The CMP Review — Week of July 7

July 7, 2025

“Needs of body, needs of mind, e.g., food, warmth, healing – love, justice, hope, companionship, security, etc., etc. A long list – do you notice that in a really happy home they all get attention? Not all at once, all the time, but each need gets answered, some time, in some way. We are in need and we feel a desire, we want something deeply, passionately – affection, notice, a friend, quiet, whatever it may be. Our needs are the ground of our human nature from which our thoughts, hopes, fears and joys grow up. Children are especially needy people. That is why Fathers and Mothers must be peacemakers, must give loving thought and care in order that the children may have their four great needs supplied – Leadership, Healing, Feeding, and Teaching.” (Essex Cholmondeley, Parents Are Peacemakers)

@tessakeath

July 8, 2025

After the Fourth of July weekend we find ourselves firmly settled in to the wonderful summer months of July and August. It’s a time we associate most of all with the outdoors.

That’s probably what Cerise Parker was thinking years ago when she was asked to speak in the month of July. For some reason she was asked to speak about rainy days! “I thought of it as being rather a pessimistic [topic],” she wrote. “Yet, it almost seemed as if our Secretary had anticipated the wet August.”

In our day, rain may not be the only thing that keeps children inside in the summer months. Once indoors, screens are often a serious temptation and distraction. How can we as parents be faithful to Charlotte Mason’s ideals in these weeks of break from formal lessons?

Mrs. Parker’s 1935 paper is full of interesting and practical suggestions. Read or listen and let a voice from the past point to a new direction for the summer. Find it here.

@artmiddlekauff

July 9, 2025

Have you ever wondered what the “specially chosen colours” were in the paintbox that students could purchase in Charlotte’s school office?

It was most likely this 9-color palette recommended by artist and PNEU luminary Emeline Steinthal.

Find out the names of each, along with a contemporary adaptation, here.

@rbaburina

July 10, 2025

The Word were but a blank, a hollow sound,

If He that spake it were not speaking still,—

If all the light and all the shade around

Were aught but issues of Almighty will.

Sweet [friend], believe that every bird that sings,

And every flower that stars the elastic sod,

And every thought the happy summer brings

To thy pure spirit, is a word of God.

— Hartley Coleridge, “The Word of God”

@artmiddlekauff

July 11, 2025

Inspired by some neighbours’ newly constructed little library, Serafina decided to put together one of her own. She had an old cupboard that she had picked up free last year from another neighbour. She reinforced the roof with some 2×6s, and highly enjoyed painting and decorating it.

And we’ve been having fun stocking it and checking on the rotation as neighbours come by and check it out!

@antonella.f.greco

July 12, 2025

“We have the one thing to offer which the whole world wants, an absolutely effective system of education, covering the whole nature of a child, the whole life of man.” (Charlotte Mason, The Parents’ Review, Vol. 23, p. 811)

@tessakeath

In the parable of the great supper, the people who are invited refuse to come. The excuses, explains J. R. Dummelow, “show careless unconcern, not hardened wickedness. Business occupations, family ties, and various distractions, are pleaded as excuses for not taking God’s summons seriously.”

It is just such careless unconcern that Charlotte Mason feared she might find in her own heart. So she wrote out a beautiful poetic prayer in response to this parable. Read and pray with her that we too may be protected from our own trivial cares. The poem is here.

@artmiddlekauff

🖼️: The Parable of the Great Supper by Cornelis Droochsloot