A Charlotte Mason Education

Mason believed that the development of good habits within a child provides the foundation for early education. She wrote, “The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days.”  She saw good habits as so crucial that she recommended putting all else aside if a bad habit appeared and working with the child (in a friendly way) to reconcile the issue before it could develop further.

Mason style lessons are short, especially for young children. The goal is to train the child to focus fully on their work, but only for the amount of time they are developmentally capable of spending.  For early elementary-aged children this often means only 5-15 minutes per subject. In older grades, the duration extends to 45 minutes or more.

When a child becomes restless, Mason advised changing the lesson to a different type of subject–maybe moving from handwriting to music study, or from math to handicrafts. Short lessons means that more subjects can be incorporated into a school day. This fits with the philosophy of introducing many topics to children and allowing them to delve deeper into the ones that spark their interest.

​Living books are the opposite of textbooks – quality literature (either fiction or non-fiction) written by an author with a passion for the topic. The writer’s passion and expertise breathes life into the book, as opposed to a textbook that gives impersonal overviews of many topics. Living books present inspiring stories that engage the minds of children and adults alike, providing characters our children can struggle with and emulate.

A Mason education uses narration as one of the central methods to evaluate a student. The goal is to teach a child to think and express themselves clearly. Up until the age of 10 or 11, Mason advises teachers to use mainly oral narration with a child. After listening to a short passage of a book, the child will tell back, in his or her own words, important aspects of the story. Narration isn’t the same as summarizing but rather is a rich retelling of what was heard.

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Letting a young child do this orally helps them develop analytical thinking skills without getting stuck by the physical mechanics of handwriting. At around age 11, children can begin written narrations, which lengthen and become more in depth as children get older.  A more detailed look at how to implement narration in the classroom is available in a later section of the training.

Dictation exercises introduce and reinforce spelling and grammar concepts. Using inspiring quotations or Scripture for dictation is a natural way to integrate living materials with this skill. The child studies the passage until they are certain of the spelling and punctuation. Then the teacher dictates the passage slowly while the child writes it down.

Mason believed in exposing a child to greatness in many forms, which is why she introduced music and art appreciation at her schools. Students studied one composer or artist each term–both through experiencing the music and art, reading living books about the artist, and perhaps reproducing the style through art or music lessons.

Mason thought children should spend as much time as possible outdoors, especially as young students. Students kept their own detailed nature journals and also used nature guides to discover and identify the natural world in their neighborhood.