The Toolshed and Wonder Tales for All!
Update
THE TOOLSHED
Greetings everyone! Last month I launched The Toolshed, a social network for families using The Children’s Tradition.
When I was choosing a name I wanted it to be meaningful. One of my earliest idea was The Toolshed. Not the prettiest name, surely. But one that is a nod to my beloved C. S. Lewis’ essay “Meditations in a Toolshed.”
“The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.
Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.”
In a world of modern educators aimed at analysis, dissections, and the bare facts of a thing, what Lewis compares to looking at the beam, TCT families are striving for a participational, sensory-rich knowledge where we look along the beam with our students in the poetic mode.
After just one month, The Toolshed is already an active community full of wisdom and encouragement, and I am so grateful for every mom who is participating there!
There are two tiers in The Toolshed:
The Free Area, which includes a general conversation area (Welcome Mat), a Resource Space, and Introductions.
A Paid Area ($12/month or $100/year), which includes Muse Meetings (Live Calls, classes, book clubs, etc.), as well as unique spaces to discuss all the various parts of the curriculum in a more organized, structured format. There is also a space for mothers to share their family’s timetables, lesson plans, etc. that they would likely feel less comfortable sharing in the public forum of the free area. If you are interested in the paid area, but the $12/month subscription does not fit into your budget, just send me an email at amanda@thechildrenstradition.com and I will happily send you a free year-long subscription! Alternatively, if you paid for an annual subscription to the Wonder Years substack, I would be happy to “credit” it towards a Toolshed membership as I scale down what I am doing over here even more. Again, just email me.
Over the next year I will be teaching a class on James Taylor’s wonderful book, Poetic Knowledge, with tonight being our first class at 6 pm pacific (recorded for anyone who can’t make it live). We also have one of the TCT moms, Arielle Tuttle, leading a book discussion group to continue the conversation next week. By the spring I will also release courses to support moms as they prepare for the 2025/2026 school year. The Toolshed is a popping place, and if you are using TCT I hope you will join us there!
WONDER TALES
In light of all the activity happening in The Toolshed, I have naturally not had time to write more Wonder Tales. I am going to pause them for now, though I enjoyed making them so much and hope to continue making more in the future. In the meantime, I am going to open all past episodes up to be available to listen for free. I hope that they will continue to inspire listeners that there is Truth, Goodness, and Beauty to be found in even some of the strangest fairy tales! I will not be planning paid content on this platform in this season, so while I appreciate those who “buy me a coffee” each month, don’t feel bad to unsubscribe from the paywall for now.
Blessings to you all in these early days of autumn!