Who is this lady, and why does she call herself "The Charlotte Mason Girl"? - I'm pretty sure you asked yourself this question the first time you heard about me. Am I right?! This is a legitimate question.
My name is Sue Pruett, and I've been schooling our children for nearly 10 years, now. WOW! I can hardly believe it! I have almost always used the methods developed by Miss Charlotte Mason.
When we began to look into methods for schooling our children, I began to hear about this woman from the turn of the century whose pioneering work in education changed the way children were taught. She thought that all children should have an excellent education, regardless of economic condition. She believed that a great education could be achieved gently. She thought the best way to inspire children to great thoughts and actions was to put their minds in direct contact with other great minds through the excellent, living books written by these great minds. This inspired me, and as we began to educate our oldest child, I began to - very imperfectly - use the method developed by Miss Mason. As I began using living books for curriculum, we saw wonderful results!
As our family grew, and the challenge of educating several children, while caring for baby and/or toddler at the same time, we ventured into some other 'easier' methods. They weren't easier. They stressed me out. They stressed the children out. They just didn't fit us. We came back to Charlotte Mason's methods, we began using living books for curriculum, and have enjoyed the peaceful fruit of well-educated, happy children - and Mommy, too!
My husband owns an on line bookstore, and last year we ventured out into exhibiting at a couple of home school conventions. We sell a few different things for home-schoolers, including some great curricula - but they don't all have to do with the CM method (as it is affectionately called!). When someone would ask me about one of the curriculum sets we have, they would ask me if we used them, and I would answer that "No, we don't. I've tried some of these personally, but I just realized that I'm just a Charlotte Mason girl, so I went back to that." It didn't really help our sales of these items, to be sure. But it was then that I realized that I AM a Charlotte Mason girl - and I'm here to stay!
So that's my story about how I got here. I invite you to come along with me on this great journey of educating my children in the ways of Charlotte Mason!
As one who has benefited directly from this CM girl's teaching method (like I'm the Grandmother of her children!) I can say I support Sue completely in what she (with, of course, the Lord's guidance) has accomplished in her children. What a blessing the children are to us, so intelligent, sweet, kind and obedient. This blog has given me information I was unaware of..we just never seem to talk about the "Whys" and "Hows" of the Home Schooling methods, so I've enjoyed this! Sue is so well-versed and writes well...Yeah, yeah..I MAY be somewhat biased, but I don't think so...I KNOW what the results are...I love home schooling and wish I had known about it when I was raising my three wonderful children. God Bless You and I'll continue to pray for you and Larry!!
Posted by: Christina Pruett | 03/21/2009 at 12:28 PM