Karen Andreola, respected homeschooling mom and consultant is the author of A Charlotte Mason Companion: Personal Reflections on the Gentle Art of Learning, Beautiful Girlhood, and Simply Grammar: An Illustrated Primer.

You have written in A Charlotte Mason Companion: Personal Reflections on the Gentle Art of Learning that "atmosphere is one-third of education." Can you elaborate and give concrete examples of how you have put this principle into practice?
Every teacher ought to have a portable gardener's tool kit with three basic and very useful tools in it. These tools are the instruments of education that help the teacher tend her garden of students. Her goal is that they will grow up vibrant and steady, toward the sun (or the Son of God). The first tool is atmosphere, the second is discipline, and the third is a life of ideas.

A pleasant atmosphere makes the best learning environment. I start the day off with a "good morning," even if I feel I've gotten up on the wrong side of the bed. Courtesy is following the golden rule hourly—doing unto others what we would have them do for us. This, Jesus' principle for living, does help alleviate bickering. Singing together helps, too.

Table manners and good table conversation secure a mother's sanity. When my children were young, I would keep a book of silly riddles handy in a kitchen drawer so I could read one or two aloud while they ate. This gave them something to think about. As they became older, I would ask one child to share at the table from a chapter of literature he had just finished reading.

Anything a person doesn't like doing can be called work. Schoolwork can be made more enjoyable by finding value in learning something new with each lesson. I often ask a child, "What new thing did you learn from that chapter?" After he narrates, I then respond with a "Oh, that's interesting, isn't it?" This is also using the other two of our gardener's tools, that of discipline and ideas. Discipline means consistently doing what we ought to do, which is actually the forming of good habits. The use of habit in the home school can make for smoother days instead of weary days of endless friction. A little penmanship practiced at the same time every morning will yield better results than haphazard practice throughout the week, for example. The same goes for reading aloud. Let the child see that he is making a little bit of progress every day and he will be encouraged. How about the tool called "ideas"? A dull education (only memorizing facts and information) leads to repressed initiative. A bored student is one who is rarely given ideas. If we give our student at least one fresh idea a day—something new to think about—he will be more satisfied with his learning experience. God made children naturally curious, so to feed their craving to know and their willingness to develop their powers of imagination, we give them knowledge in story form (Bible stories, stories from history, hero stories of adventure, biographies, etc.). We also let them play, explore the outdoors, and make things with their own hands. This makes for a happier home atmosphere.

Homeschool mothers are subject to overwhelming demands on their time. What steps have you taken to simplify your life so that you can be a more effective teacher and homemaker?
Homeschooling has a way of backing a mother into a corner of efficiency. Actually, it wasn't until the 16th year of our marriage that we had the use of a second car. Before that, Dean took the car to work, and I was home from Monday through Friday—marooned, so to speak, unless I drove him to work and picked him up again. I learned in those years that it is entirely possible to homeschool, keep house, and even run a small home business with young children in the house because I wasn't spending my time in traffic chasing appointments or picking up an item or two for supper last minute. My schedule was almost entirely a home schedule. I look upon those earlier years of homeschooling with fondness.

After breakfast, we had lessons. The lessons (math, phonics, reading, narrating from good books, grammar, penmanship, etc.) were always short ones lasting 15 minutes or less in which I expected the child's fullest attention. Gradually, with the child's maturity, the lessons lengthened a bit. In the earliest elementary grades, we were always finished well before lunch. When I added more students and the grades got higher, we would end up having a late lunch so I could say we finished our more bookish education by lunch.

At lunch, since I was in the kitchen anyway, I would often prepare some of supper ahead and put it aside. Suppers were mostly simple ones. If I was involved in making a casserole, I frequently made twice as much so that we could rely on the leftovers or save the surplus portion in the freezer for an "instant" meal in the future.

My babies always took a nap after lunch, but by the time a little one reached the age of two, a short quiet time is all I expected. While the children were in their quiet time spots, I had a little time to myself in which to bask in just enough calm stillness and solitude that enabled me to pray and ponder uninterrupted. Most of the afternoon, however, consisted of play. A change of scenery is necessary for those who spend so much time together at home. Therefore, unless the weather was severe, we spent time outside together every day. I was never in a rush to go anywhere. Nature study was done one day a week outdoors. We took walks through the neighborhood. Even a small backyard in spring and summer will supply a young child with numerous insects to watch, bird visitors at a feeder, and a place to grow radishes, tomatoes, marigolds, or sunflowers. I believe play and nature study to be important aspects of a happy childhood. It develops the powers of observation, imagination (brain) muscles, as well as physical muscles and lungs. It retains a sense of wonder.

When my children got a little older (ages 4 to 11), I would work at my desk for an hour in the afternoon. I had a quarterly magazine for six years. My desk was placed at a window where I could watch and listen while they (10 feet away) were in the puddle pool, in the sandbox, on the rope swing, or climbing trees. I would often take my research and writing outside with me. Evening was always another read-aloud time. Dean and I took turns reading from classic children's literature. I enjoyed this immensely as I read so few books in my own childhood.

One evening a week, I would start some laundry. The next day my goal was to keep the machines going without pause. This way I never needed to do laundry more than one day a week—unless there were cloth diapers to wash. Baskets of clean clothes were dumped on my bed all day. For one hour, right before or after supper, we would all stand around the bed folding the huge pile together while we listened to Mozart, Bach, or a good story on cassette.

Homeschooled children are known for doing housework. The number one chore is probably that of washing dishes. Take any 10- to 17- year-old homeschooler and you'll discover the evidence—dishpan hands!

Food shopping can be done on an evening or a Saturday, but shouldn't need to be done more often than one day a week. Bulk buying of dry foods makes good sense. The children recognize my signal for tidying up and vacuuming. I stand at the edge of a room with my hands on my hips and ask hypothetically, "How did this place get so messy?" I set the kitchen timer for 30 minutes, and we work together diligently to see how much we can get done before it buzzes.

When I started driving children in traffic to the orthodontist, to music lessons, to a friend's house, to driver's ed, etc., life became hectic. I learned to run on adrenaline. Therefore, my advice to the homeschool mom is to keep a home schedule as much as possible. In this way, homeschooling is entirely feasible.

In our catalog, you've contributed wonderful ideas for outdoor nature walks and activities. Do you also have some favorite indoor, rainy-day activities for kids?
When my children were small, they liked to play "camp out." A blanket over some chairs made a tent where stuffed animals were arranged, along with other provisions. All the arranging was the focus of the fun.

This may seem too simple a suggestion, but the truth is my children's favorite rainy-day activity became drawing. They listened to beautiful classical music as they drew. A photograph or picture was chosen, and they would set about to duplicate it with pencil and/or watercolors. My son currently draws fighter planes, his own designs, landscapes. My younger daughter draws horses and favorite scenes from history. My eldest daughter likes to draw from romantic Victorian paintings. There are usually lots of flowers in her drawings.

My children also like helping me in the kitchen, making music together on their instruments, writing letters to pen pals, or making clay figures that can be baked and painted. When they were younger, we did seasonal crafts. We ironed autumn leaves in wax paper and made Indian corn necklaces, cornhusk dolls, Christmas ornaments, gingerbread houses, paper chains, paper snowflakes, and Valentines. The girls have learned the basics of sewing and knitting. One day some years back, when my son had had enough of his Legos, he did a little knitting with us, but he pulled the living room blinds down first!

On a real dark and gloomy winter's day, I will put on a lovely video—one by Patricia St. John, for example, or a Moody science video. But videos, like sweets, have always been used sparingly in our home as not to displace more creative activities.

Learning becomes more specialized as children grow older. Now that you're homeschooling teenagers, how have you adjusted your teaching techniques to meet the developmental challenges your children face?
There is a quote by Charlotte Mason, which I think pinpoints the goal of the educator and also epitomizes high school. She calls it the golden rule of education, "whereby teachers shall teach less and scholars shall learn more." She adamantly believed that "There is no education but self-education and only as the young student works with his own mind is anything affected." Let's take essay writing, for example, because it is a more specialized method for showing what a student knows. Essay writing is really just a more sophisticated use of Charlotte Mason's method of narration. Young students become knowledgeable when we lead them to think through what is presented to them. The habit of a young child telling a portion of what was read back in his own words (giving a narration) becomes a positive skill (a strength) for high school. A teacher who has spent regularly scheduled minutes listening to her young students narrate, encouraging them to become accustomed to explaining and describing what he is learning, first orally and later by writing, is developing a necessary high school skill. Thus, a student with experience in narrating is well prepared for essay writing. When a high school student makes a statement or gives an opinion, such as "Teddy Roosevelt was a persistent and courageous man," he then must cite examples from the book or other sources to support his claim. Here is where narration comes in. He supports his statement with various narrations (his own words) and footnoted quotations. And there you have a high school paper. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Simple, yes, but narrating is work. It works the mind in more sophisticated ways and is a far better means to gaining (and showing) knowledge than by way of the multiple choice, true and false, fill-in-the-blank quiz or test.

As our children mature, the boundaries of the world need to become wider. Teens have a desire for society—a desire to socialize. Homeschoolers are used to intermingling with people of various ages, but they need to learn to become good conversationalists. Most of our friends and acquaintances have something to say worth listening to, and we should have something to produce from our own store of experience or reading that will interest others. To be a good conversationalist is also, I believe, an asset to the Christian who practices friendship evangelism, who is to be not a dull but an interesting witness in the world. A teen is putting his finishing touches on his personality. Therefore, I don't think it is wise to ignore a teen's desire for a little society. To accomplish this I have held Shakespeare classes in my living room. I teach an 8-week course that culminates in the attendance of a local Shakespeare production. The teens are assigned parts for reading aloud. In some homeschool groups, a play is performed by the students themselves. One year my students joined two other families of teens at the house of a friend to do a biology lab. They dissected cats—studying a different system each week. This once-a-week co-oping—to read a play; have a literature club; do a lab or a science, history, or nature project—is a good way to widen the boundaries and liven up a teen's high school with a little society.

As a child becomes proficient on a musical instrument, he may play for church or join a small group of players. My teens have played on the violin and cello for nursing homes, a Christmas open house, a ladies' retreat, a Memorial Day service at a cemetery, and in a small community orchestra. It has been a good (and safe) way to meet people in the community. I've taught my children that everyone needs to be "of service" to others. This idea should be in keeping with the consideration of a vocation.

As far as math goes, in order to do well on the math section of the SAT, a thorough knowledge of Algebra I and II is all that is necessary, along with some critical thinking. Algebra and other higher math and science courses taught on video are becoming popular. We have taken advantage of lectures on video by enthusiastic speakers on the U. S. Constitution, and also a worldview course. These have helped my students (and me) understand concepts, ideas, and philosophies. Overall, high school students who are largely self-educated, have read widely, and understand what it means to be "of service" are proving themselves to be excellent college students.