The Bibliovore's Wife

One of my themes on this blog is Charlotte Mason education and surrounding conversations. Narration is a central aspect of guiding children using the philosophy into actively learning and processing content. A historical phenomenon that comes to mind lately when I consider narration is the existence of oral cultures in the past and present, especially in cultures whose writings resulted in the canonical Scriptures. Let's explore how these two things fit together. Overview of the Charlotte Mason Philosophy Briefly, Charlotte Mason is not so much a curriculum as a philosophy, that is, a way of thinking about education and implementing that education in a way consistent with thinking and congruent with the individual's family environment. The CMEC  has multiple pages devoted to resources and philosophical description of how many families implement CM. Subsections below outline major "physical" components of the outworking of CM philosophy. (Here's a link to her core ...

In our years of marriage, Husband and I have determined that our financial "personalities," while quite different, are compatible. Since he was a philosophy major in college, one outgrowth is that we are both conscious of how our worldviews shape what we do with the money God provides through work and gifts. How have we blended our two personalities in this aspect of married life? How Do People Deal with Money? I grew up in a debt-free, no-credit-card family, with parents with opposing money personalities. So, that clash influenced what I heard and what I internalized in childhood in terms of what my money values turned out to be. Financial Personalities There are quite a few classification systems for financial "personalities." I've highlighted a few here:  Investopedia  and Refinery29  say 5: Big Spenders/Risk-Takers = spend a lot, don't search for bargains, risk-tolerant in investing Savers = opposite, debt-free, "frugal", risk-averse in investi...

In our parish, Sunday school is the generic term for Sunday morning pre-service classes offered for all ages. The book discussion on Surprised by Hope  (N. T. Wright) has been for one of the adult groups, and a new member catechesis class and church history class being offered at the same time for other adults. This week, though, I'd like to look at the Sunday school from the ground up--starting at 18 months. How do Christians Look at Sunday School? Like many of my readers, I grew up in churches with Sunday school but without  children's church . At the outset, it helps to define both of these, before diving into more of the US context of Sunday school. Please note that the linked article described a survey that had much more diverse opinions than those reported. "Sunday school," for the purposes of this post and based on the article, denotes an instructional time on Sunday mornings for children who are usually segregated by age or age group. "Children's chur...

Intro: When I was a child, I remember enjoying some of the Lord Peter Wimsey detective stories written by Dorothy Sayers. Years later, based on a recommendation I don't recall, I requested The Whimsical Christian  for a Christmas or birthday present, which Husband was obliging enough to get. Notwithstanding a humbly designed cover and text layout, this book became one of my favorites from 2023, so I wanted to do a reflection on it this week. As a reminder, here's the general outline of this post: I will . . . Contextualize the author's writings as a whole (bibliography) Bring the author's major ideas to the present day Comment on major sections of the book, or important chapters, depending on organization What Else did Dorothy Write? Being a somewhat compulsive writer, Dorothy had an impressive literary output . Publishing from 1923 until her death (1957), she started with the Lord Peter Wimsey series, including 11 novels and additional short stories. Before  Jill Paton...

Have you ever played charades with music? I remember, when my family played, that my parents would be on a team against two of us children. The trouble was, while my dad knew all the tunes, he couldn't reproduce them. Meanwhile, my mom could reproduce them accurately, but didn't know them. The question then is: How does one raise a toddler in the best of both worlds? Our Backgrounds in Musical Education/Experience When we met, and re-met, Husband and I knew that the other had a musical background, which certainly has helped our relationship! Hopefully, some details of that background will help to explain why we did what we did in our parenting thus far. Bibliovore Husband attended a liturgical Lutheran (LCMS) church throughout childhood and early adulthood. As such, he grew up with congregational singing accompanied by organ, choir, and other instruments. Features of this singing included (1) refrains and variations repeated weekly (e.g., Introit, Kyrie, and Sanctus); (2) cycli...

If you're a Christian, chances are you read from the Bible (somewhat) regularly. To help oneself make it through the entire Scriptures rather than just " Bible-dipping ," many people use a reading plan of some sort. If you've found one you love, stick with it--but check out the rest of this post for some ideas in case you're ready for a change! No pins for this post, because a Bible reading plan takes up too much space if it's written in legible font size! 😂 Why Read the Bible Outside of Church? Short answer: "Give us this day our daily bread " part of which is Scripture meditated upon. As a pastor from my childhood once said, this reading can be very ordinary, without any mountaintop experiences, but still benefit you, because "it's our daily bread, not our daily croissant." Ancient Literacy As I explored in a post from The Renaissance Biologist last year, literacy rates in the ancient world were fairly low. I'll reproduce N. T. ...

If you're the parent of a toddler, and are currently homeschooling or plan to homeschool, you're probably also trying to sift through the plethora of available information about both concepts. One very important part of toddler home education I'd like to focus on this week is having a realistic yet optimistic view of the toddler development process. Come along for the ride! What is a Toddler? Because toddlers toddle, the  dictionary  synthesizes the age range as 12-36 months or 1-3 years;  other sources  cap toddlerhood at 4 to overlap preschool ages. Child is currently a toddler by either of these definitions. Physically For this section, I'm choosing  Mayo Clinic  rather than CDC because in 2023 their milestone lists were revised to be more inclusive, but that has the result of decreasing needed early intervention for some . . . PTs, OTs, and SLPs are--professionally--grumpy about it). At around 1 year old, a  typically developing  toddler will ...