What is a Charlotte Mason education?

  Charlotte Mason was a British educator who developed a method of education which is now being revived by many homeschooling families.  The main elements of a Charlotte Mason (CM) education are living books, nature study, nature journaling, artist study, poet study, composer study, copywork, dictation, and in later years, the study of Shakespeare and the study of Plutarch.  I want to interject right now that most of what I know about a Charlotte Mason curriculum is from the website amblesideonline.com.

Living books: Instead of textbooks, Mason based her curriculum around what she called "living books."  A living book should be written by an expert on the subject and not talk down to children.  Living books also help students form connections to what they're studying. History becomes fun and alive when you've connected to historical figures through their stories and anecdotes.   Biographies are a big part of our homeschool.  Living books also includes great works of literature.  I encourage my highschoolers to read both the classics and modern works.  I doubt a CM purist would have The Catcher in The Rye or On The Road for their student to read, but as I said, we are an almost CM family.

Nature Study: I love, love, love this component of Charlotte Mason education.  Ideally, you would be outside everyday, but you would set aside one day a week to really explore nature for about three hours.  Children would learn plant, flower, tree, and bird identification.  They would also keep a nature journal.   Truth time: We don't live up to these ideals at all.  But I found out, that neither do a lot of other CM homeschooling families.  I think a lot of bird and plant identification may have been common knowledge for the adults at that time, so they could impart this knowledge on the kids easier than many of us can today.  Also, I have no background at all in botany or orinthology, but I'm slowly learning as I go.  One of our national parks here has a nature trail with a guide identifying the tree and plant life along the trail.

Copywork: In a Charlotte Mason education, children are to recopy sentences - often ones from their readings.  This serves as both handwriting practice and grammar practice as the student.  In a traditional CM program, the Bible (KJV) is often used for copywork practice.  In our home, we choose copywork passages from books that we are reading and poetry.   Sentences chosen for copywork should reflect not only good grammar, but also beautiful use of language.  I find Holling C. Holling books to be an excellent resource for copywork.

Artist Study:  Three artists, poets, and composers are studied per year.  One of each is studied for each term (3 terms per year.)  An example of an artist study would be that on the first Monday of a new term, your child would read about the selected artist.  After the lesson, a painting by that artist would be shown to your child for one minute and then placed face down or somehow out of sight.  Your child would then describe to you in as much detail as possible what he/she had seen.  There should be little to no prompting and no leading questions.  What the student gets out of the exercise is perfect for that student.  The child will connect with what she finds important to connect with in the work of art.  After this lesson, display the picture somewhere easy for your child to see during the week.  On the following Monday, choose a new painting by the artist and repeat the lesson of asking your child what she saw.  Display that picture for the rest of that week. https://secularalmostcharlottemason.blogspot.com/search/label/Artist%20Study

Composer/Poet Study is very similar to Artist Study:  The student would learn about the composer/poet.  One day a new piece of music or poem is listened to per week  heard again throughout the week.  The poem could be also be used for copywork and/or recitation practice.

Folksongs and Hymns: These are done in the same way as composer study.  I feel that we losing a lot of our cultural history as less and less people know many of these songs like "Who's Been Working on The Railroad" and "Buffalo Gals."  I love that this part of a CM education.  We have expanded it to include 60s and 70s folksongs and protest songs.  We have also expanded it to include African American folksongs and hymns.  A couple of artists from this subject that we have covered are Cat Stevens and Paul Robeson.

For more information, I recommend the following sites:
 http://wildwoodcurriculum.org/
http://amblesideonline.org/