"'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

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Home Geography for the Primary Grades

I downloaded Home Geography for the Primary Grades somewhere along the way from something related to Charlotte Mason, maybe Ambleside Online.  While doing a little spring file cleaning I decided I would try it out at our TORCH co-op with the youngers, four boys ages 5 to 7.

This book is an example of what used to be thought of as geography, what today would be a mix of earth science and social studies.  The lessons are short--we typically cover two or three of them in the 45 minutes we have.  So far we covered direction, measurement, and mapping.  The book includes the lessons, some poetry, and exercises, some hands-on, some written.

This week we learned about mapping.  Here on the board the boys first looked at a picture of a classroom and then drew a plan of the room.  We then went on and used a measuring tape to draw it to scale.

The book is ideal for early elementary kids to give them a nice mix of formal lessons, poetry, copywork, geography, science, and social studies.  So Charlotte Mason, no?