About Living Oaks
Living Oaks began over eleven years ago as a small homeschooling cooperative with five families gathering around shared learning, prayer, and relationship. From the beginning, our desire was simple: to honor the Lord in education, to treat children as born persons, and to walk faithfully alongside parents in the work God had entrusted to them. Grounded in the Charlotte Mason philosophy, we have always embraced an approach to education that is thoroughly Christ-centered, one that recognizes God as the source of all knowledge and learning as a life shaped by relationships, habits, and living ideas. Over the years, the Lord has grown our community to include fifteen to eighteen families each year, forming a rich and relational life of learning marked by truth, goodness, and beauty.
With the graduation of our first seniors in the spring of 2025, we recognized that the Lord was inviting us to grow in a new way. As our students matured, so did the needs of our families, particularly at the upper levels, where thoughtful discussion, deeper study, and sustained intellectual community become increasingly important. In response, Living Oaks Cottage School was formed to provide a teacher-led educational community that partners with families, supports parents who desire guidance in homeschooling, and offers older students a place to engage ideas with maturity, wisdom, and care without departing from the Christ-centered, Charlotte Mason foundations that have always shaped our work.
Today, Living Oaks serves families through two connected learning communities: Living Oaks Cottage School, a two-day-a-week academic program, and Living Oaks Cooperative, our long-standing parent-led enrichment community. Both share the same philosophy and vision, while offering different forms of support to meet families where they are.
Our Educational Philosophy
At Living Oaks, our educational philosophy is grounded in Christ and shaped by the conviction that children are born persons, created in the image of God, and formed through relationship. We utilize the Charlotte Mason method of education. We believe, with Charlotte Mason, that “the knowledge of God is the chief knowledge, and the chief end of education,” and that all learning belongs rightly to Him. There is no division between the spiritual and the secular; every subject is both from God and for God.
Education, therefore, is not merely the transfer of information, but the formation of wisdom, character, and love. We pursue an education marked by truth, goodness, and beauty, one that invites students into a living relationship with ideas, with one another, and with the world God has made. Through a feast of living books, thoughtful discussion, attention, narration, and the cultivation of good habits, we seek to educate the whole person.
How We Measure Education
Charlotte Mason reminds us that “the question is not–how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education–but how much does he care?” True education is not measured by the number of facts a student can recall, but by the formation of affections, what they love, attend to, and feel responsible for. Rather than overwhelming children with information and facts, we seek to offer worthy ideas taught through living books.
When students learn to care deeply about what is true, good, and beautiful, knowledge takes root, character is formed, and learning becomes a lifelong pursuit rather than a temporary requirement.
The Role of Parents
At Living Oaks, we affirm that parents are the primary educators of their children. Scripture consistently places the responsibility for a child’s formation of spiritual, moral, and intellectual development within the home. “These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children” (Deuteronomy 6:6–7). Education, therefore, is not first a task delegated away, but a calling entrusted by God to parents.
Our role is to come alongside families in faithful partnership. Living Oaks exists to support, encourage, and equip parents as they carry out this God-given responsibility by offering instruction, community, guidance, and shared learning without displacing the parents’ central role. As we walk together, we seek to honor the Lord, serve families well, and participate in the work of formation God is already accomplishing in the lives of children. “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Psalm 127:1).