Turkey Soup

by Anne White

My husband was watching a video by Rick Beato, called "How AI will slowly destroy the music business." Beato did a little experiment with his teenage son, who said that he could pick out AI-created songs, because they just "sounded different." He put together a playlist of five AI songs, and five non-AI, and played them for his son and some friends. Beato's son was able to pick out the artificially-created songs, but the other teenagers could not. Beato's wife also said to him (on another occasion) that a song being played was "obviously" AI-created--she said there was a "weird sound" to it. Beato has quite a bit more to say in the video about the threat of our being flooded with AI content, but one of the most interesting, and ominous things is something else that his son said to him: that "in six months I probably won't be able to tell the difference." He meant that the technology will keep improving to the point where even a pair of good ears can't pick out the true, the original, and the soulful (I am using that word deliberately). The human from the mishmash-of-human that AI draws from, or, possibly in the future, the mishmash-of-AI-and-more-AI. Kind of like roast turkey that becomes a leftover dish and then another leftover dish until there's hardly any real meat left in it.

One of the commenters on Beato's video referred to this quote from George Orwell's 1984: 

The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound.

What does Charlotte Mason have to do with any of this? I'm guessing that most of you reading this can already pick out several things. Here's one thought: if we are born Persons, our education needs to celebrate that Personhood which is not so much about our nature as individuals as it is about our status as human beings, and our relationship with the One who made us in His image. The books, the music, and the art that touch our human spirits must come from other whole human spirits, not from something run through the blender until it is unidentifiable.

For the matter for this intelligent teaching of history, eschew, in the first place, nearly all history books written expressly for children; and in the next place, all compendiums, outlines, abstracts whatsoever. For the abstracts, considering what part the study of history is fitted to play in the education of the child, there is not a word to be said in their favour... (V.1, p. 281)

No one knoweth the things of a man but the spirit of a man which is in him; therefore, there is no education but self-education, and as soon as a young child begins his education he does so as a student. Our business is to give him mind-stuff, and both quality and quantity are essential. Naturally, each of us possesses this mind-stuff only in limited measure, but we know where to procure it; for the best thought the world possesses is stored in books; we must open books to children, the best books; our own concern is abundant provision and orderly serving. (V.6, p. 26)

Like Rick Beato, we may worry that, first, our own senses may become dulled to the point where we can't tell what is real; and, second, that the blenderized versions of things might get so perfect that even the keenest eyes and ears can't tell the difference. And what then?

First, we learn to sing. With our voices. 

Second, I think, we learn to laugh. There is a deeply human (or deeply God-reflecting, if you prefer) understanding of humour that cannot be created by digital means. Why else would C. S. Lewis have titled a chapter in The Magician's Nephew "The First Joke and Other Matters?" Uncle Andrew and his magic rings don't understand the kind of laughter that fills newborn Narnia, that causes Aslan to say, "Laugh and fear not, creatures. Now that you are no longer dumb and witless, you need not always be grave. For jokes as well a justice come in with speech."

Third, we learn to cook. With real food. Because that sense of connection with the Real can carry over into a lot of other things we do. There's a difference between good turkey soup and a frozen turkey T.V. dinner.

And, finally, we try (at least we can try) to turn off the full-powered faucet of all that's coming at us, and spend our time listening, maybe, to fewer (but better) tunes; reading fewer (but better) books--you know what I mean. When "almost pleasant sounds" make up most of what we hear, maybe it's just time to turn them off. Maybe less is going to have to be more. 

May your holidays be seasoned with all these good things.

Pain Relief

Most people know what a Vulcan mind meld is, don't they? In Star Trek: The Original Series, Mr. Spock, like other Vulcans, has the ability to tap into someone else's consciousness, usually by placing his fingers on their head (or the appropriate parts of a Horta).

In the 1989 Star Trek movie The Final Frontier (the one that comes after the whales), Mr. Spock's long-lost half brother Sybok has a weird twist on the mind meld: he uses his telepathic abilities to draw out an individual's most deep-seated painful experiences, and help them experience a kind of catharsis or purification from that pain. Each person who experienced this was immediately so grateful to Sybok that they would put aside all other loyalties and do whatever he asked. Captain Kirk is one of the only holdouts to Sybok's brain-meddling; he tells Sybok that he doesn't want his pain taken away, it's part of who he is. (Those who have read Brave New World will see some parallels there.)

Is Sybok the antagonist of the story? The actor who played Sybok, Laurence Luckinbill, recalls how he thought of the character while playing him:

...his impulse is good, is really good. He is not a villain. He is someone who has made mistakes. You and I might make those mistakes. And in terms of trying to change your family or hold the community better, or something like that, you might get nuts and say, ‘No, you will do it this way.’ But the impulse [is] to make things better, and really, at its heart, is let me take your pain away. Let me make life better for you. So, that was what that is. That is my take on it. And I resisted the idea of being the villain. And I told Bill [Shatner] that. I said he's not a villain. He's a heroic guy. And he's just, he's just in the way of the legal stuff, you know. That's what I would say.

Sybok, according to the actor who, we might say, knows him best, is not villainous, but well-meaning. However, this well-meaningness nearly causes untold destruction, and, on a smaller, moral scale, he's going where no man has gone before and really shouldn't. 

Charlotte Mason knew about this too. In Parents and Children, she wrote:

...our feelings are educable, and that in educating the feelings we modify the character. A pressing danger our day is that the delicate task of educating shall be exchanged for the much simpler one of blunting the feelings. (p. 199)

She then goes on to speak, as she has in other places, about the great amount of standing back that parents and teachers must do, especially as young people must learn to choose their own actions. Luckinbill calls Sybok "heroic," but Charlotte would certainly not use that word to describe someone so manipulative, even if (as Luckinbill says) the character's desire is to make everyone's life better. And, as Kirk says, we don't need our pain to disappear completely.  It may be something that has helped shape our character, something that is there inside us but which we have mastered. Having developed the strength to keep fighting that thing may be what helps us deal with other struggles. The characters who had all their traumas blotted out by Sybok seemed floppy, without any will. They were cheerful and co-operative, but they were not choosing to submit, they were unable to do anything else.

The mother may do a good deal to avert serious mishaps by accustoming the younger children to small feats of leaping and climbing, so that they learn, at the same time, courage and caution from their own experiences, and are less likely to follow the lead of too-daring playmates. Later, the mother had best make up her mind to share the feelings of the hen that hatched a brood of ducklings, remembering that a little scream and sudden 'Come down instantly!' 'Tommy, you'll break your neck!' gives the child a nervous shock, and is likely to cause the fall it was meant to hinder by startling Tommy out of all presence of mind. (Home Education, p. 84)

We don't want to see our children suffer. Our natural urge is to protect them wherever we can. But lest we find our good intentions taking us "just in the way of the legal stuff," by which I think Luckinbill means stepping over moral lines, we need to become less--and therefore more--heroic, by stepping back.

A baby falls, gets a bad bump, and cries piteously. The experienced nurse does not "kiss the place to make it well," or show any pity for the child's trouble––that would make matters worse; the more she pities, the more he sobs. She hastens to 'change his thoughts,' so she says; she carries him to the window to see the horses, gives him his pet picture-book, his dearest toy, and the child pulls himself up in the middle of a sob, though he is really badly hurt. Now this, of the knowing nurse, is precisely the part the will plays towards the man. It is by force of will that a man can 'change his thoughts,' transfer his attention from one subject of thought to another, and that, with a shock of mental force of which he is indistinctly conscious. And this is enough to save a man and to make a man, this power of making himself think only of those things which he has beforehand decided that it is good to think upon. (Home Education, p. 324)

And that is the power of the Charlotte Mason mind: un-melded.

Words that hover above the page

by Anne White

Ideas are everywhere, in the words and, so to speak, behind the words, present because they are literally present and present even if they appear to be absent. A writer may despise the idea of zoos and communicate that hatred by writing a book about animals in the bush, never mentioning zoos, never alluding to zoos or dropping a hint about zoos. Because of the way the mind works, we get the message...If you picture a page of writing as three-dimensional, with the words hovering a half-inch or so above the paper, then you begin to see where the ideas are: behind the words, between the words, really everywhere. (Eric Maisel, Deep Writing)

In Jan Karon’s novel Out to Canaan, people in Mitford are feeling overworked and stressed by a variety of situations. Partway through the book, Father Tim invites his parishioners to a special evening church service, and as they recite the prayer of confession, we are given a glimpse of what is going on in their minds.

“Most merciful God,” Esther Bolick prayed aloud and in unison with the others from the Book of Common Prayer, “we confess that we have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed…” She felt the words enter her aching bones like balm.

“…by what we have done,” prayed Gene, “and by what we have left undone.”

“We have not loved You with our whole heart,” intoned Uncle Billy Watson…He found the words of the prayer beautiful. They made him feel hopeful and closer to the Lord, and maybe it was true that he hadn’t always done right by his neighbors, but he would try to do better, he would start before he hit the street this very night.

Now, setting questions of religious faith aside just for the moment, the point is that there is something going on here that transcends the levels of understanding, the social backgrounds and whatnot of the people praying. One big reason that this prayer speaks to Esther, Gene, Uncle Billy, and others I did not include here, is that the words, as Eric Maisel says, have dimensionality. The words, the sentences, are allowed to live, and to give life. There is enough space above them, between them, and underneath them, for each person to find green pastures and quiet waters. 

This is, in effect, the definition of a living book, and also of a living education. In Home Education, Charlotte Mason acknowledges that much good educational theory has been "conceived and perfected by large hearted educators to aid the many sided evolution of the living, growing, most complex human being"; it respects our own dimensionality (perhaps another way of saying "personhood").

The wind has painted fancies

on my wings.

Fancies...

Where was I?

O yes! Lord,

I had something to tell you:

Amen.

("The Prayer of the Butterfly" in Prayers from the Ark)

However, we tend to take such vital, free-fluttering ideas, and pin them down on collecting boards, labelling and cataloguing them, but ignoring the fact that they will never fly again. Charlotte says, "but what a miserable wooden system does it become in the hands of ignorant practitioners!...the observing of rules until the habit of doing certain things, of behaving in certain ways, is confirmed, and, therefore, the art is acquired––is so successful in achieving precise results, that it is no wonder there should be endless attempts to straiten the whole field of education to the limits of a system" (p. 9). 

These systems, these books, these artificially-generated things, are "precise" but also "straitened"; there is no room in them for us to move or breathe. I once wrote on our family blog:

... the stuff that gets used the least here is usually something produced specifically for the classroom...Case in point: a music-and-math resource book...which has such classic songs in it as this (sung to the tune of Three Blind Mice): "Let's make a people graph / Let's make a people graph / Of all our friends / In the classroom. / Boys stand over here. / Girls stand over there. / Then line up in two rows / So we can compare, / So we can compare." My daughter says she'd rather sing "Aiken Drum" any day.

Charlotte said the same thing:

The promoters of the kindergarten system have done much to introduce games of this, or rather of a more educational kind; but is it not a fact that the singing games of the kindergarten are apt to be somewhat inane? Also, it is doubtful how far the prettiest plays, learnt at school and from a teacher, will take hold of the children as do the games which have been passed on from hand to hand through an endless chain of children, and are not be found in the print-books at all. (Home Education, p. 82)

Near the end of Home Education, Charlotte discusses the religious training of young children, and she pulls no punches on what we might call un-dimensional teaching: 

There is no more fruitful source of what it is hardly too much to call infant infidelity than the unreal dead words which are poured upon children about the best things, with an artificial solemnity of tone and manner intended to make up for the want of living meaning in the words. Let the parent who only knows one thing from above teach his child that one; more will come to him by the time the child is ready for more. (pp. 346-347)

So, let the parent who knows no more than one prayer-book prayer, one or two good hymns by heart, a couple of folk songs, a favourite tale, and the names of one butterfly, two trees, or three wild flowers, share these things freely.  Let the ideas that are present take flight, and those that are absent also be noticed by their absence. God will surely bless such an education more than He will a whole heap of unreal dead-leaf words, though they be raked ever so neatly into piles. 

As the butterfly said...Amen.

In Which Tom Learns His Lesson

 by Anne White 

In English, a sentence stretches from left to right…A writer composes a sentence with subject and verb at the beginning, followed by other subordinate elements…Think of [the] main clause as the locomotive that pulls all of the cars that follow…If the writer wants to create suspense, or build tension, or make the reader wait and wonder, or join a journey of discovery, or hold on for dear life, he can save subject and verb of the main clause until later…[but] this variation works only when most sentences branch to the right, a pattern that creates meaning, momentum, and literary power. (Roy Peter Clark, Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer) 

Every sentence speaks of someone or of something, and tells us something about that of which it speaks…In our sentence we speak of 'Tom.' We say about him that he 'has learned his lesson.' The thing we speak of is often called the SUBJECT, which just means that which we talk about. (Charlotte Mason, Home Education) 

Listen.

If someone tells you what a story is about, they are probably right.

If they tell you that that is all the story is about, they are very definitely wrong.

Any story is about a host of things. It is about the author; it is about the world the author sees and deals with and lives in; it is about the words chosen and the way those words are deployed; it is about the story itself and what happens in the story; it is about the people in the story; it is polemic; it is opinion. (Neil Gaiman, introduction to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451)

 Listen. I will tell you a story about stories.

In high school we were handed a book of classic short stories. We handled that book objectively, tightly, scientifically, trying to identify the exact bacteria on the lens of “The Most Dangerous Game” and “The Rocking Horse Winner.” We mapped the rising action, the climax, the denouement; wrote up our lab reports; got our marks.

In university, we had a course on The Short Story that took the opposite, subjective, biblio-therapeutic approach. If “Young Goodman Brown” or “Bartleby the Scrivener” reminded us of our boyfriends, landlords, weird uncles, that's what the story meant. Well, as Neil Gaiman says, if a reader tells you what a story is about, they are probably right.

However, as every sentence speaks of someone or of something, so does every story. A good story deserves more than the reader’s subjective reaction. It is, though, about more than stuffing a square peg of character, voice, polemic, opinion, into a round hole of rising action, saying that's "all the story is about." Writing professor George Saunders has expanded on the idea of “someone”:

… perhaps the most radical idea of all [is] that every human being is worthy of attention and that the origins of every good and evil capability of the universe may be found by observing a single, even very humble, person and the turnings of his or her mind. (A Swim in a Pond in the Rain)

Saunders also says that, as we read a particular story by Tolstoy,

we begin living it; the words disappear and we find ourselves thinking not about word choice but about the decisions the characters are making and decisions we have made, or might have to make someday, in our actual lives. (same)

So, what is a better way to read, to write, or to teach novels, plays, stories? We go back to what Charlotte told us about sentences: they speak of someone, they speak of something that happens. We follow someone around as they swim in a pond in the rain, or drive through a blizzard, or surreptitiously slip a book into their pocket. As musical compositions begin with a theme and then introduce variations, so do stories. You thought the wolf was going to blow the brick house down, but surprise, you’re wrong. And here is the kicker: the story, as we receive it, is not only about the decisions made by the characters, but also by the author.

As apprentice writers, we watch for the ways the words themselves, the shapes of the sentences, the parallels and variations build suspense, fear, relief, delight. As readers, we are allowed to let them disappear, but only so that we can make even more discoveries (beyond weird uncles); so that we can begin living it. 

Start with subjects. Continue with verbs. If it worked for Tom, it can still work for us.

Charlotte Mason and the "Kindergarten Problem"

by Anne White

After that introduction, Charlotte goes on the warpath against Froebelian kindergartens, which were soaring in popularity at the time. Those of us who attended North American kindergartens in the late twentieth century might not quite understand her objections; we might think of singing along with the teacher’s autoharp (or boom-box), or of playing at the sand table, or painting with drippy paints at an easel; and of the whole thing being rather fun, at least in comparison to the higher grades; but the early kindergartens were not quite like that. Children were led through programmed activities involving boxes of geometric shapes, and other materials such as “folded paper and woven straw.” Sometimes they sat at little tables, sometimes they stood in circles and moved as prescribed (think of the actions for “I’m a Little Teapot”). (If you really want to know more about the purposes and methods of kindergartens at that time, see if you can find a copy of Norman Brosterman’s book Inventing Kindergarten.) When Charlotte Mason quotes Anne Sullivan as requesting not to be sent any more kindergarten materials for Helen Keller, she is rebelling not so much against the nice craft supplies as against the ways that they are supposed to be used.

“I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think, whereas if the child is left to himself he will think more and better, if less showily.” (Anne Sullivan, quoted in Home Education, pp. 195-196)

There was one more twist to the “kindergarten problem,” and that is that Froebel (like Pestalozzi before him) was undoubtedly a genius, with a deep desire to pass on his vision of the universe. A child who played with his wooden cubes, and made designs with toothpicks and dried peas, might have ended up with, at least, an amazing sense of artistic design. (Frank Lloyd Wright was apparently one of those.) But Froebel had died in 1852, when Charlotte Mason was ten years old; and by the era of Home Education thirty-plus years later, his own writings (dense and difficult) were skipped over by busy young teachers. His methods had been adapted and restyled; the activities were kept, but the understanding was lost. The kindergartens of Charlotte’s time might be called merely Froebel-ish.

And that is the context in which she wrote,

“…[if a child participates in too-structured early learning],during the first six or seven years in which he might have become intimately acquainted with the properties and history of every natural object within his reach, he…can distinguish a rhomboid from a pentagon, a primary from a secondary colour, has learned to see so truly that he can copy what he sees in folded paper or woven straw,—but this at the expense of much of that real knowledge of the external world which at no time of his life will he be so fitted to acquire.” (Home Education, p. 179)

The early-years curriculum described here is one which produces skillful hand-eye co-ordination, and also teaches children to think “showily,” to quote Anne Sullivan; but which misses out on heart. It is the equivalent of learning scales without music, or capitals of the world without people. It might even be read as an echo of St. Paul’s “If I do this or that good thing, but have not love, I am nothing.”

Ironically, those who recommend such a structured program (or its contemporary equivalent) might say that they are, in fact, providing “real knowledge of the external world,” perhaps in the same way that Eustace Scrubb was raised to enjoy pictures of grain elevators. Charlotte Mason, on the other hand, describes fortunate children whose early years allowed them to become “intimately acquainted with the properties and history of every natural object within [their] reach”; whose parents realized that they could pick up most of the common shapes-colours-numbers lessons simply by living, working, and playing. Playing included playing outdoors, as often as possible, and not only on playground equipment, or at soccer practice, but by climbing (trees, preferably), touching, digging, splashing in creeks or at the shore, listening, looking; particularly looking. “The child’s observation should be directed to flower or boulder, bird or tree; that, in fact, he should be employed in gathering the common information which is the basis of scientific knowledge” (p. 177). The goal is, like that of the kindergarten, to teach children to “see so truly”; but the eyes are focused here not on rhomboids and weaving straws, but on objects which will be theirs for a lifetime.

Excerpt from Ideas Freely Sown: The Matter and Method of Charlotte Mason, by Anne E. White (to be published soon)

Handwork and Crafts from CM, Volume 1

I offer the following information in the spirit of scholarship and understanding, because I totally groove on discovering this stuff.  It really helps me flesh out what Mason meant, what her philosophy looked like in practice, when I find more specific and concrete examples like the information below.  When I see exactly what she did, it helps me come to a better understanding of what we  might do today to further the same goals.

If it might be fun and enriching and delightful to reproduce the same crafts in your home, by all means, please do, and share.  If, however, the reading of this post makes you beat your head against the wall while repeating a tired and harmful mantra about your own worthlessness as a CM mama, please, stop.  I am not sharing this to burden anybody.  Don't beat yourself up.


 In CM's volume one, page 315 on our website, we find:

"Handicrafts and Drills.––It is not possible to do more than mention two more important subjects––the Handicrafts and Drills––which should form a regular part of a child's daily life. For physical training nothing is so good as Ling's Swedish Drill, and a few of the early exercises are the reach of children under nine. Dancing, and the various musical drills, lend themselves to grace of movement, and give more pleasure, if less scientific training, to the little people.

The Handicrafts best fitted for children under nine seem to me to be chair-caning, carton-work, basket-work, Smyrna rugs, Japanese curtains, carving in cork, samplers on coarse canvas showing a variety of stitches, easy needlework, knitting (big needles and wool), etc. The points to be borne in mind in children's handicrafts are: (a) that they should not be employed in making futilities such as pea and stick work, paper mats, and the like; (b) that they should be taught slowly and carefully what they are to do; (c) that slipshod work should

vol 1 pg 316

not be allowed; (d) and that, therefore, the children's work should be kept well within their compass."

In the appendices of a 1906 edition of volume 1, page 389, we find this fleshed out a little more:

"Work.
 Six twigs of trees (not done before) in brushwork. For occasional use, Pour Dessiner Simplement, par V. ...

 Attend to garden (Aunt Mai's Annual, 1894).

Carton Work, by G. C. Hewitt (King & Sons, Halifax, 2s.) : make a pillar-box, a match-box, a pen-tray, and a vase.

Smyrna rugs (see Aunt Mai's Annual, 1894). Children make their own designs.

Self-Teaching Needlework Manual (Longmans, is.) : children to be exercised in stitches, pages 1-15. Use coarse canvas and wool ; then, coloured cotton and coarse linen."

Here is the pertinent section from Aunt Mai's Annual, 1894, which I was thrilled to discover online (it's lovely!).

(Keep in mind 1894 British prices are given for supplies.)
WHAT CAN WE MAKE?
JAPANESE CURTAINS.

THE educational advantages of this work are many ; it teaches carefulness, numeration, colour and design. Carefulness, in pushing the string through the bamboo ; numeration, in getting the right number on each string ; colour, in choosing the coloured reeds and beads ; and design, whether the alternate lines should be the same colour, or two and two, or two and three, etc.

The materials required for this work are :
1.  Bamboos or reeds, 2/9 per 100.
2. Beads, 10d. per 500.
3. A ball of string, 6d.
4. A bar of wood for each curtain.

The bamboos are supplied in bundles of 1000 tubes, and can be had in white, red, purple, green, yellow, etc. They are each three and a half inches long, and are hollow, so that the string easily slips through. The round beads are the best for the nursery, and can also be had in many colours.

A little four-year-old is very busy at present making a short curtain for the studio window, of cut green and yellow reeds, and bright yellow beads, and the effect is charming.

The bar of wood can be made by any local joiner for a few pence. This must be three-quarters of an inch broad and thick ; the length must vary according to the width of your windows. Holes must be bored through at regular intervals of half an inch, one from the other, and he had better stain it brown or black before the children begin to work.

The following lengths are those we have found to be most useful ; but each mother can measure and decide for herself whether the curtains must be longer or shorter.

1.  Cut the string into lengths of forty inches.
2. Thread a bead on to each piece of string, hold the bead in the middle, and tie once. This prevents the little fingers pulling the string out of its hole. To vary this, you can again place a bead on each side of the tied one.
3. Push one end of the string through the first hole in the rod, and the other through the second hole, leaving the bead or beads or. the top.
4. Thread four beads on the first string. This makes an effective border.
5. Thread one reed, one bead, one reed and so on, until four reeds are on. Then put a bead on and tie. The first row might be green.
6. Work the second row in the same way, substituting yellow reeds for the green ones.
7. Take another piece of string and thread one end through the third hole, and so on.
     A very effective and simple pattern can be worked in the following way:
After the string has been threaded through the two first holes put—1st row; 1 bead, 1 green reed, bead ; 1 yellow reed, bead ; green reed, bead ; 1 yellow reed

2nd row; 2 beads, the rest in the same order—green, yellow ; green, yellow.
3rd row; 3 beads; &c.
4th row; 4 beads, &c.
5th row; 5 beads, &c.
6th row ; 4 beads, &c.
7th row; 3 beads, and so on, until the child comes again to one bead, when she again begins the next row with two. "

What can we take from this? Breaking this down, it's essentially stringing beads and rods in a pattern, right?  Not just randomly, but for a specific project of some use.   But you could begin with a tin of beads and some string- a shoelace, perhaps.  Our disabled child used to 'string' beads on a pipe cleaner, which I had anchored a bead at the end so she could not pull it off.  A pipe cleaner was easier for her to handle.  When she had a pipecleaner of beads, I would bend it into a shape- a circle, a heart, a star.  one of my favourite Christmas ornaments is a bell shaped from a pipecleaner of beads she worked.  Our beads came from thrift shop finds- they used to be popular in macrame projects.

You could duplicate the window curtain, or make a door curtain as a family project- if you have a place where you could keep the project out for a while, safe from babies, each family member could work on their own string, or everybody could add whatever, as they have time.

You could make jewelry, elastic string and beads are fairly inexpensive (when we orphan-hosted, we made our four boys bracelets with our phone numbers on them using number beads, interspersed by coloured beads).  Youtube videos explaining how to tie these off abound.   You could make key chains or Christmas ornaments or cell phone charms or something to hang from a car rear view mirror.

Mainly, you want a project involving stringing beads in a simple pattern of the child's design, the more useful the better, keeping in mind that a beaded window curtain is our standard for useful here.  IOW, don't overthink the useful aspect.

Supplies are far more readily available to us than they were to mothers in CM's time, and not much more expensive in terms of real dollars.

Amazon has wooden cylinder beads, dark or light , round and oval beads of coloured wood, holes large and small (so does ebay, in an impossible variety of colours, shapes, sizes, in wood, plastic, glass and stone or clay).
You could use hemp cord or cotton embroidery thread.

You could even resort to macaroni.  Dye it by shaking in a bag with a few drops of rubbing alcohol and food coloring, spreading to dry on waxed paper.  I prefer more permanent supplies, and don't recommend macaroni jewelry.  But for early practice in stringing colored beads in a pattern, this may be an economical alternative.  I have a cupboard over my bathroom sink which is missing a door.  I am thinking a beading project to hang over a shelf or small cupboard indoors might be a useful way to display a child's beading craft while improving the appearance of a messy shelf or a bathroom cupboard missing a door.

Up next, the smyrna rug.

More here as well.

Synthetic Thinking and Math

by Karen Glass

Education is the science of relations. That’s the principle that underlies what I call synthetic thinking (explained more fully in Consider This). The principle applies even to arithmetic, which is, although we don’t usually fathom the reason, one of the liberal arts. An art is not made up merely of information to master--it is meant to used. Arts are “practiced.” We want to foster a relationship between students and the world of mathematics, and that is most readily accomplished when we treat mathematics as an art to be practiced.

There is going to come a time, in math, when a child is going to have to sit down and work through some complicated equations. That is either going to be a challenge met with confidence and a lift of the chin-- “I can do this!”--or with boredom and despair. We often speak of wanting children to love reading, love literature, love books, maybe even love history or science. We rarely speak of wanting to them to love numbers, and this is probably a reflection of the reality that few of us formed that relationship in our early years of education. Whether or not that relationship is formed will determine the response a child--and even an adult--brings to those complicated problems.

The chief value of arithmetic, like that of the higher mathematics, lies in the training it affords the reasoning powers, and in the habits of insight, readiness, accuracy, intellectual truthfulness it engenders. There is no one subject in which good teaching effects more, as there is none in which slovenly teaching has more mischievous results. Multiplication does not produce the 'right answer,' so the boy tries division; that again fails, but subtraction may get him out of the bog. There is no must be to him; he does not see that one process, and one process only, can give the required result. Now, a child who does not know what rule to apply to a simple problem within his grasp, has been ill taught from the first, although he may produce slatefuls of quite right sums in multiplication or long division. (Home Education, p. 254)

We often speak of a "Charlotte Mason education" being a paradigm shift, and nowhere is that shift greater than in the area of math. Charlotte Mason knew that math was about much more than getting the “right answer.” There is a relationship between math and the natural life of men, and it was this relationship that she wanted to foster first.

How is this insight, this exercise of the reasoning powers, to be secured? Engage the child upon little problems within his comprehension from the first, rather than upon set sums. (Home Education, p. 254)

In practice, this means that children should begin with what we call “word problems,” and those problems should be based upon real-life experiences that the child might expect to occur. For the smallest children, these math problems occur easily in course of living.

Home life is full of easy little arithmetic problems that bring the importance of numbers, as well as concepts such as quantity, equality, and one-to-one correspondence within the grasp of even quite young children. A family of four is joining us for dinner. How many chairs to do we need to add to the table? I can only find three clean spoons--how many will we need to wash so that we have enough? There are six cookies left in the box. How many can each child have?

Older children can figure how much five cans of corn will cost, or whether there is enough money for everyone to get double-scoop ice-cream cones, or if singles will have to do this time.

Older children may be given more complex, multi-step problems, such as “Joe gathered 87 walnuts and Tim gathered 28. They plan to share the nuts with three friends. How many will each of the five boys receive?” Charlotte Mason says that a child will perceive exactly what must be done in order to solve the problem, although “Care must be taken to give the child such problems as he can work, but yet which are difficult enough to cause him some little mental effort.” (Home Education, p. 255)

The more occasions a child has to use math in real life--and that might include playing games in which counting, adding (or subtracting) points, or other arithmetic plays a part--the more likely he is to develop an interest in and a relationship with math.

Math is needed for cooking, for science, for travel, for planning and purchasing, and the more integrated a child’s exposure to math is, the greater will be his appreciation for it. Once that appreciation is established, the extra effort needed to memorize math facts or unravel complex equations will be entered into more willingly. The child has no need to whine, “why do I have to learn this?” If he has developed a synthetic understanding of math, he already knows the answer to that question, and will likely also work out the answer to the arithmetic problem at hand.

AO Year 0: Free Audio Files and More

Below are several free audio files of books used in Year 0 of AO.In addition to links to free audio sources for material for the youngest children, I have included links to related topics as well. Sometimes that link may be as simple as a coloring page or a recipe of something tasty to make that seems to go well with the story.  Other times I've linked to resources for the parent. Those resources are some I believe will help the parent develop a meaningful philosophy of education, elevate the approach to education from rules to principles, and help deepen the reader's understanding of certain valuable principles (CM's methods, for instance).

   AO, after all,  is a (free) program which seeks to develop and emulate a Charlotte Mason education.
  Read here to learn more about what defines a CM education. Here are some of the books listed for year 0 of AO in free audio format:

  Literature:

~Audio links to works by Beatrix Potter

•  Full colour, original illustrations and text here , just scroll down a bit (no audio)
• There are some coloring pages for several of the Potter books here.  The site has lots of other things, too, but for 'year 0' children, I could really only endorse the coloring pages.
• There are movies of the different Potter books on Youtube as well, but some are no doubt pirated, and not all are created equal, so be cautious.
• This is a digital reproduction of the first edition of Peter Rabbit, which was not in color. You can click on the pages to turn them (and it will even make the sound of turning pages for you).  The images are clear and large and the pages are easy to read. If you have several little ones sitting around you clamouring to 'see', this one might be the way to go.

~The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams.

~The Story of Little Babaji by Helen Bannerman. This is a retelling of an older tale and the new version is not in the public domain.  The original version is  Little Black Sambo, and it is on Librivox.   The story is essentially the same in either version, and it is a very charming story.  However, in the original, Black Sambo's parents are Black Jumbo and Black Mumbo, and the illustrations were truly embarrassing caricatures.  I wouldn't have it in my house (you can look it up on youtube to see samples or look at it here if you must).

• We do not usually find it necessary, or even useful, to have a lot of 'projects' to do to go along with our reading, especially for this age. Remember, less really is more- less of you imposing your formal lessons means more of the children really learning for themselves.   However, making and eating a pancake supper together after reading this story really does feel like a must.
• Tiger Butter: take a stick of softened butter and whip 2 or 3 tablespoons of frozen orange juice concentrate into it.  Add powdered sugar until it is the consistency you desire. You would not use syrup with this- it's sweet enough.
• Have with cottage cheese pancakes (high in protein) or almond coconut pancakes (grain free!), or Great Groovy Griddlecakes (also try one of the recipes for home-made syrup)

~Poetry:
A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson.

  Illustrations here, from a vintage edition.

The Real Mother Goose by Anonymous. Poems Every Child Should Know edited by Mary E. Burt. Mother Goose with illustrations and the option of audio, including several different languages to choose from.

• Although I don't think putting a child this young through a rigorous, deliberate program of poetry memorization is a good thing, it is a fact that most children this young will memorize poetry naturally if you read it enough.
•  There is a helpful talk on this here- though most of the material will apply to older children.
• Here is why and how we did what we did with poetry when our children were young:

...it is well to store a child's memory with a good deal of poetry, learnt without labour.  [a friend of hers raising a niece hit upon an excellent method] She read a poem through to E.; then the next day, while the little girl was making a doll's frock, perhaps, she read it again; once again the next day, while E.'s hair was being brushed. She got in about six or more readings, according to the length of the poem, at odd and unexpected times, and in the end E. could say the poem which she had not learned.

I have tried the plan often since, and found it effectual. The child must not try to recollect or to say the verse over to himself, but, as far as may be, present an open mind to receive an impression of interest. Half a dozen repetitions should give children possession of such poems as 'Dolly and Dick,' 'Do you ask what the birds say?' Little lamb, who made thee?' and the like. The gains of such a method of learning are, that the edge of the child's enjoyment is not taken off by weariful verse by verse repetitions, and, also, that the habit of making mental images is unconsciously formed...

 But, let me again say, every effort of the kind, however unconscious, means wear and tear of brain substance. Let the child lie fallow till he is six, and then, in this matter of memorising, as in others, attempt only a little, and let the poems the child learns be simple and within the range of his own thought and imagination. At the same time, when there is so much noble poetry within a child's compass, the pity of it, that he should be allowed to learn twaddle! (CMason, vol 1)

~Folk and Fairy Tales

"...let them have tales of the imagination, scenes laid in other lands and other times, heroic adventures, hairbreadth escapes, delicious fairy tales in which they are never roughly pulled up by the impossible––even where all is impossible, and they know it, and yet believe.
Imagination and Great Conceptions.––And this, not for the children's amusement merely: it is not impossible that posterity may write us down a generation blest with little imagination, and, by so far, the less capable of great conceptions and heroic efforts, for it is only as we have it in us to let a person or a cause fill the whole stage of the mind, to the exclusion of self occupation, that we are capable of large hearted action on behalf of that person or cause..." Volume 1, page 152,3

Various Fairy tale and folk tale collections by Joseph Jacobs.
  Childhood’s Favorites and Fairy Stories by Various. Includes Mother Goose Rhymes and fairy tales.
  The Three Bears- audio with lovely illustrations as well, as well as the option to listen in several different languages.
  The Three Little Pigs (same as above, pretty illustrations, audio available, and several languages).
  In The Nursery of My Bookhouse by Olive Beaupre Miller. Various folk and fairy tales for the youngest set.

  Uncle Remus and other Brer Rabbit books by Joel Chandler Harris.

If you are uncomfortable reading these stories to your children because you believe they are racist, consider this opposing view as the stories as subversive, pro-black, anti-slave-owner tales of resistance.

Many recordings of Aesop's Fables. Baby’s Own Aesop by Walter Crane.


  Additional books our family likes that are not on AO:
The Goops and How to Be One; funny poems about the Goops, who have no manners. A fun way to teach manners to your children so they won't be goops. Johnny Crow's Garden-


 Caveat: There are a few books listed above that are on AO's booklist for year 0, but there are two things you need to know.

 1. There are far more books not listed here because this short list includes only audio books in the public domain. AO uses a mix of both older tales and more modern books not yet in the public domain.  For a full picture, you need to look at AO.

 2. AO is far more than a booklist. It is based on principles which are found in Miss Mason's six volumes, in the Parents' Review magazines Miss Mason edited, in articles - all found on AO's website, fleshed out in discussions held on AO's forums, which are free. Other homeschooling moms there share schedules, narration questions, links to resources they've found, advice on what worked and didn't work with their children, and more. There are even study rooms where moms are reading and discussing Miss Mason's principles, her books, and other books- and there are lots of discussions about the books in the curriculum.

 Charlotte Mason herself addressed the erroneous idea that all there is to her programme is a booklist in the sixth volume of her series:

The easy tolerance which holds smilingly that everything is as good as everything else, that one educational doctrine is as good as another, that, in fact, a mixture of all such doctrines gives pretty safe results,––this sort of complacent attitude produces lukewarm effort and disappointing progress. I feel strongly that to attempt to work this method without a firm adherence to the few principles laid down would be not only idle but disastrous. "Oh, we could do anything with books like those," said a master; he tried the books and failed conspicuously because he ignored the principles. 

AO is more than a booklist- and there is a lot more to AO than the booklist.  If you're not participating in our forums, then you're missing an incredible amount of support, wisdom, and encouragement.