our dozen beautiful feet

(Nota bene: this is not a scholarly article. I'm a homeschooling mom. These are the ramblings of my mind as I'm processing the things I'm reading, listening to, and being changed by. Please forgive me for not citing sources or attributing quotes properly. I'm summarizing. If you think I'm getting it wrong, please comment and let me know!) There has been much and lively debate about whether Charlotte Mason deserves to be considered part of the larger classical tradition of education.  Having first discovered the classical tradition, and through that being introduced to the ideas of Charlotte Mason, I have always been curious about the differences and similarities between the two. Last year I chose Charlotte to be my educational mentor for the year and set a goal to read as many of her volumes as possible in one year. I made it through four: Home Education, School Education, Formation of Character, and Towards a Philosophy of Education. I found myself nodding in ag

Check out my guest post on the Schole Groups blog here ! About five years ago, as my oldest child was entering the third grade, I was at a loss to teach him how to write. I didn’t know anything about writing, and it seemed like such a difficult, subjective thing to teach and evaluate. I had been dabbling in what I thought was classical education and enjoying it, so I started researching how to teach writing classically. I stumbled upon the idea of the progymnasmata, and realized I had a lot to learn. This began a deep dive into classical education that led me eventually to Classical Academic Press, the Scholé Sisters, and the Circe Institute. Since I still had two very little ones at the time, learning and study was slow going for a few years without much real progress. Fast forward three years. I began to feel like it was time to really do some more study on classical ed and what it looks like beyond the grammar years. But how could I do that while also homeschooling my kids, be