One unexpected benefit of being deliberate about your child’s Education is that you put a lot more thought into toys and your home environment. I despise with all of my soul any talking toy. Those things have a mind of their own and come on at some odd hour of the night. Anyway, I digress.
The danger of choosing the best toys ( I am still saving for a Spielgaben set) is that we might replace a child’s unstructured outdoor time with toys. We could discourage them from spending time in nature, playing with the dirt and having intimacies with flowers, trees, birds and rocks. Before you tell me that children function just fine without that, have you noticed the calm you feel when you take a walk in nature? Have you noticed how a slower life seems to reset the system?
In Chapter 18, Charlotte Mason described how Ruskin’s toy bricks and his bridge gave him his initiation in the principles of architecture and how his early flower studies helped with his power of attention to detail.
Ruskin only had access to cultivated flowers in his early years. There are only so many connections that the brain can build between two types of flowers and two trees. Ruskin is described as having a deprived childhood. Every minute that we don’t spend outdoors when we can is depriving my children of making connections. A weekly nature walk is not enough. If nature is one of our teachers, we cannot spend most of our time away from it.
Books are also our teachers. A variety of books that will create the feeling that Wordsworth felt when he wrote this:
“A precious treasure had I long possessed,
A little yellow canvas-covered book,
A slender abstract of the Arabian tales;
And, from companions in a new abode,
When first I learnt, that this dear prize of mine
Was but a block hewn from a mighty quarry––
That there were four large volumes, laden all
With kindred matter, ’twas to me, in truth,
A promise scarcely earthly
And when thereafter to my father’s house
The holidays returned me, there to find
That golden store of books which I had left,
What joy was mine! How often . . .
have I lain
Down by thy side, O Derwent I murmuring stream,
On the hot stones, and in the glaring sun,
And there have read, devouring as I read,
Defrauding the day’s glory, desperate!”
Relationship is the centre of Education. Relationship with nature, relationship with literature, relationship with the Creator and relationship with people. Our children should have people that they can help for that is how character is developed. Our children should have positive influences among their peers (By peers, I mean age-group). Their literature should foster relationships, and we, as parents, should be their guides.