Charlotte Mason's first principle is: children are born persons. They are entrusted to us to protect and teach and lead in a manner that pleases their Heavenly Father. They deserve respect and individual attention and education because their souls are worth more than anything else in this world. In this episode, we discuss why it is so important to start with this simple, yet profound, truth.

With so much information available on the internet, it can be confusing to know what we're actually getting into with a Charlotte Mason education. I have read her volumes and hope to clarify in this episode how she actually intended for children to be educated. With things like living ideas, a wide and varied list of subjects --including short lessons that require full attention--narrating what is learned, time out in nature, realizing that all education is self education, and knowing that without God, no learning would happen at all.

Charlotte Mason compared ideas to the mind as food is to the body. Our minds feed on ideas. She said, "Give your 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." In this episode, I discuss some of the different ways that we get ideas and the powerful fruits that can grow from those ideas.