The second of my bonus episodes is here! It was my sincere pleasure to speak with Sally Clarkson about her newest book, Well Lived: Shaping a Legacy of Gratitude and Grace. Consider it the perfect bridge between seasons four and five: how our lives are stories that give shape to our souls.

It's about that time of year when you're starting school and possibly attending co-op. Even if you're not in a co-op, you've probably noted some needed habit training in your crew. This is a case study about my real-life habit training for co-op last year.

I'm grateful to report co-op is a smashing good time for all this year.

It’s the end of season four but here’s what’s to come.

I can’t leave this Latin question alone, can I? Our children are inheriting the richness of the Western tradition and the debt we owe to our Latin past is great. From history to theology, poetry to philosophy, we’re standing upon the shoulders of Latin writers. If all you’ve ever known of Latin instruction is terrified, bored students with a strict teacher, I think you’ll enjoy today. Get ready to catch the vision and answer the question: Does Latin form my children to move in the world in a better way?

One thing I rarely hear mentioned in the classical world is the need for re-reading great stories. Maybe it’s a fear of ruining our habit of attention or a symptom of our modern need to consume and move on, but we’ve missed something important when it comes to revisiting stories. So, let’s ask: How does re-reading change us as readers?

Could we have a season about story without touching on my favorite storyteller, the great Jack Lewis? We could not.

Many of us know Lewis as the great author of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, or Til We Have Faces. Some of us know him as the everyman theologian who gave us the wartime addresses and Mere Christianity. But there’s a lesser-known third part to Lewis: the medievalist. A self-proclaimed dinosaur, Lewis’ mind was of another time and this is the secret reason for the richness of his stories. So, we should all be wondering: What is the medieval mind and how did Lewis form one?

It’s generally accepted that children need good stories. It’s not generally accepted that good stories are the most important thing read to children. We moderns think of fiction as a treat, a bonus, or an escape; it’s nice but certainly not something we have to require for school. This is why many new classical moms find themselves confused while looking over a book list of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, and The Secret Garden for next term. If education is about the future, then we have a question: Shouldn’t I give my children real stories to prepare them for the real world?

We know it’s important to consider the ideas we take in because they form us deeply, but have you ever considered how what you act out forms you just as deeply? The practices we choose to make habits (or the ones we unintentionally form as habits) shape the story we tell ourselves about God, ourselves, and our lives. So, we should all be asking: What practices help me tell a true, good, and beautiful Story to myself?

I’m joined by Tsh Oxenreider to discuss how our practices should aim at our telos, how the historic Church has practices this, and some of our favourite practices to bring into your home.

Once upon a time. The words are an invitation into a world where virtue sparkles and vice is grotesque, and children love to inhabit such a place. But for the mom reading her first set of Grimm’s fairy tales, it’s a different story. They’re dark. There’s magic. Things get a little wild. If you’ve ever found yourself rewriting an old fairy tale on the fly because you weren’t sure it should be read aloud, you’re in good company. But when you’ve been told these are classical must-reads for young children, you have to ask: Why are fairy tales important?

Who hasn’t looked out over a sea of young children staring blankly out of the window and wondered if they’re paying attention? Who hasn’t considered explaining the story or the vocabulary to ensure the children really get it? Perhaps we need to reconsider how young children move and understand in God’s so we can answer today’s question: Do my little kids even understand this story?

Once you begin looking at curricula, it doesn’t take long to notice there’s a lot of overlap on the book lists. Homer. Plato. Plutarch. Dante. Milton. It can leave a mom wondering why we have to read these books in classical education. To get that answer, however, we have to ask a slightly different set of questions: Why do some stories last and why does that matter?

While moms may be the ones buying the books, it’s the family that inhabits the worlds within them. The atmosphere, habits, and ideas of our home are shaped by the stories we read together which means we’re forming the minds, imaginations, and hearts of everyone involved. Whether you just heard about living books or you’ve been reading the classics for years, you have to ask yourself: Are we building a family literary life of truth, goodness, and beauty?

I’m joined by Shay and Catherine Gregorie to discuss how we can inhabit the world of story with our children, teaching them to trace God’s hand in the uncommon and common moments of our lives.

As we discussed last season, there is a marked difference in how one understands the classical world and the modern world. The classical world is a symphony; the modern, a machine. The classical world is harmonious; the modern is fragmented. The classicist is an encounter-er; the modern man, a manipulator.

If there is a single idea to explain these differences, I’d venture to say it’s recognition of Christ as the logos. To really dive into the power of story, we must first look to the unifying Principle who holds all things together. Then we have to ask: How does He give form to everything?

Once upon a time, there were mothers with the power to build worlds with their words. Will you be one of them?

That’s the question I’m posing to you, dear listener, this season. But not without first answering some of your story questions.

I couldn’t start closing out this third season without answering the question in the back of everyone’s minds: Do I really need to teach my kids Latin and Greek?

It’s time to end season three but we’re not leaving the classical world beyond the wardrobe. We’re just going to go camping.

Scouting is a thing in a Mason education but I think it deserves its rightful place in classical education too. Using my favourite Charlotte-Mason-is-classical pegs, we’re going to show how scouting belongs in a classical education and how you can get started.

If we want to cultivate virtue in our children (and, let’s be honest, in ourselves), we need to learn about the sacramental imagination. Some define it as "seeing the love of God in all things” but I’m partial to seeing “a halo to the edges of all earthly things”. Without this awareness of God’s Reality, how do we know the way further up and further in?

It’s just about that time when the classical Charlotte Mason gift guides will abound and while I like heirlooms carved by a dwarf in Narnia just as much as the next homeschool mom, I don’t know if that’s exactly the gift guide we need this year. Tune in for this bonus episode pulled straight from Common House as ‘tis the season (Can you believe it?), and we’ll get back to the liberal arts next time.