thoughts I am pondering from my reading...
From The Organized Home Schooler:
"...If we're too busy to consider the consequences of how we spend our time, then we're too busy.
There's a time to be busy, and there's a time to be still. Being still is required before being busy. "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10). Without the stillness, we don't know how to be busy, when or where to be busy, or with what to be busy. When we're not still, we can't hear God or know His will. When we're too busy, we're about our own business and not His." page 51
From Real Learning: education in the heart of the home:
"A nature notebook, filled with drawings and descriptions of discoveries becomes a personal diary of growth for a child. Looking back upon what he has encountered, what he has learned, and what touched him, he begins to understand himself a little better and he is drawn ever closer to his Creator.
...Don't look on nature study as something to cross off your "to do" list, look at it as food for your soul-and your child's...A nature walk will offer you endless opportunities for lively discussion and equal opportunities for reverent silence." page 97
From A Charlotte Mason Companion:
..." I think Charlotte was very clever to encourage a child's further study into the things he naturally "takes to". Most children want to learn more about the world around them. The best way to do this is to give them opportunities for direct contact with nature where they live.
...As Charlotte said, "There is no kind of knowledge to be had in these early years so valuable to children as that which they get for themselves, of the world they live in, let them at once get into touch with nature, and a habit is formed which will be a source of delight through life. We are all meant to be naturalists, each to his own degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things." page 255