Through utilizing living books, not only can people learn about events and places, but they can also learn morals and lessons of how to act and treat others. Everything that a child interacts with, books, friends, stories, music, are shaping how they think and believe. Surrounding the child with beautiful things to fill their mind and give them unique ideas. Reading small portions of books, even short "kid" books over a few days help kids to think about the story and for it to really come alive to them.

Studying beautiful things, such as poetry, art, nature, and music builds the mind and increases observation and memory skills. Also, children create a gallery in their mind that they can always have with them. Nature study also allows children to relate to the physical world and they can notice details that they then record in their notebook. At Willow Creek Gathers, we study all of these during every co-op day. 

Education is a life, atmosphere, and a discipline. The mind needs knowledge to grow and this knowledge needs to come from generous and varied subjects. Not that we need to work on every subject every day, but over the course of their studies each year. The kids will begin to see how subjects relate to one another, drawing them even deeper in. 

Charlotte Mason had 20 main principles that she believed to be important in fostering good and noble people. One is that children are born persons.  It’s not that they have the potential to be a person and are just a canvas waiting, they are already that way. Each person will have their own interests, desires, and even dislikes. Parents are responsible for helping to shape them, as Mason also believed children are neither good nor evil, but that they had the possibility for either depending on the choices they make. 

The science of relations is how all subjects relate to each other, whether formally or the relationship the child has to each of them. We must let our children examine things, first-hand and decide their own thoughts and feelings about a subject. If we look at just the parts of a parrot, for example, we can learn about just the parrot. But, if we compare the parrot to other birds or animals, not only are we learning about one animal, but of multiple animals and how they are similar and different. 

Worksheets seem easy, they “prove” learning and are easy to grade. But, did you know there are other ways that deepen the child’s knowledge? Narration is such a focal point of Charlotte Mason, taking the place of worksheets. But, worksheets really are not.  What with their signification of a word instead of the knowledge the child should have gained from the reading. Narration involves more mental work than a worksheet because narration requires the processing of information and then speaking or writing it back in one’s own words. Pro Tip:  Utilizing devices with speech to text can be a great time saver for narrations!