Piney Woods Homeschool

Providing young children with ample opportunity for exploring the world and using their senses may be a key component of the preschool years, but along with that comes the  need for free play. Certainly, as mentioned in the previous post, children benefit from some guidance as they explore the world, some assistance in learning to use their senses, but just a little. “The notion of supplementing Nature from the cradle is a dangerous one. A little guiding, a little restraining, much reverent watching, Nature asks of us; but beyond that, it is the wisdom of parents to leave children as much as may be to Nature, and "to a higher Power than Nature itself."” CM Volume 1 p. 186 Charlotte Mason believed children must be fairly free to do as they choose during these years. “Nature will look after him and give him promptings of desire to know many things; and somebody must tell as he wants to know; and to do many things, and somebody should be handy just to put him in t...

If we choose to counter popular culture by delaying formal academics until first grade, then what do we do during all the years before then?  The next few posts will touch on a few key areas. Charlotte Mason says that “wider training of the senses” is a mother’s “primary duty.”  To begin with, this simply means allowing the child opportunities to use his senses, to explore his world. “But it is possible that the child's marvellous power of obtaining knowledge by means of his senses may be undervalued; that the field may be too circumscribed; and that, during the first six or seven years in which he might have become intimately acquainted with the properties and history of every natural object within his reach, he has obtained, exact ideas, it is true––can distinguish a rhomboid from a pentagon, a primary from a secondary colour, has learned to see so truly that he can copy what he sees in folded paper or woven straw,––but this at the expense of much of that rea...

Sending a child to first grade without having had several years of formal or semi-formal academic instruction almost, these days, amounts to parental neglect as far as most parents or schools see it.  Middle class parents routinely consider two or three day preschool for academic preparation even when a parent stays home to care for children, and barring that, the at-home parent expects to begin lessons of some sort by age two or three. Charlotte Mason discouraged formal lessons before the age of six, for developmental reasons.  Prior to that age, she believed, children's brains required freedom to choose their learning opportunities, within boundaries.  Young children have so much learning to do simply to satisfy the demands of their own brains and bodies that imposing additional learning burdens, even if they are fun, would be too much strain as well as limiting the opportunities for the learning they naturally need. “His nerve centres and brain power have been...