What I've Been Reading Lately

Inspired by recent related posts by Sarah at Dancing Through Life with the Downs Family and Lindsay at Bytes of Memory; I thought I'd give you...what I've been reading lately. Two posts in one month--whew! Don't get used to it. :)

• The Gospel of Mark. Reading through this one for small group; disturbed by how long it's been since I've spent any concentrated time in the Gospels. Have I forgotten who Jesus is? In some ways, of course not! In other ways, yeah. Putting my nose in here has been a good memory-jogger. Reading straight through a book like this has also reminded me of the more perplexing passages that I'd be hard-pressed to explain to others. More research required.
• www.simplycharlottemason.com. After a summer of putting it out of my mind, I've had a mini-renaissance of thinking about parenting and specifically about educating the kids. This is a cool website devoted to making a particular philosophy of education --19th century British educator Charlotte Mason's, to be precise--um, simple. My mother-in-law has the complete 6 volume set of her writings in the basement, and I've often eyeballed them curiously but not picked them up due to my experiences with other educational philosophy books a la John Dewey. Now, however, I will abscond with them at my earliest opportunity. This website offers some free e-books (read, pdf files) that really give the ideas and the methods in a nutshell. I've inhaled these over the last week or so. If you're interested, you can check them out here. (Note, while I did download, print out, and read all the others; I have not done so for "The Swedish Drill Teacher.") I am highly tempted to buy their other resources, but this will involve some saving up. What IS this educational philosophy, you ask? Oh ho ho! You'll have to go see for yourself! ;)