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Today I am going into detail about what we are using for individual subjects for both of my homeschool students. See my previous post for our family subjects which take up most of our learning time. For this year, I am using a mix of Ambleside Online, The Children’s Tradition, and a few other random resources to create our curriculum. I have been pretty happy with it so far, and I am hoping that after our baby is born in November/December we will still be able to continue on as we have begun.

Fifth Grader

1. Catechism and Bible. In addition to our family catechism time using Into the Deep, my fifth grader also reads a chapter from the second Baltimore Catechism every week out loud and we discuss it as a family and answer the questions together. We also have a weekly Bible study together in which we read and discuss in depth the upcoming Sunday gospel reading. I have been surprised to see how much my younger kids want to join in and participate in these discussions, which has been great!

2. Spelling. This year we are trying out the Simply Spelling curriculum from The Good and The Beautiful. My kids both love this and really look forward to it, and we will see if it helps to improve their spelling by the end of the year.

3. Writing. Each week my daughter is expected to do two written narrations. We are not doing any formal writing curriculum this year, which makes me nervous, but I think written narrations are a powerful writing curriculum in themselves and so we will see if we add back in more formal writing instruction next year or if I find written narrations to be sufficient.

4. Fairy Tales. This year she is reading through the Green Fairy Book by Andrew Lang.

5. Myths and Legends. Fairy tales and myths and legends are favorites for my daughter, so I give these high importance when choosing curriculum. For myths and legends she is reading through the following this year:

   1. Heroes by Charles Kingsley

   2. Robin Hood by Howard Pyle

   3. The Age of Fable by Thomas Bulfinch

   4. King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green

6. Novels. My daughter will be reading Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, and Freckles by Gene Stratton-Porter. She was also supposed to read Kim by Rudyard Kipling, but after discussing it with a seasoned homeschool friend I decided to change this up. Kim seems like a difficult read, and while my fifth grader is quite an advanced reader, I decided it would be better to go back and read some other Kipling books she has missed before tackling Kim. So she will likely read Just So Stories and The Jungle Book, both of which she has not read, and then we can see if she wants to add in Kim over the summer or wait for another year.

7. Adventure Stories. This year she will read Treasure Island, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Tarzan.

8. Shakespeare. My daughter will get some original Shakespeare at tutorial this year, but we are also continuing on with the retellings of the stories in Tales from Shakespeare by Lamb.

9. History. We follow several different streams of history at this point.

   1. British History. For British History we will continue reading Our Island Story which we began last year.

   2. American History. She is reading This Country of Ours which is by the same author as Our Island Story. She is also reading some selections from Answering the Cry for Freedom.

   3. World History. As I discussed in my last post, we are listening to the audiobook of Story of Civilization together during tea time to add a little ancient and world history to our curriculum. She is additionally reading Abraham Lincoln’s World.

   4. Historical Fiction. This year my daughter is reading The Cat of Bubastes and Otto of the Silver Hand.

   5. Historical Biographies. This year she will read Of Courage Undaunted: Across the Continent with Lewis and Clark and The Courage and Character of Theodore Roosevelt.

   6. My daughter additionally writes down any people she wants to add to her Book of Centuries for each history reading.

10. Plutarch. My daughter is continuing to read Plutarch’s Lives. She will read the lives of Lycurgus, Numa Pompilius and The Comparison of Numa with Lycurgus.

11. Science. In addition to our family science curriculum, my daughter reads science books and science biographies

    1. General science. This year she will read Madam How and Lady Why and Wild Animals I Have Known.

    2. Science Biographies. This year she is reading Always Inventing, Great Inventors and Their Inventions, and George Washington Carver.

12. Geography. In addition to our family geography studies, she is reading The Complete Book of Marvels and watching videos to accompany each chapter. There are some great pre-made playlists of good videos compiled by homeschool moms to go along with the book on youtube, so search for them if you are interested!

13. Math. Lastly, for math we are using Math U See. Math has been a huge struggle for my daughter and so I decided to switch from Saxon to Math U See to see if it helps her get a more solid foundation in the basics and gain confidence. I took her several steps back and she is currently working quickly through Gamma, and I think she will also be able to finish Delta before the end of the school year. We are continuing to use Nicole the Math Lady, who we absolutely love!

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Second Grader

1. Spelling. My second grader is also using Simply Spelling from The Good and The Beautiful.

2. Writing. My second grader is doing written narrations for the first time, so we are starting with one written narration per week. She is very much still learning how to do narrations in general, let alone written ones, so I am trying to have very low expectations while also encouraging her to try to organize her thoughts into writing.

3. Fairy Tales. The Children’s Tradition has second graders continue with Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm and The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang.

4. Myths and Legends. This year my daughter is reading A Wonder Book and The D’Aulaires Book of Norse Myths. We love the D’Aulaires in this house!

5. Novels. The list is quite extensive for this year:

   1. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

   2. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carrol

   3. Water Babies by Charles Kingsley

   4. Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling (TCT recommends the audiobook for this selection)

   5. Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

   6. Robin Hood by Howard Pyle

6. Literary Fairy Tales. We did not finish the George Macdonald books last year, so this year she will once again be making her way through The Princess and the Goblin, the Princess and the Curdie, and At the Back of the North Wind.

7. Shakespeare. In TCT, second graders continue on with Nesbit’s Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare.

8. History

   1. Biographies. We started with two D’Aulaire biographies, George Washington and Buffalo Bill, and then we will work our way through 50 Famous Stories Retold. For Ambleside Online she is also reading The Little Duke and Joan of Arc.

   2. British History. Same as my fifth grader, my second grader is reading Our Island Story.

   3. American History. Like my fifth grader, my second grader is also reading This Country of Ours.

   4. World History. She will be reading A Child’s History of the World by Virgil Hillyer.

   5. Book of Centuries. We are starting very simply with just trying to add a person from each history reading to our book of centuries. My daughter is very into it though and wants to add everyone we read about (even nameless people like “The Indian who shot at Buffalo Bill”) and our family members to her timeline. Its fun to see her make connections through the book of centuries.

9. Geography. In addition to our family geography studies, my daughter is doing the Holling Geography unit study from Beautiful Feet Books. It’s a little advanced for her, but she is supposed to read the Holling books this year through Ambleside Online, so I added the study to have some map work and other activities to accompany the books. We just finished Paddle to the Sea and she enjoyed making the map even though it was a bit more detailed than I would have had her do otherwise at this age. Hopefully the rest of the study will be as enjoyable!

10. Math. We are also using Math U See with my daughter, and I had her go back and start at Alpha to solidify her addition skills. She is also using Nicole the Math Lady and really enjoys her video lessons!

I hope that you find these posts helpful! I always find it interesting at the end of the year to see what we planned to do, what we never got around to, what worked, and what didn’t work for our family this year. I also have found some great resources through other people posting what worked well for their family, so I hope this can be a blessing to you.

I pray you have a great rest of your school year, and I pray that we can all keep our gaze fixed on Him who is the only curriculum we need.

We are still using The Children’s Tradition curriculum as a spine, but after reflecting on last year I made some changes for this school year. Firstly, I think TCT is great in a lot of ways, especially literature, but I think some subject areas are lacking in the curriculum. Science, history, and geography are all areas where I will be pulling from other sources to supplement. We are mainly using Ambleside Online and Beautiful Feet Books to bulk up the more sparse areas of TCT. As much as I love John Senior and his philosophy (of both education and life in general), I do not think the 1000 good book list was designed by him to be a full curriculum. I think the list is comprised of good books that will help to form a child’s moral imagination, and so we are prioritizing his list for literature choices, but I think the 1000 good book list was not meant to cover everything a child should know about history and science and other areas.

I have broken down our family learning subjects into the blocks of time in which we use these resources. Benediction table is the first thing we do together during the day, and this happens while I am cooking and while we are all eating breakfast. We then go outside together and then on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday we come right back in to do tea time. We did tea time in the afternoon last year but we got out of the habit of sitting down to do tea time after Christmas, and I realized that afternoons are better for my students to work independently so I can do chores and make dinner while they work. On Fridays we have our nature co-op and tutorial, rotating every other week. We just started our classical Christian tutorial this year, and since it is the first year we are structuring all of the classes to be age-integrated. Therefore, my students are learning those subjects together. Finally, we have the “other” category in which we have a few miscellaneous subjects that are done together at various times throughout the week.

Benediction Table

1. Prayer. We start every morning with a number of prayers that we all say together. The first thing we do is sing the doxology, and then we pray the morning offering and the angel of God prayer. We all fist bump our guardian angels and each other to try to start the day in a mood of charity and good will toward one another (note: this doesn’t always work). Then we pray the Saint Benedict prayer and read a prayer from the church fathers from the Fount of Heaven prayer book recommended by TCT. Then we choose an intention and a resolution for the day, which gives us someone to offer up sufferings for and something tangible we are resolving to do for God that day. Then we have two minutes of “silent” mental prayer (which usually involves me shushing and reminding the kids that we are praying at least once).

2. Scripture. After prayers, we listen to Father Mike Schmitz read one chapter of the Bible, following the TCT old testament reading plans. Right now we are in the book of 1 Samuel, and we will hear about David and Goliath tomorrow! I then ask the kids what they heard and they tell it back to me.

3. Saint. We were reading A Character Calendar at the beginning of the year, which we have had for several years. I like these short introductions to the saints with a little motto to remember through the day relating to a virtue the saint displayed. When the Catholic Sprouts podcast started their new season, called Every Day’s a Feast Day, we switched to listening to the saint of the day on their podcast. They are always well done, and short and understandable for my kids. I like that they have more modern and lesser known saints on there because most of the saint resources we use were published 50+ years ago, so we would otherwise not know about many of the more recently canonized saints.

4. Catechism. This year, instead of using the tried and true Baltimore Catechism for my second grader, I wanted to try out using Into the Deep. We have been doing Level 1 as a whole family during our benediction time, and we have enjoyed it so far! This could be an entire morning time resource in itself, since it has suggested scripture readings, hymns, scripture memory passages, and even extra picture book recommendations for each lesson.

5. Poetry. We read a poem (or a few) a day following the TCT recommendations. This year we are reading the Nonsense Omnibus by Edward Lear and so far none of us are a fan of his limmericks (sorry Lear!). I love some of Lear’s longer poems, like the Owl and the Pussycat, but his limmericks bother me in that they feel kind of lazy a lot of the time. Hopefully once we pass through the limmericks we will enjoy the longer poems in the second half of the book! If we finish the Lear book we will continue on with Mother Goose rhymes for the rest of the year.

6. Recitation. We have both a scripture recitation and a poetry recitation, and for both of which we follow the TCT recommendations. For scripture we love using the Sing the KJV app and it has helped us remember and retain so much more scripture than we ever have before. It’s so cute and heartwarming to see even my 2 year old sing parts of Psalm 23 with us! For poetry recitation we are memorizing poems from mother goose, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Edward Lear this year.

7. We finish benediction time with our loop of extra subjects. We do each of these once every two weeks.

   1. Character Formation. We have been using the Teaching Character Through Literature guide from Beautiful Feet Books and frankly I don’t think the guide book is worth the money so far. You could basically read aloud any books that portray good or bad moral character and have a discussion about them, but since we bought the curriculum and it includes several books we didn’t previously own we will continue to use it.

   2. Singing Psalms. We use the Crown and Covenant hymnal and the recorded songs (available on YouTube) to sing the psalms according to the TCT schedule. I really like these hymns which often use familiar musical settings as the background for various psalms.

   3. Spiritual Formation. We did not like The Parent’s Assistant by Maria Edgeworth and so this year we are using another TCT recommendation, Proverb Stories by Louisa May Alcott. These are much better written (in the opinion of myself and my children), and we genuinely enjoy and look forward to hearing what will happen next in these stories. I also like that there are Librivox recordings for many of the stories so we can listen while we eat lunch if we do not get to it during breakfast and benediction time.

   4. Aesop’s Fables. We are using the translation recommended by TCT, but we are also using a slightly more modern translation of the same stories for the sake of my second grader who struggles with the antiquated language. We don’t usually discuss the moral or read the reflection, since Andrew Kern has convicted me that the children should reflect on the story and draw their own moral conclusions! If they don’t see the implied moral immediately I usually just let them think about it and give them time to make connections and draw conclusions.

   5. Manners. We started the Millers series last year per the TCT recommendation and my kids love these books! They look forward to every other week when this comes up in the rotation. The stories are short and relatable and give great inspiration on topics ranging from good etiquette to safety, hygiene, health, and general prudence.

   6. Folk songs. We are using the TCT recommendations again, and finding various different recordings of each song on YouTube to see not only the song but the various ways that the song has been changed by various artists through time. This really gives a broader picture of how folk music evolves.

   7. Hymn. I wanted to focus on hymns that we would mostly commonly hear in a Catholic setting, and so we are using the Mother of Divine Grace hymn book and recordings on sound cloud. I like the traditionality of the hymns and the settings.

   8. Devotional. Finally we have a kids devotional book we are using. We got this book from a friend many years ago and enjoy the silly and relatable stories about the kids in a family living catholic faith and struggling through family life. I love the Catholicity of these stories, often talking about the Mass and confession.

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Family Gymnastic time. After breakfast and benediction time, we all go outside together. I am looking forward to the weather cooling down (I hope, eventually!) so that we can start playing outside more and even doing lessons outside, but at least getting out in the morning for 20-30 minutes helps us burn off energy before it gets too hot. I usually write the lessons for that day in my students’ spiral notebooks while the kids climb trees, ride books, color with chalk, or go visit the neighbor and his dog when they are sitting outside. On Sundays, we go as a family to the local YMCA and swim in the pool as a family. My older kids all really like swimming, including my kids who don’t love to be active in general, so this is a great activity that we can all do and enjoy together while training our minds and bodies through physical wrestling with reality.

Tea Time. As I wrote above, we now do tea time right after our family gymnastic time outdoors.

1. Language Arts. I took a scary leap of faith and fully embraced the classical/Charlotte Mason method of writing instruction this year after using The Good and The Beautiful for many years. We are now using The Tapestry from the Circe institute, which is a language arts program that teaches in the poetic mode. It is age integrated, so both of my girls are using it together. There is a weekly grammar discussion and narration exercise, a dictation exercise, and a copywork exercise for them to complete. It feels much more gentle than The Good and The Beautiful, but my girls love it so far!

2. Latin. We just finished using Minimus Latin which we started last year and really enjoyed. We are now using the TCT recommendation, Latin Through Stories from the University of Dallas. This curriculum is much more intense in some ways than Minimus, in the sense that it is three 30 minute lessons a week whereas we could do a chapter of minimus in about 15 minutes twice a week. I love the methodology of Latin Through Stories, which uses the comprehensible input method. It immerses the student in Latin and repeats the same material again and again without translation to gain eventual understanding. The curriculum is quite expensive and it’s not super easy to navigate all of the components, so we will see if we end up liking it or not at the end of the year.

3. Story of Civilization. We added just the audiobook of The Story of Civilization to our tea time as a fun little extra history boost. My kids really enjoy these short lessons (most are 5 minutes or less) which help cover ancient history which is otherwise lacking in our studies. I also love that they are made from a very unbiased but ultimately Catholic perspective so I know I can trust they will not contradict our faith.

4. Science. Once a week we listen to the Burgess Seashore book together. This was assigned for my second grader and my older student has never read it, so I just added it into our tea time plans. It was really nice going to the ocean after a few weeks of listening to the audiobook so we could try to find some of the creatures that we have learned about! Once a week we are also using the Seasons Afield science curriculum from Beautiful Feet Books (which we are also using for nature co-op, so I will talk about it more below).

5. Geography. Both TCT and Ambleside Online recommend using the Charlotte Mason Elementary Geography book. We are using the Ambleside schedule, so we also have chapters of Long’s Home Geography interspersed with the CM book. We do a short lesson once a week on geography from these two resources, and we also have the books Hungry Planet and Material World which we use on weeks with no scheduled chapter to deep dive into the culture and geography of various places.

6. Paper Sloyd. Lastly, once a week we do an activity from the Paper Sloyd for Primary Grades book. While this book is recommended starting at age 6, I have found that this is the first year we have successfully used this book. It involves a lot of math skills, which is great because the projects involve practical math practice, but it is hard for my second grade and younger children to do the projects without a lot of hands-on help. It is fun to practice math and end up with beautiful projects at the end, and I love that these projects usually require nothing more than paper, pencils, a ruler, and scissors.

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Tutorial. This year, two friends and I started a Christian Classical tutorial. This is sort of an off-shoot of our nature co-op that has been meeting every Friday during the school year for two years now. We wanted to add more academic subjects, and we figured the best way to do that would be to split the co-op into a nature portion and an academic tutorial portion. So far we have met twice and I think it has been going well! It’s been a ton of work to prepare, but I hope the fruits for our students and mothers will be well worth the effort. Here is the breakdown of what my students are learning at tutorial this year.

1. Benediction. We have a short benediction time to start our tutorial day, in which we say prayers, sing hymns, read a scripture story (the gospel for the upcoming Sunday), sing a psalm (using sing the KJV), and talk about a saint with an upcoming feast day (using this book).

2. Latin. We are also using Latin Through Stories at tutorial, so this will be a review lesson for my kids.

3. Fine arts. For fine arts we are doing artist study the first semester and composer study the second semester. For artist study we are starting with Monet using this resource. For music study we will be using The Complete Book of Great Musicians recommended by TCT.

4. Handicrafts. We are doing a variety of handicrafts this year, including weaving, embroidery, book making, wet felting, cyanotyping, and more.

5. Folk song and folk dancing. The kids will learn traditional folk dances, and songs that would have accompanied those dances.

6. Local history. We live in Tennessee, and so the kids are going to learn about local Appalachian history and we will include some field trips to make concrete our history studies.

7. Elocution. The kids are learning the skills of speaking well in front of others, using poetry, Shakespeare, improv games, and other materials.

Nature Co-op. Every other week, we alternate nature co-op and tutorial. Our nature co-op is generally pretty unstructured, but we are using the Seasons Afield study this year from Beautiful Feet Books to focus our nature walks and nature journaling. We start with free exploration time, then read a story from the Brambly Hedge or a picture book as recommended by Seasons Afield. Then we go on a nature walk, looking for the themes of the week along the way. Then we gather back together to nature journal what we found and continue our discussion. So far I am really enjoying the curriculum at home and at co-op, although I am shortening the lessons a bit b y picking and choosing what we do at co-op to cover a whole theme every week. Each theme includes four lessons, but not all lessons are easily done in a large group and outside (such as making jam, which is one of the fieldwork lessons). I think with the adaptations this can be great for our co-op as well as at home, and I hope it continues to be a success throughout the year.

Other. We have a few random subjects that we do as a family scattered throughout the week.

1. Read Alouds. We have switched to doing read alouds totally on audio book, so that we can listen to them in the car and while eating and doing other activities. I think this works really well for our family at this stage, and we can still pause often to discuss. This year we have been listening to the entire Harry Potter series (which I have discussed in previous posts). We love the Harry Potter books, and I love that they offer discussion points frequently. The characters don’t always behave perfectly, but we can learn from the consequences they face. There are scary and intense themes throughout the books, but we can talk about the forces of good and evil as they come up. We are currently listening to the fifth book together, and my kids beg to listen any free minute we have.

2. Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (CGS) is a Montessori based faith formation program for kids ages 3-12. Once a week my two middle children go to the “atrium”, which is what we call the CGS learning environment, and learn about Jesus and the kingdom of God. I’m glad my oldest son is finally getting a chance to experience CGS like his older sisters have. It is a really beautiful program that we are so blessed to have in our area.

3. Piano lessons. My girls will have piano lessons once a week in our home starting in October. We found a new teacher this year after deciding that in-home lessons are important for this season of life, so I pray it will go well once they begin.

4. Path to Independence. One of the things I have been the least consistent with in our homeschool is chores and life skills. I am really making a push for it this year, as I will be postpartum for a majority of our academic year and I want my husband and my girls to be able to keep the house running smoothly while I am unable to do so. Every Saturday, my girls have a pretty sizable list of chores that they are responsible for, and they add one new skill or chore to the list every week. Each new chore is fairly simple and small, like dusting for five minutes, but I am hoping that by the end of the year and having practiced each chore many times, they will be able to do more independently. This not only is helpful for the sake of our family, but for the sake of their future adult lives.

5. Walk and Talk. Lastly, we have our weekly walk and talk sessions. My good friend told me she finds this important for maintaining relationships with her kids, and I have found this to be such a blessing in our home. Once a week, usually on Monday morning during gymnastic time, I walk with each of my children individually. For the older kids we talk about school and what is going well and not going well. Then we discuss whatever they want. For my younger kids, we just talk about the past week and maybe what is coming up this week. Even my 2 year old gets a walk and talk time, and we just hold hands and talk about what we see outside. It is only a few minutes with each child, but it is so special for them to have time just with mom, and I hope that starting this practice now will mean my kids continue to know I am available to talk to them at any point in their lives.

That’s it! This is way too long so I will wrap it up quickly, but I hope seeing my plans for the year can help other families to find some resources or get some ideas that may be helpful for them. I pray you have a great school year, and I pray that you keep your gaze always on Him Who is the ultimate end of all education.

We truly limped to the finish line of our school year, given that I became pregnant in March and was very sick in April and early May. But one beautiful part of homeschooling is the flexibility, and we were able to finish things slowly through the last few months. Getting sick did give me perspective on what really matters in our school, for which I am grateful. Therefore we definitely did not do everything we planned at the beginning of the year, and a lot of things just didn’t feel worth it to finish. So let’s look back at our plans (which you can find in my substack posts Spreading the Feast parts 1 and 2) and compare them to what we actually accomplished.

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Family Subjects

Benediction Table - Our version of morning time. Not only was this our most consistent part of our school year, but it has become part of our (almost) every day routine so that we continue aspects of benediction table even when we aren’t “doing school”.

• We did our prayers daily, and did several old testament books of the Bible, reading one chapter at a time.

• We also completed the Catholic Sprouts podcast’s Gospels in a School year which was great! The simple explanations were perfect for my kids to give context without being too long.

• Our poetry also was fantastic, and we read through Now We Are Six and A Child’s Garden of Verses. After we finished those we did a few poems from Mother Goose as well, which we will continue throughout the years.

• Our poetry memorization went well, although I’m not sure how many of these we could recall now months later.

• We found a great resource from the TCT substack called Sing the KJV which puts Bible verses to song, and this totally changed our Bible memorization into something the kids enjoyed and gave us a way to memorize verses in a way that lasted. We can all still sing Matthew 5:1-22 from memory even without the music. I highly recommend it as a resource!

• We did continue with Butler’s Lives of the Saints but found it not super engaging for the kids.

For our benediction loop, we also stayed consistent with most things. Each of these things we did only once every two weeks.

• Fount of Heaven - This resource compiles prayers from the early church fathers. Some of the prayers were a little long and wordy for my younger kids to follow, but even my first grader said “I like these prayers!” It is a good resource to learn how the church fathers prayed and to learn how to pray for ourselves.

• Singing psalms - We used the Crown and Covenant Psalms for Worship hymnal and music which you can find for free on Youtube. I had a hard time recalling the psalms from one time to the next since we only sang them once every other week, but I appreciated the beautiful music and opportunity to pray the psalms.

• Spiritual Formation - This was our biggest departure from our plans for morning time. We planned to read stories from The Parent’s Assistant by Maria Edgeworth, but I found these so long and dull and not worth the read that we collectively decided after about one term to abandon this book. There are too many other good resources out there to waste our time on something uninteresting and moralistic!

• Aesop’s Fables - We continued to read a fable every two weeks, but we found the L’Estrange translation to be tough for my first grader. Therefore we also added in a more recent and child-friendly translation which we read after the L’Estrange. This allowed us to have a better discussion of the story without me summarizing the story first.

• Folk Song - We did the year 1 songs from TCT and they were great!

• Manners - We quickly fell away from doing a manner of the week, but we continued to read and loved the Prudence with the Millers book. I think this was the favorite resource of both my girls for benediction table, and I ended up buying more books in the series so we can continue reading when we finish Prudence. I will say that I don’t know that I would consider this book to be about manners per se, but it is about making good choices and being prudent, and it is definitely worth reading.

• Hymns - the last two years we used the hymns from the CMEC and while they are ok, I felt that they were not reflective of hymns we would actually hear at Mass weekly. I am switching to a different resource for next year.

• Devotional - We read The King of the Golden City and really enjoyed it! It was great preparation for first communion. We also read devotions from a book called Devotional Stories for Little Folks which a friend gifted us years ago, and we love these cute little Catholic stories.

Gymnastic Time - Every morning after benediction table we would go outside for at least 20 minutes to run around and play before we needed to focus again. This was also very consistently a part of our routine, and my kids complain less about going outside in hot weather if we do it every morning. We also added swim lessons and weekly swimming time in the spring which has been a great addition for my older daughter who is not very athletic and doesn’t love to be active unless she is in the water, which we only discovered this year!

Tea Time - Tea time fell off for us, and by the end of the year we did not do this at all. For some reason we were consistent until about Christmas break time and then we were never able to get back into the routine.

• We liked Minimus Latin and are picking it back up now.

• We did not love the Brush Drawing book by May Mallam, and switched pretty soon to Watercolor with Me in the Forest, which we greatly preferred.

• Charlotte Mason’s Elementary Geography book is just ok, but I like that it is short and doable. We are continuing to use the book this year.

• We only briefly used Stories of the Painters for artist study and The Complete Book of Great Musicians for composer study, but we will be doing artist and composer study at our tutorial this year so we won’t need to try to fit them in at home.

• Number Stories of Long Ago was an interesting math book but once again we just stopped making the time to use it and we will not be picking it up again this year.

• We all really like Paper Sloyd but fell off with it. We will be continuing it at home this year.

• For stargazing we both read stories about the constellations and actually went to look at the stars occasionally. We fell off on the stories but we really enjoyed going out to stargaze together! We would go once every month or two to our local university where they have telescopes available for stargazing, and they also had planetarium shows every so often. These were amazing, but they stopped halfway through the year because of renovations on the planetarium so we also stopped doing this. I really hope to get back to it soon once the renovations are over!

Co-op - Our nature co-op continued going strong all year! We would do a weekly nature theme relevant to the season, and take a walk to look for things related to the theme. Then we (usually, although sometimes we got lazy and skipped this) chose something to look at closely and record in our nature journal. I love our co-op and I’m excited to get back into it in September.

Religious Education - At the beginning of the year we were consistent with daily mass a few times weekly and weekly adoration, but stopped when I got very sick. We are just getting back into one extra weekly Mass, and hopefully we can find a good time to incorporate adoration as well. My oldest did a study of the Baltimore Catechism with two friends who were also preparing for confirmation, and this went well! We did some deep-dive Bible studies on topics related to confirmation and I hope we can continue these occasionally.

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Picks For My First Grader

1. Language Arts - We used The Good and the Beautiful level 1 language arts. My first grader got annoyed with the phonics booster cards but we both liked this curriculum overall. We did finish the whole book, but will be using something different next year which I am excited about!

2. Handwriting - We also used The Good and The Beautiful for handwriting practice, although not super consistently. My first grader writes a lot for fun, so she naturally gets a lot of handwriting practice. About halfway through the year she was really fighting me on handwriting practice and so we switched to cursive which she had a much greater interest in, and this kept her more engaged and she gave more effort for handwriting practice once switching to cursive. We are switching to copywork for the future.

3. Math - We used The Good and the Beautiful math, and finished the book, but I see some flaws in this curriculum for my kids and so we will not be using it again. I think it doesn’t give enough depth into any one topic for it to really stick, so if you do not have kids who are naturally gifted at math I do not think this is an ideal curriculum.

4. Piano - My first grade daughter started piano this year and it is more of a struggle for her than her older sister. She did practice every day, but I don’t know if piano will be as much of a source of joy for her as it is for her older sister.

5. Skill practice - We tried picking a skill each week to practice every day, and this once again fell off. We did ok with it, but trying to practice it daily was often just too much to be consistent. We are changing to adding a skill weekly to their Saturday chore list, and I am hoping this will lead to more consistent practice.

6. Fairy Tale - We read selections from Grimm’s Household Stories and The Blue Fairy Book, and enjoyed both! The Grimm stories tend to be darker but my first grader is not very sensitive so these were both fine for us. I think she preferred the Blue Fairy stories overall.

7. Greek Myths - We read the D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths and both loved it! We are excited to start the Norse myths next.

8. Novel - We were supposed to read Winnie-the-Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, several Dr. Doolittle books, and The Wind in the Willows. The Winnie the Pooh books are great, but I was not a fan of Dr. Doolittle. My daughter liked the original Dr. Doolittle book but the other ones felt like they were not worth the effort so we will not be reading them in the future. I love Wind in the Willows but my daughter does not love it so far for whatever reason. We are still finishing the book together, and I hope reading it slowly as a family will help her appreciate the story more.

9. Catechesis - We did not do as much formal catechesis as I wanted to this year, but we did complete a few things. We read The King of the Golden City which we all enjoyed, and I felt like it was good preparation for her first communion. We fell off of reading the catechism together unfortunately. She did participate in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd which was good preparation for first reconciliation and communion, but due to construction on the room in which the classes were taught she only got a few months of catechesis there. We will continue with CGS this year and are reading a different catechetical resource together.

10. Tall Tales - We enjoyed the Mary Pope Osborne American Tales book!

11. Natural History - We finished The Burgess Animal Book, watching the videos on Youtube that have images of each animal, and I felt like this was a much more engaging way to read the book than to just hear the stories. We did not end up reading the Eyes and No Eyes books.

12. George Macdonald Books - We completely fell off of reading these, and will read them this next year instead.

13. Shakespeare - We read several stories from Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit. It took my daughter a bit to get into these stories, I think because we only were reading part of a story each week, but when I read an entire story to her a few times she really came to like these retellings more. We will continue this book next school year.

14. History - We ended up only doing the TCT suggestions, which included several D’Aulaire biographies, and did not end up reading the materials from the CMEC which we planned to use. We have enjoyed everything we have read from the D’Aulaires!

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Picks for my Fourth Grader

1. Math - We used Saxon this year, and math was our biggest struggle. We did not finish the book entirely, and we are going in a completely different direction for this next school year after much deliberation and discernment.

2. Language Arts - We used The Good and The Beautiful level 4, and while we both enjoyed it my daughter was ok with pivoting to a new curriculum for this upcoming school year.

3. Handwriting - Also The Good and The Beautiful level 4, and we ended up barely using it since she got plenty of handwriting practice in her writing for language arts (and has very nice handwriting already). We will be switching to copywork in the future.

4. Piano - Piano went well and my fourth grader enjoys it, so we will continue lessons this year (with a new teacher).

5. Skill Practice - See above

6. Composition - The goal was for my daughter to do a written narration weekly, and this happened most weeks. I am pretty lazy at enforcing written narrations, so some weeks this was skipped.

7. Book of centuries - We totally fell off of doing this consistently, but I am determined to try again this next school year!

8. Novel - Her novels for the year included Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates, Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, and Marjorie Daw. I think she enjoyed all of them, especially Tom Sawyer.

9. Fairy Tales- She finished The Red Fairy Book and loved it. She also read The Marvelous Adventures and Rare Conceits of Master Tyll Owlglass translated by Kenneth Mackenzie. These stories were super bizarre but memorable and she also enjoyed this book.

10. Shakespeare - She read several stories from Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb, as recommended by TCT. She really likes Shakespeare and these retellings, and often read the whole story when I only assigned a part of it.

11. American History - She finished Builders of Our Country book 1 and almost all of book 2. These biographies were ok, but we are not using the CMEC for recommendations in the future.

12. Chronicler - As per TCT, she was supposed to read The Life of Saint Louis by Jean de Joinville. This felt to me like not the best way to learn history, so we stopped this part way through the year and will be skipping most of the medieval chronicler recommendations in the future.

13. Historical Biography - We completely fell off of this. The CMEC recommendations were just not our favorite this year.

14. Citizenship - The CMEC recommended both Young Citizen’s Reader by Reinsch and Stories from the History of Rome by Beesley. We did not stick with either of these.

15. Historical Fiction - We were supposed to read the Henty books for boys and immediately gave them up as not worth it. We planned to read the CMEC recommendations including Johnny Tremain, Calico Captive, Toliver’s Secret, Mr. Revere and I, Amos Fortune, and Reb and the Redcoats. We only ended up reading Johnny Treamin and Calico Captive before we gave this up, but she loved both of these books. We just simply had too many books planned for the year and so this subject was abandoned.

16. Burgess - My daughter read The Burgess Flower Book and thought it was ok. I think this is less interesting than the animal and bird books.

17. Plutarch - We stuck with the TCT recommendations for Plutarch, and it was nice that she only had to read about 2-3 pages a week. It made this classic and somewhat difficult text approachable, and she was able to stick with it all year.

18. Geography - We read parts of Elementary Geography by Charlotte Mason, and we also planned for her to read the CMEC recommendations including North America by Nellie Allen and two travelogues, Padre Kino and the Trail to the Pacific and Pierre Toussaint: A Citizen of Old New York. While I love the idea of reading Catholic geography materials, we did not end up reading any of the CMEC recommendations (you may be sensing a theme haha!)

19. Adventure Story - My daughter was supposed to read Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling, Penrod by Booth Tarkington, Swiss Family Robinson and Willis the Pilot by Johann Wyss, Smoky by Will James, and Penrod and Sam also by Booth Tarkington. We finished all but the last two so far and I hope she can read them in her spare moments and upcoming vacations. These were overall enjoyable, but Willis the Pilot, which is a sequel to Swiss Family Robinson, was not easy to locate and I can see why, as it was not a very engaging story.

20. Mythology - She absolutely loved The Heroes of Asgard and finished the whole book despite only being assigned part of it. She is a big fan of Norse mythology.

21. Grammar - We did not end up using the Charlotte Mason grammar text, and I think her TGATB language arts covered grammar enough that we did not miss out.

22. British History - We started Our Island Story and will continue it this year, which my daughter enjoys.

23. Science - She was supposed to read several books recommended by the CMEC and we did not end up finishing any of them.

24. Confirmation prep - As stated before, my daughter stuck with the Baltimore Catechism number two in her group discussions with two other confirmation students. We did not enjoy The Soldier of Christ by Mother Loyola, and I think this may appeal to boys more as it seems to be heavily focused on placing the reader in the shoes of a medieval soldier.

Read Aloud - We were supposed to read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as a family. We did read all of the Hobbit and enjoyed it, but my littles were not able to pay attention to LOTR enough to continue the audiobook. My oldest has read these and loved them, so we decided to stop and read something else that would help better hold the attention of the littles. So we are reading the Harry Potter series on audio together, and have already finished the first three and are about a third of the way through book four. My kids absolutely love these books and I think they are important to read in conversation with parents, so I am glad we can share this fun read aloud experience together.

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Favorites for the year

My fourth grader: The Red Fairy Book

My first grader: D’Aulaire Greek Myths or The Blue Fairy Book

This is already very long so I won’t say too much more, but we had a few takeaways from the year.

• I always plan too much, and this year there was a ton we didn’t end up finishing. I hope as the years go on I will become better at assessing what is realistic for us to accomplish.

• We really did not end up using the CMEC recommendations, and I feel that they recommend too much in general to be feasible. We will not be using them again this next school year.

• We overall enjoyed the TCT recommendations, but I did think some books are not worth reading and so I developed a system for better discerning which books to read and which books to skip going forward (more about that next time!).

I think one of the best parts of homeschooling is that even though I got too sick to do much school in the spring, we still had a great school year and had the flexibility to finish many things over the summer. And despite my illness and failings, my kids got to receive three sacraments this year, and God multiplied the loaves and the fishes from my humble offerings. I pray that this next school year will be filled with even more fruitful learning, and that my children will continue to come closer to the One who can provide all that is necessary every single day.

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I also want to be very clear from the beginning that I am not a health expert and you should consult a doctor about any of these changes you make (except maybe the emotional aspects which will help every pregnant woman). I am very much still learning all of this as I go and I hope to learn and share more in the future, but I want to share what I have learned in my desperate search for help so far.

My Past Experiences

I have had five pregnancies, and in all of them I have suffered from HG. Until this pregnancy, I always thought of myself as having “severe morning sickness” and not full-on HG because I’ve never been hospitalized for my symptoms. However, after more research and taking the HELP quiz (https://www.hyperemesis.org/tools/help-score/) I have realized that I do have what is considered moderate HG. I’m not going to go into detail on all of my pregnancy woes, but I will share my general pattern. I typically start getting nausea and vomiting around 6 weeks of pregnancy, and I usually start to feel better around week 20. In those intervening weeks I usually have almost constant nausea and food aversions, and I usually vomit at least once a day.

My Current Pregnancy

I am currently expecting our fifth child, and we were so happy to find out! However, as with all of my pregnancies, I dreaded the nausea and vomiting. This pregnancy has been harder than my previous pregnancies. The nausea hit me faster, around the beginning of week 5. I was extremely sick, with extreme nausea and vomiting 5+ times a day, and I was unable to get out of bed many times. I couldn’t care for my family or myself. There were many times I genuinely wondered how I would survive my pregnancy, or even the day. I became convinced I was having twins, because how can this be so much worse than it has been before? (Our ultrasound confirmed we only have one healthy baby alas).

Because I was so much worse than before, I started deep-diving into HG at any moment that I felt well enough. I had remembered seeing Jess from Born From Her in an interview several months before I became ill, and I tried to find out as much as I could. Through a long process of self experimentation and research, I have now gotten to the point that I am currently 11 weeks pregnant, writing this at 2 pm, having not thrown up yet today, having been able to eat two meals and keep them down, and having more hope and joy in this pregnancy than I have ever had. I still am dealing with infrequent nausea and gagging and even vomiting occasionally, but the fact that I’ve gone from vomiting multiple times daily and being unable to care for myself to feeling good most of the time feels nothing short of miraculous. I wanted to share this information as quickly as I could while hopefully still learning more and adding to this post in the future.

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The Current Medical Approach

Before I get into what helped me, let’s talk about the current medical opinion on HG and why it is so hard to find information like this. If you google “cures for hyperemesis gravidarum” you get a ton of posts about treating HG. The current accepted “truth” is that HG has no cure, and the only way to cope is to treat with medications and IV fluids. I do not think this is true, but it’s so sad that this information is not publicly available. I want this information to spread as far as possible, because it is true that people can cure the underlying causes of HG and have a healthy and happy pregnancy.

If you go to a doctor and talk about HG, at best you will be offered a prescription for antiemetic or other medications. At worst you are told to basically suck it up or try ginger candies (I will punch the next person in the face who tells me that ginger is a good treatment option for HG). I am not anti-medication, and in fact I am still taking unisom/b6 in this pregnancy. But medications at best mask symptoms and at worst cause a host of issues on their own, and I believe women can and should try to get to the root cause of what is causing their HG instead of covering it up with a medication bandaid.

Finding Jess and Other Stories of Hope

When I was desperately ill, I remembered seeing this interview a year and a half ago with Jess from Born From Her (previously The Wellness Element). I wanted to look into the information she offered but was discouraged by the price of Jess’ course ($950 for the self-paced course and $3500+ for the course with support from Jess). I decided to do as much research as I can without taking the course, as those prices are not feasible for me or most other women, even those who are suffering greatly and are desperate for help. I started watching interviews with Jess and looking at her Instagram page to try to gather as much information as possible.

My friend also shared with me this blog post which gives recommendations for HG based on this substack post. This really got me interested because the suggestions in this post are super easy to implement and apparently have helped a lot of women, so why not give them a try? Not only that, but the fact that this woman and others in the comments have had success in overcoming their HG, not just treating it, gave me hope that I can feel better too. This was the single biggest factor in my healing. Once I believed I could get better, I started to get incrementally better almost immediately.

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What I Have Learned So Far

For most women, the underlying root mechanism of HG seems to be:

• you are exposed to toxins and your body is trying to rid you of them

• your organs and toxin-removal pathways are not working properly, so your body resorts to throwing up in a last ditch attempt to get rid of the toxins

This might be too simplistic, and like I said I am not a medical doctor. But for the people online who have healed or cured their HG, the cure has seemed to come from addressing one or both of these factors.

There are several known causes of HG. I am going to try to list what I know, and categorize them in ways that will be helpful in knowing how to approach HG for you.

Known causes

• Nutritional deficiencies

• Mold exposure and environmental toxins

• Parasites

• H pylori infection

• Staph infections

• Histamine intolerance

• Hormone imbalances

• Gallbladder issues

• Kidney issues

• Liver issues

• Gut health issues

• Genetics

• Emotional factors and stress

This list feels overwhelming to me, and I’m sure if you are new to this information it feels overwhelming to you as well. But most of these make sense if you look at the underlying idea of toxins coming in and not being able to come out. And hopefully I can shed some light on how to figure out what is the problem for you.

Nutritional deficiencies are caused by HG, because if you cannot keep food down you are not going to be able to take in nutrition. But previously existing nutritional deficiencies also seem to be a trigger for HG, creating a vicious cycle.

Mold, parasites, infections, and histamine intolerance are all essentially an excess of toxins. Your body is being exposed to toxins too great for you to handle, and so the body is trying any means to eliminate those toxins.

Hormonal imbalances, organ issues, and gut issues are all forms of an impediment to our body’s mechanisms for excreting toxins,. If these systems are affected, we will not be able to rid ourselves of toxins in the proper way.

Genetics also unfortunately plays a role. The HER foundation talks about how the GDF15 and the IGFBP-7 genes are suspected to play a role in HG, and there is research being done on how to address that issue.

The emotional aspect is crucial in HG, and it is also the easiest to address and the factor that we have the most ability to control.

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My Suggestions on Where to Start

Once again emphasizing that I am not a doctor, I will try to offer some guidance as I am able. The ugly truth is that there is no one-size-fits-all answer to what will help you feel better. Despite what some information online indicates, no one can promise that one solution will make you feel better. You will have to experiment. But the good news is that there is hope that you can heal, and I can give you some starting places to try to experiment.

Step 1: Believe that you can heal

Decide that you want help, that help is possible, and that you can be healthy and enjoy pregnancy. If you do not feel like there is any chance of overcoming HG, you will not. That’s just the harsh reality. Read stories about people who have been helped. Start telling yourself “I can get better. I am safe. I can be healthy. My body was made for pregnancy. I am not allergic to my baby. HG is not a foregone conclusion.” Whatever positive affirmations you need. Say them and research until you believe that it is true.

Step 2: Figure out how to get any liquids to stay down for you

For the woman in the article I linked, it was lemonade. Taking sips of lemonade gave her the ability to get nutrition in her body in a way that stayed down. For me, lemonade made me worse and triggered vomiting. I found that the fluid that helped me was sipping water with pure electrolytes (only sodium, potassium, and magnesium, no flavors or sugars) in small mouthfuls every 10-15 minutes through the day. This gave me fairly instant improvement, and it did not trigger my nausea. If you go to the hospital for HG to get IV fluids, this is essentially what they will give you. Your body is starving for hydration, so please try things until you find a way to become properly hydrated in small amounts at a time.

Step 3: Once you are able to keep down liquids, you can begin to experiment with how to keep down solids.

When the lemonade didn’t work for me and when I analyzed my patterns to realize that I was largely throwing up bile and stomach acid, I realized that my issue was not too little stomach acid. It seemed as if I had too much stomach acid. This made sense given that my doctor told me that she herself had HG and the only thing that helped her keep down food was to take Pepsid, a medication that reduces stomach acid. Armed with this knowledge I started trying to eat very small amounts of low acid foods. I had to eat small amounts frequently, never letting my stomach get too empty. I couldn’t stand anything acidic and if I ate something acidic I would inevitably vomit it up. Foods that helped at the very beginning were things like yogurt, string cheese, and bland carbs eaten with a dairy protein. I can’t promise my foods will work for you, especially if you have histamine intolerance as your root cause, but experiment and see if there are foods you can keep down.

Step 4: Once you can keep down both liquids and some solids, you may be able to begin addressing root cause issues.

This is going to be very individual, and experimentation will be required. I can only share what worked for me. It took a full week or two of keeping down liquids and solids consistently before I was able to start supplementing to try to target what I suspected were my issues, without fear of immediately vomiting them up. Because I was often throwing up digested bile and had a hard time with acidic and fatty foods, I suspect my issue is either liver or gallbladder related, and may also be related to histamines. I also know that I have pre-exisitng hormone imbalances, nutritional deficiencies, and gut issues, so I am strongly guessing that my issues are multifactorial. I started with the most gentle approach, which was drinking nettle tea every morning for histamine intolerance. I also began taking milk thistle for my liver and my prenatal vitamins to address nutritional deficiencies. The range of B vitamins are especially important not only for pregnancy but for HG specifically. If I find other solutions that continue to help, I will add them to this list!

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What worked for me

I am purposely putting this information last because it very well may not apply to you, but in case someone else has the same underlying issues as I do, I will share the factors that worked for me. I will try to list them in relative order of how they helped, but it’s hard to know what made the most difference when I’m taking a somewhat throw-spaghetti-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach.

Things that helped me

• Emotional work - convincing myself that HG is curable and I can find what works and get better. This was a necessary first step for me that opened the door for everything else that began to help.

• Sip pure electrolytes (only sodium, potassium, and magnesium, no flavors or sugars) in water throughout the day. Every 10-15 minutes, take one mouthful of electrolyte water. I think this diluted my stomach acid and helped me get nutrients I was seriously lacking. This helped me begin to get the nutrients I needed, and it made me feel better almost immediately.

• Never having an empty stomach. Small and frequent meals are key.

• Liver support (milk thistle) and prenatal vitamins (especially b vitamins) once I was able to keep down food and water consistently. I couldn’t swallow pills for many weeks, but once I adjusted my liquids and diet to be able to mostly keep down food and liquids, I started taking milk thistle for liver support and a good prenatal along with extra b6. As soon as I started taking these in combination with the other adjustments I basically stopped vomiting. You cannot jump into this step obviously, as taking pills when you are vomiting up everything is pointless. But once I got to that stage this was a huge game changer and I could tell my body was functioning much better.

• Cut out as much acid from my diet as possible. This made a huge difference for me but obviously will not work for everyone.

• Cut my dietary fat down. I typically eat a fairly high fat and high protein diet, but foods that were too fatty triggered my vomiting, I suspect because of my gallbladder/liver issues, so I am keeping my fat moderate.

• Lots of sunlight and fresh air. Being inside always made nausea worse because of all the inside smells. Try to air out rooms as much as you can and be outside as much as possible.

• Lots of rest. I had to force myself to rest for several hours a day. I am building a body, and trying to do so on very little nutrition! I needed to conserve energy, and when I pushed myself I suffered for it.

• Nettle tea! This will help with almost any of the root causes. Nettles are insanely high in minerals and vitamins. They are a natural antihistamine, and my friend with histamine intolerance said drinking nettle tea made the single biggest difference in helping her histamine issues. They also help lower stress hormones. If you are at a point where you can keep down liquids, try nettle tea, as I have also found it very gentle.

• Try to keep upright after meals. Progesterone makes your sphincters more relaxed and you are more likely to have food come up from your stomach into your esophagus. Trying to stay upright after eating and drinking was helpful.

• GENTLE Exercise. Moving my body helped me feel better, but I had to really not push myself. I do Pilates for a short time most mornings which does help. When you are in the worst of HG you may be only able to do five minutes of stretching. Don’t push yourself or you may feel worse. Just do a small bit.

• Cut down on triggers when possible. Get help changing diapers, cook food outside if possible so food smells don’t linger, take out the trash frequently, keep your kitchen sink clean, avoid smoke and exhaust, etc. Avoid bad smells to keep nausea down.

Things that I’m not sure whether they helped or not

• Unisom and b6 at night. I still don’t know exactly how much this helped, but I seemed to be able to sleep without issue at least. I took it at night and I was often able to wake up in the morning without insane nausea once I implemented the electrolytes and the unisom/b6.

• Walk after meals to aid digestion. This didn’t seem to either help or hurt, but being outside when nauseous definitely helped.

• Sulfurofane in the form of avmocol started several months before pregnancy to hopefully help with H pylori. I don’t know if I have H pylori, or if this helped if I do have it, but I started taking avmocol for other reasons. If you have H pylori, apparently this is one way of treating that infection.

• Other supplements and stress management before pregnancy and pre-pregnancy wellness. I was taking a lot of supplements and eating well and exercising before pregnancy to try to treat underlying health issues (hormonal imbalances and a bulging disc). I was also making lifestyle changes to lower overall stress and inflammation. I don’t know if these helped or not, but I don’t think they could have hurt.

Things I tried that did not work for me but have worked successfully for others.

• Increase the acid in your stomach. Lemonade, acidic sweet tea, green apples, etc are all ways some people have found relief. Some people also found it helpful to take digestive enzymes. That being said, if you have high stomach acid like me or you have histamine intolerance this approach will not help and may make it worse. Its worth a try though, as this was game changing for some! I found it immediately obvious whether it helped or not.

• Iron tonic. I have a friend who found this very helpful in her third pregnancy and it made a world of difference for her. She essentially made iron rich water using a lucky iron fish, and added Emergen-C to the water as vitamin C is needed for iron absorption. This did not help me, but I think it was because of the acid in the Emergen-C

Other things people have said helped them greatly:

1. For nutritional deficiencies:

   1. Vitamin b6 alone can sometimes be enough, or b6 and unisom together.

   2. Replacing all flour with fresh milled flour

   3. Bone broth prior to pregnancy (will not help with histamine intolerance)

   4. Liver tonic (see above)

2. For liver and gallbladder issues

   1. Milk thistle

   2. Liverglow tonic

   3. Tummy Relief, which has dandelion for liver support

   4. Lemon juice can also help liver health but may make histamine intolerance worse and will not help if dealing with high stomach acid.

Further Resources

1. Materna Healthcare Guide

2. HER Foundation – Treatment Overview & Algorithm

3. RCOG – Green-top Guideline No. 69 (HG Management)

4. NICE – Nausea and Vomiting in Pregnancy / HG Recommendations

5. Materna HG Guidelines

If you are suffering from morning sickness or HG, there is hope. And if you have found ways to alleviate or cure HG for yourself, please share what helped you in the comments. I want this to be a resource to help as many women as possible, so share what you know! And above all, keep your gaze fixed on Him who is with us in all suffering.

I am not writing this to tell my story. I will share briefly some background information but I am going to keep it intentionally vague for a few reasons. Firstly, I don’t want to trigger others with details. Second, this is a hard topic and I don’t want details about the worst parts of my past on the internet for all to see, including my children one day. And lastly, this isn’t supposed to be about pornography addiction but about OVERCOMING pornography addiction. I would not write about this unless I thought it could help others, and so I am writing with that end in mind.

Before I get into my story, I want to acknowledge something that is dismissed so frequently in the world today. Yes, women can be addicted to pornography too. While a lot of women struggle with reading smutty books and fantasizing in a sexual way, there are also plenty of women who get addicted to traditional visual pornography. I am one of them. There are a few Catholic women online who have spoken about overcoming pornography addiction (I will mention some in the resources below), and many more men, but it is still hard to find any info about it. I hope adding my advice can be a further help to women and men struggling with porn.

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Background

When I was a teenager I was physically and mentally abused by a boyfriend. I loved this person and was in a relationship with them for years, and the abuse and the end of the relationship basically ruined my life at the time as I experienced it. I had already struggled with depression for years and became suicidal and thought life wasn’t worth living. To cope I got into a string of relationships with other young men which were all quite toxic, and I ended up being sexually abused. To further cope with the abuse I started viewing pornography. I didn’t really understand my motivation at the time, but I see now clearly how I was trying to use porn to cope with my abuse and depression.

Pornography was an overwhelming force in my life, and soon I viewed everyone in my life as a burden and impediment to my addiction. This lasted until I met my now husband and we married. For a while our relationship seemed to fill the longings in my heart and porn lost its allure. But as our marriage struggled from lots of baggage from both my husband and I, porn became a struggle again. Porn was obviously a coping mechanism for my loneliness and depression.

Finally things reached a breaking point. I had been a cradle Catholic and went to Mass and confession my whole life, but becoming pregnant with our first child made me start thinking about my faith slightly more seriously. I started going to Mass and confession with more seriousness. It would be years before I really started to care about my faith, but there was a mustard seed of faith to start. I also had always known that porn was wrong and the guilt started to become overwhelming. The guilt had always been there, and in fact there is a lot of information on the internet about how addiction works and how guilt adds to the cycle of addiction. But I distinctly remember a moment when I just knew, I need to stop this for the sake of my unborn child. The wrongness felt stronger than the pull of pornography in that moment. And by the grace of God I did stop. I did not watch porn again. I can’t pretend that this was through my own strength. It was solely a grace of God. I had many moments of temptation still, but I was able to resist them through grace.

The consequences of addiction do not end even after active addiction is over. The pull of temptation was still there for quite a while, although I can genuinely say that ten years into recovery I no longer feel at all tempted to watch porn. But porn addiction is particularly hard because you can accidentally be exposed to your addiction. It’s hard to accidentally shoot up heroin, but TV and movies and advertising can and do show porn all the time. Even trying to avoid it and using blocking software, you will still have moments of exposure. Also, it seems like every popular book written today for women is full of smut and it can be hard to avoid smut as an avid reader. Finding coping skills for those moments of temptation and accidental exposure is important. Also, the deep wounds that porn left continued to hurt me and my relationships. I thought at one point my marriage would end, and porn truly distorted my mind and left me confused. Only by the grace of God did my marriage stay strong and become healthy. If you think that porn is harmless, you could not be more wrong, and the effects are lasting.

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If You Are Addicted

I don’t have all of the answers. As I said, it was truly only through grace that I was able to move on and be free from porn addiction. But I do have some steps to recommend.

1. Find something larger than yourself. As addiction recovery groups have known forever, the only thing that actually helps overcome addiction is finding something stronger than the pull of addiction. Addicts know, the question is not why people watch porn but why people ever do anything besides watching porn. The chemical explosion in your brain is so addictive that people will give up everything in their life to pursue the high. The only thing that will start the break in the process is to find a “higher power”. For me this was consciously wanting to be a good mom to my unborn child, but in an unconscious way it was also wanting to love God. I think God is the only higher power that will truly have the power to change your life and overcome addiction, so run to Him.

2. Humility. In my experience a major issue with porn addiction is the massive guilt people feel when they fall to temptation. They cannot believe they fell, and the guilt and shame leads to further pain which will be temporarily filled by whatever we use to cope, porn or something just as toxic. This is the vicious temptation - fall - guilt cycle. This is ultimately a symptom of pride. You are human, and you sin all the time. You can do nothing without Christ’s help. Accept that truth, be humble, and run to the Father. Ask him to be his child again and confess your sins.

3. Know that you are not alone. I think for women in particular this can feel like a struggle in which you are alone. Pornography is portrayed as a male issue, when in reality studies show that between 35-60+% of women admit to watching porn within the last month. This is a much bigger issue than is discussed online and in real life, and so I am hoping my story can help someone out there to know they are not alone. I hope bringing awareness to the pervasiveness of this issue will help women and men to get help and not be afraid to seek the resources they need to overcome sexual sin.

4. Sacraments. The grace of the sacraments is real and efficacious. This is THE way to continually get grace to help you grow in virtue and turn from vice. If you have not been baptized, do so as fast as you possibly can. It will take all of your sin away and make you a new person. Confession, more often than you need, is crucial. If you fall to temptation every week, go to confession twice a week. You need the extra grace and it will help you to work on gaining virtue in other areas rather than just focusing on your sexual sin. The eucharist will also help to take away venial sin, give grace, and help conform you closer to Christ. We become what we receive in the Eucharist, so receive him as often as you can do so in a state of grace.

5. Admit your wrongs. Tell your spouse if you have one. This is really hard. Saying sorry for anything to my spouse is a challenge personally, but especially in this area. It is truly infidelity to watch porn, and it may deeply wound your spouse to hear that you fell. But in my opinion I think it is important to be honest. You cannot get better without living in the truth and the light of reality. Ask for forgiveness, ask for prayer, ask for help. They may be able to help you identify triggers and find other coping skills to turn to in moments of sadness and stress and loneliness. If nothing else, they can and will hopefully pray for and with you.

6. Resources. Find resources online or in person that help with porn and sexual addiction. Therapy may be helpful, either individually or with your spouse, to help work through past issues, identify triggers, and find healthier coping strategies. Some online options I am aware of:

   • Magdala ministries for women

   • Strive 21 for men

   • USCCB list of resources for men and women

   • Covenant eyes has both software and resources on their website

7. Accountability. This is major for some people. Checking in with someone regularly, preferably someone of the same sex who is in a place in life to help you, can help keep you from falling in a moment of temptation. If you know you need to tell your accountability partner about your fall, it may be enough to stay strong and walk away in a moment of temptation. As Matt Fradd has said, if you want to stay strong use you mom as your accountability partner!

8. Software. Accountability and blocking software is not perfect, and someone even mildly techy can find ways around it. When you are in the throes of addiction you will go to many lengths to get a fix, and so you may very well find ways to get around the software. But I still believe it is good for many reasons. First, it helps stop any kids in your home from accidentally being exposed to porn. It also blocks some of the instances of random or unasked for exposure to porn through ads or sketchy websites. But also, in my experience even if you get around the blocking software, Covenant Eyes (which is what we use but there are other programs too) will often recognize pornographic images on the screen and report them even if they are allowed to be shown. This is helpful for you and your accountability partner.

9. Prayer and fasting. Prayer is powerful. Ask God to help you. If you find yourself looking at porn, pray for the people, the images of God, that you are objectifying. Ask Mary and the saints to help you (there are suggested novenas listed on the USCCB site in the resources above). I know someone who was truly healed of porn addiction through praying the rosary every day. Prayer as often as possible is crucial. Also fasting is so important in addiction recovery. Porn addiction is not solely but in many ways is an excess and distortion of bodily passion. Fasting is a deliberate denial of bodily passion for a spiritual good. Fast from food, fast from treats, fast from video games, fast from other unhealthy coping skills. Fasting and denying your desires in small things will help you deny yourself in bigger ways. This is also an excellent exercise in humility because you will quickly see your own weakness. But it is a skill that can be practiced and developed, and it will help as you grow in virtue slowly in all areas.

Nothing in this world will fill the longing in our hearts. Not porn, not a loving human relationship, not success or money or fame. Only Christ and his love can fill us and heal us. For me, porn addiction was an attempt to fill a hole in my heart. The people who were supposed to love me abused me and left me deeply wounded, and I tried to fill that wound in a way that left me even more deeply wounded. The only thing that actually healed me was to fall deeply in love with Jesus and to let him love me. Jesus is the only one who can fill the deep longings in our hearts, who can love us for who we are totally and unconditionally, and who can know us and hear our deepest thoughts and desires and love us anyway. Run to him. Cling to his sacraments and ask him to heal you. I really believe that if we ask it will be given to us superabundantly.

Holy Week is the perfect time to turn back to him. See how he suffered for us, not to make us feel shame but because he loved us so much he wants us to be free. He wants us to be free to choose him and to be with him in heaven. He suffered so that we can be healed and whole. Go to confession and beg for grace. Receive the Eucharist and allow it to conform you more to Him. Celebrate the freedom of Easter morning and celebrate the fact that Jesus takes our sins and they are no longer ours, and we can be a new resurrected person along with Christ emerging from the tomb. I will pray for you, and pray for me. And keep your eyes on Him always, who alone can fill the deepest longings of your heart.

Monday

• 8:00 - I wake up (I usually wake up closer to 7 but this was the day after the daylight savings time change).

• 8 - 9 - I say my prayers, do my spiritual reading, and check emails. I also cut my son’s hair because it was getting long. It turned out a little dopey looking, but he is one and won’t sit still and doesn’t care what his hair looks like. It’s out of his eyes so it’s a win.

• 9 - 9:20 - I work out, which today was pilates.

• 9:25 - 10:25 - I cook breakfast and then we eat, all while we do our benediction table. This includes prayers, old testament reading, new testament reading, poetry reading, scripture and poetry memorization, the saint of the day, and a rotation of daily additions. Today we read a prayer from the church fathers from the book Fount of Heaven.

• 10:25 - 11:25 The kids go outside while I pay a bill over the phone, clean the bathroom, shower, get dressed, and attempt to fix our printer. Then I write out everything the kids need to do that day.

• 11:30 - The kids come in and we start school. I start my older daughter on her independent reading (today she does her novel, fairy tales, and american history) and she does her handwriting, and my first grader does math, handwriting, and language arts. In between lessons and problems I am working to fix the printer. It doesn’t go well. I am also stopping the boys from hurting each other every 5 minutes. The four year old gets a spanking and a time out in his room for hurting his brother multiple times.

• 1:15 - We need to stop for lunch, so we all go downstairs. While making lunch we listen to the first grade fairy tale on audible.

• 1:30 - We all eat and when I’m done we read Greek myth while everyone is at the table (minus the four year old who is desperate to play for 5 minutes before naptime).

• 2:00 - We all go upstairs for a nap. I get the four year old in his bed and play a podcast for him. He should fall asleep ideally but he usually doesn’t. He has to stay in his room for at least an hour and a half anyway. Podcasts make this happen. My first grader listens to a podcast in her dad’s bedroom and draws pictures. My fourth grader does math and language arts which she has chosen to wait to do until now. It is a bad idea, it takes her a long time, but she has a hard time focusing otherwise and chooses to do it this way. I give her the freedom to do so, with the clear boundary set that she cannot do afternoon things until she finishes school work. I rest with my 1 year old and work on substack, emails, and reading. I get a bill for a spine procedure I’m having next week and panic slightly.

• 4:30 - We were supposed to leave for Open house (I will be writing a post more about open house soon, but it’s a weekly get together with a few families that is the highlight of our week) at least 30 minutes ago. I angrily tell my daughter to pack her schoolwork and we can finish it in the car. We pile into the car and drive.

• 5:00 - When we get there we chat for a few minutes and then my oldest and the two youngest in the other family read a chapter of the Baltimore catechism together and discuss. We discuss the first commandment, and chat about Arianism and Elon musk and Buddhism in the course of the discussion.

• 5:30 - We finish and the kids are free to play. They jump on the trampoline and play Simon says. We all eat the delicious food my friend made. At one point all of the kids play outside and the moms chat and try to sort out a puzzle.

• 6:45 We head home so I can drop off kids. We call my husband so we can pray together on the drive home.

• 7:15 - We get home and my husband takes the kids in to do piano practice and get ready for bed. I drive straight over to my other friend’s house for book club.

• 10:15 I get home and get ready for bed, and do my Duolingo lesson for the day before attempting to sleep. At book club we discussed getting up early so I pray my guardian angel will wake me at 7 to pray before the kids get up.

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Tuesday

• 3:00 - I am still awake, never having fallen asleep. I get up and take a melatonin. I amend my prayer to please God let me sleep as long as I can. I toss and turn for another hour before falling asleep, only to wake up every hour until I get up.

• 8:40 - I finally feel like there’s no point in trying to sleep anymore. I feel like my head is in a vice. Instantly I set low expectations for school today. I read a few emails and pray my Saint Joseph novena.

• 9 - I get up and immediately lay on the floor of the homeschooling room (which the kids spontaneously cleaned completely while I was trying to sleep). I read my daily office and spiritual read while the kids play around me.

• 9:30 - I start cooking breakfast, sweet potato and sausage hash.

• 9:40 - I lift weights. Very light day considering I feel like death warmed up.

• 10 - We start benediction table and eat breakfast.

• 10:45 - We go outside and I try to get morning sunshine in my eyes so I can sleep tonight. I also read a canto of the inferno, but barely comprehend it. Then I call and leave a message asking if I self pay will the spinal procedure be less expensive. I don’t expect a response. The kids ride bikes, talk to the neighbor and his dog, and watch a neighborhood kid ride his dirt bike up and down our street. My 6 year old plays with the neighborhood six year old, who is home because it is spring break at her school.

• 11 - We go inside to start school but instead I call customer service about the printer. After an hour I realize we need a new one. I internally panic.

• 12 - We do a science lesson with both girls about primates.

• 12:45 - I take out a new toy rotation box and decide to give away three toys that are large and annoying. Maybe I will regret this when in a better head space but probably not.

• 1:10 - I start to panic that we have done almost nothing today. Take comfort in the fact that at least we did benediction and a science lesson. We start lunch because I’m starting to break down internally. My kids watch a saint video while we eat.

• 2 - I load the dishwasher and run it, then start a load of laundry. I lay the four year old down for a nap. I take a shower and feel slightly more alive.

• 2:30 - I wrestle the one year old to sleep. I work on our family budget and emails.

• 4:30 - I get up and switch laundry, clean the bathroom, and tidy my desk.

• 5:00 - I make dinner, clean up, pray as a family, the the girls do piano practice.

• 7:00 - I host a different book club at my house.

• 9:00 - I put the kids to bed, watch an episode of Better Call Saul with my husband, do a duolingo lesson, read a few pages, and go to bed.

Wednesday

• Midnight - I get up and take melatonin since I haven’t fallen asleep yet. I try to stay calm and not spiral.

• 3 - I get out of bed and Google tips for insomnia. I put ice on my face, move to another room, and listen to a podcast until I fall asleep. I wake up and move back to bed. I toss and turn but I have a dream so I must sleep at some point?

• 8 - I get out of bed and try not to cry. I read emails, do my prayers, and do my spiritual reading.

• 9:30 - I workout, which is again pilates.

• 10 - I cook breakfast, and we do benediction table and eat. I drink an adrenal cocktail to try to lower my cortisol.

• 10:45 - We go outside. I stare almost directly into the sun to start the melatonin process. We walk around and I read while the kids play.

• 11 - I read the catechism to the first grader for an hour while the 4th grader reads 4 different books to herself (fables, mythology, british history, and shakespeare).

• 12 - I do math and handwriting with my first grader.

• 1 - We clean up and go in for lunch. We listen to the burgess animal audiobook chapter for the week while eating.

• 2 - I lay down the four year old with an audiobook. The fourth grader starts her math test and language arts. I nurse the one year old and work on a school planning project and watch youtube.

• 4:30 - I don’t want to stop working on my project, but my husband is home and both the younger boys need diaper changes. I get up and change them both, chat with my husband, and start cooking dinner. In the down times I work on the project a little more. I realized I missed a call from the financial lady at the doctors office, so I try to call but get no answer.

• 5:45 - We eat, pray, clean up dinner, and the girls do piano practice.

• 6:45 - I take a break to order a new printer. I really don’t want to buy one and end up agonizing over the right choice but ultimately just pick one and go for it. I finish the kitchen clean up. I drink a huge amount of water in case the insomnia is dehydration related.

• 7:30 - I vacuum and mop the floors downstairs while my husband puts the kids to bed. Also my husband says the stock market is down so we transfer money into our brokerage account to buy stocks while they are on sale.

• 8:00 - I finish getting the kids in bed and take my supplements. My husband and I watch an episode of Better Call Saul and I do a Duolingo lesson.

• 9:30 - I shower and get ready for bed. I move my children’s foam couch into my room so I can stay up and read instead of trying to sleep. I accept the fact I may never sleep again, and pray to accept that if it’s true.

• 10 - I move the one year old to my bed and lay on the couch next to him to read.

• 11 - I fall asleep! I have to get up to nurse the one year old several times in the night but I actually sleep most of the night.

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Thursday

• 8:00 - I wake up and feel like a new human. I catch up on emails, prayers, and spiritual reading.

• 9:15 - I call back the financial lady, and get no answer. I invest the money we moved last night. Then I work out my arms.

• 9:45 - I get the kids dressed, brush their teeth and hair, etc. Then I set them to tidy up while I shower and get dressed.

• 10:20 - We eat breakfast and do benediction table. While doing benediction table I make pie crust for tonight and start bread dough and feed my sourdough starter.

• 11:20 - We all go outside. I call the lady again, and still do not get an answer. I make a grocery list.

• 11:40 -I read for 10 minutes to the first grader.

• 11:50 - We leave for noon mass.

• 12:40 - After Mass we grocery shop.

• 1:20 - We get home. The one year old fell asleep in the car despite all of our herculean efforts to keep him awake. I unload the groceries and make lunch. Then we eat together.

• 2:15 - I lay down the four year old, get an audiobook for the first grader, and the fourth grader starts math and language lessons. I get the one year old out of the car and he stays asleep (win). I nurse him and work on emails and projects.

• 3:30 - I get up and make a blueberry pie. While that is in the oven, I read more about first confession with the first grader. I help her do a thorough examination of conscience.

• 5 - We eat homemade salmon sushi for dinner.

• 5:40 - The first grader and I leave for the church.

• 6:00 - My first grader made her first confession!!

• 7:00 - We drive home and pray in the car on the way. When we get home we eat pie and ice cream and whipped cream as a family to celebrate.

• 7:45 - I clean up the kitchen.

• 8:30 - My husband and I watch an episode of Better Call Saul, I do a Duolingo lesson, I go to bed.

Friday

• 8:00 - I wake up after a rough night of the one year old wanting to nurse the entire night and crying quite a bit. I read some emails and say some prayers.

• 8:15 - I reluctantly get in the shower and tell the kids to get ready.

• 8:30 - I get dressed, pack our bags, pick out a nature book, and get the kids into the car.

• 9:00 - Mass

• 9:40 - We drive to co-op at a park.

• 10 - 2 - Nature co-op. We do a nature walk, paint in our nature journals, read poetry, and play.

• 2:20 - We get home and eat lunch. While at co-op the financial lady calls me back and we finally connect over the phone and sort out the details for my procedure on monday.

• 2:45 - I lay down the four year old and transfer the sleeping one year old from the car into my arms to nurse.

• 4:30 - I was planning on doing more school work but I am exhausted. I do a few things around the house but then focus on making dinner. The girls do piano practice while I cook.

• 5:30 - We eat dinner, pray, and have a family dance party as I clean the kitchen.

• 7:30 - My husband and I watch two episodes of Better Call Saul, I do a Duolingo lesson, and I go to bed.

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Saturday

• 8:00 - I wake up and read emails.

• 8:30 - My husband wakes up and comes into my room to hang out. We chat for a bit and then do our yearly taxes together lying in bed (so romantic).

• 9:30 - I cook breakfast. We have another dance party while it cooks. Then we eat together.

• 10:30 - I shower and clean the garbage cans for the month, then get dressed.

• 11:15 - I take the three youngest kids to run errands. We go to the library to pick up holds, get groceries at Costco, and get gas.

• 1:15 - We get home, unload groceries, make lunch, and eat together.

• 2:15 - My husband lays the four year old down and I (for the third day in a row!) successfully transfer the one year old from the car to nurse. I watch YouTube and try to stay awake.

• 4:00 - I research pavilion rentals at local parks for a big party coming up.

• 4:30 - I am determined to clean for one solid hour, listening to the Better Call Saul podcast while I clean. We end up tidying the entire house (we always do this as a family on Saturdays) and we sort clean laundry into baskets, and I sort the dirty laundry and start a load.

• 5:30 - I make dinner and we have family movie night. It’s my pick and we watch Akeelah and the Bee. We all enjoy it.

• 8:00 - We do family prayer, piano practice, kitchen clean up, and the kids get in bed.

• 9:30 - We watch an episode of Better Call Saul, I do my Duolingo lesson, and we go to sleep.

Sunday

• I didn’t write down everything we did on Sunday, but Sunday is intentionally a day to do as little as possible. We get up, eat, get ready for Mass, and then after Mass we basically do whatever we want. My husband and I play video games together, the girls play video games with each other and their dad, we rest, we read books for fun, we play outside in the backyard, and we chat with family over the phone. It’s a glorious way to rest up and prepare for the busy week ahead.

Takeaways

If you stuck with me this long (God bless you!) I wanted to point out a few takeaway messages from this glimpse into my life.

1. Anyone can homeschool. I am not particularly qualified or gifted or virtuous, but I love my kids and want to give them a good education, and I believe that is the only prerequisite for homeschooling. If I can do it, you can too!

2. Life is unpredictable but homeschooling is flexible. My life changes from day to day and some days I feel great and have energy while other days I do not. You will have your own challenges and hurdles to face. But I firmly believe that homeschooling works for everyone because it is flexible. Make it work for you. Maybe you are an early riser and you can get all of your schoolwork done before noon. That would be amazing! But at this stage of life it isn’t going to happen for us, and so we do school when we can. Maybe you work nights and you do all of your schooling in the afternoons. Maybe you need to use weekends to catch up (which we do sometimes but very rarely). Homeschooling fits into life, and you do not have to have your entire life revolve around homeschooling.

3. Find the little pockets to maximize school time. Sometimes we just have 10 minutes to read before going somewhere, but we can read a chapter of a book in that time. Make use of mealtimes. We do a lot of audio at lunchtimes and we take advantage of breakfasts to do our benediction table every morning. We also listen to audiobooks in the car which is a great way to use the otherwise wasted time.

4. Life admin has to happen, unfortunately. I hate feeling like I am wasting time with things like making phone calls, fixing appliances, doing our budget, and going to doctor appointments. But those things are part of life and need to be done. It would be ideal to have a chunk of time set aside for those things specifically, and I do try to schedule appointments on certain days and times, but sometimes school has to go on hold for a bit to sort something out that is pressing. That’s ok and necessary at times.

5. There will be times of low work and times of “catching up”. This week felt like we got almost no formal schooling done. That is really frustrating, but I know that this is not the norm. Most of my weeks I wake up earlier and we have more energy and time to do school work. I also know that other weeks we can “catch up” on the lessons that we didn’t get a chance to finish this week, and we have built in margin at the end of each term to have a chance to just catch up on missed lessons. We also don’t have to be on anyone’s schedule, and we can continue doing school all summer if we like (which we usually do). We are in no rush, and the school will get done eventually as long as we make a good faith effort to do schoolwork when we can.

6. All of life is school. Reading books together and doing math lessons is school, but so is playing and going to Mass and running errands and resting. All of life is an opportunity to learn, and we don’t need to view school as this formal thing that only happens at a desk. Laura Ingalls didn’t do formal lessons as a child in the big woods, but she learned to take care of a home and how to be a virtuous woman from observing her mother and following the rhythm of their daily life. This is probably the most important part of homeschooling, the opportunity to learn from life.

7. Know your priorities. There will be times when you cannot “do it all”. In those times, know what are your highest priorities. For me, that is benediction table, followed by math and language arts, and then all other subjects. We also prioritize Mass and our catholic faith which means that in some seasons we are just living liturgically while school gets set on the back burner. That is ok, because the first things are coming first. Ultimately I don’t care if my kids read every good book, or even learn to read or do math equations if they do not love God. That is and always will be my first priority.

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I hope this post is helpful, and I hope it encourages you that you can homeschool even if you are struggling! When life is hard, keep your gaze on Him who is the ultimate end of all true education.

John Senior and His List

If you read my curriculum picks for this school year, you know that my family is basing our educational pedagogy in part on the work of both Charlotte Mason and John Senior. I’ve written a lot on Charlotte Mason previously, but John Senior has also been deeply influential in my life. I first read The Restoration of Christian Culture in 2021 or 2022 and it had a big impact on my life and how I want to raise my children. We do not own a TV, we spend ample time in nature, we stargaze, we read good stories, and I try in all ways to root my children in Reality.

John Senior wrote another book called The Death of Christian Culture and in the appendix he lists his 1000 good book list. This is a vast array of literature and poetry which he thinks forms the basis of western civilization and sets the stage for The Great Books. The 1000 good book list trains the mind and imagination in preparation for reading the 100 Great Books later in life. I like and appreciate this list (while finding it flawed) and I am trying to root my children in Christian culture and morality through these stories on the good book list.

Aside from my small quibbles with certain books being included or omitted from the list, I think there is one glaring issue with the list overall: it is made with boys in mind. John Senior wrote a lot about education for boys, at all levels but specifically focusing on the high school level. His unpublished work The Foundation of Innocence: The Idea of a School talks specifically about how to make a school for boys, and he wrote that a companion book needs to be written for girls as well. He never wrote such a work before his death and I am unaware of any book written with the same pedagogical philosophy applied to girls (please comment if you know of one!!)

I think Senior focused on boys for a few reasons. Firstly, he wanted to reclaim true classical education, and for most of time men were educated formally and women informally. Schools were made by and for males, and literature was written by and for males. Senior also personally lived a very masculine life. He worked as a cowboy in his youth and a hobby farmer in his adulthood, and those poetic experiences gave him insight into the life and mind of boys. Lastly and most vitally, Senior was a man. He knew what it was to be a man and a father and he wanted to focus on cultivating the virtues needed for those roles. I don’t fault him for that, but I only wish there was someone who could pick up the baton and run with these same ideas and apply them to girls. I myself am not well educated enough to fill that role.

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How Books Cultivate Virtue

The stories that we read shape how we see the world, which is why good literature is so important and twaddle or bad literature so harmful. Senior says that when a boy reads a book like Ivanhoe, he sees what courage and bravery and fortitude looks like and he wants to imitate that. That is a beautiful thought, and that is exactly why classical educators want to use good literature to teach and form our children’s moral imaginations.

But this left me thinking, what does it mean to be a woman? What are the virtues that all women need to possess? Of course lots of girls will go on to become mothers and wives but some may also go on to become religious sisters or single women by vocation. Not to mention all of the variety of careers, hobbies, and roles women may enjoy in the course of their lives. What are the virtues that women specifically need to cultivate, and what are the stories that can form the minds and hearts and souls of young girls to become the women God made them to be?

John Senior constantly points to Mary, the Mother of Our Lord as the answer to the problems of our culture. I think she is also the epitome of feminine virtue and who we can look to for guidance. What virtues did Mary cultivate? We know that she was a mother, and mothers need patience and meekness and wisdom. She was a wife, both to Joseph in the earthly sense but also to the Holy Spirit in a spiritual marriage. Marriage requires chastity, docility, and sacrificial love. She was a daughter of God and as such she needed piety and obedience and openness and acceptance of His will in all things. She needed purity and dignity and kindness and generosity. All women need to be led by the four cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, temperance, and courage/fortitude) as well as the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. That is an intimidating list of virtues one must develop! But the beautiful truth is that God created us to be shaped in mind, heart, and soul by story, and through reading books about virtuous people we can begin to imitate and become more like them.

These ponderings led me to create this list, the good book list for girls. This is NOT a replacement for the 1000 good book list. I would say a majority of the books on Senior’s list speak to both the hearts of girls and boys as images of God and can teach wisdom and virtue to all. In fact many of these books already appear on Senior’s list. But there are certainly some books on the list more aimed at boys, and some gaps that should be filled in for young women in training. This is more of a supplement for girls in addition to the 1000 good book list. Whether some books on the list speak more specifically to boys and can be left off for girls is a matter of discernment for each family and situation.

This list is a work in progress, and I hope to update it often. This list was created by myself and many trusted friends who have read John Senior’s work and are familiar with the 1000 good book list. These books are ones that women thought were especially important in cultivating womanly virtue in young girls. The hardest part of creating this list for me was to figure out how to categorize the books. Do I do it by age and stage, like John Senior did on his list, or by topic or genre, or by virtue, or some other method? I finally settled on a modified version of ages and stages that felt appropriate.

Important note: I also struggled with how much to qualify these books in terms of content warnings. I have not read all of these books (in fact I haven’t read most of them). I compiled this list with the help of trusted friends. A few books that were recommended or suggested were left off because I couldn’t find any information online or it was unclear to me for which age the books were appropriate. I tried my best to determine the correct category based on internet research if I have not previously read the book, but I am sure there are miscategorized books or books that do not fit neatly into one category. For example, I read To Kill a Mockingbird in sixth grade and I have loved it dearly ever since. I loved reading about Scout and her coming of age journey. However, the book heavily features a rape trial and so parental discretion will need to be used as to determine the readiness of your child for that book. Please note that all books should be used in the context in conversations as many books have complicated or mature themes, and your child may not be ready for a book until a later stage. Pre-reading should be used to determine if a book is right for your child.

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Good Books for Girls

Elementary

1. Little House series (and The Caroline Years series)

2. Narnia series

3. Betsy Tacy (These books start with young years and go all the way to adulthood, so you can start young and grow along with the characters. Also parents should be aware that a child dies early in the series and so parental discretion is advised.)

4. Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little and other EB White books

5. The Secret Garden, The Little Princess, and others by Burnett

6. Heidi

7. The Princess and the Goblin and other George Macdonald Books

8. Mary Fabyan Windeatt series of saint biographies

9. The Vision Series of Saint biographies

10. Fairchild Family series

11. Sisters of the Last Straw series

12. Grandma’s Attic series

13. Boxcar Children (the first 19 were written by Gertrude Chandler Warner and there have been over 100 written since her death by other authors. I personally prefer the first few but have not found anything overtly harmful in the later books.)

14. Nancy Drew books

15. Understood Betsy

16. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

17. Pollyanna

18. Caddie Woodlawn

19. Ballet Shoes

Middle grade

1. Little Women, Little Men, Jo’s Boys, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, Jack and Jill and other novels by Alcott

2. Anne of Green Gables series

3. Trixie Belden mysteries

4. Jane of Lantern Hill

5. Harry Potter series1

6. Dear America series

7. Angel on the Square series

8. The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings

9. The Chronicles of Prydain

10. Wrinkle in Time series (The first two books are appropriate for middle school but the third and fourth are more appropriate for high school. In those two books there are themes of nuclear destruction, child abuse, sexual abuse, etc.)

11. The Austin Family Chronicles (matured as the series goes on and involves romantic themes in later books)

12. The Little White Horse

13. The Night Gardener, Sweep, The Vanished Kingdom trilogy, and others by Johnathan Auxier

14. Charlotte Yonge books - The Armourer’s Prentices, Unknown to History

15. The Perilous Gard

16. The Sherwood Ring

17. The Star that Always Stays

18. The Blue Sword

19. To Kill a Mockingbird (see note above)

20. The Joyful Mysteries of Life (this book is nonfiction and about “the facts of life” from a Catholic perspective)

High School

1. Jane Austen novels (Northanger Abbey is a good beginner Austen novel)

2. Jane Eyre and other Bronte sisters novels

3. Stepping Heavenward

4. Emilie Loring romance series

5. Work by Alcott

6. Come Rack Come Rope!

7. CS Lewis - I recommend basically everything he ever wrote but especially the Ransom Trilogy and Till We Have Faces for this group

8. Reed of God

9. How to be a Lady by Simpson-Giles

10. At the End of the Santa Fe Trail by Sister Blandina

11. Ruth, North and South, and Wives and Daughters by Gaskell

12. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

13. A Rocking Horse Catholic

14. Story of a Soul

15. I Believe in Love by D’Elbee

Young Adulthood

1. In This House of Brede - contains mature themes of inappropriate relationships and an abortion

2. Books and resources by Leila Marie Lawler - about motherhood, womanhood, and homemaking

3. A Mother’s Rule for Life - how to properly order our days

4. Kristin Lavransdatter - contains premarital sex and violence

5. Middlemarch

6. Anna Karenina - contains lots of adultery

If you have books you would like to suggest please drop them in the comments below, preferably with the suggested age group. I hope you find this list helpful in cultivating books for the young women in your life. I pray that these books help my daughters and yours to become like Mary of Bethany and Mary the Mother of Jesus, who always kept their gaze on the One Thing Necessary.

This book, originally published in 1831 and titled Notre Dame de Paris, is considered by some to be a classic. The story itself is very gripping and I will admit that Hugo kept me wanting to figure out what would happen next or how the pieces would fit together in the end. I am not necessarily saying the story was poorly written. But I do think that books that are considered classics should be upheld and lauded for more than just gripping storytelling. Classics, and all books worth reading, should point in some way to a higher truth. I feel like this book not only failed to do that but purposely set out to uphold vice and falsehood.

With the caveat that I am not an expert in literature, philosophy, or French politics, I found a few problems in this book that I want to address. Before I go into specific points, I want to give some background on two points.

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First, The French Revolution. Hugo is clearly a fan of the French Revolution (shown more in Les Miserables but also in the undercurrents of this novel), which is highly problematic from a Christian standpoint. If you know nothing about the French Revolution, I will try to very briefly summarize here why it is problematic. The intellectuals behind the movement had very different goals than the men behind the American Revolution. The French Revolution was violent from the beginning, with heads being cut off and placed on pikes, everyone considered skeptical of the revolution being sent to the guillotine, etc. While in the US people were incited to action by the writings of Thomas Payne, the French Revolution was influenced highly by Jean-Paul Marat. Marat explicitly incited fear and wanted people to be afraid for their lives. He didn’t ask for rights or representation in government. He asked for the killing of all nobility. Because the clergy was a higher class in France, separated from the lower classes who led the revolution, priests were persecuted harshly. They got deported and arrested when not complying with revolutionaries. The church was a target. A new atheistic state religion called The Cult of Reason was created to replace the Catholic Church. Notre Dame and many other churches were gutted and turned into temples dedicated to Wisdom. They replaced crucifixes with images of Marat after his assassination. The revolutionaries desecrated and destroyed the graves of past kings found in Catholic churches. The entire French Revolution was not only a failure in a lot of ways but was also immoral and deeply anti-Christian in its philosophy.

Secondly, Hugo’s life. Hugo was a complicated figure and held various views throughout his life. He was politically active throughout his life and advocated for republicanism and the ideas behind the French Revolution of Equality, Fraternity, and Liberty. He was strongly and outwardly opposed to capital punishment. When he was young he was a Catholic but came to hate the church and be critical of the church and its authority in later life. He thought the church was not sympathetic to the poor (and to be fair to him there were a lot of issues with church hierarchy in France before the revolution). The Catholic Church put both The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables on the Vatican’s Index of Forbidden Books, which did not help his view of the Church. He practiced spiritism and participated in seances in his life and later adhered to deism and described himself as a Freethinker. He ensured in his will that he would be buried without a crucifix or a priest. I think it is also relevant to note that while he was married both him and his wife had numerous public affairs. Be cautious in looking too far into Hugo’s life so you can be spared the gross details I was subjected to. Sentences like this can be found on his Wikipedia page: “He sought a wide variety of women of all ages, be they courtesans, actresses, prostitutes, admirers, servants or revolutionaries… for sexual activity”. With one of his mistresses, who was married, he was caught in adultery and while he got off with no consequence she spent two months in prison and six months in a convent. All of this to say, he was not exactly a model of virtue in his personal life, and I think his political and philosophical views come across in this novel.

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Here are some of the problems I found with this novel:

(Note: I have tried to avoid spoilers if you plan to read this book but some of the themes discussed are later plot developments.)

1. This story is sensual. There is a lot of sexual content in the book, and almost every man openly lusts after Esmeralda. There are graphic depictions of violence. The seedy underbelly of Paris is where a lot of the action takes place in this story, and crime and vice is rampant. This book overall has a lot of mature themes and uses sensuality to drive the plot of the story.

2. There is not a single character with good virtue in this book. There are punctuated moments of selflessness or virtue displayed by characters, but it feels like these are momentary departures from the characters’ personalities to drive the plot rather than actual acts of virtue. Characters are shown to be selfish, lustful, gluttonous and drunkards, greedy, and hungry for power. Quasimodo is supposed to be the hero but even he is savage, vicious, and as I will discuss below, places Esmeralda above God. Esmeralda is portrayed as virtuous but she is manipulative, happy to be a mistress for a married man, and practices some form of witchcraft (in her amulet at least). I also don’t feel like the book is showing vicious characters as a warning of what not to do. They feel like they are being upheld as characters to aspire to. I think that Hugo was actually trying to create virtuous characters, but I do not agree with his idea of positive virtue (blasphemy, licentiousness, selfishness, pride, etc.) and I think it is antithetical to Christian morality.

3. Hugo shows a clear hatred for authority. The king is seen to be foolish and completely greedy and money hungry. He is capricious and unthinking. The church authorities are seen to be prideful and grasping for power. The criminals of the city are considered the “best company” and are seen to be the heroes of the story. The Pope is also cursed many times in the book.

4. Esmeralda, who is beautiful, is basically seen as a goddess in the book worthy of worship. She seems like a literary idol of the Goddess of Wisdom who was honored in the Cult of Reason. Almost every man in the book lusts after her (let’s just ignore the fact that she is 16 and Frollo refers to her as “child” while throwing himself at her). Multiple characters outright say they would rather go to hell with her than heaven without her. Quasimodo even says that if she just says the word he will fling himself off the tower of Notre Dame and commit suicide. He literally calls her more divine than God.

5. Architecture, especially of churches, is focused on a lot in the book but it always is talked about as an end in itself instead of pointing to God and bringing him glory. Beauty itself is esteemed as an idol. There is also a lot of discussion of the alchemical symbolism in architecture which was I found weird and I don’t feel knowledgeable enough to dive into, but know that it is discussed.

6. The book is strongly anti-justice. The justice system is depicted as totally corrupt and a farce. Anarchy seems to be idealized, or at least the toppling of all systems of authority and equality for all praised as the ideal. This is a very proto-Marxist view. This is also seen in the play Les Miserables (I have not read the original book, but have nearly memorized the musical from my family’s fondness for it when I was growing up). This is where it is clearest that Hugo is pro-French Revolution.

7. There are many blasphemies, and Christian symbolism is twisted and used with sinister characters and situations. There are several scenes that are similar to Palm Sunday, the passion, and the crucifixion, and it is used to evoke emotion, but the characters involved are not sacrificing themselves nor are they virtuous. Hugo explicitly says that Esmeralda “looked like a virgin standing at the foot of the cross” at one point. There is a recluse character described as a nun but who actually has not devoted her life to God but to wallowing in misery and hatred of the people who took her infant daughter. There are several moments of explicit blasphemy. A priest character says “…I spit in the face of my God, all this for thee enchantress. To be more worthy of thy hell.” Another character states after lying “if it is false I am damned and I reject God”.

8. Hugo’s views of the printing press. Hugo believes that the printing press is a powerful force that will destroy both the Church and architecture as a medium. The printed word is so powerful that “It is the second Tower of Babel” in Hugo’s view. He explicitly states that this is a good thing, the “dawn of a new day”. For more detail read the chapter entitled This Will Destroy That, which is an essay all about this topic.

I humbly submit these points for consideration. I am not an expert in literature and I am open to being corrected on any of these points, and these opinions are my own. But I was disturbed by these themes of the novel, and I wanted to bring some awareness to these issues. I think it is good to hate evil, and since I truly think this book is glorifying evil I think it is right to hate it. Do I think it is bad or sinful to read this book? Not necessarily. I ended up finishing the whole book despite realizing halfway through that the messaging of this book was sinister. But I think there should be caution in considering this a classic, or encouraging children to read this book.

This book is generally highly regarded and sometimes recommended to children in school curricula. John Senior (who I love) lists this book on the 1000 good book list for children ages 12-16. I would highly caution against children reading this book without ensuring they have strong moral character and having conversations about the moral failings along the way.

After the publication of this novel, tourists flocked to Notre Dame and the city was influenced to restore the cathedral to its former beauty and dignity. God can make good come out of our sins, and so I am glad this book influenced the world for good in at least this one way. Thank you for joining me in venting my frustrations about this novel. Until next time, keep your eyes on Our Lord who can use all things for good.

As Catholics, the Christmas season does not start until December 25th (or after the vigil Mass in the new rite). Then the feasting and celebrations begin! Christmas is not over on the 26th, and the end of the season varies based on who you ask but I think there are a few days traditionally considered the end of the Christmas season.

• The Christmas octave begins on the 25th and lasts for 8 days, ending with the solemnity of Mary the Mother of God on January 1st. Christmas is fully celebrated (even alongside the other feasts that happen during this period) for this entire 8 day period.

• The twelve days of Christmas (hence the song) end with another huge feast of the Epiphany on January 6th. In many places in the world this is celebrated even more than Christmas. This is considered the first end of the Christmas season.

• Next, the Sunday following Epiphany we celebrate the feast of the Baptism of our Lord. This is the official end of the liturgical Christmas season. After this, the priests wear green vestments and we are liturgically considered to be in ordinary time.

• Lastly, The Christmas season can be considered to last until the feast of the Presentation, or Candlemas, on February 2nd. I think this is a beautiful custom, because in traditional Judaism, a woman was purified 40 days after giving birth to a boy. This would have been the day that Mary was purified in the temple. Mary and Joseph also offered a sacrifice in the temple to redeem their firstborn son. This is truly the last feast of the Christmas narrative.

All of that to say, Christmas for Catholics is an entire season, not just one day. As such we have a variety of ways to celebrate, and I wish to share how my family celebrates these holy and festive days.

St Nicholas

The feast of Saint Nicholas is celebrated December 6th, typically early in the Advent season. We remember the bishop of Myra who, legend says, gave secret gifts (and also punched heretics, which is even better IMO). This Saint Nicholas was the inspiration for our modern Santa Claus. So how do we approach Santa in our home?

On December 5th in the evening we set out our stockings above the fireplace. We also leave out cookies for Saint Nicholas and carrots for the reindeer. In the morning we wake to find an orange, some chocolate coins, and a new book in each of our stockings. Oranges and chocolate coins are both traditional symbols of Saint Nicholas since he gave money secretly, which is sometimes shown as a golden ball in icons. We love the drama of this tradition, but it’s important to me that my children know that we are in fact acting on behalf of Saint Nicholas. Saint Nick does not literally come to our house and leave these gifts for us. But in giving gifts secretly, we get to act like him. And all of this is done with the intention of remembering Christ who came to give us the best gift of all at Christmas, Himself incarnate. We also emphasize this when we act as secret Santa for our chosen family members all Advent long (see our Advent traditions post for details). So yes, we still get to have fun and wake up to surprise gifts, but we treat it like a game instead of a reality. It is crucially important to me that my children know that when I tell them the truths of the faith, they are real and not a game. So we draw a sharp distinction between reality and falsehood in this way.

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Christmas Cookies

Baking Christmas cookies is a sweet memory I have from my own childhood that I now try to pass on to my own children. Usually I let my family each choose one cookie that is their favorite and make sure to make those throughout Advent. Each Sunday of Advent, we bake one or two types of Christmas cookies. We eat one or two each that day, and then freeze the rest for Christmas. Then after Christmas dinner (or Christmas Eve dinner if we go to Mass that day) we break out all of the cookies and the feasting begins! I love that we get to eat special treats that we only eat in this short season, and I don’t have to spend several consecutive days in the kitchen making them all at once. Some of our favorite cookie recipes can be found here and here.

Christmas Cards and Letters

This tradition begins in Advent but is usually not completed until sometime in the Christmas season. Growing up we always sent out a photo of our family each year with an accompanying letter talking about changes that happened in the year. I love this tradition and I love seeing not only our cards and how our family has changed through the years, but those of my friends as well. Actually addressing and sending out the cards sometimes happens after Christmas Day for us, but hey, the Christmas season isn’t over until February 2nd! As long as I send them before that day I consider it a Christmas card.

Service Projects

This has taken many forms over the years, but we usually try to do a service project sometime during Advent and Christmas. In years past we have shopped for kids who wouldn’t otherwise get gifts, sent gifts to intellectually disabled adults living in a group home, and visited a nursing home on Christmas Day to pass out homemade Christmas cards. This year we filled a Box of Joy through Cross Catholic Outreach to give gifts to kids in developing countries. I want my kids to know that Jesus came and taught us to serve others, and I also want them to be grateful for what they have, and so we try to do at least one service project each year.

Mass and Baby Jesus

Growing up we always went to Christmas Eve Mass and sang in the children’s choir, led by my grandmother. As much as I love the idea of midnight Mass now, my family isn’t quite on board with the idea. So we usually end up going to Christmas Eve Mass. As soon as Mass is over, Christmas begins! When we get home from Mass we find a little package wrapped in gold under our tree. The youngest child usually opens it (sometimes with help) to find our baby Jesus. We then get to place him in our good deed manger, full of hay from the good deeds we did all Advent long. Then we eat our traditional meal and start on the Christmas cookies!

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Christmas Eve Meal

Probably my children’s favorite Christmas tradition is our Christmas Eve meal. After the vigil Mass we have a meal that Mary and Joseph could have eaten at the time of Jesus’ birth. We eat a variety of things like fish, lamb, sheep and goat cheese, figs, dates, raisins, pistachios, grape juice, flat breads, honey, and olives. We set it out like a smorgasbord and everyone gets to try what they like. They absolutely love this meal and ask for it year after year. I also love that it helps us remember that Jesus was really born in a time and place, and we can try to transport ourselves there by eating as they would have done.

Exchange of Secret Santa Gifts

After Mass and feasting, we exchange our homemade secret Santa gifts on Christmas Eve. We started to do this on Christmas Eve because we assumed the homemade gifts would be overshadowed by the store bought gifts on Christmas morning, but it shocks me that every year all of my family members usually choose their homemade gift as their favorite. The kids love to reveal who they got to be Santa for all through Advent, and they proudly display the gift that they made for their recipient. I truly look forward to this exchange all year long.

Christmas Morning

I have such fond memories of barely being able to sleep on Christmas Eve, and waking up so excited to see what I got for Christmas. As much as I want my children to be focused on the reason for the season, I also love that I get to see their joy when they wake in Christmas to gifts under the tree. We do not do stockings on Christmas, as that is part of our Saint Nicholas celebration, but we do open the gifts under our tree. I try to limit myself to only buy three gifts for the kids each, but sometimes I add in extras depending on the year. Every year I wish that we could do one gift each day for the octave of Christmas or for the twelve days of Christmas, but it has never worked out due to travel in that time. If someday we do not travel for Christmas I think that would be such a special way to keep the feast going all the way until the Epiphany. After we open gifts we also eat a special breakfast meal (usually something sweet but the requests change every year) and listen to Christmas music!

The 12 Days of Christmas

As I wrote above, we usually travel during the Christmas season and so it’s hard to maintain any specific traditions. But we do try to celebrate Christmas a little bit each day. We listen to Christmas music, which we have tried to avoid all during Advent. We eat Christmas cookies and treats each day. We try to do fun activities like look at Christmas lights during this time. We try to go to Mass at least a few times. And we watch lots of Christmas movies! Some of our favorites are The Muppet Christmas Carol, Elf, Home Alone, and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

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Epiphany

We celebrate the Epiphany on January 6th, which commemorates the magi following the star, visiting Jesus, and bringing Him gifts. This is a special day for blessing holy water so we try to get to Mass and have our water blessed. We also get blessed chalk and write a blessing above all of our doors to bless our coming and going throughout the year. We celebrate this feast with our version of a king cake. It is traditional on Epiphany to hide a baby Jesus in a king cake and whoever finds him gets a special prize. I don’t really love eating king cake, so we started making cheesecake on the Epiphany instead. We hide a pecan in the cake, representing baby Jesus, and whoever finds him gets to wear the Epiphany crown and boss everyone around for the day. My husband is known for cheating and putting a pecan in his own piece, and so the kids get a special kick out of watching him closely to make sure no tomfoolery happens. Even though we don’t give gifts every day of the twelve days of Christmas, we do get one last gift on the Epiphany each year, usually a book and/or new clothes.

Baptism of our Lord

We don’t have a ton of traditions for this day, but we have borrowed Kendra Tierney’s tradition of making gnocchi on baptism days. Gnocchi are ugly little blobs that get dunked into water and transformed into deliciousness. In the same way, we are transformed by the waters of baptism. We talk about baptism and why it is important, we discuss the reasons Jesus was baptized, and we renew our baptismal promises together on this day as well.

Candlemas

Candlemas on February 2nd marks the final end of the Christmas season. On this day we make sure to put away all Christmas decorations and pack away our special Advent and Christmas books. I try to leave our Christmas decor out until this time because the Christmas season is in midst of the bleak midwinter. In the darkest part of the year we need the lights to remind us of the joy that Jesus brought with Him at His incarnation. We also bless candles on this day, and sometimes (when we remember) we eat crepes which are traditional in Europe on Candlemas. Thus ends the Christmas season, and usually sometime around this period comes Septuagesima Sunday, the day we begin our pre-Lenten planning and preparation. In 2026 Septuagesima actually falls on February 1st, so we will have to take care to begin preparing for Lent as soon as Christmas is finally over.

That’s all friends! Once again, I know this may seem like a lot but these traditions have evolved over many years of family and liturgical life. If you are just starting, pick one or two things that sound doable and fun and try to make them happen. Christmas is my favorite time of year, and these traditions are a big reason why that is. I pray you have a blessed Christmas, and through it all try to keep your gaze on Him whom we are celebrating!

One important note: I recognize that we have a ton of traditions. We do not do all of these every year. Years when I am pregnant or have a newborn we do the bare minimum. Even in the best years, like this year, we do not do all of this to the fullest extent. But these traditions have evolved over the course of the 9 years we have had children in the house and we try to have meaningful traditions that we continue year after year. If you are reading this to figure out what to do for your own family, please start small and do not try to do everything we do. Pick one or two meaningful things to try this year and see what sticks. There is no way we could have started all of this at once and had a meaningful and peaceful Advent season. It is much easier to continue traditions than to start them.

Without further ado, here is a brief description of how we prepare for Christmas in our family.

Advent Fast and Preparation

Advent is a season of preparation, which means we have roughly four weeks to prepare our hearts and homes for Christmas. Because we know that Jesus is coming, but not yet, we try to build anticipation for Christmas. There are some varied ways that we do this.

• Firstly, we avoid treats and fancy meals in Advent. This is hard to do in general because there are special feasts and a birthday during Advent for us, and we do celebrate those days. Also, the secular world treats the Christmas season as lasting from about November 1st until Christmas day, so there are lots of parties and events and treats in the world in general during Advent. But if something special is not going on we do not have sweet treats.

• We try to avoid too many activities and parties in Advent and save those for the Christmas season.

• I try to get all of my Christmas shopping done before Advent begins. I don’t like shopping and don’t want to spend my contemplative moments thinking of and buying gifts for family members. This also helps when kids see something in the store and say “I want that for Christmas!” I can remind them that all of the gifts are already purchased. (In the next post I will discuss how we address Santa in our family.)

• I also try to clear out the freezer and make simple meals in order to have time to focus on other Christmas preparations.

• We prepare our home slowly over the course of Advent. We ideally put up our Christmas lights on the feast of Saint Lucia. We try to get our tree on December 23rd, although they can be a little difficult to find so late in the secular season. This is nice because not only does it emphasize the preparatory nature of Advent, but it gives us time to slowly decorate and prepare instead of having to get everything done in November and take everything down December 26th.

Books

As I stated in my previous post, we love Advent and Christmas books in our family. We have a box of seasonal books that only come out on the first Sunday of Advent and they go back away on February 2nd. This is one simple way we can keep the Christmas season alive all the way until the feast of the Presentation. In years past, I have wrapped the gifts in cloth wrappings and brought one out each day to read together. I carefully plan to have our books about special feast days correspond to the correct day. This year, I just brought out the box of books and let my kids read them as they like. Because I have two independent readers now, and I am not reading everything to them, it worked out this year to just offer them freely. I still read books to my two youngest who cannot read and the older kids like to listen, but we aren’t doing one book a day as in years past. See my last post for a few of my favorites.

Catholic New Years Eve

The church year begins on the first Sunday of Advent, so the day before that is Catholic New Year’s Eve! We usually do a small celebration with sparkling grape juice and party hats, and look back at the previous year. We can also use this evening to make resolutions that we want to try to do in Advent and beyond. For some reason we tend to choose our Saint of the Year and Word of the Year on December 31st, but Catholic NYE would be a great time to do this as well. We try to just take a moment to simply recognize that the old year is ending and the new one is beginning.

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Secret Santa

One the first night of Advent, we place all of our names in a bowl and each family member draws one name. For all of Advent, we become a secret Santa to that person. We try to do extra good deeds for them and try to find ways to secretly serve them. We also make a handmade gift for that person throughout Advent. People of all ages can participate in this, although I usually have to help quite a bit with younger kids gift making. Here are examples of gifts we have made each other in the past: books written and illustrated by my kids, a pomander, cookies, a painted mug, finger knitted/knitted/crocheted items, a hand painted nativity set, a painted and handmade wooden treasure box. We exchange these gifts on Christmas eve and they are often some of the most cherished gifts we get throughout the entire Christmas season.

St. Andrew Anticipation Prayer

November 30 is the feast of Saint Andrew the apostle, and it usually falls right around the beginning of Advent. In our family evening prayer, we spend these weeks of Advent replacing our nightly rosary with the St. Andrew anticipation prayer. We pick an intention that we want to pray for all throughout Advent. Then we say the following prayer 15 times a day from November 30 until December 25:

Hail and blessed be the hour and moment

In which the Son of God was born

Of the most pure Virgin Mary

At midnight, in Bethlehem, in the piercing cold.

In that hour vouchsafe I beseech Thee, O my God,

To hear my prayer and grant my desires,

(Think silently of intention)

Through the merits of our Savior Jesus Christ,

And of His Blessed Mother.

Amen.

It does not take long and this could easily be added to whatever you already do, such as the rosary, but for my family and stage of life it works better for us to replace our prayers since we are adding the other prayers and devotions listed below as well. It’s a fairly short prayer and since we say it 15 times a day it gets memorized pretty quickly. When my kids were all little we used to listen and pray along silently with the Hallow app as they prayed this prayer, so that’s another good option for families with littles or families who would otherwise forget.

Advent Wreath

Each night of Advent at the beginning of our prayer time together, we light the candles on our Advent wreath. We light a candle for each week of Advent. Each candle has a meaning: hope (purple), peace (purple), joy (pink), and love (purple). We discuss each new candle as we light it, but the simple visual reminder of the wreath and candles helps to anchor our Advent traditions, and the kids love to fight over who gets to blow the candles out at the end of prayer time.

Good Deed Manger

We have a small wooden manger that sits in the middle of our Advent wreath. Each night I ask the kids if they did a good deed that day. If they did, they get to add a piece of hay to the manger. On Christmas eve we will add our baby Jesus to the manger, and the good deeds we performed throughout Advent will make a soft bed for him. I love this practice for virtue and habit training because trying to go above and beyond in doing good deeds all year long can be hard to remember, but for four weeks we get to focus on doing at least one extra good deed each day. This is a great way to try to remember to serve our secret Santa recipient as well.

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Advent Calendar

We have done many different versions of Advent calendars in the past, ranging from simple chocolate-each-day calendars, to calendars that reveal a piece of a toy set each day, to a homemade felt stocking calendar with activities written out for each day. The one we have continued to use in the last few years has been this simple window cling nativity set with a piece for each day December 1st through 24th. I don’t love the chocolate calendars or the ones with toy sets because to me they feel celebratory and not preparatory. We try to avoid treats in Advent, so eating chocolate each day defeats that purpose. The window clings feel simple but meaningful, and we read about each symbol as we add them to our window each night.

Jesse Tree

The main devotional we use each night during our prayer time is the Jesse tree. The Jesse tree is a way of remembering salvation history from creation through the birth of Jesus, highlighting the major events and people along the way. I use the Jesse tree readings chosen by a friend and I have never found her exact plan online, but I can post it separately if desired. Several years ago I made a homemade wooden ornament with an icon for each event or figure from salvation history. We read about them in the bible and then add the ornament to a small fake tree on our mantle. We then sing an Advent hymn, with the children taking turns to pick which hymn we sing each night (almost every single night we sing This Little Light of Mine as my kids all love that song).

O Antiphons

From the beginning of Advent until December 16th, we read about events and figures in salvation history, from creation until the birth of John the Baptist. But starting on December 17th, we read about the O Antiphons each night. Each night there is a title of Jesus and a corresponding reading from the Scriptures. The titles in Latin are Sapientia (Wisdom), Adonai (Lord), Radix Jesse (Root of Jesse), Clavis David (Key of David), Oriens (Radiant Dawn), Rex Gentium (King of Nations), and Emmanuel (Emmanuel, or God with us). At the end of the week if we look at the first letter of each title going backwards, it spells out ERO CRAS, which in Latin means “tomorrow I come”. I also have wooden ornaments for each of these titles, so they get added to our Jesse tree after we read the scripture verses. Each of the verses of the hymn O Come O Come Emmanuel corresponds to an O Antiphon title, and so instead of picking a hymn to sing each night we sing that antiphon’s verse of O Come O Come Emmanuel.

Santa Lucia or Saint Lucy

Lastly, there are two big saintly feasts that we celebrate in our family during Advent. There are various other feasts in Advent that we celebrate in smaller ways, like eating mexican food for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, going to Mass and eating blue foods for the Immaculate Conception, and reading about and maybe even doing small activities for saints with Advent feast days like Barbara, Ambrose, Our Lady of Loreto, and Juan Diego, but we don’t celebrate them with as much pomp and circumstance as Santa Lucia and St. Nicholas (who I will discuss in the next post). Saint Lucy’s feast day has been celebrated traditionally in Sweden with the oldest girl in the house making and serving food to the family while wearing a white dress and a wreath on her head with candles. In our house we make a cinnamon raisin bun that is also the same base of hot cross buns that we serve on Easter. Lucia comes from the Latin word meaning light, and so we remember the light that is coming soon into the world on her feast day. This is also the day when we try to get our outside Christmas lights up (which we have not yet managed to do this year). This feast is a favorite of my girls, who work together to serve everyone else in the family.

That’s all for now! In typing this all out it looks like a lot more than it feels in practice. These traditions have evolved and changed over the years, but I think it is more important to have some way of commemorating the season than to do any of these traditions in particular. I grew up in a home that didn’t live particularly liturgically, but I have distinct memories of lighting the Advent wreath and singing This Little Light of Mine. Did we do that every single year, or every day of Advent? I don’t know, but even doing it a few times was enough to make a lasting memory for me. However you decide to prepare for Christmas with your family, remember to keep your gaze on Him for whom we are preparing!

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1. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

This book is an awesome read aloud for this time of year. It is about the Herdman family: a wild bunch of children who are terrible in every way. They are mean and violent and love to commit crimes. When they become a part of the local Christmas pageant, mayhem ensues. This book is so sweet and honestly I cry every time (that is kind of a theme for me and Christmas books!). There is also an amazing movie version of this story that came out last year from director Dallas Jenkins, creator of The Chosen, that is definitely worth a watch. My 9 year old daughter lists this as her favorite Christmas book.

2. The Gift of the Magi

I really love this illustrated version of the classic story. A man and wife want to buy each other gifts for Christmas but don’t have any money to do so. What are they willing to give up to be able to give to each other? A lovely story of sacrifice and finding out what truly matters.

3. Father Christmas

This book is full of nostalgia for me. I grew up reading this and The Snowman, also by Raymond Briggs, at my grandmother’s house every year during the Christmas season. My children of all ages love these books because they have no words, only speech bubbles in the pictures. I can still remember my grandma describing this hilarious and beautiful book to me. This book is a bit irreverent (it shows Santa grumbling about his work, savoring a glass of cognac, and using the outhouse to name a few instances) but it is so near and dear to my heart and these pictures live in my brain. Two of my children name this as their favorite Christmas book.

4. The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree

I am a huge fan of Barbara Cooney’s illustrations, and this book does not disappoint. This gorgeous picture book tells the story of a young girl at Christmastime in the Appalachian Mountains whose father is away at war and whose mother has to keep the Christmas traditions in his absence. This is one of those books where the adults and children can both love and appreciate the text and illustrations, but the adults will pick up on the subtle nuances of a mother trying to do all in her power to keep life going and make Christmas special with limited resources and a husband gone.

5. Angela and the Baby Jesus

It is a challenge to read this book and not tear up at the end! If you have read it you will understand why. This touching picture book is about a little girl who thinks that the baby Jesus in the church nativity scene looks cold and wants to take him home to wrap him in blankets. A beautiful true story from Frank McCourt about his mother and her childhood in Ireland.

6. Saint Nicholas and the Nine Gold Coins

The feast of Saint Nicholas is on December 6th and we celebrate every year by putting out our stockings the night of the fifth to be filled by Saint Nicholas. This book, told in iconographic style, explains the history of Saint Nicholas and the most famous story of him giving money to three young girls for their dowry. Also, my children love that one of the girls is named Zoe.

7. The Night Before Christmas

I think a huge part of what makes a great Christmas picture book is the illustrations, and Tasha Tudor is another legendary illustrator. This book, which I believe can only be bought used but is available at a few places online, is simply the text of the well-known The Night Before Christmas poem fully illustrated with a mix of black and white and full color illustrations. There are many pages with only pictures and no words, and never more than a few words per page, so this is a good book to snuggle up and linger over the illustrations together.

8. The Story of Holly and Ivy

Barbara Cooney makes another appearance on this list, paired with Rumer Godden who wrote one of my favorite novels, In This House of Brede. This is a picture book with lovely illustrations, as always is the case with Cooney, but it is also a touching and poignant story. I find this one hard to read all at once as it is quite long, and we have sometimes used YouTube read-aloud videos along with the book since the story takes about an hour to read the text fully. This book reminds me of the Velveteen Rabbit or Corduroy, and has themes of belonging and love and family set at Christmas time. This is also a favorite of my oldest daughter.

9. Who is Coming to Our House?

If you have very young children who can’t be trusted with paper books (cough cough my youngest), this board book is a step above the usual offerings. It is a story of animals making room for a special guest in their barn and finally welcoming the holy family. The rhyming words and delightful pictures are great for little ones preparing for Christmas.

10. An Orange for Frankie

This one also makes me cry every single time. Patricia Polacco shares the true story of her great uncle Frankie and his family preparing for and celebrating Christmas. This is also a longer picture book (read-aloud versions on YouTube last about 20 minutes), but I make sure to find the time to read this bitter-sweet and beautiful story every Advent season.

Bonus Devotional for Adults: Waiting on the Word

As a bonus for moms and dads who want to prepare themselves for Advent, this is a thoughtful and curated devotional consisting of a poem and short reflection each day from the start of Advent until the Epiphany. The poems are thoughtfully chosen to reflect special feast days, and in the days leading up to Christmas there are special poems for each of the O Antiphons. I have used this several years in a row and I see something new in the same poems with every new year. Malcolm Guite is a deep thinker and an accomplished Christian poet, and I appreciate his guidance in seeing the deeper messages and references in the poems. This is a book you will want to return to time and again.

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I have so many more Christmas and Advent books that I love, but I hope you are able to find a new gem or two from this list to add to your collection this year. And most of all, I pray you have a contemplative Advent and a blessed Christmas. Keep your gaze on Him who is coming soon!

My children’s education and formation is a very high priority in my life. But as important as the education of my children is, my own education also matters. I cannot give what I don’t have, and therefore I need to cultivate my own intellectual life. If I want my children to be born in wonder and grow in wisdom and virtue through the liberal arts, I must be doing that for myself as well. I want to model to my children that learning is not done only in “school” and does not end when they graduate. Therefore, it is important for me to have a plan for my ongoing mother’s education.

A book that has greatly influenced my life is A Mother’s Rule for Life by Holly Pierlot. This book lays out how to make a “rule of life” for mothers. A rule of life is essentially a plan for how we will live out all of the aspects of work, from prayer to work to play. In A Mother’s Rule for Life, Pierlot lays out that mothers have five roles to which they must attend. Those are, in order of importance, Prayer (someone who prays), Person, Partner, Parent, and Provider. I love this book and may do a more in-depth review of it another time, but for the purposes of this conversation we must note that my role as a person comes well before my role as a parent and provider. I have to work on myself and develop my own personhood before I should focus on my children and their development. This is much easier said than done, and motherhood is a tricky balancing act, but it is a task which is well worth undertaking.

This year my education is a bit more formal and heavier than in years past. Life goes in cycles and stages, and at this stage I am not pregnant, nor do I have a newborn. I have found that pregnancy is a time of pure survival for me, and I basically am unable to read anything during pregnancy. While newborn days are slightly better I still tend to be running on very little sleep which greatly affects my abilities to comprehend anything difficult. My life stage may change by the end of the school year (we don’t really plan these things) but for now I do not have a little baby to depreciate my mental capacities, and can plan accordingly for this school year.

Without further ado, here is my plan for my own personal education this year.

Spiritual Reads

I spend ten minutes each morning reading a spiritual book. That isn’t much, and some days I end up re-reading my portion from the day before if my attention was lacking, but I do tend to make slow progress on spiritual books throughout the year. Currently I am working on John Senior and the Restoration of Realism by Father Francis Bethel. I love John Senior and have admired his work for years, and his work has influenced The Children’s Tradition curriculum which we are using and loving this year. After introducing a few friends to Senior and The Children’s Tradition, we decided to read his biography together. I am really enjoying this book and am about ¼ of the way through. So far it has been delving into Senior’s early life and his time exploring Eastern mysticism and symbolist literature. He has just converted to Catholicism and I am excited to read about his time with the Integrated Humanities Program.

After I finish the John Senior biography I will go back to reading two spiritual books I am working through. They are We Who Wrestle With God by Jordan Peterson and Pinocchio with Reflections on a Father’s Love by Franco Nembrini. The first is an exploration by Peterson (who has greatly influenced my life) about several stories in the Old Testament and their psychological and archetypal significance. It is slow-going since it is so rich but it is giving me so much food for thought. The Nembrini book was a pick from the Well-Read Mom book club last year (which I will discuss below) and I am still forcing my way through it. Honestly, I do not understand Pinocchio and its appeal. Nembrini reads (forces?) a lot of Christian messaging into the book and his reflections are okay, but the source text is so bad I am really struggling through this. To say that Pinocchio is an allegory for our relationship with God is absurd to me given the amount of times the text differs from that reality. For example, Geppetto is shown to be a loving father in some ways and situations but is also shown to be a quick-tempered and angry man who makes many very unwise choices. This book is honestly just frustrating to me, but I will keep trying to mine the gold amidst the ore of this book.

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Book Clubs

I am currently in three book clubs this year. That seems like a lot when writing it, but I love book clubs and I get so much more fruit from discussing books than simply reading them on my own. One book club I mentioned above, in which we are reading the John Senior biography. Another book club was also aforementioned, the Well-Read Mom book club. This is an international catholic organization that chooses a book for each month for women to read together and discuss. This year the theme is the year of the teacher. We read Persuasion by Jane Austen (which took me a bit to get into but I ended up thoroughly enjoying it!) and now we are reading Giants in the Earth by O.E. Rolvaag. It is a pioneer tale of families moving west and starting a settlement together. This book is pretty tense and stressful to read, but I am not finished yet. I usually enjoy the Well-Read Mom book choices and I always enjoy discussing them with friends. This book club has been a huge blessing in my life in the four states in which I have participated in different groups.

My third and final book club meets once a month to discuss In The Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall by Joseph Ratzinger (who later became Pope Benedict XVI). We are very slowly working through this book which is essentially four homilies given by the future pope on the beginning chapters of Genesis. We read the text together (no homework yay!) and discuss it. There is much more discussion than reading that happens, but I have found this to be a fascinating book to explore topics like creation, environmentalism, science, rationality, sin, the complementarity of the sexes, etc. The discussions open up so many more interesting ideas than are present in the text itself. It helps that this group is led by my brilliant friend who is much more well-read and intelligent than I am, and this group is definitely helping me to cultivate my intellectual life each month.

Medieval Class

I am so fortunate as to be able to take a class from the Circe Institute’s Atrium program this school year. I am taking a class from Heidi White, who is on the Close Reads podcast and has a new book out I cannot wait to read entitled The Divided Soul: Duty and Desire in Literature and Life. The class is called How to Think Like a Medieval, and here is her description from the Circe website:

In this course, Heidi White will immerse you in the medieval mind on its own terms, walking you through essential touchstones of medieval thought from cosmology to the Holy Grail. Using C.S. Lewis’ Ransom trilogy as a literary guide, we will enter the sacramental mind of the Middle Ages through the eyes of Lewis’ Dr. Ransom, a fictional modern scholar forced to reckon with a world beyond his understanding.

I have never previously read the Ransom trilogy, and honestly I don’t know that I would enjoy it much on its own. I am not naturally drawn to science fiction and the book is kind of bizarre if you don’t understand the references. There are so many medieval thoughts and references jam-packed into this book! This class has opened my eyes to the medieval world and I have become pretty enamored (possibly even obsessed) with the medieval way of life and thought. I am so enjoying this class and would highly recommend taking any classes, intensives, or webinars through the Circe institute, of which I have taken many and enjoyed them all.

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Gymnastic and Poetic Education

Education is so much more than book work. Just as I view all parts of life to be educational for my children, I also have opportunities to learn through more means than simply reading good books. I have been learning languages through the Duolingo app for a long time (I have a 1000+ day streak at this point) and I recently started doing both their Latin and chess programs. I did Spanish for years on there but recently decided to switch to Latin since I am more interested in the language despite its perceived impracticality. My children and I are learning Latin together through the Minimus curriculum and enjoying it, and I have been making an effort to practice the language together. I am not very naturally gifted at learning other languages so this is a struggle but I think it’s important for myself and my children. I am also practicing chess on Duolingo. I learned chess as a child but have always been content to be terrible at it. I know the basics but almost never win and don’t really mind losing. Now that three of my children know chess I thought it would be good to try to improve my skill.

I am also trying to educate myself through experiences with my children. We have started stargazing monthly, and even though I dread the late nights it is so special to have the time together with my older children to gaze upon the universe that God made in all its splendor and goodness. We are trying to see lots of plays together, and so far this year we have seen The Hobbit and Winnie-the-pooh, and plan to see the Nutcracker both on ice and in ballet format in the next month. We also are planning to take a few trips in the next year (made possible because of the previously mentioned lack of pregnancy and babies) and I hope to experience different places in our country as a family and learn and enjoy the world together.

That’s it for my mother’s education plan for this year! It has already been fruitful and life-giving in our first term and I hope it continues to do so in the next. Until next time, keep your gaze upon Him who made the stars in the heavens.

Welcome back to Educating Persons, the series in which I am breaking down each chapter of Charlotte Mason’s Home Education series. Today we are on Book 1 Part 1.1-2, meaning the Some Preliminary Considerations section, reading through sections 1 and 2, entitled A Method of Education and The Child’s Estate.

As always, see parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of this series for background info before jumping into this chapter.

Summary

A Method of Education

Traditional Methods of Education

• Traditional methods of education have been found wanting, and many of the principles by which we were raised and taught we now know to be lacking.

• It used to be that children were harshly exposed to the reality of the world and in her view parents have now gone the other way and coddle their children into protection and an easy life.

• How are we to strike the balance? The way to do this properly is to have a thoughtful method of education to which we will adhere.

Method a Way to an End

• A method involves a “way to an end” and a “step by step progress in that way”.

• A method has an end in mind.

• If we have a method of education based on natural law, we should be able to find out the right course of action to take in every circumstance in order to direct our children toward our intended end.

• All of life becomes an education when we have an end in mind.

• We have to be cautious that our methods don’t devolve into systems.

A System Easier Than a Method

• Systems promise calculable results, methods do not.

• Rules will bring about desired outcomes.

• She defines systems as “the observing of rules until the habit of doing certain things, if behaving in certain ways, is confirmed, and, therefore, the art is acquired”.

• If humans were machines, we would only need good systems to educate.

• But we are not educating machines, but persons. We must guide and assist our children to develop to the fullest the good that they are naturally capable of and to help them turn from the evil they are naturally capable of.

• Children are living, breathing, growing things and are therefore unable to conform to systems.

• It is much easier for us to subject our children to systems than to be constantly diligent in educating our children to their unique personhood.

• Critics may say that this method of educating individual persons is impossible for mere mortals, but she believes that if we have a thoughtful philosophy of education, we can act upon them naturally in every situation.

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The Child’s Estate

The Child in the Midst

• We must consider what a child is. Children are not blank slates upon which we can write. They are instead “a prince committed to the fostering care of peasants”.

• She quotes from many places in the Bible where Jesus speaks highly of children and says that we must become like them to enter the kingdom of heaven.

• Jesus tells us how highly God thinks of our children.

Code of Education in the Gospels

• Jesus tells us how to teach children in scriptures.

• All three commandments are given in negative form - what we must not do.

• “Take heed that ye offend not - despise not - hinder not - one of these little ones.”

• Mason believes this sums up everything we must do and not do for training children.

• In the next three sections (covered in the next Substack post) Mason will examine these three negative laws so that we can then posit a positive method of education.

• “If we once settle with ourselves what we may not do, we are greatly helped to see what we may do, and must do”.

Commentary

The first few paragraphs of this section are so relevant to the world of today. It is wild to think that Mason was writing this about a hundred years ago, yet we can say the same things just as truthfully today. We modern parents struggle to know how to raise our children. Mason is really criticizing in this section the “gentle parenting approach” that goes so far as to cater to children’s every whim and fancy, while also criticizing the other extreme of harsh authoritarian parenting. Finding a balance between raising children in a gentle way without coddling them is as difficult a balance to find today as it was in Mason’s time.

We then come to Mason’s answer to our conundrum. As always, I feel like Charlotte is so right but just barely misses the mark in her verbiage. I think keeping in line with natural law and treating the child as a person are important goals to keep in mind when deciding the end of education, but the biggest and most important end of education is sainthood. Being a Protestant she would likely not put it in those terms, but that is what the end of education is for Christians. I love how we will come to a biblical analysis of the right methods of education later in this section and in the next, but I wish the true end of education (sainthood, the cultivation of wisdom and virtue, training the soul to love what is worth loving) was more explicitly emphasized by Mason throughout her writings.

I also think her views can be a little optimistic. If we were perfectly rational or mere machines we may always be able to tell the right thing in every circumstance. But we are not perfectly rational! And we are limited in scope as well. I may know that my child needs lots of exposure to literature and nature and beauty, but if I am in a season of illness it may be all I can do to get through the day. This may leave parents feeling like “I have a thought out philosophy of education but this is still so dang hard and I don’t always know what to do!” If it is not so easy for you, don’t be discouraged by what Mason is saying. I think what she says is good and true and that a thought out philosophy of education can help us to know what to do, but I still think that it will not always be easy to know and implement these philosophies in reality. We have to rely on God and prayer for the tough decisions.

Mason was such a pioneer in seeing the danger of methods devolving into systems. The idea that we only need to develop and implement perfect systems was a prevalent thought process in the time when she was writing. It is easy to check boxes and consider that we are giving our children a full education. It is much harder to see the child before us as a person with unique needs and a unique calling, and help them discover who God wants them to be. That is the true work of the homeschooling parent!

What is the child before us? As Christians we know that our children are images of the divine and we must treat them as such. This is an impossible call if we do not rely on the grace of God to help us. God esteems our children to be valuable and worthy, and our job is to see them as God sees them.

It is a sobering thought that when Jesus teaches us how to educate children he tells us what not to do. It is as if it is more incumbent upon us to NOT hinder children than to teach them anything positively. Of course children must be trained up in the ways of virtue, but we should also contemplate what it means that Jesus directly instructs us to NOT harm our children in regards to their education. Considering these commandments seriously will help us know what we are to do positively to educate our children.

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Philosophy of Education Takeaways

• We must have a well thought out philosophy and method of education for our children.

• We must take care that our methods do not become systems - always looking at the child in front of us instead of trying to follow a rigid set of steps to get a desired outcome.

• We must remember what our children are - images of God - and treat them as such.

• If we listen to how Jesus says to NOT treat children, we will get a clearer picture of how we must treat them.

Practical Applications

• Educate ourselves so as to come to a thoughtful philosophy of education.

• Avoid box checking and try to be adaptable to the needs of the person before us.

• We should meditate upon what Jesus says about children, and contemplate how we can apply it to our own child rearing.

Takeaway Thoughts

After much preamble I think we are finally really getting into the meat of this section of the book. I love that this section is directly inspired by scripture and the words of our Lord. I am really excited to read the next section to see how Mason tells us to both NOT educate children, and eventually to see what we MUST do to educate children. I will be looking forward to contemplating these ideas more soon. Until then, keep your gaze upon Him who knows and loves our children best of all.

Suffering and Its Lessons

I have taken some lessons with me from this difficult past year, and the most important I believe is that I no longer fear death. As a Catholic, we are told a lot about how death is a passing from this world to the next. The Baltimore catechism states that we are made to know, love, and serve God in this life so that we can be happy with him in the next. We are told to “live every day like it could be your last”. But most of the people I speak with still have a lot of fear about death. I’m not going to solve that with this post, but I want to speak to why we should get comfortable with the idea of death.

Life is inevitably going to be full of suffering. It is a fact that this world is broken, and pain and suffering and death are the consequences. But it is also true that we were made for eternity. We are made to be with God in a place where pain will not exist. As Catholics we believe that suffering can be redemptive. We can offer up our suffering and use it as a force for good. That is one of the uniquely beautiful things about Catholicism, because while most religions have a goal of ending suffering, we believe that suffering can be redeemed. That doesn’t mean we want to suffer or look to add suffering to our lives, but while we are picking up our cross and following Christ we can make sense of and use our suffering for a purpose.

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CS Lewis on Death

CS Lewis has become a great influence on my life and my thinking, and this is also true as regards my musings on death and the afterlife. His book Mere Christianity came to me at an important time in my life, and his argument from desire has always struck me as one of the most beautifully articulated theological arguments for God. In Mere Christianity, he writes:

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

Being ill, physically and mentally, has shown me the profound truth that suffering can be made worse or better by how we respond to it. I can wallow in my suffering and complain that life is unfair and feel like a victim. But in my moments of being rightly ordered, I can also choose to see suffering as a gift. I can use those moments to offer up my suffering for the sake of others. But even more so I can use those moments to see this life as fleeting and get a glimpse of what I was made for, a life without pain and suffering in heaven. This is much easier said than done, but I have found it possible to practice and get better at seeing all things in the light of my eternal home.

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I also read the entire Chronicles of Narnia series with my children this past year, and it has been influencing my thoughts to a great degree. A section at the end of the final book, The Last Battle, has particularly stuck with me. For those unfamiliar with the book, it is about the end of Narnia and, for the main characters, the beginning of the life in “true Narnia” or the afterlife with Aslan (the Jesus figure of the book). There is a stunning section that I have thought about many times since reading it together. Digory is explaining how it felt for him when their train crashed and they died, allowing them to enter the afterlife in the True Narnia where they could eat of the perfect, satisfying fruit that Aslan provides there. He says:

“It was much the same for us in the railway carriage,” said the Lord Digory, wiping the last traces of the fruit from his golden beard. “Only I think you and I, Polly, chiefly felt that we’d been unstiffened. You youngsters won’t understand. But we stopped feeling old.”

As someone who has felt aging in a very real way the past year, and someone who has had pretty severe back pain for the last six months off and on, that section hit home. The thought of unstiffening, of no longer feeling old, is such a beautiful thought that drives me toward the end of the race.

I am more recently reading Lewis’ Ransom trilogy, and he uses this series to further expand on the idea of heaven being our home, and death being the necessary gateway to our resting place. Ransom travels to the planet of Malachandra, a planet where things are rightly ordered without a fallen nature. One of the residents of the planet mentions that life is sweet only because death is possible, and that the greatest drink of all will be the drink of death that will lead us to our home with God. Lewis is showing us that this is the attitude of a human who is rightly ordered, someone who knows what they were made for.

Divine Intimacy

One of the beautiful mysteries of life is that God became man so that we can know Him and love him more. God wants intimacy with us so badly that he was willing to undergo physical suffering and loss to be with us. This is a beautiful thought to meditate upon in difficult moments. There are times in this life when we will be in the garden and wishing that this cup could pass. But we have a choice to accept the Father’s will, and trust that he knows what we need and what is best for us. Like a child taking medicine, we may not understand why we have to undergo our current trials. But we know we have a Father who knows what He is doing, and knows what we need. The more intimately I know Our Lord the more I desire to be with Him. I look forward to a day when I can behold Him face to face, and gaze upon Him forevermore.

Unless a Grain of Wheat

Verily, verily I say unto you, unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. John 12:24-25

I think these Scripture verses, in the light of the entire Gospel, is the ticket to understanding how a Christian is to view life and death. Jesus tells us clearly that death is the key that unlocks our life in Heaven. I do not love death in itself, but what it leads to. It is simply the journey that brings me home. That passage may be rough or it may be smooth, but the destination is what I have in mind.

When Jesus says that we must hate our life to have life eternal, I do not think he means wishing we would die and wanting to escape this life. He clearly showed in the garden that he did not want to suffer the pain of crucifixion and death. He cried when Lazarus died. He loved his Mother and his friends and he laughed and drank wine and enjoyed food with those he loved. Similarly, I love reading with my children, and sitting on the front porch in the sun, watching my children play. I love making jokes with my husband and laughing until my sides hurt. I love nursing my little son and watching his eyes flutter closed and knowing that that will not last forever. I love being with my friends and having deep conversations and reading books and eating delicious food. I don’t wish for those things to end. But if they ended tomorrow, I would be OK.

I think when Jesus says that we must hate our life He means we must be detached from this life. The pleasures of this life are fleeting and ultimately unsatisfying. We cannot heap up treasures here and ignore our treasures in heaven. Also, we should not try to grasp for control. I am not in control of whether my heart continues to beat and my lungs continue to work. I am not in control of whether I live or die. If it was God‘s will for me to no longer be on this earth I would know that his plans for my family are better. And I think it’s important for my children to know that that is true as well. Because someday I will not be here any longer, and they will likely have to go on without me. Hopefully that will not be for many years or decades, but none of us know the time that will be our last moment on earth. So I want to be ready for what is coming afterwards now, and I want my kids to know that I’m ready. And I want them to not live in fear. And I think it is OK to look forward to what is coming while also steadfastly doing the job that God wants me to do while I am here.

When my daughter’s friend asked me how I want to die, I had to really think about it. I hadn’t really considered that question much before! After some thought I said that I would love to die peacefully in my sleep, or even better, to be assumed into heaven like Our Blessed Mother or Elijah. But more seriously, I think every time we Catholics pray the Hail Mary we can think a little bit about our death. When we say “pray for us sinners now and at the hour of death” we can be reminded that our death is coming, and that hopefully in that moment we will be surrounded by the saints in Heaven praying for us to be steadfast and guiding us to our home with God. Until then, I want to fix my gaze upon Him who is the ultimate grain of wheat, broken and brought to eternal life so that we may join Him.

Welcome back to our curriculum picks for the 2025-2026 school year! If you missed part one, read it here for our family subject picks and why we chose the spines we are using this year. This is going to be a very long post with what we are reading in every subject area for both of my school aged children. Feel free to skip to just the grades or subject areas you want to check out! Without further ado, let's get into the choices for my first and fourth graders.

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Picks For My First Grader

1. Language Arts - We use The Good and The Beautiful language arts curriculum. It incorporates art, geography, poetry, grammar, spelling, phonics, and more all in one curriculum. The lessons are short and do not require prep from me (usually) and we enjoy the curriculum. This series has worked well with both my first and fourth grader so far for grades preschool through fourth grade, and so we will stick with this unless it stops working well for us.

2. Handwriting - We also use The Good and The Beautiful for handwriting practice. In an ideal world I would just do copywork from our readings, but I like that they can practice their handwriting independently and easily with these books. They often have scripture quotes or other passages to copy, they teach letter formation, and they have fun pictures to color or copy to practice handwriting.

3. Math - For my first grader we are also using The Good and The Beautiful math. This is not a great math curriculum in my opinion, but it's the best I have found for lower level math. My ideal math curriculum would be spiral, simple, and thorough. The most important aspect of a math curriculum for me is to give the child ample practice using skills they have already mastered. This is how you actually develop a love for math. No one likes a subject in which they are constantly challenged and are never comfortable doing what they know. For this reason we have chosen TGATB math for the lower levels and will likely switch in third or fourth grade to Saxon math.

4. Piano - My girls both take piano lessons once a week and are required to practice every day. They usually do this with their more-musically-inclined dad when he gets home from work, after dinner.

5. Skill practice - This year I am putting a greater emphasis on teaching my children skills they need to be independent. This can include anything from how to dust and fold clothes, to learning the names of all of their body parts and phone numbers, to cooking scrambled eggs. We pick one skill a week and work on it for a few minutes each day.

6. Fairy Tale - We are reading a selection of fairy tales from Grimm’s Household Stories and The Blue Fairy Book, according to The Children’s Tradition suggestions. The Grimm’s translation we are using is very dark, so even though we are used to the original Grimm tales this has been a bit of a challenge. I am a very big fan of exposing children to dark realities through fairy tales through, so we will keep at it!

7. Greek Myths - We are reading the D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths and loving it! This is probably the best thing we are reading together so far this year. We are enjoying the stories and illustrations, and I love that we have also had engaging conversations about why they believed in many gods and why we believe in one God and whether it is ok to read stories about gods we know to be fake (I absolutely believe it is!)

8. Novel - For novels we are reading Winnie-the-Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, Dr. Doolittle, and Wind in the Willows. If we have extra time we will read other books in the Dr. Doolittle series. We just finished Winnie-the-Pooh, and it is such a lovely and funny story. We have been reading these as a family during lunchtime, usually listening to the audiobook.

9. Catechesis - My first grader is making first communion this year, so we are doing preparation for that. Aside from The King of the Golden City which we are reading during Benediction Table, we are also reading the New Saint Joseph First Communion Catechism. We will also read the story of Blessed Imelda, patron Saint of first communicants. My children participate in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, a Montessori based faith formation program, and my first grader will be doing level 2 this year. We also attend Mass, live liturgically, and live a Catholic life, and all of these things will prepare my daughter for first communion.

10. Tall Tales - We are reading the Mary Pope Osborne American Tales book, and this has also been delightful. The stories are funny and folksy and my kids are excited when it is time to read these tall tales.

11. Natural History - For natural history this year we are reading the Burgess Animal Book. I read this series with my now fourth grader and found it hard to be engaged and remember the animals. This time we are watching a series of videos on youtube which has the entire chapter read aloud and videos and photos of each animal to correspond to the chapter. The kids are enjoying it much more, and since the videos stop for narration time I think we will remember these stories more than if we simply read the stories aloud together. We will also start the Eyes and No Eyes series when we finish the Burgess book.

12. George Macdonald Books - These are considered literary fairy tales and are supposed to be read at bedtime. The year one suggestions from The Children’s Tradition are for the Chronicles of Narnia series, but we just read that entire series aloud last year and finished over the summer. We are instead reading some of the George Macdonald books, starting with Princess and the Goblin. I haven't read these before so I am excited to read them together.

13. Shakespeare - Year one students read retellings of Shakespeare plays from Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit. I am hoping deep familiarity with the stories of Shakespeare will make the actual plays easier to read when we graduate to the full stories.

14. History - We are using a combination of materials from TCT and the CMEC for history. We are reading the D’Aulaire picture book biographies (a perennial favorite), A First Book in American History by Eggleston, and The Book of Indians by Holling C Holling.

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Picks for my Fourth Grader

1. Math - We are using Saxon math for the second year. It is very lengthy but it is solid and it helped my daughter go from really struggling in math to being more confident and even enjoying math. Part of the enjoyment comes from using Nicole The Math Lady, a subscription site that has a teacher, Nicole, teach every lesson, give practice problems, and grade the lessons immediately. This has been a game changer to allow for immediate feedback to see what my daughter knows and what she is struggling with. Even while homeschooling on a budget I think Nicole is absolutely worth the money we pay yearly.

2. Language Arts - The Good and The Beautiful level 4, for the same reasons stated above.

3. Handwriting - Also The Good and The Beautiful level 4, also for the same reasons stated above.

4. Piano - See above

5. Skill Practice - See above

6. Composition - My daughter is expected to compose a written narration once a week. She can choose any book she is currently reading and she has to give me one full paragraph written about the book. This is actually a lot to expect from a fourth grader from a CM perspective, but she is a very competent narrator and a good writer, so the paragraphs haven't been too difficult for her.

7. Book of centuries - To start an introductory book of centuries, I am having my daughter choose five figures from history across all of her books to add to her book of centuries each week. She does a mix of figures she read about in history, to actual figures in historical fiction novels, to authors of fictional books. She has enjoyed this even more than I expected so far, and it is helping us both get a sense of who lived at the same time across subject areas.

8. Novel - Her novels for the year include Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates, Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, and Marjorie Daw.

9. Fairy Tales- My daughter reads a fairy tale from Lang’s Red Fairy book each week. She really enjoys these tales. She also reads from The Marvelous Adventures and Rare Conceits of Master Tyll Owlglass translated by Kenneth Mackenzie. These are very short and silly stories that my daughter loves. She is definitely a big fan of fairy tales, myths, legends, etc.

10. Shakespeare - I debated starting my daughter on the full Shakespeare plays, as recommended by the CMEC for this grade level, or to stick with Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb, as recommended by TCT. We decided to stick with retellings this year as my daughter has read some but not all of the Shakespeare play retellings. I think because of the amount of work we have had this year that doing the Lamb stories was a good choice.

11. American History - We are using the CMEC recommendations and reading Builders of Our Country books 1 and 2. We began book 1 last year and will finish it and then begin book two. These are nice short chapters about events in American History.

12. Chronicler - History in the TCT curriculum comes in the form of reading medieval chroniclers. This year she is reading The Life of Saint Louis by Jean de Joinville.

13. Historical Biography - My daughter reads a chapter or two from America FIrst by Lawton Evans each week, covering different historical figures.

14. Citizenship - The CMEC recommends both Young Citizen’s Reader by Reinsch and Stories from the History of Rome by Beesley. This we may have to adjust because so far I am not loving how the Young Citizen’s Reader is set up. It asks questions at the end of each chapter that are not answered in the book. This is very frustrating for both my daughter and I. We will see if we stick to it throughout the year!

15. Historical Fiction - This was one of the only subjects in which we had to make a big departure from our plans. The TCT recommends the Henty “books for boys” series for historical fiction but my daughter was immediately not a fan. Instead of fighting her on it, I decided to drop those books from our plans and possibly assign them as independent reads over the summer when her school work is lighter. We are reading some historical fiction novels recommended by the CMEC including Johnny Tremain, Calico Captive, Toliver’s Secret, Mr. Revere and I, Amos Fortune, and Reb and the Redcoats

16. Burgess - My daughter has read both the Burgess Animal and Bird books, so this year we are reading the Burgess Flower Book. She has never really loved these books but hopefully she will enjoy this one more than the others so far.

17. Plutarch - She is beginning to read Plutarch’s Lives at a very slow pace, only 2-3 pages a week. She was expecting to hate this but when she realized she would be reading about Theseus, she was pleasantly surprised. My girl loves mythology so she was happy to have the connection.

18. Geography - In addition to our family reading of Elementary Geography, she is also reading North America by Nellie Allen and two travelogues, Padre Kino and the Trail to the Pacific and Pierre Toussaint: A Citizen of Old New York. I love that the CMEC incorporates American saints into the study of geography!

19. Adventure Story - My daughter is also assigned a number of adventure novels to read, including Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling, Penrod by Booth Tarkington, Swiss Family Robinson and Willis the Pilot by by Johann Wyss, Smoky by Will James, and Penrod and Sam also by Booth Tarkington.

20. Mythology - For her mythology this year she is reading The Heroes of Asgard, which contains stories of Norse myths. She is quite familiar with these stories already from the D’Aulaire book so she is enjoying these versions of the stories.

21. Grammar - Ideally my daughter would be doing lessons from the First Grammar Lessons by Charlotte Mason. We haven't started on this yet and I am unmotivated to do so because she has grammar instruction in her language arts course. Most of parts 1 and 2 of the book would be review but the later parts do contain material that is new to her and so I hope to get to this eventually. We will see if that happens! This may also be a summer venture.

22. British History - We are beginning Our Island Story as per the CMEC recommendation. This is a brick of a book but we plan to only read the first 20 of the 110 chapters in the book. Because this book begins with mythology, my daughter has enjoyed it so far (can you tell that is her favorite “school subject”?)

23. Science - My daughter is reading The Sciences by Edward Holden, Easy Experiments in Elementary Science by Mckay, and Life and Her Children by Arabella Buckley. I like that The Sciences starts with astronomy because we are also trying to study star stories and go stargazing this year, so it correlates nicely.

24. Confirmation prep - Lastly my daughter is preparing for confirmation. We are reading the Baltimore Catechism number 2 and reading some other confirmation-specific texts like Soldier of Christ by Loyola. We are discussing the Baltimore Catechism lessons with a group of friends which I think will help with understanding and will help us to go beyond the text and think more deeply about our faith.

Read Aloud

There was one family subject that I forgot to mention in my last post. We are doing a family read aloud anytime that we are riding in the car together. We are listening to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings series, read by Andy Serkis. We are enjoying it so much! I have read the Hobbit before as a child and my fourth grade daughter has read all of these books on her own. We love the conversations that the books spark, and it is so fun to hear all of the voices that Andy Serkis performs, especially Gollum of course. It will take us quite a while to listen to the whole series, but I am trying to be okay with that and enjoy the contemplation that comes with waiting between chapters for car rides.

That's finally the end! It took me way too long to type this all out but I think it will be good to look back at the end of the year and see what we accomplished and what we modified or did not finish. I also hope we can look back in many years and see what we were reading and doing together at this time. As always, the most important part of our curriculum is the fact that it is all centered in knowing God more in order to love and serve Him. Until next time, keep your gaze on Him who is the only true subject.

We base our choices off of two curriculum “spines”. The first is the CMEC, or the Charlotte Mason Educational Center. It is a Charlotte Mason curriculum run by two Catholic ladies. I like the curriculum because it is solidly based on Mason’s philosophies, but I can also trust that it will not clash with my Catholic faith. I also love that it tries to combine students across grades for many subjects, which makes it more doable for a large family.

This year we are also using The Children’s Tradition (TCT). This curriculum was written by Amanda Faus and is based on both the work of Charlotte Mason and John Senior. John Senior was one of the designers of the Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas, as well as the author of The Death of Christian Culture and The Restoration of Christian Culture. The former work contains his 1000 good books list. He experienced many young adults who could not understand the Great Books he tried to teach, and he felt that this was because they were not solidly rooted in the teachings and worldview that led to the writing of those great books. In order to be able to understand the 100 Great Books, he felt that people must first have a deep familiarity with the 1000 good books. The TCT curriculum is largely designed around the 1000 good books list.

We are combining the two curricula, while putting a heavy emphasis on the TCT, and also using some of our other favorite curricula not recommended by either spine. This post will cover the subjects that we are doing as a family, by both my first and fourth grader and the little boys if they care to sit and listen. Later I will post our individual subjects for the year as well. Now, on to our family subject choices for the year!

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Benediction Table

The Children’s tradition has a version of morning time called a benediction table. It is a time where we come together as a family to start our morning in prayer, scripture, and beauty. We are mainly choosing suggestions for year one of TCT because these resources work for all ages and this is our first year with the curriculum. While I am cooking breakfast and while we are eating together, we do the following:

• Prayers. We start with a few rote prayers. We do the morning offering, the guardian angel prayer, and the Saint Benedict prayer. We then have two minutes of silent mental prayer (this is aspirational, but if they are eating at this point it can sometimes be mostly quiet!).

• Bible Reading. We do a chapter from the Old Testament first. We are starting with Job since we read all of Genesis last year. This has already brought up some great conversations in our family. We then do a reading from the Gospels. We are doing the Gospels in a School Year with the Catholic Sprouts podcast, so we listen to the reading and the girls journal their thoughts and takeaways.

• Read a Poem. We read one new poem a day. Last year we read When We Were Very Young by AA Milne, and so now we are reading one a day from Now We Are Six. After that we will read A Child’s Garden of Verses and also some of The Real Mother Goose. I have many more poetry books so we will never run out of new poems to read!

• Recitation. We do both a scripture memory verse and a poetry recitation. For scripture we are trying to memorize Psalm 1 and Matthew 5:1-22, with one verse each week. We have a few poetry selections from the TCT curriculum that we are memorizing as well.

• Saint of the Day. We are reading a saint each day from Butler’s Lives of the Saints. My daughter who is preparing for confirmation is noting any saints she may want to consider for a confirmation saint, although she is pretty set on who she wants to choose already.

Benediction Loop - Lastly, we do one thing from our benediction table loop. These are things I want to do, but not necessarily every day. They include

• Fount of Heaven - This resource is a book of prayers written by early church fathers. I am using these to try to learn how to pray as the early Christians did.

• Singing Psalms - We sing a psalm along with the Crown and Covenant Psalms for Worship hymnal. The curriculum also suggests reading psalms but I am considering singing the psalms to be sufficient as a prayerful and slower reflection.

• Spiritual Formation - We are reading passages from The Parent’s Assistant by Maria Edgeworth. These are moral stories for children. They are a little long and moralistic for my taste, but my kids beg for me to read these stories!

• Aesop’s Fables - A timeless collection of fables (read without the moral lesson for young kids).

• Folk Song - These we are doing from the CMEC. Right now we are learning Yankee Doodle.

• Manners - We are reading Prudence with the Millers, a book about health, hygiene, and manners written by an Amish mother. It follows a family and teaches through stories about the kids. We are also focusing on a manner to work on each week, and I made a list of manners my kids (and sometimes I as well) need practice with.

• Hymn - These are also added from the CMEC, and we are learning two each term. Right now we are learning “I Sing the Mighty Power of God”.

• Devotional - We have a few random devotionals and spiritual books we want to read, especially The King of the Golden City for my first communion child this year.

We follow benediction table each morning with 20 minutes of gymnastics. This usually means swinging or running in the backyard or riding bikes. It's been nice for all of us to get outside and get some sunshine and fresh air before moving on to individual subject work each day.

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Tea Time

We also do subjects as a family in our twice weekly afternoon tea times. These subjects are in a loop as well, meaning we do some and pick up where we left off the next time.

• Latin - We are using Minimus Latin, a direct method language text that uses comics of a mouse and his Roman family to teach Latin to children beginning Latin. We are liking it so far! The illustrations are cute and I am a fan of the direct language method. We have been actually practicing the vocabulary we have learned as a family, so I think it is a great introductory text.

• Drawing - We are using the Brush Drawing book from May Mallam. It has a series of “plates” which you copy to learn various techniques. This book is recommended by both the CMEC and TCT but does not have enough detailed instruction for me, so I think we will use some additional resources along with this book.

• Geography - We are using Charlotte Mason’s Elementary Geography book. I like that it has very short chapters and covers practical topics like the shape of the globe (and how we can prove it), cardinal directions, hot and cold parts of the globe, etc. It is a good beginner text.

• Artist study - We are using Stories of the Painters by Amy Steedman to get a biographical overview of the painters, and then looking at their works closely. This term we are doing Giotto and we will follow that up with Fra Angelico and Sandro Botticelli.

• Number stories of long ago - This is a CMEC recommendation that talks about the history of numbers and math. It tells stories of how young people in different parts of the globe counted and expressed numbers in the ancient world. We are liking it so far!

• Paper sloyd - We are slowly making our way through the Ednah Anne Rich book. These are simple paper crafts that use geometry and math principles. It's a practical way to study math, and we get to make fun crafts at the same time.

• Composer study - Similar to artist study, we are using The Complete Book of Great Musicians by Percy Scholes to get biographical information and then listening to pieces by the artist. This year we are studying Henry Purcell, George Frederick Handel, and John Sebastian Bach

• Stargazing - Lastly, we are stargazing together. We are taking a two-fold approach to stargazing. Firstly, we are reading stories of the constellations. We are attempting to understand how people used to understand the stories that the stars told in the ancient world. Then, we are actually going out and looking at the stars together. I am trying to wait to start this until it begins to get dark earlier, so we may not do this for a while. But I think even if we can go once or twice a term to look at the stars it will be an impactful experience.

Co-op

Our weekly co-op is for all ages (from newborn babies to grandmothers!) and so these enrichment subjects are also for our entire family. The things we do each week at co-op are:

• Weekly Nature Theme for Nature Study - We pick a theme each week from the Exploring Nature with Children curriculum. I love this curriculum because it is seasonal and has great suggestions for picture books, activities, and poems to go with the theme. It also has scientific information about the theme for older children. For example, this week’s theme was seeds. We talked about why plants focus on making seeds in the fall instead of flowers. We read a poem about Autumn by Emily Dickinson. We read a picture book about seeds. Then we collected seeds and looked at them together. We have used this resource for many years but it is a perennial favorite and we can always gain something new even if we are studying the same themes each year.

• Nature Walk - Our co-op skews pretty young, so we don't usually make it very far each week. Today since it was warm and we were in an area with water, we didn't go far at all and stayed in the water area the entire session. But often, especially in colder weather, we explore together and try to notice the theme for the day as we walk.

• Nature Journaling - This fell off last year but I am determined this year to actually nature journal as a group. We choose a subject to look at closely and try to replicate it in our journals. Today some of the choices were black walnuts, pinecones, leaves, and ducks. We try to actually look closely and observe details we would otherwise miss. It's a good practice for all of us, and doing it as a group means it actually gets done, whereas it often falls through the cracks at home. This is such an important part of early scientific training and so I hope we can progress through the year and become even better little scientific explorers.

Religious Education

The most important part of our curriculum is living a Catholic life. We go to Mass together, at least twice a week although I would like to make it more often. We have been going to a short period of eucharistic adoration each week. We are studying the Baltimore catechism and discussing it as a family. And of course we celebrate feast days and saint days and live the liturgical life. This is the heart of our homeschool, and when I take my focus off of this center things come undone quickly. I am trying to focus my gaze on what actually matters.

Those are our family subjects for the year! I will soon post our individual subjects as well. Until next time, keep your gaze on what matters most!

Hello! I am so glad to be back to writing on this substack. I took a long summer break, but now I have things to share. I will be posting soon about back to school things, but first I wanted to share a delightful two-part reflection on aging and death. I know those are not considered fun and light entertainment topics, but I hope you enjoy them regardless!

My family has a weekly Zoom date. Our conversations usually revolve around what has happened in our lives in the past week and what we plan to do in the upcoming days. Every once in a while we get to some meaty topics, and death has come up twice in the past few months (although I have not brought it up either time). Both times I have declared that I am excited to die someday and go to heaven, and both times my family has been shocked and abhorred. My grandma wrote me a card recently stating how sad she is that I would talk so negatively and want to give up on my family here. This bothers me so much, because I think my family truly misunderstands how I feel and why. In turning over this issue in my mind, I have come to some conclusions about aging and death. I hope to bring clarity, acceptance, and (dare I say?) a love for your own inevitable aging and death.

I have written a few times here of the pain and health issues I have dealt with in the last year. I am improving, slowly, and thank God I am doing better mentally than I have for quite some time. But physically I am still not in great shape. It has brought to mind more than once a quote from one of my favorite books, Brideshead Revisited (from which I also get the title of this post).

Sebastian and Charles are college students entering their second year of school and are realizing that the lavish living they enjoyed in the first year is no longer sustainable. Sebastian quips “Oh, Charles, what has happened since last term? I feel so old." And Charles responds "I feel middle-aged. That is infinitely worse.”

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Response to Ian Leslie

After my family’s recent discussion of death and aging, my father shared this substack post from Ian Leslie with me. It is 27 reflections on aging, and it corroborated so many things I have been reflecting on in the last year. Block quotes will be from his article, with my responses in normal text.

5. One of the weirdest things about the midlife ageing process, as those of you who have passed 40 will know, is that it is discontinuous. It doesn’t happen at a gradual and consistent rate, allowing you time to adjust. After lulling you into a false sense of security, it rushes forward, catching you unawares. It’s like finding yourself dropped into a different world. You may ask yourself, how did I get here?

I hope to have many more years on this earth, but I FEEL middle aged. As the author points out, it has caught me by surprise how my transition from feeling young to old was not gradual but sudden. I felt like overnight my body started falling apart. I was complaining to my physical therapist that my back was not healing quickly, and she replied that I am not in my twenties anymore and healing will take more time. Talk about feeling middle aged.

6. The physicist Michael Nielsen tells us that the Polish-American mathematician Stanislaw Ulam perceived his life as sharply divided into two halves: “In the first half, he was always the youngest person in the group. In the second half, he was always the oldest. There was no transitional period.” There was no transitional period.

Similarly , the transition from feeling like a young mom to feeling like a middle aged mom came out of nowhere for me. In many ways I am obviously still a young mom, but since my oldest is 9 I am actually considered an experienced homeschooler(!!!) in relation to the average in my community, where the majority of people have kids 6 and under and are just beginning the homeschool process. I even sat on a homeschool panel answering questions for newbies! It feels weird being relatively young but considered one of the experienced moms. I know many moms have much more experience than I, thank God, but the fact that people come to me for curriculum recommendations feels incongruous.

1. Will Storr, author and fellow Substacker, recently wrote about his “midlife identity crisis”. I was struck, while reading it, at how rare it is for people - men in particular - to admit that growing older can be tough. In the second half of life, we’re all expected to say how much happier we are than in our insecure twenties, how we wouldn’t swap places with our younger self, oh no, not even if you paid us. Hmm. Sometimes I feel that way, but not always. Some days, ageing feels like a curse, only lightly mitigated by the knowledge that the curse is universal.

This honestly doesn’t surprise me. Women by nature have to be more aware of their aging. I think this is partly because of the emphasis that society places on the physical appearance of women. But even more so I think women feel their aging more because of their time-sensitive ability to give birth. Women are not fertile forever. It’s a relatively short period of our lives in which we are able to bear children. Our “biological clocks” tick away, like the ever present ticking of the crocodile’s clock in Peter Pan. If and when we are lucky enough to give birth, this aging is felt even more acutely. The transition to motherhood, which happens the moment your first child is born, is basically the most radical sudden shift anyone will experience in their life. Women who have given birth and who take it seriously have to come to the realization that their heart now walks around outside of their body. They feel viscerally their vulnerability. I think that being aware of aging isn’t that far of a leap from that transition.

2. Let’s be honest: after a certain point - 35? 40? - growing older is psychologically punishing. How could it not be? It involves getting a little bit weaker, stupider and uglier every year.

In my experience, I feel my vulnerability and aging with the birth of each baby due to the drastic cognitive decline I experience with childbearing. Pregnancy, birth, and postpartum all come with hormonal shifts and a lack of sleep as well as evolutionarily-appropriate reasons for having a decline in mental capacity (like our necessary hyper-fixation on the wellness of our helpless infant at all times). I can no longer remember things like I used to. I’m actually a lot dumber than I used to be. I’ve accepted that as a sacrifice for my children which was hard at first but now is easier. I am not defined by my smarts and quick wittedness. I am not any less valuable because I’m stupider.

I also think one of the reasons aging is so hard in modernity is because of our obsession with productivity and our tendency to equate our value with our capacity to DO things. Our culture hates children and the elderly and wants them to be shunned and exiled to spaces just for them, and I think at least part of that is because they are not productive members of society. We have cry rooms so no one has to experience the rambunctious energy of little kids. We have nursing homes where we can put the elderly and pretend they are being well cared for so that we don’t have to even think about them. I think it’s more complicated than just productivity. I think seeing children and the elderly exposes our vulnerability. Our nakedness, and we feel shame in the face of it. But we come from dust and are heading back there quickly, and that is obvious when viewing children and the elderly.

I’ve been thinking so much lately about the problem of pain. College kids talk about how God cannot possibly exist because pain exists. But those kids probably have not experienced real pain. Real pain makes you realize really quickly how bad and broken this world is. It can make you depressed if we are disoriented, but hopefully if we are rightly ordered it points us to the fact that we are made for a place where pain does not exist. Where we will never have illness or exhaustion or pain or loss. I think the existence of pain is a gift if we allow it to be, a gift that makes us so incredibly excited and sometimes even impatient to be where we were made to be, and with the one whom our hearts were made to love (lots more on this to come in part 2).

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Jordan Peterson said one time that the natural state of things is broken. He was actually talking about computers at the time, and I have thought about that a lot and marveled when every appliance in my house works at the same time (what a gift!). Just this morning our car battery was dead and I wasn’t surprised, it’s more surprising that our car ever starts. But this actually goes for bodies too. Our bodies are complicated, and when everything works at the same time that is actually pretty miraculous. Our bodies tend to be broken and in pain. If you are not at the moment you should have astonished gratitude. If you are broken, you should not be embittered at the unfairness of it all. It’s to be expected. Be grateful for what does function well and look forward to a future in which we will never be broken again.

24. To be reminded of your decay every time you look in the mirror is, as the kids say, low-key brutal, but if nothing else it teaches you acceptance of things you can’t control. It’s a rigorous spiritual practice.

Stunning. Absolutely beautiful. We are not in control, and life is a process of realizing that more and more. I read recently about the difference between consent and assent. Consent is allowing something to happen, assent is being ok with something that is already happening. We are not in control. We can fight that until we go mad or we can assent to it. Aging is one way to practice assenting to the fact that we are not in control.

Aging really can be a gift. The life experiences we accumulate over the years can allow us to become wise and soft-hearted and empathetic. But that process is not automatic. We can also choose to become stubborn and stuck in our ways and intolerant. We can use our age as a cudgel to beat younger folk into submission to our will. We must be vigilant that we are using our aging as an opportunity to grow in virtue, not stuck in our hamster wheel of vice.

I am thankful that I am getting older. I am slightly more patient now than I was as a new mom 9 years ago. I am much easier to live with now than I was when I first married my husband 12 years ago. I love Jesus more now and am getting slightly better at prayer. All of these things come with experience and age if we allow them. Aging is a gift. My mother in law only lived to be 42. While I hope I can live to see my children’s children, that is not guaranteed. I want to use every day I am given to fix my eyes ever more firmly on the One Thing Necessary, and crawl closer to sainthood every day.

Thanks for sticking around despite the long summer break! I’ll be back soon with our curriculum picks for the year and part two of this post, about death and the afterlife.

Welcome back to Educating Persons, the series in which I am breaking down each chapter of Charlotte Mason’s Home Education series. Today we are on Book 1, Part 1, and reading the intro to the Some Preliminary Considerations section.

As always, see parts 1, 2, and 3 of this series for background info before jumping into this chapter.

Summary

Children are a public trust

• The most important work that can be done is the raising of children.

• Even more important than education in school is the raising of children at home, because home culture and life will have the biggest impact on the child and their future.

• Because children bless the whole world, they should be considered “public trusts” - parents need to “make the very most of them for the good of society”.

• This job falls more on mothers than on fathers because mothers have the most direction over the early and impressionable years of a child’s life.

Mothers owe a thinking love to their children

• God gives us our children and equips us to raise them. What is left to mothers is to decide how to direct our children. Will we direct them toward their ultimate purpose, to know, love, and serve God, or away from that purpose?

• “Maternal love is the first agent in education”

• “As mothers become more highly educated and efficient, they will doubtless feel the more strongly that the education of their children during the first six years of life is an undertaking hardly to be entrusted to any hands but their own.”

• We are inclined to, and should, treat this duty with as much importance as any other job we may do.

• As such, we should familiarize ourselves with the philosophy of education.

The Training of Children Dreadfully Defective

• This section includes a very long quote from Herbert Spencer which states that it would be madness to undertake important jobs like house building without first training in those skills. It is similarly unwise to try to raise children without having some background knowledge of how children work physically and psychologically.

• The most basic principle we need to remember is that child development follows natural laws and we should find out those laws and adhere to them before trying to raise our children without guidance.

How Parents Usually Proceed

• Parents often start out thinking their children are blank slates that can be written upon. But even very young children show personality and desire and affections that are inherent to them. We soon realize that children really do learn and grow without any help from us.

• The parent’s job is to supply food for the child, bodily, yes, but also food for the mind and soul as well. The child knows how to take what they need and use it to grow.

• “The parents’ chief care is, that that which they supply shall be wholesome and nourishing, whether in the way of picture-books, lessons, playmates, bread and milk, or mother’s love.”

• “Nothing could be better for the child than this ‘masterly inactivity’”.

• Children should grow and be helped to grow according to their nature, and are helped out when we leave them alone and not interfere. But this must be coupled with a parent’s duty to shape their children to become their best.

• We must study our children’s thoughts to understand the direction of their hearts.

• The family is the most fundamental unit of society. It is in a family that a child is ordered toward the good, for the benefit of society and the nation.

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Commentary

I love so much of what Mason says here, and most of it speaks for itself. I will say that I disagree with Mason’s continual emphasis that children should be raised for the good of society. Yes, children live in society and hopefully will be a part of society as both children and adults. But I think that keeping this as an explicit goal of child-rearing is missing the mark. Our job is to know, love, and serve God and to be with Him in heaven. That should be the primary focus of our education, and the societal aspects should always take a backseat to that primary goal.

Also, I love the idea that our job as parents is to provide food of different sorts for our children. I think this goes back to what she says in the introduction of the series that our means of providing the food for our children is through atmosphere, discipline, and life. These are the meals in which we have an opportunity to feed the entire person of our children.

Philosophy of Education Takeaways

• Child raising and education of children is our most important job.

• We should be thoughtful about how we want to educate our children.

• Children develop according to natural laws, and our parenting should try to adhere to those laws.

• Children are born persons, not blank slates.

• Our job is to provide food for our children to grow.

• We need to balance letting our children develop into who they will be while also shaping their environment to help them become their best selves.

• The family is the fundamental unit of society and the tool which we have to influence our children.

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Practical Applications

• Our jobs are to provide good food for our children, so we need to discern what is good for them and what is not.

• We also have a duty to provide a thinking love - we need to be thoughtful in how we approach education and child raising.

• This means we have a duty to understand the philosophy of education - or at least have reasons for doing what we are doing and knowing why we are taking one approach over another.

Takeaway Thoughts

I find Mason’s words so encouraging here. She is pointing out how important our job as mothers is, and I love that she says that the most highly educated mothers will want to educate and raise their own children! This seems so counter to the cultural idea that women are empowered by working outside of the home, and that women are “wasting their educations” by homeschooling and raising their children at home. Mason is stating something very much opposite of that idea.

We have a duty to be educated about the way in which we approach the education of our children. And that is exactly what we are doing in this series! This series is one way in which we are giving our children a thinking love - we are taking inspiration from Mason and examining how we want to educate our children.

Lastly, I love the idea that we can let our children grow on their own. Unless they are impeded from doing so, children will learn to crawl and walk and talk without help from us. But we also have a duty to influence their growth to help them become what they are made to be - saints. So we need to provide them good food for their growth. One of the most important ways we do this is to raise them in a family, with all of the atmosphere and discipline and life that necessarily entails.

Thank you for reading along with me! I hope this series is edifying and helps to give you a deeper thinking love for your children. And I hope that until next time, you keep your eyes on Him who your children are made to be with.

Everybody goes through difficult periods of time, and homeschooling moms are certainly no exception. Maybe you are in the first trimester of pregnancy and feeling sick and exhausted. Maybe you are in the first few weeks postpartum. You could be experiencing grief or a recent loss. Or you could be chronically ill and dealing with pain and symptoms that interrupt your ability to live normally for a time. I have experienced all of these situations in my life, and I want to give some tips for how to manage during difficult periods.

Check In and Set Expectations

I have found that a crucial first step to thriving in tough situations is to assess how much physical, mental, and emotional energy you have on a day to day basis. I have found it helpful to check in during the first hour or so of the day and decide how much energy you will have to give during this day. Then I try to categorize what kind of day it will be based on that assessment. For me this can look like:

• A - a high energy day

• B - a normal day

• C - a lower energy day

• D - a purely survival day

In the next section I cover in more detail what a normal day looks like for me, but on a normal day I plan to do school and my daily chore routine. A high energy day will mean that I have time to tackle extra tasks and projects. A lower energy day will probably involve school but I will let go of any chores and lower my expectations for my own productivity. A survival day is one on which we just try to eat, sleep, and stay alive.

This can be really helpful to set expectations for myself and know that some days I can push myself while many other days I need to prioritize rest and recovery. Sometimes you can plan ahead of time and know what you can expect for a period of time. For example, if you are in the first 3 weeks postpartum, you will likely have every day be in the D category, whether you feel well or not. You have to plan to rest and recover for a solid chunk of time before you get back to “normal life”. But sometimes, especially with chronic illness, you will not always know what kind of day it is going to be. Because I am sometimes awake most of the night with palpitations, and those nights come at unpredictable times, I don’t always know how I will feel waking up. So the first step of the day would be to figure out what type of day it will be.

Routines and Rhythms

Setting up good routines in normal seasons of life can help when challenging situations arise. You have to have a baseline for each of these kinds of days so that you know what you can expect from yourself without having to make decisions about where to expend your energy vs where to save your energy and rest. For me, I have a pretty standard routine that doesn’t deviate too much if I am in the first 3 categories. It looks something like this:

• Wake up

• Pray

• Exercise

• Breakfast

• School

• Lunch

• Naps

• Chores

• Dinner

• Chores

• Kid bedtimes

• Hangout with my husband

• Sleep

Part of the reason I can keep this routine most days is because I do not necessarily attach times to each thing. Some days I wake up at 6:30. Other days I need to catch up on sleep and wake up closer to 8. Somedays my rest time in the afternoon is about an hour (I try to take that much time at least every day) and on a lower energy day I may try to rest for 3 hours and skip chores. It doesn’t matter and I don’t stress about it because all I need to do is go from one category to the next.

Obviously in a survival situation (category D) things will look different. We still need 3 meals a day, we still need naps and bedtimes, but otherwise it can be a bit of a free for all. Even within categories, things can look different from one day to the next. Some days my prayer involves praying part of the divine office and spiritual reading. Other days I can just manage to make a morning offering. Do what you can, when you can.

Your schedule and routine will look different from mine. But I highly suggest setting yourself up with a routine if you anticipate a difficult time in the near future, because it will help not only yourself but also your children to know how the day generally operates, and this will minimize the amount of decisions you will need to make when you are already mentally and physically exhausted.

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Tiered To Do Lists

I have developed a tiered system for my to do list that helps me in good times and difficult moments. First, I make a very simple to do list every week in my planner of what needs to get done every day. As Leila Marie Lawler has suggested, try to keep the list of things for each day around 3 items. If you are in survival mode, feeding the family and changing diapers may be the entire list. On a school day, school is one of our 3 things. If we have appointments or outside of the house commitments, that goes on the list too. This will limit you, but that is a good thing. You want to really focus on the things that NEED to happen.

So mine might look like:

1. Monday

   1. School

   2. Mass

   3. Grocery store

2. Tuesday

   1. Co-op

   2. Doctor appointment

   3. Set out garbage cans

After the needs are planned out, we work on the secondary items. On the side of my list is a list of projects for the week. These are the things I really want to get done around the house, but life will continue even if they don’t happen. For example:

Projects

• Mow the lawn

• Change furnace air filters

• Check medicine cabinet for expiration dates

• Order birthday gifts for Nick

• Bake sourdough bread for the week

Lastly, I have a running list in my planner that I call my “anxiety list”. These are things I want to get done, but are not needs and are either low priority or do not need to happen imminently. They are the things I need to get out of my brain and onto paper, so that I am not anxiously thinking about them again and again in the back of my brain. An example would be:

Anxiety list

• Organize the stack of unnecessary papers on my desk

• Plan out the garden for the spring

• Work on my current sewing project

This three tiered system works well for me because I can almost always accomplish the three tasks for the day, and on higher energy days (A and B) I can accomplish my weekly to dos as well. If I am having a category A day, I may even get to start chipping away at some anxiety list projects. But if I don’t, that’s ok! Life will go on. Be realistic about what needs to be done, what you want to get done, and what you have the energy to do.

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Now Take the Above Advice, and Apply it to Schoolwork

The suggestions that I gave above for routinizing and categorizing based on necessity also apply to schoolwork. Decide what are the most important things to do during a school day to make you feel like you accomplished “enough”. Some people call this a minimum viable day, but I just call it our core subjects. For me, this is math and language arts for all of the kids. If we do math and language arts, everything on top of it is a bonus. On a category A or B day, we will do more than that, but even on a C day we can at least do the core subjects. Try to set up routines and rhythms so that your kids can do the core subjects at least semi independently, although young ones will need more help.

I have also found it helpful to not overly plan our school days. Instead, I write what I want to accomplish each week of school instead of breaking it down by day. Some days we can’t do any school at all, most days we can at least do the core subjects and maybe a few extras, and other days we can “catch up” and do more than we needed to do for that day. In the end it usually balances out and means that we can do a good amount of school across the week. I think it is also helpful to plan an extra week at the end of each term (we do 3 terms a year) to catch up on any extra lessons that did not get accomplished during the term. It’s crazy how much we can “catch up” during a week, and it helps me not stress so much when we are in survival mode. The work will get done eventually, and there is a time set aside to do it. That really helps to put my mind at ease.

Commit to Less

This is hard but important if you anticipate a difficult season in the next year or so. If you hope to get pregnant, will be giving birth, or are suffering from a chronic illness, you owe it to yourself to not overburden your schedule. Remember when I said to try to not have more than three things to do each day? This gets harder and harder the more you commit to outside of the house. Running a household takes a lot of work, and homeschooling is realistically a full time job, even if you unschool or are very relaxed. Do not add more stress by making unnecessary commitments. This necessarily means that you will have to say no to good opportunities. There is a new co-op starting in our area this fall that sounds like it would be very enriching for my kids and would be a great experience. But it also would require me to be out of the house for several hours. It would require driving, packing lunches, planning, scrambling to get out of the house, etc. Each commitment comes with baggage and you have to realistically decide if it is worth it. Some activities are worth it, but realistically look at your schedule, look at the patterns of how much energy you typically have to give across a week, and decide on what to take up and what to leave behind for now. It doesn’t have to be forever, but rest and recovery is important in difficult times.

Give Yourself Grace

Lastly, be gentle with yourself. I recently talked to a friend who moved into a new house and was telling her that it took me almost a full year to unpack the last few boxes after we moved into our current house. I had unpacked most of the house and then became pregnant. I get pretty sick the first half of my pregnancies, and no longer had the energy to finish unpacking the laundry room and a few home office boxes. They sat in a state of chaos for almost a year. But in the last few weeks before my son was born, I got a boost of nesting energy and was able to finish the job.

Difficult situations do not last forever. Especially for pregnancies and babies, the seasons of difficulty are so short in reality even though they can feel interminable in the midst of them. Be gentle on yourself. Let the weeds take over your garden, take an extra nap during the day, take time to nourish your body and get sunlight instead of folding laundry. The day may come when you can “catch up” on all of the things you want to do. And even if you don’t, life will still go on.

That’s it for today! I have so many more suggestions, with a lot of tips and tricks and hacks that I have discovered through the years. I will write those up in another post, but let me know if you have any questions or suggestions of your own as to how to manage life in difficult times.

You may be burdened and anxious about many things. But there is only one thing necessary in difficult seasons, and it is keeping your eyes on Him from whom all strength comes.

Welcome back to Educating Persons, the series where we are exploring the Home Education series by Charlotte Mason chapter by chapter. Make sure to read parts one and two if you missed them. Today we are looking at the preface to the series and the much shorter preface to the fourth edition of the first volume of her series. The titles can be a little confusing because the series is usually referred to as the Home Education series, and the first volume is also entitled Home Education. Mason explores education for ages 0-9 in this first volume, and that is the volume we are reading together.

The preface to the series is almost the same for all of the volumes (she actually adds two principles in volume 6, which we will read later). It lays out her purpose in writing, her principles of education, and sets us up for what is coming after. It is packed with important points so without further introduction I will dive right in.

Summary

Mason prefaces her series by stating that the current state of education is depressing because there is “no unifying principle, no definite aim; in fact, no philosophy of education. As a stream can rise no higher than its source, so it is probable that no educational effort can rise above the whole scheme of thought which gives it birth”. But Charlotte Mason does not leave us in the depths of despair. She has observed in her experience as an educator that there is an underlying principle of education, a natural law which governs the process. Not only is it a law but a “standard whereby all things (educational)… must be tested”.

She states that knowledge of God is the principal knowledge and the chief end of education. She goes into more detail about what a philosophy of education would necessarily entail. She thinks many ideas have been put forth but none of them have a “broad unifying basis of thought to support the whole”. What follows is her attempt at just that: a unifying and supportive philosophy of education.

Mason states her central thought as “the somewhat obvious fact that the child is a person with all the possibilities and powers included in personality”. She also states that education is the science of relations, and in her words this solves the question of curriculum: “the object of education is to put a child in loving touch with as much as may be of the life of Nature and of thought”. Add to that self knowledge and the student will be well educated.

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She discusses that the means by which she discovered this philosophy of education was through experimentation and observation, not philosophical opining. She wants more people with more experience to put forth educational theories, but hers is summed up in these 18 principles (for now, there will be two more added later in the series). Note: some of these are shared word for word but for the longer principles I have summarized or condensed them.

1. Children are born persons.

2. They are not born either good or bad, but with possibilities for good and evil.

3. The principles of authority and obedience are natural, necessary, and fundamental.

4. We cannot encroach on the child’s personality (we cannot manipulate them by fear, love, suggestion, etc.)

5. The way we influence children is through 3 instruments: atmosphere, discipline, and life.

6. Atmosphere: the environment around a child is a means of education in itself. (Side note: as someone who has studied both Montessori and Waldorf philosophies of education I think Mason will have some criticisms of both in regards to the atmosphere! Hopefully we can dive into this more as it comes up in later chapters).

7. Discipline: habits are so important to education, and our habits change our brains.

8. Life: the child needs intellectual, moral, and physical ideas to feed upon, and they should therefore have a generous curriculum.

9. The mind is not a receptacle, like a bucket to fill with ideas.

10. The child’s mind is a spiritual organism with an appetite for knowledge.

11. This principle is a criticism of doctrines that stress method and ones that put the burden of education on the teacher.

12. Children must receive a generous curriculum with vital knowledge - facts and informing ideas always presented together (herein lies the biggest criticism of the neoclassical movement from Charlotte Mason in my opinion).

13. Education is the science of relations. We have to acquaint children with lots of living ideas and experiences so they can relate them in their mind.

14. We need to teach children the way of the will and the way of reason.

15. The way of the will - children need to learn to distinguish between “I want and I will”, and how to turn thoughts away from what they do not will toward something different. (She makes an interesting note here about how diversion gives us time to rest our will so that we can later will again with full force).

16. The way of reason - children should not lean too much on their own understanding because while we can use reason to prove mathematical and logical proofs, we can also justify what we want whether it is right or wrong.

17. The main job of children is to accept or reject initial ideas. We help them in this by teaching them ways of conduct and giving them lots of knowledge.

18. Allow no separation between the intellectual and the spiritual life. The Holy Spirit is our constant teacher and guide.

Thus ends the preface to the series. She also has a short preface to the fourth edition of the first volume.

The first volume has two goals: a method of education based on natural laws (this would be summarized in the principles she laid out) and to talk about the duties of a mother in relation to these principles. She acknowledges that the Holy Spirit is the ultimate guide for mothers and helps mothers to intuit what their children need best. With that caveat, we can still use the principles of education to teach all children while using discernment to know what our child needs in particular.

The years between age 6 and 9 for the child are important for laying the basis for a liberal education and are crucial for developing a “habit of reading for instruction”. Children should “enter upon the domain of knowledge, in a good many directions, in a reposeful, consecutive way”.

One of the main points of this volume in particular is how important habits are in education. She wants to outline which habits are valuable and how to form them in children.

Philosophy of Education Takeaways

• The knowledge of God is the chief end of education

• Children are born persons

• Education is the science of relations

• We have the tools of atmosphere, discipline, and life to educate children

• Children need a generous curriculum to feed their minds

• Children need to learn the way of the will and the way of reason

• There should be no distinction between spiritual and intellectual life in children

• The Holy Spirit is the ultimate teacher

• Habits are crucial for children ages 0-9

Practical Applications

Her whole methodology will be based on these philosophical underpinnings, so there are necessarily going to be tons of practical applications coming from this. We will explore these more in detail as we read the specific chapters, but there are a few points made explicit in the preface we can look at now:

• Children should live in the real world, not an environment tailored to their child level.

• Habits are vital for children, and we should emphasize their formation in their education.

• There should be a wide range of ideas for children to grasp onto in their education, a generous curriculum.

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Takeaway Thoughts

The preface to the series is so packed full of goodness, truth, and beauty. Many people have commented upon and explored these principles in fuller detail, but even briefly looking at them now in the preface allows us to be set up for what is to come in this book and the following volumes. We are now ready to dive into the first chapter of Home Education volume 1 with the background knowledge of the underlying philosophy Mason is operating under.

Until next time friends, keep your eyes on Him who is the proper end of all education.