The end of the school year and the end of this podcast season is cause to pause and reflect. The ADE ladies review the past year and encourage you to not just slam the books closed, but pause to remember the good and give thanks. We also encourage you to take some time this summer to listen to old episodes as you plan for the upcoming school year. Finally, we have a big announcement to make about the coming season. We close this episode with a fitting devotional to help you gain perspective on t...
May 16, 2025•20 min•Season 10Ep. 301
As Charlotte Mason Homeschoolers, we all know the challenge it is to find balance in all the other parts of life besides our school lessons. With so many priorities and responsibilities, it is imperative that we continue to evaluate and seek to find balance in our lives. In this podcast episode Emily, Liz, and Nicole discuss the challenges, mistakes, and tips they have for balancing relationships, home responsibilities, service, and ministry opportunities. CM Simple Languages www.livingbookpress...
May 02, 2025•47 min
This season, as we explore finding balance in the Charlotte Mason Method, we are interviewing people who have been able to find balance in their various contexts. This episode is an interview with Sarah Potter who made a big change in her homeschool after graduating the first of her six children and enrolling her remaining students in a not-so-local hybrid CM Cottage School. Sarah shares the factors that led her to make this decision, the hard parts as well as the wonderful benefits her family h...
Apr 18, 2025•23 min•Season 10Ep. 299
Often when we encounter a difficulty in our Charlotte Mason education, the problem lies not in the books and materials, but rather in a mismatch between our expectations and the reality we see before us. In this episode of the podcast, we explore the unbalanced expectations we consciously and unconsciously embrace that are at odds with the outcomes Charlotte Mason expected. In returning to the principles of our educational method, we can find balance, and thereby, peace. "If we realise that the ...
Apr 04, 2025•42 min•Season 10Ep. 298
Charlotte Mason viewed all educational possibilities as fitting into one or the other of two schools of philosophy: Materialism and Idealism. Instead, she offers a "middle way," a new path that draws on the strengths of both schools. The portion of Parents and Children where she discusses these ideas is dense. In this episode of the podcast, Jessica Becker guides us through what Miss Mason had to say, and, more importantly, why it is essential for parents and teachers to find balance between the...
Mar 21, 2025•1 hr 18 min•Season 10Ep. 297
Charlotte Mason firmly believed that novels are our greatest teachers, hence why she included them as a major serving in the feast that nourishes our children's education. This episode was recorded live at the ADE At Home conference, February 7, 2025, with Nicole, Emily, and Liz leading a discussion with attendees who had read the book and come to what they gleaned from Miss Gaskell's groundbreaking and somewhat controversial novel, Ruth . If you have read the book, you will enjoy listening to w...
Mar 07, 2025•44 min•Season 10Ep. 296
This season, as we explore finding balance in the Charlotte Mason Method, we are interviewing people who have been able to find balance in their various contexts. This episode is an interview with Angie Cole, a home-educating mom from Arizona, who has cultivated unique learning communities for herself and her four children. We understand the need for balance in determining how to incorporate social time and group learning while homeschooling and protecting morning lesson time. Angie has a lot of...
Feb 21, 2025•29 min•Season 10Ep. 295
It goes without saying that life is full of transitions, and a Charlotte Mason Education is no exception. From beginning school lessons with one child to adding subsequent students, moving into higher levels, or bringing older students into the Method for the first time, this episode discusses the multitudinous transitions we, and our students, make over the course of our education and how to avoid pitfalls while seeking balance. AWAKEN: A Living Books Conference Episode 292: Balancing Time--Sch...
Feb 07, 2025•48 min•Season 10Ep. 294
In today's podcast episode, we bring you a session from the 2024 ADE at HOME {Virtual} Conference. LaShawne Thomas presented a session full of ideas and possibilities for navigating homeschooling when seasons of transition arise (and sometimes hang around) in our lives. A long-time Charlotte Mason educator and former Navy wife, LaShawne has experienced her fair share of upheavals and transitions and has much wisdom to share with us. Our Country and Its People, Monroe & Buckbee Strayer-Upton ...
Jan 17, 2025•48 min•Season 10Ep. 293
This week on the podcast, we are discussing the principles behind Charlotte Mason's School Schedules. First we look at the whole year's schedule, why three terms, and options we have for today's students. Then, we turn our focus to the daily schedule and how we can bring much needed balance to our education. We hope you take away principles, rather than rules, and gain clarity on how our seemingly mundane choices have such a large impact on our students. “It is impossible to overstate the import...
Jan 03, 2025•43 min•Season 10Ep. 292
This season, as we explore finding balance in the Charlotte Mason Method, we are interviewing people who have been able to find balance in their various contexts. This episode is an interview with Helen Swaveley, a seasoned home-educating parent, as she offers her perspective on how the Charlotte Mason's method gives balance to our students in high school and beyond. Waverley, Sir Walter Scott A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens ADE at HOME {Virtual} Conference 2025 www.livingbookpress.com Use...
Dec 20, 2024•24 min•Season 10Ep. 291
This Charlotte Mason podcast episode is a re-aired, re-visit to a common question we receive: bringing children into the Mason method from previous school experiences. What are the approaches that help children of various ages transition, what are realistic expectations, and how do we help them adjust to a different way of doing lessons? "The success of such a school demands rare qualities in the teacher––high culture, some knowledge of psychology and of the art of education; intense sympathy wi...
Dec 06, 2024•46 min•Season 10Ep. 290
A perennial question those interested in the Charlotte Mason Method want to find out is how children raised in the method fare as they move on from homeschooling. At the 2024 ADE at HOME {Virtual} Conference Jono Kiser talked with three former CM students about their adjustment and experience. We bring you the audio from this interview as part of our occasional Voices of the Conference series. Ender's Game, Card Ourselves, Charlotte Mason Much Ado about Nothing, Shakespeare The Winter's Tale, Sh...
Nov 15, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Season 10Ep. 289
The Charlotte Mason Method is an all-encompassing method of education for all of life, and therefore, there are many ways we can fall out of balance as we apply it in our homes and schools. Today, we are discussing the pitfalls of imbalance we face as relates to our students doing the work of their education. We discuss finding the balance between challenging our students but not pushing them, how the wide curriculum meets them where they are at without pigeonholing them, and how we teachers mus...
Nov 01, 2024•35 min•Season 10Ep. 288
This season, as we explore finding balance in the Charlotte Mason Method, we are interviewing people who have been able to find balance in their various contexts. This episode is an interview with Michelle Riesgraf to learn how she balances her very full life as CM homeschooling mom and wife with all her other duties with her family serving inner-city kids on a working farm. While she shares specific challenges of her farming life, Michelle offers wisdom for us all in parenting, educating (and c...
Oct 18, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Season 10Ep. 287
The Charlotte Mason Method is an all-encompassing method of education for all of life, and therefore, there are many ways we can fall out of balance as we apply it in our homes and schools. Today, we are discussing the pitfalls of imbalance we face as relates to our teaching. From how we ourselves learn about the method, to combining multiple students; helping our students become more independent or making modifications for individual students. Miss Mason has timeless wisdom to offer us, and she...
Oct 04, 2024•39 min•Season 10Ep. 286
This season, as we explore finding balance in the Charlotte Mason Method, we are interviewing people who have been able to find balance in their various contexts. This episode is an interview with Susanne Norris, a full-time homeschool mom and missionary. She has wise words to share with all of us, even if we're not in full-time ministry! www.livingbookpress.com Use code "delectable" at check out to receive 10% off your order ADE's Teacher Training Videos ADE's Patreon Community...
Sep 20, 2024•25 min•Season 10Ep. 285
One of the distinctives of the Charlotte Mason Method is that it is relational education. The Method also applies to all of life, and so we start with the foundational relationship in our students' lives: their relationship with their parents. In this episode of the podcast, we look at the two extremes, and learn from Charlotte Mason how to strike a balance that leads to life--for both parent and child. School Education, Volume 3 of the Home Education Series by Charlotte M. Mason, chapters 1-3 "...
Sep 06, 2024•42 min•Season 10Ep. 284
As we discuss ways to bring balance to our lives using the Charlotte Mason Method, our first focus is on our Priorities. We can fall off on either side of the horse: Making school all-important, or pushing it to the back burner. Miss Mason has excellent advice for how to avoid either extreme, and the ADE ladies share their own experiences with imbalance. "...this is a delightful thing to remember, every time we do a thing helps to form the habit of doing it; and to do a thing a hundred times wit...
Aug 16, 2024•37 min•Season 10Ep. 283
A Delectable Education is back for its Tenth year! We have grown a lot over these past 9 years, and so has the Charlotte Mason Community. We are honored to be here sharing with you all still. In this episode we are sharing some big announcements like our 5th Annual Parents' Educational Course Reading List, our 5th Annual Online Conference (coming February 2025) and new Teacher Helps and Training Videos to help your school year go smoothly. We're glad you're here with us. Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskel...
Aug 02, 2024•29 min•Season 10Ep. 282
The end of the school year and the end of this podcast season is cause to pause and reflect. The ADE ladies review the past year and encourage you to not just slam the books closed, but pause to remember the good and give thanks. We also provide a great number of helpful episodes and resources as you plan for the upcoming school year. The episode closes with a fitting devotional to help you gain perspective on the value of the past year and inspire you for what lies ahead. “Every mother, especia...
May 17, 2024•28 min•Season 9Ep. 281
There seems to be a common misconception that Charlotte Mason's Method is complicated and difficult to understand. While it does take time to grow in our understanding, what we find instead, at its heart, is a simple, cohesive applied philosophy that we CAN understand. Join us on the podcast today as we distill some of the barriers we place for ourselves that make it seem more difficult than it is to follow her method, and enumerate some of the key distinctives of this living method of education...
May 03, 2024•24 min•Season 9Ep. 280
This season, we are interviewing experienced Charlotte Mason moms, inviting them to tell us how they've come to "Trust the Method." In today's episode Sandy Johnson, mom of three, joins us to reflect on her homeschool journey and how she came to trust Charlotte Mason's Method. As she has graduated her oldest daughter who is now in college, Sandy reflects on her own education, and how different the education she is giving her children is. With humility and strength, Sandy shares her family's pers...
Apr 19, 2024•38 min•Season 9Ep. 279
As we near the end of this season-long discussion on "Trusting the Method" we turn our attention to the curriculum itself. How can we choose curriculum that Trusts Charlotte Mason's Method? How can we evaluate whether a resource or curriculum follows the method in part or whole? How do we decide if we even *want* to trust the method with our curriculum? " N.B.1 In home schoolrooms where there are children in A as well as in B, both forms may work together, doing the work of A or B as they are ab...
Apr 05, 2024•59 min•Season 9Ep. 278
This season, we are interviewing experienced Charlotte Mason moms, inviting them to tell us how they've come to "Trust the Method." In today's episode, as she prepares to graduate her oldest student this spring, Morgan Conner joins us to reflect on her homeschool journey and how she came to trust Charlotte Mason's Method. After jumping from one curriculum to the next, once Morgan discovered Charlotte Mason, she never looked back, but that doesn't mean it has always been easy. You will glean much...
Mar 15, 2024•29 min•Season 9Ep. 277
Charlotte Mason firmly believed that novels are our greatest teachers, hence why she included them as a major serving in the feast that nourishes our children's education. This episode was recorded live at the ADE At Home conference, February 2, 2024, with Nicole, Emily, and Liz leading a discussion with attendees who had read the book and come to contribute what they had been taught by William Makepeace Thackeray's classic novel Vanity Fair . If you have read the book, you will revel in the myr...
Mar 01, 2024•1 hr•Season 9Ep. 276
This season, we are interviewing experienced Charlotte Mason moms, inviting them to tell us how they've come to "Trust the Method." In today's episode, Jami Hurt, mom of two homeschool graduates tells us about her experience with Charlotte Mason Homeschooling, and the joys she is witnessing with her boys who have now launched their own lives in young adulthood. For the Children's Sake, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay Destiny of the Republic, Candice Millard ADE's Patreon Community...
Feb 16, 2024•21 min•Season 9Ep. 275
As home educators trying to spread the wide feast of a Charlotte Mason education for multiple children, we feel the need to have our students working independently. But how do we get them there? Join Liz, Nicole, and Emily as they discuss the rewards and challenges with practical advice for how to help our children grow in independence--in school lessons and beyond. “As we have already urged, there is but one right way, that is, children must do the work for themselves. They must read the given ...
Feb 02, 2024•43 min•Season 9Ep. 274
At the 2022 ADE at HOME {Virtual} Conference Melissa Petermann of Charlotte Mason PE presented a talk entitled "Mindset, Margin, and Tactics: Homeschooling Through Trials & Chronic Illness." We've invited her onto the podcast this week to discuss some of the practical ways she has found to continue on even on hard days. "ln the things of science, in the things of art, in the things of practical everyday life, his God doth instruct him and doth teach him, her God doth instruct her and doth te...
Jan 19, 2024•33 min•Season 9Ep. 273
How do you determine which books are the "right" books for your children? Charlotte Mason said they must LIKE their books, right? Or did she? We explore the nuances of children's taste and how much a role that should play in our choices of their lesson books in this episode. “The children must enjoy their books." (3/178) "What manner of book will find its way with upheaving effect into the mind of an intelligent boy or girl? We need not ask what the firl or boy likes. She very often likes the tw...
Jan 05, 2024•44 min•Season 9Ep. 272
