Enter the Vencel Family Book of the Month Club. If you grew up in the 1980s, you might remember clubs like these. Books would magically appear on your doorstep once a month. It was fantastic, especially if the person curating the books knew what they were doing. This is a similar concept. I curated a list for the year, one book per month, that I am willing to buy and give to my young adult children (and daughter-in-law, of course). I didn’t want this to feel like a burden to any of them, hence the guidelines I set:

• You can choose to accept as many (or as few) of these books as you wish.
• You don’t have to read the book in the month I bought it for you.
• You don’t have to talk with me about the book (though I always love to hear your thoughts on what you’re reading and thinking).

I haven’t heard back from everyone yet, but the ones who did reply want all the books. Music to my ears! I would love for us to have a real family book club where we met and discussed a book once a month, but we live in two different states and, even if we didn’t, my busy college kid wouldn’t have the time. Perhaps that is a good long term goal? A girl can dream!

Want to know what I’ve curated for 2026?

The 2026 Book of the Month Club

January

Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Dr. Anna Lembke

February

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

March

How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe by Thomas Cahill

April

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy

May

Something Wicked: Why Feminism Can’t Be Fused with Christianity by Carrie Gress

June

Prester John: Authorised Edition by John Buchan

July

The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy by Thomas Stanley and William Danko

August

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

September

Vaccines, Amen: The Religion of Vaccines by Aaron Siri

October

The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier

November

Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment by James Gaines

December

The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry (illustrated by PJ Lynch)

The post The Family Book of the Month Club (Or: How to Keep Your Young Adults Reading) appeared first on Afterthoughts.

No matter.

The issue is that fear is never enough. Fear leads to minimalism; it dictates what we want to avoid. Fear cuts back and cuts down — less of this and none of that.

Fear isn’t bad. In early childhood, especially, children really do need to be protected, incubated from the world, the flesh, and the devil as much as possible.

But fear doesn’t give us a positive vision. It never tells us what to do. It doesn’t create a drive toward a goal. Fear cowers rather than pushing on. It halts and looks around rather than marching into the fray.

Fear is impotent, and yet oh so potent. It’s power to paralyze us is notorious.

My children were quite young when I first read these words from Charlotte Mason:

“Thou hast set my feet in a large room,” should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. (School Education, p. 170)

A large room. What does this even mean? I wondered. She’s referencing Psalm 31:8 here, but you only catch it if you read the King James Version:

And hast not shut me up into the hand of the enemy: thou hast set my feet in a large room.

Notice the contrast between fear and danger (the hand of the enemy) and what God has done (placed me in a large room). Somehow, a large room is the antidote to fear. We could give the Sunday School answer, of course. God and Jesus have done it. But how does a large room antidote fear?

Another verse comes to mind:

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. (I John 4:18)

A large room only antidotes fear if it is built and established in love.

Education is a large room we fill with good things to know and love. This is maximalism at its best: so much to love. We read widely because there are so many things to love — so many things that God made, so many things He has done, and so many things His creatures have done and made. Plus there is Him Himself!

We add education by things — we learn to love to run and jump and triumph in a racing or sparring or dancing, we learn to make and rejoice in how simple materials like charcoal and paper or paints or threads or leather can become something else entirely.

And for a time, the fear leaves and the middle years of homeschooling can be a great rejoicing.

And then fear returns in different forms. Suddenly, you’re worried about the college they will (or won’t) go to, the job they will (or won’t) get, the spouses and friends they choose, the music they listen to, the books they select, the [shudder] YouTube videos they curate for themselves. How did it spin all out of our control? we wonder.

We start to look for other solutions to the fear. Personally, I throw the book at them. I keep buying the new book that will give them the direction they so obviously seem to need.

But what if the solution is always the same? What if maximalizing — growing in love — is still the answer?

Once upon a time, I had a conversation with Martin Cothran for a Scholé Sisters episode that really gave me pause. I don’t remember if he said it during the episode or just when we were chatting, but we were talking about parents’ fear of Harry Potter. Cothran said that the issue wasn’t really that Harry Potter was so dangerous — it was only dangerous if that was the sum total of a child’s experience of fantasy writing. I had an aha moment. My children had been raised on Narnia and Middle Earth. By the time they went to Hogwarts, they enjoyed the story, but it wasn’t an obsession. Their rooms were far too large for Hogwarts to be able to fill them.

What about music? As a teenager, I learned to love Metallica, but it wasn’t dangerous because I also loved Bach and Mozart. I was discerning enough to know only some of their songs were worth loving. I see this in my own children — their wide tastes have made room for orchestras and choirs and sea shanties and folk songs … and also their own rock music … and my rock music … and their grandparents’ rock music. They’ve found a lot to love while training the app algorithm to stop cursing.

It turns out that when it comes to all the scary life decisions, maximalism holds true. They still need more to love, and then they will be okay. Specifically, they need more of God — more Scripture and more prayer and more church and more fellowship.

How can a young man keep his way pure?
By keeping it according to Your word. (Psalm 119:9)

There is a place for the books I want to buy — the book on dating, on choosing a career, on making your way in the world — but those only do their magic when placed in the largest room of all: the love of God.

The post Maximalist Homeschooling: More Love is the Only Solution appeared first on Afterthoughts.

It was glorious.

We went almost daily, and I read and I read. I gobbled up Mason’s first volume. I felt like I’d had my brain on standby since I’d had my first child four years prior; I found her difficult to read (which was embarrassing). No matter. I kept reading. It was all so foreign and familiar at the same time — foreign in that I’d never experienced it for myself, yet familiar in that I knew it was what I wanted for my babies.

Within the month I’d finished the first volume. My out-of-practice mommy brain could hardly recall what I had read. The only idea that really sunk in was that children, especially young children, should spend a lot of time outside. It was summer, and our part of California had outdoor weather ten months out of the year if you could stand triple digit temperatures (which, being native born, I could). So we went back outside, and I read it again.

This time, however, I read it more slowly, and I paused and implemented a few things with my son as I read about them. What I did was very simple, mostly just little games that I thought up, variations of games and activities in the outdoor chapters of the book.

That was back in 2005. I started this blog about half a year later (meaning the 20th anniversary is coming up!). It was the beginning of our Charlotte Mason adventure.

I had no idea then that I would end up trying to help other people learn this. I was simply trying to do what I thought was best for my children. I had this instinct that there was more I could give to my children than what I had received, if only I could figure it out.

And that’s really what I’ve been doing around here, even when I wrote the study guides, gave the talks, and coached Charlotte Mason Boot Camp: figuring it out.

Data Paralysis

In his book A Failure of Nerve, Edwin Friedman talks about what he calls “data junkies.” In its worst form, this is a disease of paralysis — the patient refuses to act because is certain he doesn’t have enough information. If he could just get enough information, then he would know what to do, and, he believes, he would do it. But for now, he must study up.

But the study is endless. Of the reading of many books, there is no end, after all.

Reading keeps us humble, yes. The more we read, the more we realize we do not know. But this does not mean that we fail to act upon what we have read. Let your reading make you more humble, yes. But do not let it crush you.

Friedman writes:

As long as leaders … base their confidence on how much data they have acquired, they are doomed to feeling inadequate, forever. They will never catch up. (p. 104)

Friedman is mostly speaking of people who feel the need to do more and more research. But I have noticed a phenomenon among mothers that, even if they limit themselves to just Charlotte Mason’s works, or just her philosophy, they still become afraid to act. It’s not that they think they need more and more research, but rather more and more understanding.

So let me say this now: you do not need perfect understanding in order to begin.

Application and Understanding Are Related

They say oldest children are prone to wanting to have it all figured out and perfect before they act. I am an oldest child, but somehow, in my parents’ backyard, where no one could see what I was doing, I felt able to act without perfection.

I’m so glad I did because doing so taught me something vital: it was in the acting, in the attempts to apply the ideas, that what I read began to connect up in my brain. This is so important! We think we must have something figured out and then act, but rarely does it work this way. Humans both learn by reading and by doing. When we read, we gain the initial ideas, but when we act, we begin to really understand.

I’ve seen it happen a million times over these past two decades of reading Charlotte Mason and trying to figure it out: I read something, I try to implement it, I see how that goes, and when I re-read I have an aha moment. Aha! Now I understand what she meant!

Wash, rinse, repeat.

If you want to really understand, you are going to have to do it. Lynn Bruce once told me that philosophy is meant to be walked. I have never forgotten that because it stopped me in my tracks. We don’t read all of this and store it up so that we can impress people at parties; we read so that we have direction for how to better love the children God has entrusted to our care. We read that we may live out the good things we have read. This is what it means to walk in wisdom.

Newsflash: You Aren’t Perfect

I have seen so many women come into Charlotte Mason Boot Camp wanting to learn more about Mason’s philosophy. And more they definitely learn! So much more! But over the years I have run Camp, I have noticed two kinds of campers, the ones that want to keep data gathering, and the ones who start experimenting with what they have learned, sometimes even in the early weeks of Camp!

In my experience, the ones that go ahead and try it are the ones that do better. The number of connections they make with the reading is directly related to what they have tried (and even failed) at doing. The relationship between their study and their application is dynamic and vibrant. Those who are afraid to act because they feel they do not know enough often do better once they are convinced to just try it and see what happens.

You will never be perfect enough to get it right each time you try. It’s been twenty years for me and I still categorize myself firmly in the figuring it out (note the present tense) side of things. Children keep growing and changing, they become adults and then new children enter your life — there is always so much more to learn.

We are often encouraged to keep learning. The learning is never through! This is true. But there is an attendant truth that is like it: keep applying. The applying is never through! There is always a new small person, desperate for nurture, to try things on.

The years go by fast, so they say. I go back and forth on that. It sure felt long when I was in the middle of it! But on the other hand, here I am with three graduates and only one student left in my homeschool. I will blink and he will graduate and it will all be over.

Don’t wait to act. That’s my encouragement to you. Be brave and try out what you have read. If all you understand is, like me, that you should go outside, then go outside. Then read it again. You will get more out of it each time, if you are always applying what you understood.

Your Ultimate Confidence

You will never be perfect enough or informed enough. Remember what Friedman said? As long as your confidence is in how much data you’ve acquired, you will feel inadequate forever.

Where do you get your confidence?

Charlotte Mason revolutionized my family first and foremost because she redirected my confidence. I was trying to find my confidence in me. I was going to become competent and then my children would be able to rely on me. There is a measure of truth in thinking this way, but it’s missing the foundation.

Where does our confidence come from, ultimately?

It comes from God. Typical Sunday School answer, I know. But I don’t just mean that we rest in His absolute wisdom and goodness, though that is an excellent place to start. I also mean that rest in the fact that when He created all of reality, He chose me to be the mother of these children. He chose you to be the mother of those children. The children given to our care are given to us by God’s design.

When I realized this, everything changed for me. Before that, I felt like maybe I didn’t have the right to be the authority in the room with my children. But I did, and you do, too. God has graciously given your children a mother, and that mother is you. Our confidence is not only in the trustworthy character of God, but in the unblemished wisdom of His design for our lives.

So go. Live out what you know so far. Read more. Do it again. And pray a whole lot along the way. Before you know it, you’ll be twenty years down the road and wondering where the time went.

The post On Data Paralysis: Don’t Be Afraid to Act appeared first on Afterthoughts.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I will say it again: once you have busy teens, you really need to keep more than one book going if you want to maintain the habit of reading aloud. I have a book for every possible group our schedule could create: myself plus … three kids, three kids and my husband, just my husband, two of three kids, etc. The reason for this is that the habit depends upon ME. As long as I pull out a book and read every afternoon directly following lunch, for example, the habit will be maintained, regardless of the fact that my college student is rarely home at that time.

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This list contains books we finished in 2024, in approximately the order in which we read them (except if I put a series together). This means the first book on the list was begun in 2023 and finish in early 2024.

Dune by Frank Herbert

This was an interesting tale, to be sure, but we won’t be going on to read the rest of the series. Everyone felt done by the time it was done, if you know what I mean. It is, after all, a long book. The author obviously stole a lot of his religious imagery from Islam and desert religions in general, which made it a more unique read. I wouldn’t conflate it with Islam, though. It’s definitely its own thing. It’s not particularly heroic, and I think that is why it fell flat for us at the end. I’m glad we read it, though, especially since the movies have popularized the book. It’s good to know the source material they draw upon.

Sackett by Louis L’Amour

We’ve been reading through the Sackett series, a few books a year. I love them. In fact, it’s been a while since we’ve read one. I need to make sure we do a few this coming year!

The Hammer by Alfred Church

This is a book I had on my shelf a long time and then, before I got to it, I somehow lost it. I have no idea how that happened, but it reappeared after our move! Miraculous! It’s a basic retelling of some of the stories in Maccabbees, which was fun. The cover at left is not the version I have, and the link goes to another edition, which also is not the one I have. I can’t vouch for these except to say that mine is a cheap scanned reprint, too, and it’s fine.

Flint by Louis L’Amour

I like all the Sackett books, but I think this was one of my favorites so far. I just loved the main character so much. The Sackett books are probably fine, by the way, for elementary students. You might want to read them, though, to make sure you agree with me.

The King Raven Series by Stephen Lawhead

In this series, Stephen Lawhead retells some of the Robin Hood mythology in a fascinating way. He sets it in Wales, shortly after the Norman invasion. Warning: we thought the first book was slow. I’m glad we pressed on and read the rest of the series, though. It was so good.

The Oath by Frank Peretti

There are a few books I’ve read that I think really illustrate the power and/or consequences of sin. This is one of them. I put it in the same category as The Picture of Dorian Gray or (for a bit younger crowd) The Night Gardener (if you only own one of these books, own this last one — it’s my favorite). This is definitely for the older teen crowd; we had some great discussions about it.

The Visitation by Frank Peretti

I inherited two Peretti books from my grandmother, who died a few years ago, and this was the other one. This is about false prophets and cults and deception. It is a good intro into that topic, in my opinion. But also, I wanted to introduce my children to a more charismatic, Pentecostal type of Christianity. They’ve never been around it, and I didn’t want them to be surprised or confused when they finally encounter it.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

This is great fun, but a good one to read aloud because it is better with some light censorship. It is a happy, irreverent type of science fiction. I suspect that I like it more than my kids do.

A Failure of Nerve by Edwin Friedman

I love this book and I am reading it again this year with my local book club. This particular reading was with my husband (kids eavesdropped off and on). It was super helpful giving us some language to discuss various issues that had come up with people we knew. I highly recommend this book even though I wish the author had lived to see the editing stage of his work.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams

This is the continuing adventures of the Hitchhiker’s Guide crowd. I love that the end of the universe means where the restaurant is situated in time rather than space. The plays on words in this book are so much fun.

Saving My Assassin by Virginia Prodan

This is my favorite of all the books we read aloud this year. It was excellent and such a good reminder of how easy our lives are here in the United States and how little we have suffered compared to those who came before us. Virginia Prodan details her early career as a lawyer fighting for religious rights in Romania. It was so interesting to read, partly because much of what she shares, I remember vaguely from American news media when I was a child during the Reagan Administration. I highly recommend this book!

On That Night by Elizabeth Yates

I try to add a new Christmas book to our collection each year. (I may have forgotten during our frantic packing last season!) This was the new addition for 2024. It’s a sweet little book, good for a quick read aloud.

The post The Official 2024 Afterthoughts Read Aloud List appeared first on Afterthoughts.

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Best in Health

Dirty Genes by Dr. Ben Lynch

Of all the health books I read this year, this one is the best written and most helpful for the most number of people. With that said, I think a lot of the advice is outdated, and some of the supplements promoted are helpful in the short-term but harmful in the long term (because they slow liver detox, for example — Dr. Garrett Smith calls this the Duration Paradox). But Dr. Ben Lynch is pretty influential when it comes to the genetic perspective on health struggles, so reading him means you will start to understand the lingo when people throw out acronyms like MTHFR or SNPs. It’ll introduce you to the inside baseball. Do I think he’s really discovered the “root cause of illness” though? No.

Other contenders: Good Fat Is Good for Girls, Good Fat is Good for Women: Menopause, The Indoctrinated Brain

Best in Fiction

Taliesin by Stephen Lawhead

This is the first of a series of books by Lawhead, who is my favorite living novelist. I can’t speak for his newer stuff (yet), but what I’ve read of his older stuff is so good. Taliesin did not disappoint! Combining the Atlantis mythology with the King Arthur tales? Yes, please! I was hoping to finish more of the series than I did, but the books are long and I had some things in my life that ended up stealing a lot of my time. I carry one in my purse everywhere I go, hoping I will finish it in time.

Other contenders: The Andromeda Strain, Merlin

Best in Leadership

Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

This book was extremely helpful. We live in a world where everyone tries to escape responsibility for everything. Even when people sound like they are taking responsibility, you start to doubt it when you think about it later and realize how they worded it. And I don’t know about you, but I have definitely struggled with the desire to blame someone or something else for a problem! This book shows what it looks like to really take ownership of a situation and why that is such a cultural gamechanger. I’m planning to assign it to my youngest next year.

Other contenders: Drive, The Art of War (yes, I read it again!), Choose Your Enemies Wisely, The Golden Key for Life and Leaders, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Best in Living Well

How to Be Free from Bitterness by Jim Wilson

I originally bought this book in order to better understand a couple people in my life who are extremely bitter (and possibly how to help or encourage them). However, it ended up having a chapter on child rearing called Saturation Love that is worth the price of the book all by itself. I wish every mother and father could read it; it’s so incredibly good. The chapter on bitterness was also excellent!

Note: I can only recommend this author with a caveat. I read another book of his (which is in the list below) and in that book it became evident that some of his theology is at a serious departure from mine.

Other contenders: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (of course!), Generation to Generation, In Tune with the World, How to Be Free, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind

Best in Culture and History

Slaying Leviathan by Glenn Sunshine

I’m actually in my second reading of this book. The first time, I listened to an audio book, only to discover I am a poor listener sometimes. This time, I’m reading it the real way — with a pen in my hand and everything! It really is so good and helpful in understanding how government works and what Protestants (and other Christians, too, of course) have thought about the relationship of people and churches to governments along the way. I highly recommend it.

Other contenders: People of the Lie, Areopagitica, The Fourth Turning is Here

The 2025 Afterthoughts Book of the Year

Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up by Abigail Shrier

This book was excellent. It’s another one I read twice: once on my own and once aloud with my husband. I really think it’s a must-read because it helps you understand how things have gotten to be the way that they are — how so many people are raising their children to be such weak, fragile adults. It also gives you pause and helps you think through ways to avoid such mistakes. Even though a lot of what she talks about is going on in schools, it’s not like homeschoolers are exempt from such things.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

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Charlotte Mason expected kids to learn most things naturally and when our kids don’t pick those things up, we panic. How do we help our children and still give them the education we want them to have?

The answer is simple: go ahead and incorporate the therapies your child needs.

Yes, there is more to it. If there are, say, three therapies available for whatever ails your child, probably one of them stands out as being more aligned with our principles and methods (or one stands out as definitely not aligned!). So yes, know your principles and use your discretion. But being careful isn’t the same as rejecting therapy outright.

Where did I glean Charlotte Mason’s position from? She mentions it briefly in a book review buried in the appendix at the back of Volume 5. I had completely forgotten about it until I re-read it this week for my local Charlotte Mason book club meeting. Charlotte Mason offers us a quote from a book called Educational Studies and Addresses by T. G. Rooper, which covers the “treatment of mentally deficient children” found in an article on the French educator Séguin:

Now in a normal child the various parts of the nervous organism work so rapidly and promptly that it is almost impossible to follow the process of co-ordination. It is indeed quick as thought. In the cretinous child, owing to want of co-ordination, different movements can be studied before they are combined into a whole. The method of training such children consists in doing for them artifically what in the ordinary child is done naturally. (Formation of Character, p. 437)

Isn’t this what most therapies are doing? I think of a woman I know, down on the floor, making sure a child struggling with learning disabilities can really crawl. She told me most dyslexics never crawled correctly and teaching them to do so, even when they are bigger, can help them better learn to read. This is the theory behind Brain Balance and a host of other similar approaches: manually coordinate what ought to have happened naturally … but didn’t.

Charlotte Mason didn’t object to this. She recommended the book and carefully selected the quote! What she objected to was doing for the child — any child — what he could do for himself.

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Here I am, once again planning someone’s senior year. (This is the closest I’ve ever cut my school planning — we start in six days!) I was very casual with this child’s writing instruction because she has always been naturally good with words (she had a lot to say before she was a year old), and also she insisted she was never going to college. I would rather teach much more interesting types of writing if you are not going to college (I’m looking at you, ND Wilson’s School of Fantastical Wordcraft!), but if you are going to college, there are ways I feel obligated to finish up your time with me. (So no, this student has not been tortured by incessant essay writing since the third grade. This is her first rodeo.)

Did I mention she changed her mind about college?

May I introduce Lucile Vaughan Payne’s The Lively Art of Writing if you haven’t already met:

I wrote about this book seven or eight years ago when my oldest was in 11th grade. I loved it then and I love it now. It’s just the perfect little book, doing the job I need it to do. Years ago, I offered a downloadable schedule for it. I have created a new schedule for my latest senior.

If you would like a copy sent to your inbox, just fill out this form here:

A Few Thoughts on This Schedule:

• Most chapters in this book ends with questions, assignment, and vocabulary. When I say “assignment” on the schedule, I am skipping questions and vocabulary on purpose. I do not believe well-trained Charlotte Mason students need either of these, but the assignments help them build their first essay and apply what they have learned in the chapter.
• Following the assignments will result in (among other things) a rough first essay. After this I expect two more essays in quick succession. My student needs to be ready for quicker turn around times in college, so this pacing is on purpose.
• This probably goes without saying, but the assignment is not done until I receive the narration (written or oral, whichever is fine) and/or the assignment, which I then review and check for performance. We are not doing our students any favors by not holding them accountable for their labors.
• This is not intended to replace daily written narrations, which are the backbone of how we teach composition in a Charlotte Mason education.

More Thoughts on Charlotte Mason-Style Writing Instruction

Charlotte Mason describes her composition training for high schoolers in part as coaching:

Perhaps the method of a University tutor is the best that can be adopted; that is, a point or two might be taken up in a given composition and suggestions or corrections made with little talk. (Vol. 6, pp. 193-194)

I recommend looking at your student’s written narrations and fixing basic flaws starting in junior high. I understand that this is not what Charlotte Mason said, but I also recognize, after talking to many, many mamas trying this approach, that it is simply untrue that these things sort themselves out. A high school student who does not capitalize the first letter of a sentence, use proper paragraphing, or understand how quotation marks work is unacceptable. If your student is consistently improving without coaching, great. If not, stepping in earlier than Charlotte Mason recommends is what I recommend. It’s my opinion, and you can do with it what you wish. (I have a theory that all the sloppy writing we allow our children to be around in the form of text messaging, emails, etc. is likely the root source of their confusion, but … it’s just a theory.)

The key with coaching is to only fix one or two things as a time. Otherwise, you will overwhelm the student.

Secondly, if you haven’t started by high school, you need to be giving a broad variety of assignments that move beyond plain written narrations:

Here is an example of a programme set for a term’s work in these two Forms, — “A good précis; Letters to The Times on topics of the day; subjects taken from the term’s work in history and literature; or notes on a picture study; dialogues between characters occurring in your literature and history studies; ballads on current events; (VI) essays on events and questions of the day; a patriotic play in verse or prose.” Here are questions set for another term, — “Write a paean, rhymed or in blank verse, on the Prince of Wales’s tour in the Dominions.” “An essay, dated 1930, on the imagined work of the League of Nations.” Form V, “Write a woeful ballad touching the condition of Ireland, or, a poem on the King’s garden party to the V.C.’s.” “An essay on the present condition of England, or, on President Wilson.” (Vol. 6, pp. 193-194)

There is a lot we can observe here, and my favorite is the idea that these sorts of assignments are the opposite of the boring writing curricula used by most homeschoolers which produce what Charlotte Mason warns against: “a stilted style.”

It is a philosophical mistake to overcorrect and say that the only way to avoid producing such a style is to “only do written narration.” That is not what Charlotte Mason did. Instead, she provided many rich and varied opportunities for writing that allowed for robust, flexible, creative thinking on the part of the student. (Please note that my not really assigning essay writing until senior year for this student was also not what Charlotte Mason did! I am not claiming to perfectly adhere to her methods but rather explaining what her methods were.) Written and oral narration are the foundation upon which we build our house but they are not the house.

To return to my daughter’s senior year, I am focusing on two things: daily written narrations and following the schedule I provided above. She has had a lot of varied writing assignments in previous years of high school; my goal this year is for her to graduate feeling confident in her ability to construct a basic essay when she is required to do so.

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