The Mother’s First Shelf

Most homeschool mothers spend their days surrounded by wonderful books, reading aloud beloved stories and filling baskets with poetry and living books, and somewhere along the way many of us begin longing for a book of our own. Charlotte Mason believed children are whole persons with minds that hunger for living ideas, and one of the loveliest discoveries a mother can make is that the same is true of her, because when she is reading something good, she carries that fullness into her home and her children grow up seeing that learning is a joy for every season of life.

The best book to begin with is one that fits the season you are living in right now, whether that is a book with short chapters like Gift from the Sea during the years of little ones, For the Children's Sake as your children become young learners, or Charlotte Mason's own Home Education once your students are older. To help you choose, I created A Mother's First Shelf, a free list of ten well-loved books gathered by season of motherhood, with a printable reading tracker to keep beside your chair.