Piney Woods Homeschool

Certain relations proper to a child--how much that phrase encompasses!  Volume 3, Chapter 8 almost sums up Charlotte Mason's academic goals entirely.   <<We are more exacting than the Jesuits. They are content to have a child till he is seven; but we want him till he is twelve or fourteen, if we may not have him longer. You may do what you like with him afterwards. Given this period for the establishing of relations, we may undertake to prepare for the world a man, vital and vigorous, full of living interests, available and serviceable.>>   Here is our mission: to train up the child so that by age 12 or 14 he is fitted to meet the world head-on.  We do this by establishing "certain relations proper to a child".  What are these?   * Science * Dynamic relations * Power over material * Intimacy with animals * The great human relationships * Almighty God   Science <<Geology, mineralogy, physical geography, botany, natural histor...

I've been reading Charlotte Mason's Volume 3 on an email list, and we recently read Chapter 4 , which has a great passage I can never find when I'm looking for. The applicable passage is on page 42: <<We have only room to mention one more point in which all of us, who have the care of young people, would do well to practise a wise 'letting alone.' There are burning questions in the air, seething opinions in men's minds: as to religion, politics, science, literature, art, as regards every kind of social effort, we are all disposed to hold strenuous opinions. The person who has not kept himself in touch with the movement of the thought of the world in all these matters has little cause to pride himself. It is our duty to form opinions carefully, and to hold them tenaciously in so far as the original grounds of our conclusions remain unshaken. But what we have no right to do, is to pass these opinions on to our children. We all know that nothi...