"'Education is the Science of Relations'; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books, for we know that our business is not to teach him all about anything, but to help him to make valid as many as may be of––
'Those first-born affinities,
That fit our new existence to existing things.'"

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education
with a quote from The Prelude by William Wordsworth

Friday, January 23, 2009

More rabbit trails--where they go

We had what is to be considered a mild day around here with temperatures in the high 30's. After the kids were sledding in the yard for awhile I put on my boots and took them into the woods.

We didn't need to go but a few steps when we saw rabbit trails around the edge of the yard.

They were only in the area close to the yard, not further back in the wood. And they all stopped at various holes.

I don't know if the kids expected to see creatures in the holes, but they certainly wanted to see what was down them. Some of them were just leaves, as if the rabbits had dug there and moved on. The ones at the tree bases were deep holes where we could not see the bottom.







We only went a little further back today, enough to see again our grove of bent birches. Looking closely you can see that all of them bent together such that their crowns are entangled preventing them from returning upright like most of the others have.


I think Mrs. Gatty could have made a parable of the scene.

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