As we prepare for season six of The Charlotte Mason Show, we are bringing back a few of our most popular episodes in a midseason mini-series!  Don't miss this week's replay with Cindy West of Our Journey Westward. Cindy West helps us to understand the connection between brain training and a Charlotte Mason education. In this conversation, we dive into how we can make forming good habits fun for our children by including creative activities each day. Guest biography Cindy West is passionate about homeschooling joyfully and loves to share strategies to tackle things that tend to steal joy in the day-to-day grind. A 19-year veteran of homeschooling with a master’s degree in education, Cindy has graduated two children and is currently homeschooling an 8th grader. She’s a Charlotte Mason homeschooler at heart, but knows that any method or curriculum must be adjusted to work with the needs of individual families and even individual children. One of her specialties is helping parents figure out the best ways to tweak homeschooling to find great success. She teaches monthly online Homeschool Masterclasses to parents and regularly shares creative and encouraging homeschooling solutions on her blog, Our Journey Westward. She has written several helpful books and curricula such as Homeschooling Gifted Kids and the popular NaturExplorers series. Teaching twice monthly, online classes to 1st-8th graders during No Sweat Nature Study LIVE lessons is one of her very favorite pursuits ever. She and her students have so much fun learning science and creating nature journal pages together! Brain training is one topic that she fell into by accident and found that it makes a world of difference when taken seriously. Host biography Julie H. Ross believes that every child needs a feast of living ideas to grow intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. As a former school teacher, curriculum coordinator, and assistant director of a homeschool academy, Julie has worked with hundreds of students and parents over the past 20 years. She has also been homeschooling her own five children for over a decade. Julie developed the Charlotte Mason curriculum, A Gentle Feast, to provide parents with the tools and resources needed to provide a rich and abundant educational feast full of books, beauty, and Biblical truth. Julie lives in South Carolina. When she’s not busy homeschooling, reading children’s books, hiking, or writing curriculum, you can find her taking a nap. Resources Brain Training: FUN Ways to Build Stronger and Faster Brains Brain Training Activities for Auditory Attention Brain Training Activities for Visual Attention and Visual Processing Brain Training at Home: What, Why, and How? (Video Training) 15 of the Best Independent Brain Training Games for Kids Connect Cindy West | Website | Instagram | Facebook Julie Ross | Instagram A Gentle Feast | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Website Homeschooling.mom | Instagram | Website Thank you to our sponsors! Medi-Share: an affordable Christian alternative to traditional health insurance A Gentle Feast: a Charlotte Mason curriculum for the entire family Want to know more about the Charlotte Mason method? Visit www.agentlefeast.com and click on LEARN MORE to receive a FREE four-day introduction course. Have you joined us at one of the Great Homeschool Conventions? We hope to see you there! For more encouragement on your homeschooling journey, visit the Homeschooling.mom site, and tune in to our sister podcast The Homeschool Solutions Show. View full show notes on the blog.