of Charlotte Mason’s teacher training college with the former journalist & managing director of Condé Nast Britain. Pay special attention to hear Mr. Read’s novel term for what we in the CM-world know as “narration,” how a commonplace book aids our imagination, and ways to work our own imagination muscle as adults.

@rbaburina

February 20, 2025

This month in the Idyll Challenge we are reading my favorite chapter in all of Charlotte Mason’s six volumes. I like to say that this chapter is the greatest essay ever written about education. It captures an idea so inspiring, so far-reaching, and so impactful that it touches every aspect of teaching and learning.

Charlotte Mason had discovered the idea and coined the term “the great recognition” in 1892. But then in the winter of the following year she visited Florence and saw a wondrous fresco that would forever be associated with her wonderful idea.

Many Charlotte Mason educators travel to Florence to see the Spanish Chapel of Santa Marian Novella for themselves. But we are not the first to do so. In fact, we follow a delightful tradition.

In 1934 Rose Amy Pennethorne visited the chapel to see the frescoes for herself. “I was struck by the prevailing colours of green, white and red,” she recalled. And then she added, “I felt that the whole building was a prophecy.”

Two years later she shared about her trip. But she wrote about more than colors. She wrote about an idea that touches every aspect of teaching and learning. Read her reflection here.

@artmiddlekauff

February 21, 2025

To walk where only the deer have trod…

There’s always something magical about following in their steps.

@antonella.f.greco

February 22, 2025

“There can be no greater vocation in life than the family responsibility of sharing life with the growing child. The school is an extension of our home. These are hard days, in many ways, for rightful living. It doesn’t ‘just happen.’ Stop and think. Get priorities right. And remember, education is ongoing. We, too, are learning, growing, living. We are to ‘become as little children.’” (Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, For the Children’s Sake, p. 157)

@tessakeath

“The Hebrew was stirred by what he saw to thoughts of God,” proclaimed Rev. Francis Lewis at St. Mary’s in Ambleside in 1926. “Everything was fraught with the deepest lessons of spiritual truth to the one whose heart was attuned to God. Our Lord drew some of His greatest lessons from the birds and from the lilies of the field. In their lives was revealed the watchful and loving providence of a heavenly Father.”

A unique verse in the Gospel of Luke reveals that our Lord drew a lesson even from the raven. So did Miss Mason. Read or hear her poem “Be not anxious”, along with commentary by J. R. Dummelow here.

@artmiddlekauff