Ep 08 | For the Five and Younger Crowd
Have you ever read a word but never heard it said aloud? And maybe you liked the word, so you used it casually in conversation only to realize later you said it incorrectly? This has happened to me many times and is happening to me every time someone listens to this episode.
Fallow. Let us never forget how to pronounce /ˈfalō/.
But I hope it makes you laugh and serves as a reminder that we’re all learning and growing in the early years of a classical education.
We’re not so unlike our little ones.
Episode Notes
Continuing Education Picks
‘A Little History of American Kindergartens,’ Kat Eschner
‘Looking Back: What I Wish I’d Known About Homeschooling in the Early Years,’ Brandy Vencel
Classical Heavyweights
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READ THE TRANSCRIPT
Someone once told me, ‘You’ll never meet a more eager homeschooling mom than one of a three-year-old.’
I wondered if she could almost read my mind because my oldest was actually two, not three, and I had just spent the afternoon flipping through the pre-k classical curriculum I purchased for her. I had also just declared it insufficient. Obviously, my girl and I could do way more than that.
But I kept that little fact to myself.
The numerous options for classical Charlotte Mason preschool curricula are evidence that I’m not the only eager mom in the homeschool world. I think most of those programs exist not because they’re actually needed, but because of the demand for something educational to do in the earliest years. We still think education means school, even if it takes a watered-down form for young children.
And I get it. I mean, I really do.
Not only are we used to kids heading off to pre-school as early as 2, 3, or 4; we’re also excited to get started! We want to lay the feast! Buy the books! Do the homeschooling!
But what if I told you the early years, with all of their learning, are supposed to be distinct from the years of formal education? What if the benefit to home is that it’s nothing like the classroom?
Could God have designed the natural relationship of mother and child, of person and nature, of sacred and ordinary to lay the foundation for all education? Could the best pre-k curriculum be rather commonplace?
Well, I think so.
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I ran into a little problem a few months ago.
While quietly reading Miss Mason’s first volume, Home Education, I ran into nine little words that threw me for a major loop.
‘Let the child lie fallow till he is six.’
Now, I know the Mason rule for formal lessons beginning around six but this wasn’t the context. She was speaking about childhood generally.
But I know another quote about lying fallow, from Quintilian, an educational philosopher and teacher from about 2,000 years ago whose writings are so helpful that I often feel as if he just dropped his latest book last month.
He said, about the early years, “Those however who hold that a child's mind should not be allowed to lie fallow for a moment are wiser.”
So, who was right? Are we lying fallow or are we not?
Well, it depends on what you mean by lying fallow. The early years of pre-formal schooling are like the later years of education in that your children have developmental needs, interests, emotional and physical changes, and so on. But the way in which you meet those needs in the early years is very different than later ones. From one angle, you need to let them lie, free from the coming expectations and requirements of formal education. But from another angle, you need to feed their minds, souls, and bodies with that which is appropriate for their stage.
Remember, God created childhood, it’s not a holding cell before the real living and learning happens. It’s an ordained time of life, which means it has its own specialness, natural laws, and common grace.
One of the most regularly asked questions in my direct messages and inbox is about how to start educating the five and under crowd. And I’ve learned—from my own experience with my oldest and the conversations with others—that we assume ordinary living along with our young kids just isn’t enough. In a world of dual-language pre-schools with enrollment waiting lists for babies still in the womb, saying: get outside, read great stories, and include your children as full persons in your family seems inadequate. Like there must be more. Maybe just a few pop quizzes on Winnie the Pooh to get started.
And, really, this is all because parents do care so much. In fact, Quintilian perfectly summarizes the heart of a parent when it comes to a child’s education. He explained that because a father (or, ahem, mother) has the highest hopes for his child, from the moment they’re born, he’s more careful about the groundwork of their education.
He gets it. A parent’s eagerness is evidence of our care, and that can be a gift to our children.
But rather than looking around at what the modern education system is doing and trying to force the word classical in front of it, we need to ask: what principles shape all of education and how do those apply to the early years?
Let’s think about some we’ve already discussed this season.
First, we have three tools in educating a born person: atmosphere, discipline, and life.
We use opportunities in the child’s home environment to teach since kids learn in the real world from real things. We train kids through good habits to learn what ought to be normal in life. And we know a full education applies to their souls, bodies, and minds.
Second, we know a child’s mind isn’t an empty bucket in which you deposit facts like rocks. The mind needs living ideas, and the young mind needs access to many natural things to form a memory.
Third, children must grow a strong will, learning the difference between ‘I want’ and ‘I will.’
And lastly, children must learn that all truth is God’s truth, and there is no separation between the secular and sacred. The world is alive with wonder and enchantment and story, and to understand it in a harmonious and integrated way is to truly see God’s world.
Before we can begin an education in the early years, we have to think about where it’s going in the end years, and I don’t mean at 18 when they leave the homeschool. I mean the true final cause, the end goal, the reason for living and learning. What is a person for? How ought they live? What is the good life?
These are the questions that provide the principles for classical education, and yes, for the pre-schooling years.
We are to do as Miss Mason and Quintilian advised. We let a child lie fallow until six-ish, guarding their early years and offering them a quiet growing time, and inviting them to learn with us. And we never let a child lie fallow, we chase goodness, truth, and beauty with them, marking their childhood with a true jollification.
But fear not, there are actual, practical things to do. But you know we had to cover the principles first.
Classically speaking, children were expected to begin formal education between the ages of 6 and 7. Plato, Aristotle, and Quintilian all assume a later starting age when a child could derive profit from instruction and had the stamina necessary to complete lessons. Miss Mason says around six, acknowledging that some children may be ready a bit earlier or later.
I’ve noticed, at least on social media, that when people insist that Charlotte Mason said no formal schooling before six, the implication is that Miss Mason hated the idea of preschool or kindergarten. If it wasn’t Form 1B, it wasn’t worth thinking about. But that’s not true. Miss Mason was well aware of the recent introduction of the kindergarten, the way it was taking shape in both Germany and America; she just thought the mother was the best kindergarten.
And I have to say I agree.
The kindergarten should be, as Miss Mason wrote, “a little heaven below.” The early years should be marked by things a mother is naturally capable of doing: offering sympathy, common sense, common knowledge, an atmosphere of joy, and personal influence in the child’s life.
There is no need to make the kindergarten at home look anything like the mechanistic and wooden way of the school kindergarten. Kids will naturally pick up their colors, shapes, and even some of their letters. The focus of the early years isn’t facts, but life. How do you relate to others in your home? How fast can you run down a hill? Roll down it? How do you handle big emotions? Build a Lego castle? Restore fellowship? Brush your teeth? How do we take care of what God has given us? How do we love our neighbor?
Discovering the answers to these types of questions are done through what Miss Mason calls ‘kindergarten occupations.’ They’re the hundreds of little things that pop up in the common places to train a just eye and a faithful hand in a child.
From packaging a parcel to straightening a table cloth, the lessons of the early years are larger and deeper than ABCs and 123s. Of course, those will be learned but in the ordinary ways: like counting out the number of rocks in the creek or writing one’s name in the dirt. But if education is truly about developing one’s character, then how one cleans up their toys is just as important as becoming reading ready.
And who better to teach and where better to learn than from mom at home?
Now the almost one-stop shop for the early years is being out-of-doors. Miss Mason says why be within doors when you can be rightly without them, and she means it. She encourages mothers to eat outside, to leave the city for the country frequently, and to aim to raise a child naturalist.
Nature is the commonplace invitation for children to practice the habits of obedience and attention, to develop their five senses, to learn to move their bodies, expend their energies, and fall in love with God’s creation. A child learns from things, and the outdoors offer them extensive beauty and form a memory of lovely things, which we know provide solace and well-being for the soul.
Unsurprisingly, your children need to play. Not only do children process and solidify new knowledge through movement, but it’s also how they act out stories and help form their imaginations. The repeated storylines and physical movements leave literal impressions in their brains that form how they think and what they love. Two of the best things to do for young children are to lose yourself and your time in playing with them, and to, as appropriate, leave them alone to play freely without adult instruction, narration, or correction.
Of course, habit training, or the ‘discipline’ part of education, is vital in the early years. Remember that habits rule in 99 out of 100 actions. And I’ll just remind you there’s a whole habit series at the beginning of this podcast season.
Now, this is a little fun. Miss Mason does describe the branches of nursery education in volume one, which include cleanliness, order, neatness, regularity, and punctuality. It’s actually ordinary, simple things you’d think to do: filling your youngest children’s spaces with beautiful things, teaching basic manners, playing the best of music, and keeping to a daily rhythm.
Have you noticed how excited young children get when they’re given meaningful work within the home? How much they’ll focus as you explain how to fold a hand towel, button a shirt, or how to peel a carrot? This is learning done in amusements; it’s fun and natural and full of eagerness. By teaching in a way that honors the earliest developmental stages, interests, and abilities, you lay the foundation for the harder things to come.
This is showing them to be faithful with little, so as their education grows, they can be faithful with much.
And I think this is true of us too. We’re learning to be faithful in the little years so we can be faithful in the formal years. If I had to name one muscle being most worked in this season of motherhood and homeschooling, it would have to be my repentance muscle. I want and aim for a home marked by jollification in every moment, but the reality is I’m a sinner and I’m daily faced with my inadequacies for this good work before me. But my hope is this commonplace liturgy of repenting and restoring fellowship will grow our homeschool into something really beautiful.
The kids and I aren’t so unlike one another. Our first slow steps into home education are a sweet gift that calls all of us to humility before the God who is goodness, truth, and beauty; and that’s the only place from which a true education can begin.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
I’ll see you guys in two weeks.
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