"I am, I can, I ought, I will" is the motto of the CM child, as they endeavour to form good habits as a discipline of their will and behaviour.

Charlotte Mason was a pioneer in the education system, with her ideas of 'delayed' learning (some subjects she felt were better left until the child was older rather than younger) and immersion in a subject. Her method is holistic in approach and emphasises learning through experience, rather than passive listening, storing information or filtering information through a middle man/teacher.

Charlotte Mason also encouraged reading a lot of books, but in the form of biographies and first person accounts of history, rather than dry textbooks recounting events with dates and highlights. She felt that immersing in 'living books' would enable the child to better remember and empathise with the people, animals and events, rather than memorising plain facts.

Language Arts are learned through narration, or retelling a story, which encourages sequencing, logic skills, and writing skills, and also through copywork, which encourages writing through developing skills of transcribing from well-written literature and modelling the techniques of correctly written English. Science is taught primarily through nature walks and observation with written records in personal notebooks, similar to famous historic botanists.