Wednesdays with Words: Little Drops of Wisdom from the AO Retreat

Here are some of my notes taken at the Ambleside Online ‘At Home’ Retreat last weekend. Some are more verbatim than others – hopefully I have not misrepresented what anyone said! Additional thoughts and clarifications are in brackets like this: […]. Kathy and Donna-Jean’s talks I have “narrated” in paragraph form. I only wish I could have sat in on all the breakout sessions, because I’m sure they contained even more wisdom and encouragement. 🙂

Karen Glass gave a plenary talk Friday night entitled Believe in Mind.

  • The mind is not [synonomous with] the brain.
  • Charlotte Mason said it [the mind] was a spiritual organism which feeds on ideas.
  • We are not limited to what we percieve physically. [This was a hot philosophical issue in the 1800s.]
  • The opposite of believing in mind results in fear, and [there is] no unity in the curriculum.
  • “They’ll get there in their own time and you can’t micromanage it.”
  • Narration is evidence that ideas have been absorbed.
  • A Charlotte Mason education becomes doable when we believe in mind.
  • There will be fruit, but it won’t look the same for each child. Every mind, like every body, has it’s own unique shape. We provide the same meals, but we can’t choose what form the growth will take.

Cindy Rollins started us off on Saturday with her lovely thoughts on The Habit of Being.

  • Be careful with your time, even small amounts.
  • Model what you want your kids to do.
  • You can’t change your children’s nature, but you can help them develop good habits.
  • Make narration a habit. [She encouraged a written narration a day for older children, which is mostly what Miss A has been doing this past year. Mr. D usually does three a week, and would rebel if I made him do it every day. But we will try to work up to it eventually. 🙂 ]
  • Connecting our children to the past gives them ideas our culture is running away from.
  • Be humble, admit when you don’t know.
  • Don’t panic when your children fail.
  • Do something you don’t want to do a little bit each day, gradually increasing the time. [She gave us a personal example of how she started running.]
  • Habit doesn’t stifle creativity, it is the groundwork.
  • Moms need their own identities, they are persons too.
  • Step back with older kids (17-18). [I would add, and I’m sure Cindy would agree, that you have to start the stepping back much earlier!]

Kathy Livingston spoke about Jewels of Astonishing Worth, which was how Charlotte Mason spoke of the young child. She reminded us that we are facilitators when it comes to our preschoolers: helping, providing opportunites, aware of what they are doing, but not scheduling their every minute. In her research, she found that the best preschools try to imitate the home environment as much as possible. Ordinary family life, outdoor play, conversation and stories are the best way to prepare our little ones for formal lessons later. We can do counting and pre-reading activites as they show interest, but we must be careful not to push them before they are ready.


Anne White’s breakout session was entitled The Habit of Living Books, and her enthusiasm for her subject was evident. 🙂

  • Education is [meant to] build up relationships with things far and near.
  • Living books must be filled with ideas, make us think, vivifying.
  • They help us relate to others with compassion and understanding.
  • They help us make wise decisions.
  • They encourage energy [activity?] rather than passivity.
  • We want the children to make the books their own, to find the key to the storehouse of knowledge. [That last phrase was a word picture that Charlotte Mason used in Parents and Children, I think.]
  • Living books show us our choices matter – they are books for living.
  • They show us that things have meaning beyond our uses for them.

In discussing the ‘how’ of living books, Anne said that along with narration, Charlotte Mason also advocated talking with the children about what they had read, clarifying anything they had misunderstood, perhaps looking at a map to enhance their understanding of what went on in the reading. It’s and aspect of Miss Mason’s philosophy that isn’t talked about much, and she encouraged us to look into it more, and read the articles by one S. De Brath in the AO Parents’ Review archives. My mind went to the questions that Andrew Kern encourages us to ask our students after they read a book, such as, “Should (character) have done (action)?” Something to think about!


 

Donna-Jean Breckenridge spoke on Charlotte Mason in Hard Times, and it was the perfect ending to the retreat. She quoted the preface of Karen Glass’s book, Consider This: “…the children I needed to teach…became the reason I needed to learn.” She encouraged us that although we might be feeling sad that the retreat was over, the real reason we were here was to go back home and put what we had learned into practice! She shared frankly of her struggles to implement Charlotte Mason’s principles with her own children, and it was encouraging to know that even the ladies of the AO Advisory do not or simply cannot perfectly implement the CM philosophy of education. We do what we can to “spread the feast” for our children and trust that God will give the fruit in His time.

Wednesdays with Words is hosted by ladydusk.

8 Responses to Wednesdays with Words: Little Drops of Wisdom from the AO Retreat

  1. Anna, thank you so much for sharing your notes. I live in Canada and there was no way that I would be able to go to the conference but I have been living vicariously through the generous souls who have shared their thoughts and notes. So thank you for taking the time to write these thoughts and words with us.

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