Laying Down The Rails

For those of you who know me, you know that I love to read! I am a researcher at heart. This is a favorite on my bookshelf. I find myself from time to time coming back to this wonderful reference book by Charlotte Mason, called Laying Down The Rails. If you've never heard about Charlotte Mason you can learn more about her here. 

Charlotte emphasized the importance of character building and habit training and likened it to laying down rails on which our children's lives could run smoothly. 

This book is chalked full of so many wonderful nuggets and quotes. Here is one of my favorite quotes:

"The Mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days."

Smooth and easy days! Isn't that something we all want? Yet, the implication here is that without the hard work of training, discipline, and etc...our days will be anything but smooth and easy.

If you'd like to learn more about habit and character training this book is a must have for sure! Habits are divided into 5 easy to reference sections along with practical suggestions and how to's in the following areas:

• Decency and Propriety Habits
• Mental Habits
• Physical Habits 
• Moral Habits
• Religious Habits

“Just as it is on the whole easier for the locomotive to pursue its way on the rails than to take a disastrous run off them, so it is easier for the child to follow lines of habit carefully laid down than to run off these lines at his peril. It follows that this business of laying down lines towards the unexplored country of the child’s future is a very serious and responsible one for the parent.  It rests with him to consider well the tracks over which the child should travel with profit and pleasure; and along these tracks, to lay down lines so invitingly smooth and easy that the little traveler is going upon them at full speed without stopping to consider whether or not he chooses to go that way”~Charlotte Mason

You can find Laying Down the Rails here. For more Charlotte Mason Stuff, be sure to check out www.simplycharlotte.com

Mel