 in memory of her much-loved granda and wish her well for the marathon.
“With around 90,000 people living with dementia in Scotland, it is our biggest health and social care challenge.Ottawa County Parks offer summer fun Anonymous For the full schedule of summer programs, visit miottawa.org/parks and click on the newsletter icon; or call 616-786-4847.The Summer Interpretive Programs Series are naturalist-led walks that focus on a variety of subjects for adults and families. The walks last about 90 minutes and are canceled if raining. There are no program fees and advance registration is not required. Bring insect repellent and dress for the weather.Exploring the Grassland will be at 10 a.m. Saturday, June 16, at the Nature Education Center. The short-grass native grassland at Hemlock Crossing should be ablaze with color for this hike along a hard-surfaced trail. Bring your camera.The next walk in this series is What is an Oak Gall? At 2 p.m. Saturday, June 23 at the Nature Education Center. Explore the natural history of the unique galls found on oak trees. After a brief indoor introduction, the group will go outside to see how many different kinds of galls they can find on oak trees along the trails.The last walk in June is a Butterfly Foray at 1 p.m. Saturday, June 30, at the Nature Education Center. Look for butterflies along the trails and learn the proper way to capture butterflies with a net, handle butterflies, and release them unharmed.The Shoreline Amateur Astronomical Association is offering Summer Astronomy Sky Viewings on selected Fridays this summer (weather permitting) in the parking lot near the Nature Education Center. If the viewing is canceled due to weather on Friday, it will be rescheduled for Saturday. Telescopes will be provided or you may bring your own. Bring a lawn chair, binoculars (if you have them), and insect repellent. There are no program fees and advance registration is not required. Programs are for adults and older children. Sky Viewings are scheduled the second and fourth Fridays in June at 9 p.m., July at 9 p.m., and August at 8:30 p.m.For adult birders, there is an all-day Breeding Birds Field Trip on Friday, June 15. This trip will focus on finding and identifying a variety of breeding birds including waterfowl, gulls, raptors, shorebirds, and songbirds in west Michigan. The trip is from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., transportation is via personal vehicles, and binoculars are required (some loaners available). There is no fee for this trip, however, a state park vehicle passport may be required. Advance registration is required. A letter with details and meeting location will be sent in advance to those registered.And for the kids, a Nature Walk Just For Kids will be every Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Nature Education Center. Join the Nature Education Center staff for these one-hour hikes at Hemlock Crossing. The plants and animals in the park change every day as the season progresses. These age-specific walks will focus on these changes in a fun and interactive way. There are no fees; however advance registration is required and space is limited. Walks are canceled if raining. Walks for kids in kindergarten through second grades will be on June 24, July 8, July 22, Aug. 5, Aug. 19, and Sept. 2. Walks for kids in third through sixth grades will be on June 17, July 1, July 15, July 29, Aug. 12, and Aug. 26.The Nature Education Center is located at Hemlock Crossing County Park in Port Sheldon Township. From U.S. 31, travel west on Croswell Street just over the tracks to West Olive Road. Travel south on West Olive Road to Hemlock Crossing. The center is at the end of the park drive. Recommended for You Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.JULIE – Welcome to the Charlotte Mason show, a podcast dedicated to discussing Ms. Mason’s philosophy, principles and methods. It is our hope that each episode will leave you inspired and offer practical wisdom on how to provide this rich, living education in your modern homeschool.
So pull up a chair, we’re glad you’re here.
Hello everyone, welcome back to the Charlotte Mason show. I’m your host, Julie Ross, and today I’m going to be reading from volume one of Charlotte Mason’s original homeschooling series, Home Education. And the title of this section of the book is The Outdoor Life for the Children, and I’m gonna be reading part 7, The Child Gets Knowledge by Means of His Senses.
Watch a child standing at a gaze at some sight new to him. A plow 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.
Everybody knows how a baby fumbles over with soft little fingers and carries to his mouth and bangs that it may produce what sound there is in it. The spoon or the doll which supercilious grownup people give him to keep him quiet. The child is at his lessons and is learning all about it at a rate utterly surprising to the physiologist who considers how much is implied in the act of seeing. For instance, to the infant, as to the blind adult restored to sight, there is at first no difference between a flat picture and a solid body. That the ideas of form and solidity are not obtained by sight at all but are the judgments of experience.
Then think of the vague passes in the air the little fist makes before it lays hold of the object of desire and you see how he learns the whereabouts of things, having as yet no idea of direction. And why does he cry for the moon? Why does he crave equally a horse or a housefly as an appropriate plaything? Because far and near, large and small, are ideas he has yet to grasp. The child only 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.
Overpressure. 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 tiring of seeing, of examining 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.
Now, how far is this craving for natural sustenance met? In infant and kindergarten school by object lesson, which is good so far as it goes. But is sometimes like that bean a day on which the Frenchman fed his horse. The child at home has more new things brought under his notice, if with less method. Neither at home nor at school is much effort made to set before the child the abundant feast of eyes which his needs demand.
A child learns from things. We older people, partly because of our mature intellect, partly because of our defective education, get most of our knowledge through the medium of words. We set the child to learn in the same way and find him dull and slow. Why? Because it is only with a few words in common use that he associates a definite meaning. All the rest are no more to him than the vocables of a foreign tongue.
But set him face to face with a thing and he is twenty times as quick as you are in knowledge about it. Knowledge of things flies to the mind of the child as steel fillings to a magnet. And pari-passu (given equal footing) with his knowledge of things, his vocabulary grows. For it is a law of the mind that what we know, we struggle to express. This fact accounts for many of the apparently aimless questions of children. They are in quest, not of