The CMP Review — Week of May 5

May 5, 2025

“Nature teaches so gently, so gradually, so persistently, that he is never overdone, but goes on gathering little stores of knowledge about whatever comes before him.” (Vol. 1 p. 66)

@tessakeath

May 6, 2025

Celebrate Jane Austen’s 250th birthday with this article by Dorothy Brownell. Read by Modern Miss Mason Leah Boden. Find it here.

@rbaburina

May 7, 2025

Just a handful of brushstrokes can be combined in infinite ways to confidently paint most anything we want in our nature journal.

See how to capture six different leaf shapes using one basic stroke in my newest tutorial “Watercolor Leaves with Confidence,” available in this month’s TREASURES bundle from Wild+Free.

Find the link to the entire bundle here—or grab a free sample bundle if you’re not subscribed.

@rbaburina

Images & video @aolander

May 8, 2025

If there’s one thing in life that has made me keenly aware of my limitations, it’s homeschooling my children in high school. There’s so much to the banquet in these final years, and it’s hard to be adequate for every subject. It has stretched me like nothing in my experience.

In moments of doubt I ask myself whether in this day and age my children would be (or would have been) better served by specialized instructors who were each able to deliver the most seasoned instruction and heart-felt enthusiasm in their respective subjects of expertise. In those moments I can go subject by subject and think of how someone with better training and experience could do a better job.

I recently found unexpected encouragement when reading Charlotte Mason’s “School Education.” On page 170 she wrote:

We cannot expect a school to be manned by a dozen master-minds, and even if it were, and the scholar were taught by each in turn, it would be much to his disadvantage. What he wants of his teacher is moral and mental discipline, sympathy and direction; and it is better, on the whole, that the training of the pupil should be undertaken by one wise teacher than that he should be passed from hand to hand for this subject and that.

Perhaps I am not a wise teacher, but at least I am one teacher. Hour after hour and day after day my son learns from a person who loves knowledge and who loves him. Could someone else do better? Perhaps. But there is no one else who would consider it more of an honor… and no one else would more gladly cherish the memories of these precious years that no one will ever be able to take away.

@artmiddlekauff

May 9, 2025

Buds on trees. Filled with promise. The slow start to spring.

What signs of spring are you seeing? (Or signs of autumn if you live in the southern hemisphere.)

@antonella.f.greco

May 10, 2025

“Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”

~ G.K. Chesterton

@rbaburina

My son and I have been on a multi-year journey through Charlotte Mason’s The Saviour of the World, and we are currently on volume 6. This volume covers an extended portion of the Gospel of Luke that contains material not found in any other Gospel. It has been an eye-opening study for me.

Luke seems to delight in recording details about our Lord’s final journey to Jerusalem. Reading Luke’s gospel in the light of the Gospel History has helped me appreciate these passages in a whole different light. It evidently captured Charlotte Mason’s imagination as well.

In Luke 13:22 we read, “And He went through the cities and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem.” Miss Mason lingered on this thought of Jesus and His journey to the momentous events soon to follow. Her poem about this verse brings us into the moment, and invites us to reflect more deeply on our Lord and His Word. Read or hear her poem here.

@artmiddlekauff

🖼️: He Went Through the Villages on the Way to Jerusalem by James Tissot