Uncle Remus

When we read the Uncle Remus stories in Year 0, I pick and choose the stories we read so as to be sure to read the most familiar tales and to avoid some of the more unsettling stories.  I do like to use the original Joel Chandler Harris version, despite the dialect, because Julius Lester omits the Uncle Remus frame story in his version and I think that part of the story is important.

If you are not familiar with these stories, you might want to read about why they are important.



This is the list of tales I read during the preschool years:

Uncle Remus Initiates the Little Boy
Wonderful Tar-Baby Story
Why Mr. Possum Loves Peace
How Mr. Rabbit was Too Sharp for Mr. Fox
Story of the Deluge
Mr. Fox Tackles Old Man Tarrypin
Mr. Rabbit Grossly Deceives Mr. Fox
Mr. Fox is Again Victimized
Mr. Fox Goes a-Hunting But Mr. Rabbit Bags the Game
Old Mr. Rabbit, He’s a Good Fisherman
Mr. Rabbit Finds His Match at Last
Mr. Rabbit Meets His Match Again
Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Bear
How Mr. Rabbit Lost His Fine Bushy Tail
Mr. Fox and Miss Goose
Mr. Rabbit’s Astonishing Prank
The Story of the Pigs
How Mr. Fox Failed to Get His Grapes

Jewels of Astonishing Worth Part 6 - Other Goals

Charlotte Mason has much to say about the power of developing constructive habits.  The science behind this idea was known somewhat even in her time and is confirmed now as we more fully understand the formation of neural pathways.  Sometimes, students of Mason make almost an idol out of habits, believing that if once they can form effective habits in their children the difficulties are over.

Charlotte Mason made a point of insisting that habits are not our most important or sole focus.

“The busy mother says she has no leisure to be that somebody [who takes time to gently guide a child exploring], and the child will run wild and get into bad habits; but we must not make a fetish of habit; education is a life as well as a discipline.”

Charlotte Mason  Volume 1 p. 192

Discussing all of her thoughts on habit training would require more than this single post, so we will pass on to another area of focus after just this one more note.   Mason encourages us to secure cooperation and participation through gentleness.

“Do not treat the child's small contumacy too seriously; do not assume that he is being naughty: just leave him out when he is not prepared to act in harmony with the rest. Avoid friction; and above all, do not let him disturb the moral atmosphere; in all gentleness and serenity, remove him from the company of others, when he is being what nurses call 'tiresome.'”  

CM Volume 1 p. 181

One last area of significance during the preschool years: storytelling and conversation.

“In connection with this subject let me add a word about story-telling. Here are some of the points which make a story worth studying to tell to the nestling listeners in many a sweet "Children's Hour";––graceful and artistic details; moral impulse of a high order, conveyed with a strong and delicate touch; sweet human affection; a tender, fanciful link between the children and the Nature-world; humour, pathos, righteous satire, and last, but not least, the fact that the story does not turn on children, and does not foster that self-consciousness, the dawn of which in the child is, perhaps, the individual 'Fall of Man.' But children will not take in all this? No; but let it be a canon that no story, nor part of a story, is ever to be explained. You have sown the seed; leave it to germinate.

Every father and mother should have a repertoire of stories––a dozen will do, beautiful stories beautifully told; children cannot stand variations. 'You left out the rustle of the lady's gown, mother!' expresses reasonable irritation; the child cannot endure a suggestion that the story he lives in is no more than the 'baseless fabric of a vision.' Away with books, and 'reading to'––for the first five or six years of life. The endless succession of story-books, scenes, shifting like a panorama before the child's vision, is a mental and moral dissipation; he gets nothing to grow upon, or is allowed no leisure to digest what he gets. It is contrary to nature, too. "Tell us about the little boy who saved Haarlem!" How often do the children who know it ask for that most hero-making of all tales! And here is another advantage of the story told over the story read. Lightly come, lightly go, is the rule for the latter. But if you have to make a study of your story, if you mean to appropriate it as bread of life for your children, why, you select with the caution of the merchantman seeking goodly pearls. Again, in the story read, the parent is no more than the middleman; but the story told is food as directly and deliberately given as milk from the mother's breast. Wise parents, whose children sit with big eyes pondering the oft-told tale, could tell us about this. But it must be borne in mind that the story told is as milk to the child at the breast. By-and-by comes the time when children must read, must learn, and digest for themselves.”

CM Volume 5 pp. 215-217

Rather than emphasizing reading picture books, focus on oral storytelling.

“Experiences with pictures attached, even when they involve looking at picture books and learning new words, are not as valuable, says [Dr.] Wells, because the child needs to learn ‘sooner, rather than later’ to go beyond just naming things that can be seen.  He concludes:

For this, the experience of stories is probably the ideal preparation. . . . Gradually, they will lead them to reflect on their experience and, in so doing, to discover the power that language has, through its symbolic potential, to create and explore alternative possible worlds with their own inner coherence and logic.  Stories may thus lead to the imaginative, hypothetical stance that is required in a wide range of intellectual activities and for problem-solving of all kinds. . . .” 

Jane Healy, Ph.D. Endangered Minds p. 92

“Telling stories over and over, expanding on characters, events, and ideas, also helps children learn to think carefully and give good explanations.” 

Healy p. 91

“Any activity that helps children use their brains to separate from the ‘here and now,’ to get away from pictures and use words to manipulate ideas in their own minds, also helps them with the development of abstract thinking. . .” 

Healy pp. 91-92

Conversation and storytelling both provide important frameworks for learning.

“Although writing--and the kind of talking and thinking that go along with it--promotes the development of school-like ways of reasoning, the arts of storytelling, oral history, and conversation have their own special niche in developing reflective thought, memory, and attention.” 

Healy p. 103

“Good language, like the synapses that make it possible, is gained only from interactive engagement: children  need to talk as well as to hear.” 

Healy p. 88

“The person who teaches your child to talk also teaches a way of thinking.  The ideas, values, and priorities of a culture are borne along on the stream of language that flows between generations.” 

Healy p. 89

“Many parents today try hard to provide elaborate ‘stimulating’ environments for their children, but not even designer toys substitute for good-quality conversation.” 

Healy p. 91

Jewels of Astonishing Worth - What is a Child? (Series Introduction)

Jewels of Astonishing Worth Part 5 - Free Play

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 the way; and to be many things, naughty and good, and somebody should give direction.”

CM  Volume 1 p. 192

Modern research confirms this as the "wisest course" because young children will find what they need for their proper stage of development on their own.

“Many studies support the notion that brains--and the organisms attached to them--tend to gravitate to the types of stimulation that they need at different stages of development.  If we encourage children to make choices from a selected variety of available challenges, both environmental and intellectual, we are no doubt following the wisest course.”

Jane Healy Endangered Minds p. 72

The children have to do the learning themselves.

“Children need stimulation and intellectual challenges, but they must be actively involved in their learning, not responding passively while another brain--their teacher’s or parent’s--laboriously develops new synapses in their behalf!”

Healy p. 73

“Knowing this, it's more important than ever to give children's remarkable, spontaneous learning abilities free rein. That means a rich, stable, and safe world, with affectionate and supportive grown-ups, and lots of opportunities for exploration and play. Not school for babies.”

Alison Gopnik "Why Preschool Shouldn’t Be Like School" Slate

Structured activities, as documented in a previous post in this series, negatively impact future learning.  Less structure has positive effects.

"The more time that children spent in less-structured activities, the better their self-directed executive functioning. The opposite was true of structured activities, which predicted poorer self-directed executive functioning."

Jane E. Barker, Andrei D. Semenov, Laura Michaelson, Lindsay S. Provan, Hannah R. Snyder and Yuko Munakata ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE Frontiers in Psychology

"Neuroscientific studies have shown that playful activity leads to synaptic growth, particularly in the frontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for all the uniquely human higher mental functions."

David Whitebread "School starting age: the evidence" University of Cambridge Research

"Physical, constructional and social play supports children in developing their skills of intellectual and emotional ‘self-regulation’, skills which have been shown to be crucial in early learning and development."

David Whitebread "School starting age: the evidence" University of Cambridge Research

Jewels of Astonishing Worth - What is a Child? (Series Introduction)

Jewels of Astonishing Worth Part 4 - Training the Senses and Exploring the World

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 real knowledge of the external world which at no time of his life will he be so fitted to acquire. Therefore, while the exact nicely graduated training of the Kindergarten may be of value, the mother will endeavour to give it by the way, and will by no means let it stand for that wider training of the senses, to secure which for her children is a primary duty.” 

Charlotte Mason Volume 1 pp. 179-80

This "training" begins naturally if opportunities are provided.

“Watch a child standing at gaze at some sight new to him––a plough at work, for instance––and you will see he is as naturally occupied as is a babe at the breast; he is, in fact, taking in the intellectual food which the working faculty of his brain at this period requires. In his early years the child is all eyes; he observes, or, more truly, he perceives, calling sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing to his aid, that he may learn all that is discoverable by him about every new thing that comes under his notice.”

CM Volume 1 p. 65

“A great deal has been said lately about the danger of overpressure, of requiring too much mental work from a child of tender years. The danger exists; but lies, not in giving the child too much, but in giving him the wrong thing to do, the sort of work for which the present state of his mental development does not fit him. Who expects a boy in petticoats to lift half a hundredweight? But give the child work that Nature intended for him, and the quantity he can get through with ease is practically unlimited. Whoever saw a child tired of seeing, of examining in his own way, unfamiliar things? This is the sort of mental nourishment for which he has an unbounded appetite, because it is that food of the mind on which, for the present, he is meant to grow.”

CM Volume 1 pp. 66-67

Learning to use his senses, exploring the world around him, prepares him for later more abstract learning.

“The child has truly a great deal to do before he is in a condition to 'believe his own eyes'; but Nature teaches so gently, so gradually, so persistently, that he is never overdone, but goes on gathering little stores of knowledge about whatever comes before him.

 And this is the process the child should continue for the first few years of his life. Now is the storing time which should be spent in laying up images of things familiar. By-and-by he will have to conceive of things he has never seen: how can he do it except by comparison with things he has seen and knows? By-and-by he will be called upon to reflect, understand, reason; what material will he have, unless he has a magazine of facts to go upon? The child who has been made to observe how high in the heavens the sun is at noon on a summer's day, how low at noon on a day in mid-winter, is able to conceive of the great heat of the tropics under a vertical sun, and to understand the climate of a place depends greatly upon the mean height the sun reaches above the horizon.”

CM Volume 1 p. 66

Charlotte Mason realized that a hundred years ago.  Educators still know it to be true today. Audobon magazine in winter 2012 featured a nature-based preschool:

“Noticing differences between objects, like seeds and burrs, helps wire the brain, nurturing initial math and pre-reading skills that develop from the ages of one through four.”

Susan Cosier "A Nature Preschool Enhances Early Childhood Brain Development" Audobon Magazine

Researchers recognize that mental readiness often relies on physical development, specifically using the senses.

"In order for children to read, write and spell they must be developmentally ready. Some are ready at the age of four or five, some not for many years later. This readiness includes complex neurological pathways and kinesthetic awareness. Such readiness isn’t created by workbooks or computer programs. It’s the result of brain maturation as well as rich experiences found in bodily sensation and movement."

Laura Grace Wheldon Reading Readiness Has To Do With The Body

Charlotte Mason encouraged mothers to take their young children outside for as much of the day as feasible. In her first volume, she catalogues many ways in which outdoor time can be spent to good purpose.  (Do read through the Out-of-Door Life section of Volume 1.) This time spent outdoors doesn't just provide the sensory opportunities already mentioned above.

One purpose of the outdoor explorations is to learn about the world.

“It would be well if we all persons in authority, parents and all who act for parents, could make up our minds that there is no sort of knowledge to be got in these early years so valuable to children as that which they get for themselves of the world they live in. Let them once get touch with Nature, and a habit is formed which will be a source of delight through life. We were all meant to be naturalists, each in his degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things.”

CM Volume 1 p. 61

This requires both opportunity and some gentle direction.

“Now, consider what a culpable waste of intellectual energy it is to shut up a child, blessed with this inordinate capacity for seeing and knowing, within the four walls of a house, or the dreary streets of a town. Or suppose that he is let run loose in the country where there is plenty to see, it is nearly as bad to let this great faculty of the child's dissipate itself in random observations for want of method and direction.”

CM Volume 1 p. 68

“There is no end to the store of common information, got in such a way that it will never be forgotten, with which an intelligent child may furnish himself before he begins his school career. The boy who can tell you off-hand where to find each of the half-dozen most graceful birches, the three or four finest ash trees in the neighbourhood of his home, has chances in a life a dozen to one compared with the lower, slower intelligence that does not know an elm from an oak––not merely chances of success, but chances of a larger, happier life, for it is curious how certain feelings are linked with the mere observation of Nature and natural objects.”

CM Volume 1 p. 68

Time outside also provides exercise for the body.

“The afternoon's games, after luncheon, are an important part of the day's doings for the elder children, though the younger have probably worn themselves out by this time with the ceaseless restlessness by means of which Nature provides for the due development of muscular tissue in them; let them sleep in the sweet air, and awake refreshed. Meanwhile, the elders play; the more they run, and shout, and toss their arms, the more healthful is the play.”

CM Volume 1 p. 81

“The outdoors is the very best place for preschoolers to practice and master emerging physical skills."

Rae Pica "Take It Outside!" Earlychildhood News

Current research has found other benefits from hours outside.

“Studies also show that just 20 minutes spent outdoors improves concentration in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder as much as, if not more than, medication. That’s in addition to the physical benefits of exercise and exposure to vitamin D (which helps build strong bones).

Susan Cosier "A Nature Preschool Enhances Early Childhood Brain Development" Audobon Magazine

“The outside is also important because the outdoor light stimulates the pineal gland, the part of the brain that regulates the "biological clock," is vital to the immune system, and makes us feel happier.”

Rae Pica "Take It Outside!" Earlychildhood News

“Outside, children are more likely to invent games. As they do, they're able to express themselves and learn about the world in their own way. They feel safe and in control, which promotes autonomy, decision-making, and organizational skills. Inventing rules for games (as preschoolers like to do) promotes an understanding of why rules are necessary. Although the children are only playing to have fun, they're learning

• communication skills and vocabulary (as they invent, modify, and enforce rules)
• number relationships (as they keep score and count)
• social customs (as they learn to play together and cooperate)."

Rae Pica "Take It Outside!" Earlychildhood News

Jewels of Astonishing Worth - What is a Child? (Series Introduction)

Jewels of Astonishing Worth Part 3 - Do preschoolers need academic instruction?

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 unduly taxed, some of the joy of living has been taken from him, and though his baby response to direct education is very charming, he has less latent power left for the future calls of life.” 

Charlotte Mason Volume 1 pp. 190-191

Is an early start on academics necessary for later success in school and, more importantly, life?  Research says it is not.

"[Dr. Lillian] Katz also writes in the report that 'earlier is better' is not supported in neurological research, which 'does not imply that formal academic instruction is the way to optimize early brain development.'”

Valerie Strauss "Education pioneer debunks 'earlier is better' approach to childhood education" College of Education at Illinois

“On the contrary, a number of longitudinal follow-up studies indicate that while formal instruction produces good test results in the short term, preschool curriculum and teaching methods emphasizing children’s interactive roles and initiative, while not so impressive in the short term, yield better school achievement in the long term (Golbeck, 2001, Marcon, 2002; Schweinhart & Weikart, 1993).”

Lilian Katz, Ph.D. "Lively Minds: Distinctions between academic versus intellectual goals for young children" DEY Project

Actually, research shows that formal instruction impedes development rather than assisting it.  For one thing, teaching specific concepts to young children keeps them focused on those specific concepts and prevents their learning how to discover for themselves.

“Direct instruction really can limit young children's learning. Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific—this tube squeaks, say, or a squish then a press then a pull causes the music to play. But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to draw unexpected conclusions.”

Alison Gopnik "Why Preschool Shouldn’t Be Like School" Slate

“Youngsters who are hurried from one activity to another may get lots of sensory input but be shortchanged on the time-consuming process of forming association networks to understand and organize experience meaningfully.”

Jane Healy, Ph.D. Endangered Minds p. 74

"Studies have compared groups of children in New Zealand who started formal literacy lessons at ages 5 and 7. Their results show that the early introduction of formal learning approaches to literacy does not improve children’s reading development, and may be damaging. By the age of 11 there was no difference in reading ability level between the two groups, but the children who started at 5 developed less positive attitudes to reading, and showed poorer text comprehension than those children who had started later. "

David Whitebread "School starting age: the evidence" University of Cambridge Research

Also, young brains, as Charlotte Mason suggested, have vital learning tasks of their own to do, and formal learning gets in the way of that work.

“It is much more difficult, however, to reorganize a brain than it is to organize it in the first place. ‘Organization inhibits reorganization,’ say the scientists. Carving out neuronal tracks for certain types of learning is best accomplished when the synapses for that particular skill are most malleable, before they ‘firm up’ around certain types of responses.”  

Healy p. 53

Significantly, young children may not be ready for the skills being taught, which can cause the growing brain to develop inefficiently.

“Before brain regions are myelinated, they do not operate efficiently.  For this reason, trying to ‘make’ children master academic skills for which they do not have the requisite maturation may result in mixed-up patterns of learning.  As we have seen, the essence of functional plasticity is that any kind of learning--reading, math, spelling, handwriting, etc.--may be accomplished by any of several systems. Natureally, we want children to plug each piece of learning into the best system for that particular job.  If the right one isn’t yet available or working smoothly, however, forcing may create a functional organization in which less adaptive, ‘lower' systems are trained to do the work.”  

Healy p. 67

Delaying formal academics, far from being a sign of neglect, allows young children to learn what is neurologically appropriate for them at the time they are developmentally ready.

Jewels of Astonishing Worth - What is a Child? (Series Introduction)

Jewels of Astonishing Worth Part 2 - Should instruction be left to experts?

Lately, culture here in America has encouraged parents to send their young children to formal programs for preschool and kindergarten.  People assume that trained professionals need to prepare children for school.

Charlotte Mason says parents must direct and instruct rather than defer to professional educators.

“It seems to me that we live in an age of pedagogy; that we of the teaching profession are inclined to take too much upon ourselves, and that parents are ready to yield the responsibility of direction, as well as of actual instruction, more than is wholesome for the children.” 

CM Volume 1 p. 169

She also suggests that parents must learn educational principles and decide how to apply them in their own home, rather than trying to replicate in the home what the schools are doing.

“Though every mother should be a Kindergartnerin, in the sense in which Froebel would employ the term, it does not follow that every nursery should be a regularly organised Kindergarten. Indeed, the machinery of the Kindergarten is no more than a device to ensure the carrying out of certain educational principles, and some of these it is the mother's business to get at, and work out according to Froebel's methods––or her own.”  

CM Volume 1 p. 178

Many considerations may lead to this preference that parents take charge of their children's educations, not least being that parents have the most personal interest in the well being of their own children.  Just the fact of being a parent apparently confers some skill in working with children.

“Overall, being a parent may confer a special advantage.  One recent study compared children’s interactions with parents and with other well-intentioned adults who were not parents.  Parents did a much better job of guiding the children’s language, even if the children weren’t their own.”

Jane Healy, Ph.D., Endangered Minds p. 94 

Charlotte Mason recognizes that a well conducted preschool or kindergarten can be beautiful.  An exceptional teacher may impress, but not all teachers are exceptional.

“It is hardly necessary, here, to discuss the merits of the Kindergarten school. The success of such a school demands rare qualities in the teacher––high culture, some knowledge of psychology and of the art of education; intense sympathy with the children, much tact, much common sense, much common information, much 'joyousness of nature,' and much governing power;––in a word, the Kindergarten method is nicely contrived to bring the child en rapport with a superior intelligence. Given such a superior being to conduct it, and the Kindergarten is beautiful––'tis like a little heaven below'; but put a commonplace woman in charge of such a school, and the charmingly devised gifts and games and occupations become so many instruments of wooden teaching. If the very essence of the Kindergarten method is personal influence, a sort of spiritual mesmerism, it follows that the mother is naturally the best Kindergartnerin; for who so likely as she to have the needful tact, sympathy, common sense, culture?”

CM Volume 1 p. 178

Even in such a lovely and unusual situation, the teacher manipulates the environment to make it so pleasant--and this, says Charlotte Mason, is not ideal.

“Our first care should be to preserve the individuality, to give play to the personality, of children.”

CM Volume 1 p. 186

The charming teacher encourages the children to be good through her “zeal and enthusiasm”, and at home the children do not behave so well, but the school environment is for that reason probably not best for these young children.

“Most of us are misled by our virtues, and the entire zeal and enthusiasm of the Kindergartnerin is perhaps her stone of stumbling. 'But the children are so happy and good!' Precisely; the home-nursery is by no means such a scene of peace, but I venture to think it a better growing place.”

CM Volume 1 p. 188

In this artificial environment, all ideas pass through teacher--and this is also not ideal.

“Everything is directed, expected, suggested. No other personality out of book, picture, or song, no, not even that of Nature herself, can get at the children without the mediation of the teacher. No room is left for spontaneity or personal initiation on their part.”

CM Volume 1 p. 188

Besides, too much peer interaction overstimulates children.

“The clash and sparkle of our equals now and then stirs up to health; but for everyday life, the mixed society of elders, juniors and equals, which we get in a family, gives at the same time the most repose and the most room for individual development. We have all wondered at the good sense, reasonableness, fun and resourcefulness shown by a child in his own home as compared with the same child in school life.”

CM  Volume 1 p. 191

In the next post in this series, we'll look at what Charlotte Mason and modern researchers say about what preschoolers really need.  What works, and why?

Jewels of Astonishing Worth - What is a Child? (Series Introduction)

Jewels of Astonishing Worth Part 1 - What is a child?

Have you ever felt pressured to send a child to a preschool or Mother’s Day Out because if you didn’t, your child would somehow be less?

Ever worried that if you didn’t make sure your child mastered identifying shapes and colors, letters and numbers, counting, reading, or some other subject before kindergarten that your child would start school at a disadvantage?

Have you been concerned that keeping your child at home with you would warp the child’s personality, creating a clingy child afraid to venture out?

Our culture today tells us that young children must have professional educators to shape and mold them, or at the least have formal instruction, before they can be ready for the rest of their school career.

Even homeschoolers often find these arguments convincing.  But are they true?  What do young children need to prepare them for learning and life?

Charlotte Mason lived during the Victorian era, when these same pressures came to bear on parents.  She knew that at its heart this was a question of assumptions about what children are and what they need.

“But is the baby more than a 'huge oyster'? That is the problem before us and hitherto educators have been inclined to answer it in the negative. Their notion is that by means of a pull here, a push there, a compression elsewhere a person is at last turned out according to the pattern the educator has in his mind.

The other view is that the beautiful infant frame is but the setting of a jewel of such astonishing worth that, put the whole world in one scale and this jewel in the other, and the scale which holds the world flies up outbalanced.”

Charlotte Mason Volume 6 pp. 33-34

When considering any educational theory, we need to know what that theory assumes about the nature of children and how they learn.  Is the child a lump of clay to be molded by adults?  Is the child a receptacle to fill with information?  Charlotte Mason's methods, tested and refined over decades of work in schools and homes, rests solidly on her 20 Principles.  The first point on Charlotte Mason's list of principles, truths we know about children and education, is this:

“Children are born persons.”

CM Volume 1 p. 5

Charlotte Mason believed that children were precious treasures, already, from the beginning, and were actual people from the start.  One significance of this point is that children come already with a mind prepared to learn.  We do not have to prepare them for learning.

“Reason is present in the infant as truly as imagination. As soon as he can speak he lets us know that he has pondered the 'cause why' of things and perplexes us with a thousand questions. His 'why?' is ceaseless.”

CM Volume 6 p. 37

From the start, according to Mason, an infant* "perceive[s] and receive[s]" from the world about him.

“His [the infant’s] business is to perceive and receive and these he does day in and day out.”

CM Volume 6 p. 34

Rather than relying on parents or educators, the child's mind produces his education.

“. . . he always has all the mind he requires for his occasions; that is, that his mind is the instrument of his education and that his education does not produce his mind.”

CM Volume 6 p. 36

Modern neurological research supports this view of the young child's mind.

“Genes set the outlines of mental ability, but the way children use their brains determines how their intelligence is expressed.  The experiences with which a child chooses to interact determine each brain’s synaptic structure as well as the way it functions for different types of learning.  If children change the way they use their brains, their synapses are rearranged accordingly.  The more they are used in a certain pattern of response, the less flexible they appear to become.”

Jane Healy, Ph.D. Endangered Minds p. 81

“External pressure designed to produce learning or intelligence violates the fundamental rule: A healthy brain stimulates itself by active interaction with what it finds challenging and interesting in its environment.”

Healy pp. 81-82

Do we believe that our children are jewels of astonishing worth?  Or do we believe that they cannot shine without our constant active intervention?

*"Infant" here includes toddlers and probably preschoolers as well.

Articles and Research - Read more about best practices during the preschool years.

Posts in this series:

• Part 2 - Should instruction be left to experts?
• Part 3 - Do preschoolers need academic instruction? 
• Part 4 - Training the Senses and Exploring the World
• Part 5 - Free Play
• Part 6 - Other Goals

 

Kindergarten and a Half

DD#2 and I have been planning her school year for this coming year, which will begin for her no later than August (just after she turns 6).  Although she would be old enough to officially begin formal school this year, so that we could start AO Year 1, I think she will benefit from a more gentle and relaxed year of working on skills before starting in on the more difficult work of Year 1.

To that end, we’ve planned out a year’s schedule with books that are not on the AO list.  I expect this schedule to be adjusted as we go along and see what works and what doesn’t.  We may end up beginning Year 1 in January, or we may wait until our new school year begins next summer.  Officially she is going to be in first grade this year, but the material we’re using I’m calling Year 0.5.

Here is our booklist for this year, keeping in mind that this list reflects where we are and the materials we have around, not necessarily the best list that could possibly be made in preparation for Year 1, and also that we read many other books that aren’t scheduled.  I did not intend to create a formal list that others should follow, but I hope our schedule will help you in creating your own if you find the need.

• Bible (and Bible memory)
• Poetry
• Reading/Phonics
• Math
• Instrument practice (lap harp)
• Handwriting (there are YouTube videos where the author demonstrates each letter)
• French
• Soup Should Be Seen, Not Heard
• Stories of American Life and Adventure
• Flower Fairies / Burgess Flower Book
• Animal Stories (I have not yet read all of these, so can’t speak for them yet.)
• Strawberry Girl
• The Great Bullocky Race
• Sarah Whitcher’s Story
• Sarah, Plain and Tall
• Johnny Texas
• Little Lord Fauntleroy

To all of this we will add planning and cooking a weekly supper, learning household cleaning tasks, regular nature study, and possibly drawing lessons if I can manage to get them together (using Mona Brookes’ Drawing with Children).

UPDATE:
Having now completed the school year (over a month ago, actually), I know I will make major revisions to our schedule the next time I do a Year 0.5 with one of my children.  Our reading load will go way down.  Burgess Flower Book will be an every-other week experience or less.  Little Lord Fauntleroy will be out.  Animal Stories will be every other week or less, and I’ll read ahead and select key stories.  We ended up using Handwriting Without Tears, which I think I’ll use again.  A couple of years of that may be a good intro to handwriting, after which we can move over to italic.

Charlotte Mason Kindergarten

If you are planning to do a kindergarten year with a five-year-old, I hope you’ll study up first on CM’s recommendations so you can plan a wonderful K year that meets your goals in a CM-friendly way.  I don’t say this because I think there’s some rule that says we all must follow CM’s recommendations but because I have always found her recommendations to be wise and useful, and I am sure that these (related to the years before formal school begins at age 6 or later) are also wise and useful and so are worth keeping in mind.
If you want to study up, I’d recommend starting with these two links:

A Formidable List of Attainments for a Child of Six–For Five-Year-Olds or Six-Year-Olds?

This is my attempt to catalogue what CM says in Volume 1 about children under six.  The first part focuses on the List of Attainments, but read all the way through.  One important part:

"Charlotte Mason did not intend for children under the age of six to be free to play all day with no parental direction or instruction.  She gives us definite guidelines for the type of gentle instruction we should weave into our children’s days."

Charlotte Mason's Volume 1, Part V, Section 2: The Kindergarten as a Place of Education

Start with the second section in Charlotte Mason's Volume 1, Part V, which covers the kindergarten, and also read the third section (which also covers the kindergarten).  Read carefully and see what she praises about the kindergarten and what she mentions as concerns.  Notice also where she says that certain aspects of the kindergarten (as a formal institution) are good but can be handled better differently at home–those are aspects you’ll want to keep in mind as you make your own plan.

Think and pray about your goals for a K year.  What is its purpose?  What do you hope to accomplish?  What does your specific child need during this time (which may last for more than one year)?
It is absolutely possible to have a kindergarten year that follows Charlotte Mason’s advice.  May you find just the right arrangement for your child!

A Formidable List of Attainments for a Child of Six–For Five-Year-Olds or Six-Year-Olds?

[This post at the moment is something of a rough draft.  I welcome your comments as I revise it.]

"A Formidable List of Attainments for a Child of Six" is described as a reprint of a curriculum outline from a CM school in the 1890′s; it was printed in the Summer 1993 Parents Review published by Karen Andreola.  Here is the list:

"To recite, beautifully, six easy poems and hymns.

To recite, perfectly and beautifully, a parable and a psalm.

To add and subtract numbers up to ten, with dominoes or counters.

To read-what, and how much, will depend on what we are told of the child; children vary much in their power of reading.

To copy in print-hand from a book.

To know the points of the compass with relation to their own home, where the sun rises and sets, and the way the wind blows.

To describe the boundaries of their own home.

To describe any lake, river, pond, island within easy reach.

To tell quite accurately (however shortly) Three stories from Bible history, three from early English, and three from early Roman history.

To be able to describe three walks and three views.

To mount in a scrapbook a dozen common wildflowers, with leaves (one every week) ;to name these, describe them in their own words, and say where they found them.

To do the same with the leaves and flowers of six forest trees.

To know six birds, by song, color and shape.

To send in certain Kindergarten or other handiwork, as directed.

To tell three stories about their own "pets"-rabbit, dog, or cat.

To name twenty common objects in French and say a dozen little sentences.

To sing one hymn, one French song, and one English song.

To keep a caterpillar, and tell the life-story of a butterfly from his own observations.

A formidable list of attainments for a child of five or six, but it is nearly all play-work, and to be done out-of-doors. The "sit-still" work should not occupy more than an hour and a half daily, and the time-table will show how all can be done, little by little, by day-by-day efforts. Our aim is to gather up the fragments of the child’s desultory knowledge, so that nothing is lost. "

Because the original article is apparently not available online and I am unwilling to pay $20 to purchase the issue in which it appeared, this is all the information I have available about this list.  Many of us who are educating children below the age of six using Charlotte Mason’s principles have wrestled with exactly how and when this list should be applied. The six volumes Charlotte Mason wrote do not deal with the ages before six except in bits and pieces.  Even Volume 1 focuses primarily on children ages six to nine, although sometimes it’s hard to tell exactly what age child is being referred to.  

Although this list comes from a PNEU school, we should not assume that it represents the official recommendation from Charlotte Mason for what should be done with children below the age of six.  It’s important to note that the Formidable List of Attainments does not appear in any of Charlotte Mason’s volumes, although she has another similar list for older children at the end of Volume 3.  What does Charlotte Mason actually say about what children should be doing before the age of six?  

She considers the first six years to be vitally important.  On p. 2 and 3 of Volume 1:
"We are waking up to our duties and in proportion as mothers become more highly educated and efficient, they will doubtless feel the more strongly that the education of their children during the first six years of life is an undertaking hardly to be entrusted to any hands but their own. And they will take it up as their profession–that is, with the diligence, regularity, and punctuality which men bestow on their professional labours."

But what did she want during those first six years?  From p. 43 of Volume 1:
"In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mothers first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it spent for the most part out in the fresh air. And this, not for the gain in bodily health alone–body and soul, heart and mind, are nourished with food convenient for them when the children are let alone, let to live without friction and without stimulus amongst happy influences which incline them to be good."

From p. 96-97:
"The consideration of out-of-door life, in developing a method of education, comes second in order; because my object is to show that the chief function of the child–his business in the world during the first six or seven years of his life–is to find out all he can, about whatever comes under his notice, by means of his five senses; that he has an insatiable appetite for knowledge got in this way; and that, therefore, the endeavour of his parents should be to put him in the way of making acquaintance freely with Nature and natural objects; that, in fact, the intellectual education of the young child should lie in the free exercise of perceptive power, because the first stages of mental effort are marked by the extreme activity of this power; and the wisdom of the educator is to follow the lead of Nature in the evolution of the complete human being."

From p. 179-180:
"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 real knowledge of the external world which at no time of his life will he be so fitted to acquire. Therefore, while the exact nicely graduated training of the Kindergarten may be of value, the mother will endeavour to give it by the way, and will by no means let it stand for that wider training of the senses, to secure which for her children is a primary duty."

She wants us to train the children in habits of the will, of the mind, of the body.  She wants us to let the children alone as much as we can, while still watching over them.  She wants us to give them as much outdoor time as possible and to guide them toward developing powerful habits of attention during that outdoor time.

She definitely implies in some places and states in others that *some* academic work is going on in the first six years–learning to write (because on p.54 she mentions a child of five or six possibly making notes in his own nature journal), learning the alphabet and at least some pre-reading and possibly even full-blown reading (see section IV of Volume 1 Part V), learning to paint (again mentioned on p.54), learning to keep himself clean (p.127). But she says that this work should be the choice of the child at this age (pp. 193-194):
"A child will have taught himself to paint, paste, cut paper, knit, weave, hammer and saw, make lovely things in clay and sand, build castles with his bricks; possibly, too, will have taught himself to read, write, and do sums, besides acquiring no end of knowledge and notions about the world he lives in, by the time he is six or seven. What I contend for is that he shall do these things because he chooses (provided that the standard of perfection in his small works be kept before him)."

On page 11 of the preface to Volume 1 she says:
"This period of a child’s life between his sixth and his ninth year should be used to lay the basis of a liberal education, and of the habit of reading for instruction."
She doesn’t say that we should start laying the basis for that liberal education at age five or four or earlier but at age six.  On p.12 of the preface, she specifically states that the material in Part V of Volume 1 applies to children between the ages of six and nine.  In regards to memorizing, she did not recommend we begin until at least age six.  In Volume 1 on p. 226:
"Let the child lie fallow till he is six, and then, in this matter of memorising, as in others, attempt only a little, and let the poems the child learns be simple and within the range of his own thought and imagination."
Also, on p.231 (and again on p.232) of Volume 1 she specifically mentions that a child should not be asked to narrate until age six, which means that the items on the list that ask for the child to tell accurately about a story would be inappropriate at this age (although the child could certainly hear the stories at an earlier age).  And on p. 253 she says that Bible memory work should begin at age six or seven, which means that the parable and psalm should not be begun before then if we are following her recommendations.  She suggests in that same volume that art instruction and drawing lessons begin at age six.  In Volume 5 (beginning on p. 215), she says that children under the age of six don’t need to be read to but should just be told a dozen or so really great stories over and over.

Formal lessons would not begin before age six according to Volume 1, where on p.193 (and in other places) she says formal lessons should begin at age six or seven:
"At six or seven, definite lessons should begin, and these need not be watered down or served with jam for the acute intelligences that will in this way be brought to bear on them."

Also, all the parts of Volume 1 that talk about formal lessons (or at least the ones I’ve looked at as I searched through just now) speak of beginning at age six or seven or of undertaking the lessons during the ages from six to nine.  In a couple of places age five is mentioned, but that’s not the usual pattern.

If you are familiar with the passages in Volume 1 that deal with kindergarten, there’s a strong tone of caution about too much structured activity before formal lessons begin at age six or seven.  (That age is the one specified by CM on p.193:
"At six or seven, definite lessons should begin, and these need not be watered down or served with jam for the acute intelligences that will in this way be brought to bear on them.")  In fact, the whole concept of kindergarten and the necessity for it is questioned by CM in those sections. She talks at length about the kindergarten and why it isn’t necessarily a positive (even though the kindergarten she was describing was a beautiful experience).  (I should add that she find some positives in that kindergarten experience, but in the end she emphasizes that the benefits of masterly inactivity–which is what the mother does, not the child–and the outdoors experiences children get by spending hours outside every day far surpass the results of the organized academic work they get in even the best kindergarten situation.  *Note: that’s my very quick summary of her notes on kindergarten.  Please feel free to disagree with them and present quotes to clarify her actual points.)

Charlotte Mason did not intend for children under the age of six to be free to play all day with no parental direction or instruction.  She gives us definite guidelines for the type of gentle instruction we should weave into our children’s days.  She strongly urges us toward diligent formation of habits, both habits of character and habits of mind and body–those habits will provide excellent preparation for formal academics.  However, the entire Formidable List of Attainments, as written, cannot be achieved before the age of six while still adhering to CM’s recommendations.  It may be that this list was in fact an outline of goals for a PNEU kindergarten.  That does not mean that it is in line with CM’s recommendations.  In 1903, after the Formidable List of Attainments was published, Charlotte Mason wrote "A P.N.E.U. Manifesto", and in it she specified:
"Children may not enter under six. We think the first six years of life are wanted for physical growth and the self-education children carry on with little ordered aid."

Year 0 Introduction

The early years with Charlotte Mason require a bit of a different focus than most of us are used to. Instead of academic goals, we focus on the "many relations waiting to be established; relations with places far and near, with the wide universe, with the past of history, with the social economics of the present, with the earth they live on and all its delightful progeny of beast and bird, plant and tree; with the sweet human affinities they entered into at birth; with their own country and other countries, and, above all, with that most sublime of human relationships–their relation to God." (Charlotte Mason’s Original Homeschooling Series, Volume 6, pp. 72-73) The rest will come! This may even sound like a huge task, but in reality we accomplish this through simple activities and interactions–no scope and sequence is necessary.

The most important Year 0 goal, according to Charlotte Mason, is time spent outside. ". . .[T]he chief function of the child–his business in the world during the first six or seven years of his life–is to find out all he can, about whatever comes under his notice, by means of his five senses; that he has an insatiable appetite for knowledge got in this way; and that, therefore, the endeavour of his parents should be to put him in the way of making acquaintance freely with Nature and natural objects. . . ." (CM’s OHS, V1, p.96)

A close second in priority behind outside time is habit formation. ". . . [T]he education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions–a running fire of Do and Don’t; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way, and grow to fruitful purpose." (CM’s OHS, V1, p.134) CM has much to say about the why, what, and how of habit formation, which involves far more than just establishing a routine. CM refers to such habits as obedience, attention, imagining, cleanliness, and more. Take the time now to learn about it and implement it. Volume 1, Volume 2, and the first part of Volume 5 help explain how to do this.

As for scheduling, that depends on the age of the child. Many moms (or dads, grandparents, etc.) on this forum have one or more children in Year 1 or higher. For those children they are probably planning 2 or 3 hours (or so) of formal lessons each school day. Sometimes when a post talks about scheduling and planning, it’s referring to children in that age range (6 or 7 and up).

Year 0 is sort of a kindergarten year, so some moms are using it for a 5 or 6 year old. Those moms may be beginning some formal lessons, like reading. Generally those wouldn’t be more than 1 hour a day. Year 0 doesn’t require this sort of structure, but as long as it is kept short and lots of time is left for time outside and other non-academic pursuits, it’s still in line with CM.

Year 0 also encompasses the preschool years, below the ages of 5 or 6. Those years should not have formal academics, but some moms may plan short activities each day. The most important objectives at this age, though, are lots of time outside, building relationships (including a relationship with God), and habit formation. Select only the very best books, and don’t let reading keep you from more important activities. Charlotte Mason actually recommended learning a few excellent stories and telling them to your children instead of reading books, during these first few years. "Away with books, and ‘reading to’–for the first five or six years of life. The endless succession of story-books, scenes, shifting like a panorama before the child’s vision, is a mental and moral dissipation; he gets nothing to grow upon, or is allowed no leisure to digest what he gets." (CM’s OHS, V5, p.216)

Children in these early years should be working with concrete objects from the real world, like planting a flower and watching it grow. Between hearing great stories and spending time with nature, you’ll be amazed what they’ll learn.  For more learning goals for the preschool years, look at the items on the Formidable List of Attainments for a Child of Six, an excerpt from a curriculum outline from one of CM’s schools.  You can read it at the bottom of the page here.  Remember that this list was meant to be addressed after a child turned six, not prior to the child turning six.

The Year 0 years provide an opportunity to begin Ambleside art appreciation, hymn study, folk song, and classical music.  Try gently beginning a foreign language.  Develop the habit of tea times.  Teach them to sew and draw, hammer and paint.  Play card games and board games.  These are all CM friendly activities for the Year 0 ages.

Check out our Yahoo group site. Look in the Links section, the Files, and the Database. All three sections have the content categorized by subject, so be sure to look at more than one category.  You’ll find many helpful resources.  Then read Charlotte Mason’s writings.  They are the key to implementing a Charlotte Mason education.

Flower Garden

In Volume 1 (titled "Home Education") of her six-volume series, Charlotte Mason talks about the
kindergarten, which at the time was a new concept.  She discusses this new approach to educating small children in terms of its educational value and then in terms of its philosophical value.  She had concerns about both.  In this post I’d like to look at her second area of concern, the philosophical underpinnings of the kindergarten.

CM criticizes the "garden" concept as setting up a false analogy–children are not flowers and the sort of care effective with plants does not work well for children.  "The outcome of any thought is necessarily moulded by that thought, and to have a cultivated garden as the ground-plan of our educational thought, either means nothing at all, which it would be wronging the Master to suppose, or it means undue interference with the spontaneous development of a human being."  Vol 1, p. 189

I believe she is saying that these "gardens" give each child the same treatment, expecting the same result at the end for each child.  There is no recognition that children are actually "born persons" (remember the 20 principles?) and that they may have natural bents that differ from each other and even from what we’ve planned for them.  But CM always recognizes that children are people from the very beginning and that we must work with them as they are, in their individuality.  She goes on in the following paragraph and decries the organized activities for infants that are so popular even today.  What is her concern?  That the natural, sweet play of mothers with infants is being supplanted by something less when we substitute  pre-planned games for spontaneous play.  She follows this by decrying the unnatural arrangement which puts many children of the same age together for hours on end every day.  Then she explains, with two points:

1) "It is possible to supplement Nature so skilfully that we run some risk of supplanting her, depriving her of space and time to do her own work in her own way."  Vol 1, p. 191

God made us to grow in a certain way.  Sometimes, when we try to help the process along, we actually interfere.

2) "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 the way; and to be many things, naughty and good, and somebody should give direction."  Vol 1, p. 192

On the other hand, children can’t just be left on their own to grow without direction.  Parents are there to answer their questions and help them learn to do things and to help direct their moral development.  We must not interfere overmuch, but we must not let them alone altogether either.

"The educational error of our day is that we believe too much in mediators."  Vol 1, p. 192
We can make this error at home just as well as it can be made at school.  If we try to control the environment and development, hoping that in doing so we are ensuring a positive outcome, we are trusting in ourselves as mediator.  (This can be, in fact, a form of idolatry.)

Sometimes as homeschoolers we think we are avoiding many potential pitfalls by bringing our children home to educate, but I think the problems CM has with the kindergarten are often replicated in our own homes, even in homes where Charlotte Mason’s principles are being followed.

I believe this happens because so many of us find it so easy to slide into the "system" approach to homeschooling/parenting rather than using CM’s principles as a "method". For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, this is covered in Volume 2, where CM explains that she is giving a method (essentially some general principles to follow) rather than a system (a lined-out set of rules).

I believe that if you are viewing CM in terms of general principles that should be applied in a way that suits your particular child, you aren’t gardening.  At least, what I see CM telling me to watch for and diligently apply myself toward is very different from the externally-focused efforts that so many programs emphasize.
*But* if I instead try to outline her principles, look at the PNEU programs, see what others are doing, and then compile them all into a template that I can use in my home, and if I think that by following this template I will inevitably receive on the other end the sort of people I hoped for, then I’m making CM into a system, which was not her intention at all.

I think one big culprit in this is the popular books about CM that really describe her philosophy in terms that easily become a system, a checklist of activities and experiences.  Another big culprit is our natural human tendency to prefer systems to methods.  Systems are easier and require less from us, and they also leave us with less responsibility.

Charlotte Mason calls us to be much more than gardeners, much more than mediators or gatekeepers.  She is calling us to exercise our God-given role, with the help of our intellect and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to assist in the work God is already doing with our children.  We can’t shirk our responsibility or foist it off onto someone else (a teacher at school or the creator of a curriculum), but we also shouldn’t believe that we are solely responsible for the outcome or that we can, by completely controlling the situation, ensure the results we desire.  The results we desire will come only by the grace of God.

Year 0 Introduction

There is an update here.

The early years with Charlotte Mason require a bit of a different focus than most of us are used to.  Instead of academic goals, we focus on the "many relations waiting to be established; relations with places far and near, with the wide universe, with the past of history, with the social economics of the present, with the earth they live on and all its delightful progeny of beast and bird, plant and tree; with the sweet human affinities they entered into at birth; with their own country and other countries, and, above all, with that most sublime of human relationships–their relation to God." (Charlotte Mason’s Original Homeschooling Series, Volume 6, pp. 72-73)  The rest will come!  I do know that even this sounds like a lot, but I think the key is that they will get these relations through the living books we’re reading and the time (lots and lots of time) spent outside.  We don’t have to plan out a scope and sequence!

The most important Year 0 goal, according to Charlotte Mason, is time spent outside.  “. . .[T]he chief function of the child––his business in the world during the first six or seven years of his life––is to find out all he can, about whatever comes under his notice, by means of his five senses; that he has an insatiable appetite for knowledge got in this way; and that, therefore, the endeavour of his parents should be to put him in the way of making acquaintance freely with Nature and natural objects. . . .”  (CM’s OHS, V1, p.96)

A close second in priority behind outside time is habit formation.  “. . . [T]he education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions––a running fire of Do and Don’t; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way, and grow to fruitful purpose.” (CM’s OHS, V1, p.134)  CM has much to say about the why, what, and how of habit formation, which involves far more than just establishing a routine.  CM refers to such habits as obedience, attention, imagining, cleanliness, and more.  Suffice to say it is the key to CM’s methods.  Take the time now to learn about it and implement it.

As for scheduling, that depends on the age of the child.  Many moms (or dads, grandparents, etc.) on this list have one or more children in Year 1 or higher.  For those children they are probably planning 2 or 3 hours (or so) of formal lessons each school day.  Sometimes when a post talks about scheduling and planning, it’s referring to children in that age range (6 or 7 and up).

Year 0 is sort of a kindergarten year, so some moms are using it for a 5 or 6 year old.  Those moms may be beginning some formal lessons, like reading. Generally those wouldn’t be more than 1 hour a day.  Year 0 doesn’t require this sort of structure, but as long as it is kept short and lots of time is left for time outside and other non-academic pursuits, it’s still in line with CM.

Year 0 also encompasses the preschool years, below the ages of 5 or 6.  Those years should not have formal academics, but some moms may plan short activities each day.  The most important objectives at this age, though, are lots of time outside and habit formation.  Reading is good, but select only the very best books, and don’t let reading keep you from time outside and habit training.

If you want to cover academics, the best thing to do is read a few really great books.  We have some booklists on the Yahoo group site (see below).  Children in these early years should be working with concrete objects from the real world, like planting a flower and watching it grow. Between reading great books and spending time with nature, you’ll be amazed what they’ll learn.  For more learning goals for the preschool years, look at the items on the Formidable List of Attainments for a Child of Six, an excerpt from a curriculum outline from one of CM’s schools.  You can read it at the bottom of the page here:  http://www.amblesideonline.org/00.shtml.  Remember that this list was meant to be addressed after a child turned six, not prior to the child turning six.

In my family, we do the Ambleside art appreciation, hymn study, folk song, and classical music (although we sometimes don’t use the assigned selection).  We work on Spanish and sign language on an occasional basis.  My dd’s know quite a few folk songs, including lots of patriotic songs and a few obscure ones.  They recognize some classical selections and musical instruments.  They know a handful of hymns at least.  They can recognize several of the art selections from previous terms.  They memorize Psalms and other scriptures, not through drill but through my reading it every morning and then after a few days of that we all try to say it together.  We read some of the Ambleside poetry selections, particularly AA Milne and Robert Louis Stevenson.  They have (infrequent) tea times.  The older dd is learning to sew and draw.  We play card games and board games.  These are all CM friendly activities for the Year 0 ages.

Check out our Yahoo group site at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ambleside_year0/ . Look in the Links section, the Files, and the Database. All three sections have the content categorized by subject, so be sure to look at more than one category.  You’ll find many helpful resources.  Then read Charlotte Mason’s writings.  They are the key to implementing a Charlotte Mason education.

***UPDATED to reflect a new understanding of the relative priority of outside time versus habit formation.