The CMP Review — Week of March 24

March 24, 2025

“Intimacy with Nature makes for Personal Well-being. … a love of Nature, implanted so early that it will seem to them hereafter to have been born in them, will enrich their lives with pure interests, absorbing pursuits, health, and good humour.” (Vol. 1 p. 71)
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@tessakeath

March 25, 2025

Charlotte Mason is well known for offering a method of education that develops the whole child: mind, body, and soul. Thankfully, many modern guides and explanations are available to help us understand specifically how her method feeds the mind and the body. But when it comes to feeding the soul, the details are not as fresh and crisp.

How do we as parents and educators nourish our children’s souls? E. M. Bounds wrote, “When faith ceases to pray, it ceases to live.” Charlotte Mason also understood that the soul lives and grows by prayer. In fact, she wrote quite a bit about this aspect of the spiritual life. Surprisingly, however, few efforts have been made to systematically review and present Miss Mason’s teaching on prayer.

Nancy Kelly sought to remedy this gap. In the course of research, however, she found out more than just how to awaken prayer in our children. She also discovered balm for her own soul at a time when she needed it most. Listen to Nancy Kelly’s powerful and moving presentation and testimony entitled “Prayer: Speech of the Soul,” recorded live at the 2024 Living Education Retreat. Find it here.

@artmiddlekauff

March 26, 2025

Math Book 6 and Practical Geometry 2 have just released!

The series guides you and your child in what Charlotte Mason herself called a “living teaching”—and it’s already won multiple awards! One of my favorite things about Book 6 is that it leads your child to discovering and understanding why the solution to fraction division problems can be obtained by inverting and multiplying. Raise your hand if you were taught the “how” but not the “why” behind that in school 🙋🏻‍♀️

Ask me any questions about the books in the comments or download a free sample along with the placement guide via the link.

@rbaburina

March 27, 2025

Many of us know Greg Rolling by his voice — his expressive reading has been for us the sound of H. W. Household, Arthur Burrell, and others on the Charlotte Mason Poetry podcast.

But I also know Greg from a different context — he was a participant with me in the first Idyll Challenge nearly ten years ago. I had the privilege of interacting with him and several other men each month as we discussed Charlotte Mason’s volumes. He explained that one point in particular struck home with him.

He wrote an article about it entitled “A Look in the Mirror.” In it he describes a disconcerting realization: “I suddenly understood the problem of my morning devotions, and how I could read faithfully and walk away forgetting what I had read.”

To address this problem, he began the practice of making written narrations of his daily Bible reading. At the time I thought it was a wonderful and inspiring idea, but surely not something I had time to imitate myself.

In the years since, however, I have learned that in there is another kind of narration besides oral and written narration: mental narration. For several months now I have been “mentally narrating” my daily Bible readings and the practice has transformed my relationship with God’s word. I’ve experienced firsthand the difference between reading and knowing.

If you missed Greg’s article when it first came out, I encourage you to check it out. But when you read or hear it, consider that mental narration is also a powerful option. Find his inspiring message here.

@artmiddlekauff

March 28, 2025

A shared love of rocks.

A gaggle of children of varying ages were rock hunting on our property and after a while Serafina brought out her own prized collection to show them.

Her favourite is a piece of purple quartz that she found in the river here in our neighbourhood.

I know we’re not the only rock aficionados here! Tell us about your family’s most prized rocks.

@antonella.f.greco

March 29, 2025

Look at these beautiful shells!

Previously housing freshwater snails of the genus Pleurocera, they were found down at the riverside. The largest shell is just under 25 mm.

We’re all enamored.

@rbaburina

In 1912, Charlotte Mason wrote a series of letters to the Times which were published the following year with the title The Basis of National Strength. The first letter focused on knowledge. “It is for their own sakes that children should get knowledge,” she wrote.

Each letter appeared as a crescendo, strengthening and echoing her theme. And then finally in the fourth letter she made her great claim: “knowledge is the basis of a nation’s strength.”

Reading this booklet, now forever made part of her final book, one might think that for Mason, knowledge is the highest good. But it is in her poetry that we find the completeness of her thought.

A day is coming, she foresaw, when a Judge is coming. And then we will be asked not “What did you know?” but “What did you do with what you know?” Read Mason’s important and challenging poem here.

@artmiddlekauff

🖼️: Behold the Bridegroom Cometh by William Blake Richmond