The CMP Review — Week of October 13

October 13, 2025

“Most of the time of the Nursery Folk is spent out-of-doors, and rightly so. Therefore it is quite an easy thing to help them to be friends with Mother Nature.” (J.R. Smith, Nature in the Nursery, PR28)

@tessakeath

October 14, 2025

Charlotte Mason’s PNEU continued to send out programmes of study for decades after Charlotte Mason’s death in 1923. Families and schools using these programmes were supported by the Parents’ Review, which was later renamed the PNEU Journal. Articles in the journal shared wisdom and insight about how to apply the Charlotte Mason method.

An intriguing article from 1972 was written by a homeschool parent to explain how he handled “the mechanics of ensuring that the term’s syllabus is completed smoothly in the time available.” His candid and practical article is extremely relatable, written as it was at the midpoint between Charlotte Mason’s era and our own.

If you’ve ever wrestled with how to “fit it all in,” trying to reconcile page counts and time tables, then this article is for you. Or if you want to see how a Charlotte Mason educator approached homeschooling fifty years ago, be sure to check this out. It’s the next in our series of vintage articles from the PNEU Journal. Find it here.

@artmiddlekauff

October 15, 2025

We found our first Lion’s Mane mushrooms this past weekend!

This is the first year we’ve gone beyond morels and boletes, and have done so comfortably and confidently with @appalachian_forager Whitney Johnson’s book, Go Forth and Forage.

BTW, they were delicious.

@rbaburina

October 16, 2025

Sometimes I am asked how the Library of Congress obtained its collection of Parents’ Review and PNEU Journal volumes. I can’t say for sure but I can speculate. Unlike the volumes at the Armitt, the bound volumes at the Library of Congress include the original covers of each issue, usually of blue card stock.

For example, this cover appears in the bound volume for 1927 just after the index for the year. Notice the stamp. It says “Library of Congress,” and, if I’m reading it correctly, “Jan. 10 1927.” This suggests that the January issue was received by the library shortly after it was published. Then sometime after the end of 1927, when all the issues for the year had been received, the Library of Congress bound the 12 issues into a single volume.

These original issues also include the advertisements, something I don’t recall seeing in the bound volumes at the Armitt. It is fascinating to see ads for PNEU schools and uniforms. And it is fascinating to think of a clerk stamping each issue of the Parents’ Review as it arrived 100 years ago. I, for one, am glad they did.

@artmiddlekauff

October 17, 2025

I went on a visit to my family in Ontario and we spent a lovely afternoon at my nieces’ and nephews’ favourite nature trail.

Here are some of them watching a small paddling of ducks in the creek there.

The children wandered to and fro, following the ducks who were doing the same, for a good, long while.

Squeals of shared joy would send the ducks downstream, but they never ventured very far. The children would run back towards them, excitedly squeal again, the ducks would come back upstream, and we would repeat the whole scene again.

It’s almost as though the ducks were enjoying watching my little people running back and forth and stopping to look as much as the children enjoyed watching the ducks.

@antonella.f.greco

October 18, 2025

The power of a strong windstorm.

And a tree that no longer had the health or strength to remain rooted in the ground.

Nature is quite amazing, isn’t it!?!

@antonella.f.greco

In Luke 17:20–21 we read, “Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, ‘The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, “See here!” or “See there!” For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.’”

D. L. Bock states that the ending phrase of this passage “is one of the most discussed in Luke’s Gospel. It is one of the few statements of Jesus that puts the kingdom in the present. In fact, so unprecedented is this statement that some argue the idea is really futuristic.”

In the discussions about this verse, many interpretations have been offered. Charlotte Mason offers her own in her poem “Lo, here! or, There!” In beautiful verse she assures us that we need not run after signs and wonders to find the Kingdom of God. Instead, she promises that we can find it now. Read or hear her poem here.

@artmiddlekauff

🖼️: The Pharisees Question Jesus by James Tissot