Min awakes with joyful anticipation of what God will do as she cooperates with Him in home-educating her 4 creative children, as well as her friend’s precious two children.  She delights in sharing the Gospel-grounded Charlotte Mason philosophy and methods with every family and church.

Over a decade ago, having become convinced of the life-giving paradigm the Charlotte Mason philosophy brings, she has embraced Miss Mason’s principles, allowing them to inform her ministry with moms, college students, and children.

If you were having tea with her, she would tell you God doesn’t waste anything; she can testify to how her varied background in Nursing, law, and nonprofit work establishing safe homes for sexually exploited, pregnant mothers, has helped equip her for her current vocation.

Min is a wife of more than 20 years to her best friend, Young. They have the blessing of pastoring a beautiful, ethnically diverse church in New Jersey. In addition to serving as Pastor’s Wife, the Children’s Ministry Director, an artist, and home-educator, you’ll find her loving on mothers at Life Giving Motherhood – a worldwide community of mothers desiring to grow in their spiritual disciplines and life-giving habits – and podcasting at “Charlotte Mason For All” and “Charlotte Mason’s Volumes.”

Main Sessions

• Courage & Calling – Unveiling God’s Everlasting Purpose For Your Homeschool
• Moses refused to go a step further unless God would go with him. Jacob refused to let go of God until He blessed him. Not because they were incompetent. It was because they had their sights, not on things of earth, but on things of heaven. They had a cosmic view, a clear vision of their everlasting goal.
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• In this workshop, we will prayerfully craft a detailed vision of your child at graduation to set before you. God said, “Without vision, the people perish.” Let’s give Him this time to set His vision in our hearts and move us from confusion to clarity – grasping His everlasting purpose for our homeschools, as we say with Moses: “If Your Presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here!”

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• The Five C’s of Motherhood
• How do we, in Life-Giving Motherhood, cultivate growth in Christ Jesus?  First, with what Charlotte Mason calls the God-given “noble courage” of a mother, we fearlessly forge ahead in nurturing our loved ones; we also make habit changes without giving into anxiety or past failures. We seek clarity, feeding our minds spiritual food. We remain consistent with daily habits and our date with Jesus, developing a steadfast love for Christ. We grow within our Christian community, relying on Jesus’ commitment to us to spur our own faithfulness. As we remain vulnerable to go deep, we cultivate healthy roots with which to feed our minds, homes, ministries, and marriages.
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• The Hidden Work of Rest

Apostle Paul writes, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” (1 Cor. 3:6). There are days I wonder if I am effective in my ministry of motherhood to my children. Rather than the harvest I expect from each new (and to me, exciting!) change I prayerfully make in our home atmosphere and homeschool curriculum, I get…. well, nothing. Some days, I get worse than nothing; I get resistance and what looks like five steps back. On those days, I can only but lift my eyes to the mountains where my help comes from. Only then, I can see with clarity.

My work is like that of Apostle Paul and Apollos. I am to plant the seeds in my children’s hearts through ample opportunity to hear God’s living word and experience His powerful presence. I am to water carefully, while sensitively checking the “soil” to ensure I don’t overwater or underwater the growing seeds preciously hidden underground. Too often, that is where I go wrong.

The ministry of motherhood is one that takes great faith. Our spiritual senses must be sharp as never before. Our faith in the redemptive work of Christ, finished for us on the cross, MUST increase. I’d like to prayerfully explore with you what it means to (1) overwater and (2) underwater. And (3) to do that hard work of proactively seeking rest so that we can discern how God gives the growth, as ONLY He can. That is, through Faith and Love

Immersion Topics

• Plutarch
• Composer & Picture Study
• Shakespeare
• Watercolor Art as Mother Culture

My husband, Jeremy, and I were married almost 15 years ago.  We have three incredible children, Isaac (11), Asher (9), and Abigail (7).  We live in Central Illinois surrounded by family.  We love adventuring in God’s creation on trails, mountains, and beaches.  I used to be a public school teacher, but I’ve been homeschooling my kids with the Charlotte Mason philosophy since they began school.  A couple years ago some other local families and I started a CM learning community.  It’s been great for all of our families.  When we start to see a hole in our kids’ lives and/or education, God has always been faithful to fill it in ways that are better than we could imagine.

Breakout Session

• Handicraft

Steve – I am a husband of Marcia for over 23 years and am a father of six children, ages 10-23, and we have a son-in-law. I have gladly and completely (and joyfully) entrusted the formation of our children first to the Lord and then, by way of educational orientation, to the vision and guiding principles of Charlotte Mason.  I first completed a degree in Occupational Therapy, then Philosophy. Over time, I went back to school as a working professional on the “slow route” to gaining a MA in Counseling and then a MTS in Theology. I serve within Catholic healthcare as a Senior VP for Mission Services where I support Mission, Leader Formation and Pastoral Care. If I end up having a little spare time, I enjoy spending time with our children in our garden, working in the woods on our land or improving our older farm house. I like my coffee black from home roasted beans and I make a Saturday morning breakfast that’s out of this world.

Marcia – I love being part of the Charlotte Mason community in Central Illinois. I am grateful for the other moms in my area who keep reading her volumes with me! Each year adds another layer of understanding and implementation to our Charlotte Mason approach of learning. Steve and I live on 12 acres with timber and animals both wild and domestic. I worked as a Dietitian before choosing to stay home with our six kids. Now I moonlight as a doula providing pregnancy and labor support to other mothers between the days of searching for the best book to use in our learning. I am only homeschooling three children this fall!

Breakout Session

• Cultivating a Life of Service Panel
• Seeing Your Child as a Person Through the Forms (Marcia)

Josh and Vivian have been married since 2008 and are blessed to be able to learn every day with their three daughters, ages 9, 10, and 13.  They are grateful for the support and encouragement they receive from their Charlotte Mason community through the past seven years of homeschooling.  Vivian enjoys exploring new places, learning new skills, and creating beautiful things.  Josh loves being outside cutting firewood, making maple syrup, and maintaining their property.  If they were trees, Vivian would be a little spruce – graceful and fun and always green.  Josh would be an old oak – tall and strong but missing some leaves on the top.

Breakout Session

• Cultivating a Life of Service Panel

Tina Schallhorn is a Charlotte Mason educator and pediatric registered dietitian. She resides in Peoria IL with her husband and three boys. As a family, they enjoy traveling both in the US and abroad, and adventurous eating. Personally she loves handicraft projects, summer mornings and quiet reading times.  She is originally from Brazil where she lived until the age of 17, and then spent almost a decade in Canada before finally settling in the United States.  She feels the Peoria Charlotte Mason community has been a wealth of inspiration and support over the past 7 or so years!

Breakout Session

• Feeding the Person at the Table 
• “The duty of parents is to sustain a child’s inner life with ideas as they sustain his body with food.” Charlotte Mason. 
   
  Mason also teaches us that those ideas need the right atmosphere and discipline to become true education. Those too are the duties of parents to provide. If knowledge is to the mind as food is to the body, then what atmosphere and discipline are we to offer our persons at the table? Does a book list alone lead to a living education?  Then should a food list suffice in producing a life long competent eater? 
   
  In this talk we look at how to treat children as persons at the table in the same manner in which we treat them as persons in the school room. This is not a talk about “what” to feed – there’s plenty of great quality food lists out there – but rather “how” to feed. A method, you might call it. In the school room we call it a Living Education.  At the table we call it sDOR (Satter’s Division of Responsibility in Feeding). The born person is the same.  Join me as we sit at the table for a lovely discussion with Miss Charlotte Mason and Ms. Ellyn Satter on the formation of the life long competent eater.

Chip and I celebrate our thirty first anniversary next week! We graduated our home-educated three adult children. With a better understanding of a Mason education, our Form 1 eight year-old gives us a chance to begin anew this time around. Our family enjoys working together on our cattle/crop farm, playing games, many house projects (ours and our kids) and music. Gardening, preserving the harvest, raising chickens, teaching little ones God’s Word, and supporting my family members in any way I can gives me joy. I participate in our local CM Peoria group, a learning community, and our local Natural History Club. Focusing on Form 1 and 2, I host and facilitate a Folkdance and Games afternoon.

Breakout Session

• Folk Dancing
• Cultivating a Life of Service Panel
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Breakout Session

• Seeing Your Child as a Person Through the Forms