Venturing into Charlotte Mason
I have been so inspired by how LindaFay’s blog, Higher Up and Further In, about Charlotte Mason education, that I risked life and limb to dig out my Charlotte Mason books from their hiding places. I found them in the bottom box of a stack of 4 moving boxes of course. I became interested in Charlotte Mason when we first starting homeschooling, but didn’t really do anything with the information I had found. In reading the books again, I am reminded at how well Sonlight goes along with CM.
One reason I like Sonlight so much is that it is all put together for me. I don’t have the temperment to research what I want to teach, when to teach it, etc. So even the thought of adding something simple like picture studies to our curriculum is making me nervous. I mean, which artist to study? Which paintings? Where am I going to find copies of the paintings to look at? Then it hit me. We live in Washington, DC – so does the National Gallery of Art. I took my copy of A Charlotte Mason Companion where the author outlines the steps to a good picture study. She even recommends some artists to study. I checked her list against the list of artists featured at the National Gallery and discovered that the museum has a good collection of Mary Cassatt, Raphael, Monet and Renoir. They even have a huge collection of Ansel Adams. So those will be our artists of choice for the next year or so. I plan to have the children study the specific works that are on display at the National Gallery and then end our year with a trip to the museum to see the art in person.
I am excited about this new venture. I like that we won’t be doing huge extensive studies of schools of art, techniques or even of the artist’s lives. We will be reading short biographies, but will mostly focus on just enjoying the art for itself. I believe that Charlotte Mason had her students do picture studies for only 10 minutes a week. I can handle that! Next on the list – nature journals!
