About Autumn Kern and The Commonplace

It’s easy to understand how a mom’s imagination and heart are captivated by the idea of living books, morning time and composer studies. What mother doesn’t want an education that nourishes her child’s soul? It’s like a breath of fresh air to find an education that treats your child as a full person who exists not for the one-day 40-hour work week but for the glory of God in every area of their lives.

But then you notice everything mentions Plato or Boëthius or Plutarch. Classical educators toss out phrases like teleological ends, masterly inactivity and twaddle. And why is there so much Latin? What seemed doable now seems out of reach, unattainable, and maybe just for another type of family.

But that’s not true. A classical Charlotte Mason education is for every child, for every home, for every mother.

The Commonplace exists to bridge the gap between the starting line of the homeschooling journey and the riches of the classical world. It’s your homeschooling Virgil, leading you from the ideas floating high in the sky down to the dirt where you can wrap your hands around them and plant them like seeds in your children’s lives.

Come and get your bearings in the world of old ideas and old books, of wisdom and virtue, and of the means of grace by which God works through the common places—which includes your home.

It was my love of C.S. Lewis and the Inklings that led me to Dorothy Sayers’ famous essay, “The Lost Tools of Learning.” Within those precious twelve minutes, I tripped through the classical wardrobe. And I have to say, I don’t think I’m ever coming out of it.

Autumn Kern is a wife, mother of four, and keeper of an actual commonplace book. When she was twenty-one, she sat under a tree with a man who told her the woman he married would homeschool his children. Handsome as he was, she didn’t anticipate being that woman, but here she is with four little ones in tow, and, as in all God’s providential ways, it has been the greatest gift.

After talking at length for years about classical education to anyone who would listen—and possibly some who wouldn’t—she was interrupted by the aforementioned man, who encouraged her to hit “record.”