I don’t know that anyone else has been waiting a long time, but I have! I began writing this book in 2019 and now it’s 2024. Many things have happened since I began, and of course I wasn’t working on this book all that time. That’s why it’s taken so long to finish! I had to keep putting it off to take care of other, more pressing things, including my share of working on Six Voices, One Story which was published last year. However—at last—my little book is nearly ready to venture out into the world.
Much May be Done with Sparrows is a collection of essays—educational meditations based on nuggets of wisdom gleaned from Charlotte Mason. Her volumes are littered with little gems of wisdom—idea-seeds that sprouted and grew into these reflections.
Have you ever heard of a chapbook? It’s a little collection of an author’s writings gathered together and published in a small format— quite often poetry, but it can be prose as well. (This is prose!) I hope you’ll find it a nice size for tucking into a day bag, to be pulled out when you’ve got a minute to sit down with a nice cup of coffee or tea. In these pages, we won’t be wrestling with big philosophical ideas. Instead, we’ll take a nice pocket-sized piece of Charlotte Mason’s genius, turn it over and and over in our hands and thoughts, and appreciate how precious the little things in life can be.
All teachers need to refresh their hearts, souls, and minds at intervals, and this is especially true for homeschool moms. This is a book for homeschooling parents.
I hope that the thoughts and reminders here will keep your heart focused on the things that are truly important. I hope you will pick up a useful idea or two, like a stray gift, that will ease some part of your teaching work.
I hope, most of all, that as you enter into the little things I’ve written about here that you will find the joy of your work renewed and strengthened. Yes, homeschooling is a large and important task. Yes, the days can grow long and tiresome. Yes, sometimes we get weary and disheartened. But in the end, teaching is not a drudgery. The joy of learning that we want to preserve and encourage in our children is our joy as well. Here is a little passage from the title essay:
We would do well to apprehend the truth that our lives are made up not of years or months or even weeks, but only moments, one after the other. We have only today, this crumb of time. What are we meant to be doing with it? What life-giving blessings have been poured into it for us? If we pay attention to the blessings at hand—whatever they are—this moment will be a moment of nourishment, joy, peace, or labor. Whether we are washing dishes or picking up toys or changing a diaper, that is not a wasted or worthless moment. Those tasks are a sign that we have been blessed with food to eat, a home to live in, and children to love.
from Much may be done with sparrows
I’ll have to keep you updated about the exact publication date, but I’m hoping it will be available in June 2024. We’re in the home stretch with this little book and I’m so excited to show you the cover and talk about it. I hope it will be a blessing to you as you take a break from the 23/24 school year and get ready to dive in to 24/25. Home educating your children is a big job, and sometimes you just need some encouragement. That’s what this book is for.
Hosted via the 
Just after I wrote In Vital Harmony, I began to reread Charlotte Mason’s Home Education. I was deeply immersed in the principles, and keenly aware of every turn of phrase that made reference to them. As I read through Home Education, I could see the wonderful connections and related parts that I had just written about, and I thought—wouldn’t it be wonderful to read Home Education with a study guide that would ensure the principles were highlighted?
After I abridged A Philosophy of Education as 
Home Education began as a series of eight lectures delivered to parents. Eight. If you open any contemporary publication of Home Education, you will find only six. But the other two lectures are still out there. In 1905, Home Education was updated with a lot of material related to teaching lessons. In order to make room for the new material, lectures seven and eight were moved to a new volume—Formation of Character. Yes, that strange, eclectic volume that not many Charlotte Mason enthusiasts find time to read in the year of our Lord 2022. (But if you want to explore it further, I collaborated on a good overview of it in the 
Charlotte Mason took them out in the first place to make room for new material, and I made room for them by leaving out other things–beef tea, wool clothing, coal fires, and Victorian-era science about the brain—and full-time nannies, as much as I could. The things you really want from Charlotte Mason—her educational principles, her practical advice, her wisdom and encouragement—that is all still here, presented in short readings that can be finished in as little as ten or fifteen minutes. Each reading is followed by three points for discussion, further thinking, or practical activity to help you get the most out of the material. I think it will work well for those who want to read and discuss in community. (If you do that, let me know how it goes.)
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I did an informal poll in the 
I’m so excited to share that 
Now that it’s January, I have been flooded by questions about when, exactly, Know and Tell will be available, and that is perfectly fair because I said January, right?
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