Mason for Me - Fall 2017

One thing I've really loved about the Charlotte Mason community is the emphasis I've seen put on Mother Culture. Mother culture is a term used, not by Mason herself, but as the title and topic of a PNEU article.  That article focuses on the activity of reading but the concept isn't limited to that.

 I love this quote, which is from Charlotte Mason herself, in Volume 3 when she is talking about Masterly Inactivity and Mothers.

 If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for their children when these are overdone, we should have happier households. Let the mother go out to play! If she would only have courage to let everything go when life becomes too tense, and just take a day, or half a day, out in the fields, or with a favourite book, or in a picture gallery looking long and well at just two or three pictures, or in bed, without the children, life would go on far more happily
for both children and parents. Vol 3 pg 34

And this one from Volume 6.

But the function of education is not to give technical skill but to develop a person; the more of a person, the better the work of whatever kind; Vol 6 pg147

Charlotte Mason's #1 principle is Children are born persons but I like to joke that it really needs a part b: Mothers are persons too! We need books, we need ideas, we need truth and beauty and goodness!

Now some of that we get with the kids when we're doing hymns and picture study with them and that's wonderful. It's honestly one of my favorite perks of homeschooling. However, sometimes we need a bit more than that and maybe some inspiration for other moms as to how to make that happen.

Enter - Mason for Me! It's a place for us to link up to the ways we are making the Charlotte Mason principles work for us - as people, not teachers.

I know several of us are or will soon be working our way through an AO year. I'll be starting y8 in January so I'm sure I'll have lots to say about that - the readings, my attempts to keep timelines and a book of centuries and try my hand at map drills. All those types of posts are welcome here! I'd love to read about other moms and their "AO for adults" journey. But if you don't use AO or are only taking baby steps into the mother culture world, feel free to share more general mother culture posts.

- If you have a post you'd like to share, leave it in the linky below. I find the issue with link-ups is that i forget to go back and check the links that have been added after I leave mine, so I'll still be highlighting the posts left in this quarter, next quarter!

- Grab the button code on my sidebar to add to your blog. Spread the love!

-You can also use #Masonforme on instagram.

- Feel free to ask specific questions in the comments as well. If your struggling to find a keeping style or timeline set-up that works for you, ask! Limited time/budget and wondering what books you really can't drop from a year, ask! You might get your answer in the comments or I can highlight a question or two each quarter and maybe you'll get a whole set of answers/ideas to help you out.

Once a quarter, I'll compile those links to share with everyone and select a few instagram posts to highlight as well. My Winter round-up will go up at the beginning of December so we can all have time to be inspired and ready for the New Year. I can't wait to hear from you!

The Links:

Since this is the inaugural link-up, I don't have too many links to share yet (so help me out, start linking!) But here are a few I've seen lately around the interweb. Hopefully they'll get you inspired.

• Pam Barnhill's Morning Time Basket Podcast Episode #40 was all about A Mother's Morning Time Basket. So maybe you don't feel up to committing to a whole year of AO, but you do think you want build up the habit of mother culture reading. This podcast has got a lot of ideas to get your started. 

• Celeste over at Joyous Lessons shares her amazing Reading Journal. This post gave me some great ideas as I was pondering ways to expand my notebooking of my AO readings next year. Plus it has plenty of pretty pictures and I'm a sucker for a nice looking notebook. 

• My original Mason for Me/Ambleside for Adults post talking about my experience going through Year 7. I think Year 7 is a great place to begin because its pretty much the beginning of the second cycle through history. Which means if you have younger kids using AO, you'll either have already covered this history period or you  might be doing the same period together  - and familiarity helps!