Thinking Love

Amy and Leah are back for a special episode about habits for moms. Why and how do our habits make a difference when it comes to helping our children with  their habits? How can we go about developing good habits? We are excited to share our new workbook,  Habits for a Mother's Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength . Now available in print and as a downloadable PDF. Find out more!

How do we guide our families through the holiday season in a way that is meaningful and restful? And how do we navigate all of the opportunities and good ideas that we have before us? Leah and Amy come back to Charlotte Mason's idea of habit and (its longer ranging cousin, tradition). View the show notes: https://thinkinglove.education/2023/12/07/christmas-traditions/ Subscribe to our newsletter:...

Just because you do school at home doesn't mean you have to do it all yourself! Co-ops, enrichment programs, private and charter schools offer ways to compliment your child's education. Amy and Leah talk about their experiences joining and even starting home ed groups, detailing the highs and lows, and offer ideas to help you figure out whether a group is right for you. Read the show notes: https:...

With countless courses, videos, tutorials, and books available for immediate download, how do we steward all the online resources available to us and our children? Charlotte Mason encourages us to spread a feast but is there a limit? In this episode, Amy and Leah talk about how they incorporate digital content in their homeschools, how they choose what to include, bad choices they've made, and bas...

In the last episode of the podcast, Amy and Leah explored the ins and outs of Charlotte Mason nature study. While nature study is the foundation for the study of science, there is plenty more to this broad discipline, and so we decided to take an episode to deep dive into Charlotte Mason science. We talk about how to use living books, why we need to make science hands on, and how science is inspir...

Nature study is a quintessential part of a Charlotte Mason education, but that doesn't mean that it looks the same for every family. In this episode, Amy and Leah talk about how they do nature study with their kids as well as why we do it at all. What are the principles behind observing the natural world and, once we're committed to nature study, how can we make it happen consistently? View full s...

Even with the best of intentions, most of us look around at some point in the day and wonder how we ended up so busy. In today's episode, Leah and Amy chat about how to manage our time: how can we avoid procrastination, apply the discipline of habit, keep ourselves from dawdling, and just avoid finding ourselves in a tizzy? We definitely don't have perfect time management skills ourselves, but we...

Charlotte Mason died one hundred years ago this year and left behind a legacy that continues to impact countless people today. Amy and Leah launch the latest season of the Thinking Love podcast with a conversation about exactly how Charlotte Mason shared her ideas in a lasting and meaningful way, and consider how we might do the same.  You can find notes for the show on our website: https://thinki...

Join Amy and Leah as they wrap up this podcast season with a discussion on manners. How can we teach our kids to be polite? And while we're at it, how can we help them learn to be the kind of people who are thoughtful and considerate toward others? As Charlotte Mason homeschoolers, our first inclination is to reach for a book - but with manners, that's not always the best option. We chat about mak...

As our children learn to read and write, their first attempts at spelling are endearing. But at a certain point, we may start to wonder  when and  how to teach spelling.  With Charlotte Mason, learning to spell is integrated into many parts of the curriculum, including reading lessons, copywork, and dictation. Together, these lessons help our children learn how to spell by engaging with words in c...

Charlotte Mason hoped that children, educated upon many, beautiful ideas and supported in good habits, would grow up to continue learning their whole lives. With that in mind, educating our children is a dynamic process that moves toward this big picture. We choose books, plan lessons, and teach our kids, but as they get bigger, we start working on habits of independent learning, too. In this epis...

Charlotte Mason believed that children should learn a second language from a very young age. She felt this was so important that teaching foreign language made it into the very short list of daily subjects for a child under six! But if we have little or no knowledge of a second language, it's hard to know where to start.  In this episode of the Thinking Love Podcast, Leah and Amy chat with Adelaid...

Sometimes homeschooling doesn't feel very peaceful. Whether our kids are dragging their feet, or we're struggling with our own attitudes, it's worth thinking about how we can get our day out of a downward spiral and heading toward something better. In this episode, Leah and Amy talk about what to do when our day is less than great. We turn to our tried-and-true friends, Atmosphere, Discipline, and...

How are handicrafts going? Whether you are crafting up a storm or struggling with consistency, we hope that this episode will be helpful and encouraging. We chat about why handicrafts are part of a Charlotte Mason curriculum, what we need to think about when we choose handicrafts, as well as sharing what and how we've taught our children. Read the show notes, including links.

The Thinking Love Podcast is back for a new season, and we'll be talking  Everyday Homeschooling. First up: what do we do with some of the not-so-everyday homeschool days, like the first day back after a summer break? Amy and Leah talk about how we can keep family traditions genuine, rather than an attempt to keep up with all of the pictures we see in our feeds!  We also share where we put most of...

Eighteen months ago, Amy caught wind that Karen Glass had a new project around Charlotte Mason's Home Education . Karen was removing distracting, outdated references, adding back in some essays that had been moved to other volumes, and writing some study questions to help the modern reader see the principles behind Miss Mason's writing. Karen has now published her book, A Thinking Love: Studies fr...

It's summer! Whether you follow a more traditional school schedule or school year-round, if you're in the northern hemisphere, it's time for some sun and hopefully some fun. In our season finale, Leah and Amy chat about what we do when we're not doing school and how our children (not to mention ourselves) can find living ideas to grow and inspire wherever we live. Don't forget that our new self-pa...

Technological advances seem to happen faster and faster, and for many of us homeschool moms, we would prefer to tuck ourselves away with our book stacks and nature journals. But hiding from the Information Age could mean that we are missing opportunities to enrich our homeschools on one hand, and prepare our children for the world they will live in. Join us as we chat with Dachelle McVey about how...

Is the Charlotte Mason method enough? In a world full of pressure to achieve and attain, most of us have asked this question. Perhaps it looms largest on the minds of parents of kids with special needs. But for education specialist and home educator Amy Bodkin, the answer is a definite, "Yes". If your child is a born person, the Charlotte Mason method is not only enough, but it is the foundation f...

In this episode of the podcast, Amy and Leah circle back to the topic of habit training , but with a special focus this time on kids with differently wired brains. We explore how we might expand our understanding of "Education is a Discipline" and think about how to break habits down in order to help our kids learn and grow - starting right where they are. Join us as we break down Charlotte Mason'...

In the last episode of the podcast, Amy and Leah explored what Charlotte Mason really said about kindergarten. Today, they are back with Jennifer Dowdy from Charlotte Mason Mama to talk about how and why we might want to create a kindergarten year for our younger children. Jennifer, a veteran Charlotte Mason homeschooler of thirteen years, shares incredible insight into how to make kindergarten a...

On the Thinking Love podcast, we love to bust Charlotte Mason myths and in this episode we're taking on kindergarten . While we firmly believe in 'gentle and quiet early years', Charlotte Mason never said that kindergarten is wrong, harmful, or off-limits. Tune in for a helpful conversation about how to approach the education of our five and six year olds. This episode is sponsored by the Wise Beg...

Amy and Leah are back for a new season of the Thinking Love Podcast. Our theme for the next few months is Charlotte Mason in the Real World because sometimes we struggle when our ideals meet our reality. To kick off this season, we are chatting about one of the most practical Charlotte Mason ideas: narration. Narration seems so simple, but it's not always straightforward, so we dig into what it is...

The word "joy" has a strong association with the Christmas season. The angels bring good tidings of great joy. One of the Advent candles represents joy. The word joy is often printed on decorations and Christmas cards! In this episode, Leah and Amy ask what joy really is, and how we can have more of it in our homeschools. We hope that this conclusion to our 'Art of Homeschooling' season encourages...

As homeschoolers, we often focus on what we do: the curriculum we use, the books we read, the co-ops we join. Charlotte Mason, however, reminds us that our children's most important lessons often have nothing to do with us. In this episode, we explore masterly inactivity - how the art of doing nothing allows atmosphere to play its part in the lives of our children. For full show notes, visit: http...