A True Good Beautiful Life

This week's special guest is . . .

Sarah Collins

Sarah Collins, MSOT, OTR/L is an occupational therapist with a background in both pediatrics and home health, and a homeschooling parent. Sarah was first introduced to homeschooling in 2016 while working as an OT in a client’s home; she was amazed at the learning atmosphere and opportunities within the home. Now as an OT homeschooling her own family, she noticed that parents, though experts on their own children, were invariably asking the same questions and needed resources. As a result, HomeschoolOT was established.

Sarah now provides classes, consultations, and community to homeschool families to help children thrive in the activities they specifically need and want to do. You can find Sarah on line at www.homeschoolot.com on Instagram at www.instagram.com/homeschoolOT and in the Facebook group she moderates at www.facebook.com/groups/homeschooltherapyideas.com

"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do."

- Helen Keller

"There is no such thing as an individual brain. Transformation requires a collaborative interaction with one person emphatically listening and responding to the other so that the speaker has the experience, perhaps for the first time, of feeling felt by another."

- Curt Thompson in Anatomy of the Soul

On This Episode

Show Notes

Occupational Therapist and good friend, Sarah Collins, of Homeschool OT , sits down with me to talk during our TRUTH segment about the first tool of education that Charlotte Mason gives parents and teachers -- circumstance, or better known as Atmosphere. We touch on topics like alerting our sensory systems, Morning Time, natural environments, and proprioception! Don't know what that is? Neither did I!

For our segment on the GOOD, I share with you 4 things that can destroy your child's love for knowledge -- too many oral lessons, too many lectures, poor textbooks, and grades and competition.

And lastly, in our segment on the BEAUTIFUL, I get to talk to you about Picture Study, one of my favorite things to teach!

Some recommended resources:

Morning Time: A Liturgy of Love by Cindy Rollins
"The Skills Nature Builds" Blog Article by Sarah Collins
Learning and Living 12 DVD Set by Simple Charlotte Mason
Ambleside Online's Topical Series and other CM information
Charlotte Mason's Volumes 1-6 by Ambleside Online
Picture Study Portfolios by Simply Charlotte Mason

Commonplace Quotes

. . . about the child hangs, as the atmosphere around a planet, the thought-environment he lives in. And here he derives those enduring ideas which express themselves as a life-long kinship towards sordid or things lovely, things earthly or divine." - Karen Andreola, A Charlotte Mason Companion, p. 51

Let them learn from first-hand sources of information––really good books, the best going, on the subject they are engaged upon. Let them get at the books themselves, and do not let them be flooded with a warm diluent at the lips of their teacher. The teacher's business is to indicate, stimulate, direct and constrain to the acquirement of knowledge, but by no means to be the fountain-head and source of all knowledge in his or her own person. - Charlotte Mason, Volume 3: School Education, p. 162

Treat children in this reasonable way, mind to mind; not so much the mind of the teacher to that of the child,––that would be to exercise undue influence but the minds of a score of thinkers who meet the children, mind to mind, in their several books, the teacher performing the graceful office of presenting the one enthusiastic mind to the other. - Charlotte Mason, Volume 6: A Philosophy of Education, p. 261

(a) The children, not the teachers, are the responsible persons; they do the work by self-effort. (b) The teachers give sympathy and occasionally elucidate, sum up or enlarge, but the actual work is done by the scholars. - Charlotte Mason, Volume 6: A Philosophy of Education, p. 6

We cannot measure the influence that one or another artist has upon the child's sense of beauty, upon his power of seeing, as in a picture, the common sights of life; he is enriched more than we know in having really looked at even a single picture. - Charlotte Mason, Volume 1: Home Education, p. 309

. . . give a child a single valuable idea, and you have done more for his education than if you had laid upon his mind the burden of bushels of information. - Charlotte Mason, Volume 1: Home Education, p. 174

Application

Think about the atmosphere of your home or classroom. Do the children feel loved and respected? How are you modeling an interest in the noble, lovely, and things of good report? Consider implementing a Morning Time. What topics would you include?
Inspect your textbooks. Are there better living options that you could use to ignite the interests of your readers?
Look around your house or classroom. What objects of BEAUTY are readily available for your family or students to ponder? Pick and artist to study this summer.