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I was going to make sure to mention Charlotte Mason's picture study if you didn't! It's good for grown-ups to. The moms in my Charlotte Mason group did one where we went up in twos to the hosting mom's home office to look at an image and then came downstairs to try to draw what we remembered. It felt like something we undertook in awe because of ascending and descending in silence (mostly due to the office being small!) and it gave us something different to do with drawing than "try to be good at it."

In high school, my AP Euro teacher had us all come *back* to the building the night before the AP exam and took us on an art walk around the school, highlighting works that touched on the history we'd learned. (There were a lot of framed prints in the hallways, but we mostly hustled past them). It was a review, but a review that (like the picture study) was touched by awe and clearly pointed *beyond* the test we were to take.

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You're making me have very fond recollections of the art in my own AP European History class — and here I thought our teacher was just adding those in for fun! (Amazing teacher: last name of Mueller, his uncle flew for the Luftwaffe, his parents met in the Hitler Youth, and he was a progressive Democrat.)

I hadn't run across the "draw the picture" part of the Charlotte Mason picture study — do you happen to have any recommendations for where I should be looking, to get great ideas from that community? (Backstory: I'm beginning a deep dive in CM education; already 1/4 through "Towards a Philosophy of Education". I switched to her writing after finding most of the contemporary stuff sentimental, but now I'm finding her works less "here-do-this"-dense than I was hoping. I intuit that this is a community chockablock with thrilling-yet-sensible ideas, but I'm continually stymied at FINDING that many of them.)

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Let me ask the hostess!

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Here's Jane's answer:

She outlines the lesson for Picture Study in Home Education, pp. 308–11: https://www.amblesideonline.org/CM/vol1complete.html#1_5e

There is a nice article about it by K. R. Hammond in the July 1901 volume of Mason’s journal, the Parent’s Review: https://www.amblesideonline.org/PR/PR12p501PictureTalks.shtml

There are a lot of Parent’s Review articles archived on Ambleside and they are a helpful resource for practical how-to guides to Charlotte Mason principles such as your friend is looking for!

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No snarky comments this week!

I find the idea both intoxicating and timely, as I plan to start “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.” Super-excited to do this for book club — just bought the PDF…

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The Cultural Tutor, theculturaltutor.substack.com, does something like this for adults-- you might get some technique inspiration from subscribing to his weekly updates (it doesn't look like the Substack itself has them, but you can subscribe and get them as emails).

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