When Ambleside Schools International, who Calvary Schools partners with in providing a Charlotte Mason education, was deciding its curriculum, they wanted to be sure that Handwork was practiced weekly in classrooms at all ages due to its importance in the formation of good habits.
Charlotte Mason gave some basic principles for Handwork in her writing.
▪ Work should be worthy work, not futile or without use.
▪ Habits should be formed in the process of handwork; specifically the habits of precise, careful, steady work and perseverance.
▪ The work, while difficult, should be manageable for children to do without much help.*
What is wonderful about these principles is that they can be applied to work in general in most cases. What work are your children engaging with at home or in other spaces outside of school? Whether it is doing the dishes, weeding the garden, taking out the trash, cleaning their room, or practicing the piano, these same principles can and should be applied.
Most worthwhile work requires careful, steady effort, pushing through difficult things in the process and ultimately leading to a sense of internal satisfaction and the formation of good habits.
One of the keys to achieving these goals is the presence of a joyful, mature adult who is willing to work with the child through difficulties in the process.
The focus of Handwork is not the end product. While we do create beautiful things, the main goals are
forming good habits and inspiring children towards good and worthy ways to engage with the world around them—
not only in their future occupations, but also in how they spend their free time.
It is important to remember that according to Charlotte Mason the formation of the whole child—body, mind, and spirit—is the chief end of education.
The character and habits laid down in the child at a young age, through their adolescence and into early adulthood, greatly impact the person they become.
Handwork is one subject of many that allow us as teachers and parents opportunities to help a child grow in many habits that lead to a flourishing life.
At Calvary, so much of what makes us distinctly Charlotte is not always in what we do, but in how we do it. The same is true of Handwork, it’s not so much about what we are making or the end product, but how we go about doing the work and how the work is growing us and forming us in the process.
*Charlotte Mason, Home Education (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1989) p 315
