A Review from the Eclectic Homeschooler Online Magazine July 1, 2004 Issue:

“Veteran homeschool mom and native Houstonian June Butchee divulges her family’s homeschooling successes in her first book, Through the Years with Charlotte Mason. Butchee, who now lives in The Woodlands, shares her heart and her 14 years of home educating wisdom, and encourages you to look into Miss Mason’s methods for nuggets of wisdom adaptable to your own family.

Butchee’s 121 page, comb-bound book really is more like a manual – the kind you highlight, adding your own thoughts to in the margins, and use. “Education should not be a chore or a drudgery, Butchee writes. “ It should be enjoyable, which contributes to making it memorable.” She means that, too. The fourteen chapters that follow her disclaimer paint lovely pictures of nature studies and bird watching, whole-book reading and exploration-minded field trips.

Butchee has a come-along-side-you approach that is easy to read and easy to understand. Her style is conversational as she shares with you an approach to home education that is as different from most mental images of the task as an old-fashioned Sunday drive through the country is from a race track. With Butchee's help, you can tearlessly tackle Shakespeare, glide through more-than-enough high school credits, and really enjoy your children as they readily absorb education and develop the pleasure of learning.

Butchee includes helpful hints on literature, history, nature studies, other sciences, citizenship, language arts, poetry, art, music, and geography. In page after page, you'll find how the Butchees grew and changed and learned through adapting the Charlotte Mason style of education to their home. Butchee shares their successes, her regrets, and even curriculum and school book lists. The book list, broken down by subjects like literature, religion, poetry, and economics, includes self-reading, grade-level suggestions as well as the subjects covered in the books. Fourteen-year-old Patrick even lets "Mom" share his K-7th curriculum list. 

Beyond the “nuts and bolts” of teaching, Butchee assures her readers that it’s okay to follow what you feel is best for your child. “You have my permission to enjoy wonderful literature with (your) children!” she says.  It sounds almost funny for a stranger to give you this freeing permission. I have frequently heard experienced homeschoolers open this door of relief to newcomers who oft-times have a certain public-school inflicted image of how “school” should look. Miss Mason’s approach, handled well by Mrs. Butchee, will have your children curled up next to you on the sofa with their “whole book,” and later you'll be challenging your children, “Let’s discover what’s in the back yard today.”

~Deborah Deggs Cariker~

asst.editor/product reviews department

Eclectic Homeschool Online magazine~http://eho.org