CMER 2025: Where are we from?
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CMER 2025: Registration open
Registration is now open for the 2025 Charlotte Mason Educational Retreat. Please, visit the CMER 2025 Website to see the speakers, sessions, schedule, and so much more. We hope you are able to join us.
CMER 2025
It is with great joy we announce the 2025 Charlotte Mason Educational Retreat.
WHO?
The CMER Team and our plenary speaker, Donna-Jean Breckenridge
Donna-Jean Breckenridge lives with her family in northern New Jersey. She considers herself blessed to be a founding member of the AmblesideOnline Advisory, the creators and sustainers of the AmblesideOnline curriculum. Donna-Jean was involved for many years in church ministry with her pastor-dad, she homeschooled her four children, and she now homeschools two of her five grandchildren. She is a frequent public speaker, writer (“This Country of Ours – Annotated, Edited, and Updated” and “Six Voices, One Story – The Heart of AmblesideOnline”), and audiobook narrator – yet she considers her most important roles that of Mom, Mom-Mom, and friend. Her heart’s desire is to encourage others that God is safe to trust, no matter what.
WHEN?
Friday, January 31, to Sunday, February 2, 2025
WHERE?
Colorado Spring, CO
The Hideaway
More information will be available in September.
Registration will open on October 1st, 2024.
Rose Cottage School
Warm greetings from Colorado! I’m Jennifer Taylor, member of the CMER team. What a blessing it was to share such a beautiful weekend with many of you at the CMER earlier this month. This community of love and support touches my soul and is a source of encouragement for me year after year.
In addition to my role with CMER, I have the privilege of offering a Charlotte Mason homeschool enrichment program to families living in and around Colorado Springs. Rose Cottage School is a tuition based program that exists to support, enrich, and enhance a CM home education. Students 1st-5th grade experience the enjoyment of learning with their peers by participating in weekly lessons. Parents gain support by having an experienced CM home educator supplement their core curriculum. In community, we share the calling to educate children with the beauty and richness of a Mason education.
Enrollment is now open for 2024-2025 and I am excited to share that Rose Cottage School will have new offerings this fall! RCS is expanding to include two program options: The Arts and Nature Study. The Arts program will meet on Thursday mornings and includes Artist Study, Shakespeare, Hymn and Folk Singing, Handicrafts, Composer Study, and Folk Dancing. Our Nature Study program will meet on Tuesday afternoons and includes Object Lessons, Nature Walks, and Nature Journaling. Families are welcome to enroll in one or both programs. Please visit the website for more details.
In addition, to support our RCS families in pursuing education as “an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life” plans are in the works to offer parents opportunities to learn more about a Charlotte Mason education and build community through scheduled events. Stay tuned!
If you or someone you know is looking for a Charlotte Mason enrichment program to complement your homeschool, email [email protected] to request an application for enrollment.
Peace and every blessing!
CMER 2024: One Thing
Each year, at the group reflection time that brings the Charlotte Mason Educational Retreat to a close, we encourage everyone to choose one thing they will take with them: one thing to change, one thing to commit to, one thing to get accountability for. The group reflection time allows us to take the first hard step of publicly giving a name to that one thing.
My one thing is simple: cut back.
With the beautiful, life-giving ideas Cindy Rollins shared during the plenaries, I left the retreat prepared to cut back. Within 24 hours, two big asks came my way. They were good asks to do good things with good people for good reasons, but I knew they would not be good things for me to do at this time. To the praise of God, through the ideas sewn at the retreat, I courageously and confidently said no. Saying no to something new is not cutting back but a start and an important step.
In Georgia, we have sweetgum trees. They are considered weeds by many and produce the spikey sweetgum ball. The balls are all over our yard, are painful to step on, and can tear a duck’s foot. (We have many ducks.) Their seedlings pop up like dandelions, growing from the roots of mature trees. We mow them down with ease. This is like saying no. But removing the sixty-foot mature trees is another story. It is a lot of work and can be expensive. This is like cutting back.
A friend asked, “What is behind the cutting back? Overextended? Are you involved in things you shouldn’t be or whose season has passed?”
These are good questions to ponder as I get out the chainsaw to start working on the trees.
CMER 2024: Session Change
Don Rhymer’s session – ‘The Way of the Will’ and a New Parenting Book – will happen during Session D in place of The Fifth Teacher.
‘The Way of the Will’ and a New Parenting Book
How Purposeful and Persistent Parenting Reflects CM’s Principles
Workshop Presented by Don Rhymer
For Parents
John and Cindy Raquet wrote a book decades in the making as a practical guide to fill in the gaps of a Biblical parenting philosophy. Much of this practical guide was written to systematically help parents “who struggle with teaching their children to respectfully obey them” as Scripture commands. It turns out, much of their practical guide resonates with Charlotte Mason’s principles. This session will unpack how many of Miss Mason’s principles, like “The Way of the Will,” intersect with the Raquets’ practical advice on basic parenting, especially for children 10 and under.