Charlotte Mason had great faith in us mothers to know what to teach our children and how. She said, “but the mother will find a hundred opportunities to teach geography by the way.” Indeed, the whole field of Pictorial Geography may be covered in this way. So stay tuned to today’s podcast to hear her ideas on how to go about this daunting feat while our children are still in the early years.
Listen Now:
Charlotte Mason, Volume 1 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)
ADE Season 12 Reading Schedule
ADE’s Out-of-Door Geography in the Early Years through Form 1 handout
The Hole in the Dike by Green
The Story about Ping by Flack and Wiese
Emily
Welcome to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I’m Emily Kiser and I’m here with…
Liz
…Liz Cottrill…
Nicole
…and Nicole Williams.
Emily
Last week we began our series on Geography with a bird’s eye view of the whole subject. So today we’re going to start focusing in on the teaching of Geography at each level. And we’re of course going to start at the very earliest stage of a child’s development. So what people in the Charlotte Mason community call the Early Years, that time before formal lessons begin.
And like Science, Geography is a subject that can and we probably should start introducing our children to these topics even in the early years because it can be done very naturally outside, as Charlotte Mason said, by the way. And we have all those long hours out of doors. So this is one of the ideas she had of how we can use that.
So we’re just going to be looking at those very earliest lessons today. Nicole, would you share what ideas we might consider introducing to our children?
Nicole
Yeah, because there’s no book yet, and no map, they’re just really starting, like you said, with the early ideas outside their own home, their own neighborhood, and that area. Charlotte Mason said,
There are certain ideas which children must get from within a walking radius of their own home if ever they are to have a real understanding of maps and of geographical terms. (1.73)
So that’s the whole spirit of this stage is really learning their own neighborhood. That is like their first Geography book.
And like you said, like early Science and Nature Study, it’s outside and there’s no rigid sequence. Kind of like we talked about when we talked about the early years of Nature Study. It’s more of a menu for you to draw from. I like that you pointed out “a hundred things;” I’m like I maybe pick out five...
There are resources for you of course but first here’s some ideas that we can pull from. The first is what Miss Mason called the Pictoral Geography and it’s as you’re out walking you teach Geography by the way:
A duck-pond is a lake or an inland sea; any brooklet will serve to illustrate the great rivers of the world; a hillock grows into a mountain––an Alpine system; a hazel-copse suggests the mighty forests of the Amazon; a reedy swamp, the rice-fields of China; a meadow, the boundless prairies of the West; the pretty purple flowers of the common mallow is a text whereon to hang the cotton fields of the Southern States. (1:72)
So you’re using those small things right in front of them to teach much larger ideas. And one thing that I loved about this is that you know how when you’re little and then you go back to something later in your life, you’re like, that was way smaller than I thought it was.
Emily
Right.
Nicole
And so I loved this idea because she’s just playing into what is natural for the children anyways.
Then there’s simply noticing where the sun is in the sky, where it rises and where it sets and how that changes at different times of the year. Just some of those noticing things and then learning to tell time by it. So big ideas, but really introduced in a gentle way.
There is the feel of distance that they’re getting. They love this because it’s done with their own feet and counting and so they walk familiar distances around the house and they get to know how far is a long way and a short way and we can calculate that.
They start learning a sense of direction. Again, you know, where the sun rises, where it sets, and then from there they can learn some direction. They can start getting their bearings in that way. And that’s kind of that first map idea, which direction does the road run, you know, versus the river and things like that. They could even get a pocket compass at this time once they’ve learned these things, which is pretty exciting.
There’s also reading their own neighborhood, like where things are. And as he notices this, like what’s growing in the fields, what bounds them, then he can start to draw the maps in the dirt, like with a stick or his finger of what he is seeing around him.
Emily
And of course we give that example first, like show them how that’s done. And we’re not expecting him to have that inherent knowledge, right? We think it’s inherent, but it really isn’t. You know, we had to learn it.
Nicole
Yeah. Right. And so much better to learn it this way, you know, maybe even on a hill where you can see down at the neighbor’s field or the the road that’s, you know, near your house. So just a great way to very concretely give them a look at this. So just again rooted in their own place.
And then this is just like Nature Study and Science, this is setting the foundation for what is to come. So it’s important work.
Emily
And you notice how intertwined the two are, ’cause even when they’re learning boundaries, it’s what’s growing in that field? You know, it’s so hard to pull apart what is Science and what is Geography.
Nicole
Right, right. Yeah.
Emily
So remember, of course, these are lessons by the way, as Nicole just said, there is not a scope and sequence, there’s not a rigid order. It is what captures their attention and let’s help them get a bigger idea from what has captured their notice or what their attention is focusing on.
So be on the lookout for ways to open your children’s eyes to something. Maybe it’s a mud puddle they’re splashing in, and after they have fun with that, you could just talk about how the puddle could be a pond or a lake or something like that.
Or they’re noticing ants building a little ant hill. And you could say, can you imagine how big that anthill must be to an ant? Can you imagine? And just pull on their imagination and then go, that’s how we feel when we’re climbing a really big hill or a mountain. We feel as small as the ant compared to that big hill.
So much imagination is used. So just be on the lookout. I think that’s our biggest lesson here as moms at this age. Be on lookout for what’s already captured their attention and then how can we sow the seeds of some of these ideas. I also like instead of just dirt and a stick, sidewalk chalk, which is just a fun play, you know, and a lot of people are like, Well, I don’t have a lot of dirt around me, I live in a concrete jungle or whatever, we live in the city. Sidewalk chalk is such a fun play that we already are doing with our kids, and we could turn that into drawing boundaries and some like basic sketch maps.
And that these are just not, it’s not like we’re meticulously methodically teaching them how to read a map, but these are the initial ideas to give them a different perspective, right? Their perspective is I see the world from three feet off the ground, and so to think about things from a bird’s eye perspective, which is what maps do, it’s just a different skill. So play with it, have fun.
And then as the opportunity– so I just I say that because I don’t want you to think that this is just silly. This is literally such important groundwork for what’s going to come in their lessons, and it’s very worth our time to do with our young kids. And so, as opportunities present themselves, just maybe consider where is the sun in the sky, and maybe once a month, look at you know, if you go out for your outside time after lunch or before lunch, notice where the sun is. And it changes through the year, unless you live on the equator. Well it still does even at that point, right?
Or what direction their shadow falls, or where the sun rises and sets if you have opportunity to do that. Sometimes it’s really hard for us to do that because it’s way before or way after children are awake. But you can also consider weather, and again this is where all of these are Geography ideas, but they’re also Science ideas. So it’s very intertwined with your Nature Study outside.
So, as far as resources, you will notice if you’re reading along with us none of this is covered in Volume 6, but it is very much covered in a section called “Outdoor Geography” in Volume 1. And so we gave you that chapter and those pages in our reading schedule, so you would have all of these ideas.
And then we at A Delectable Education have taken those ideas and put them in kind of a logical progression. It’s obviously not rigid or anything, but it’s like they do need to have some concept of the sun rising and setting before you introduce the cardinal directions of the compass, for example, because that’s why we have them, right?
And so there is a progression and it starts in the early years and it goes through Form 1. So they’re going to continue building on these ideas. But if you’re just at a complete loss of what kinds of things do I even talk about or introduce them to, that document is linked in the show notes. So take a look at that.
And like I said, Volume 1, “Outdoor Geography”, that is going to be invaluable to you just to get that big idea and hopefully inspire you to tackle some of these ideas with your kids.
Liz
I think that’s one of the biggest questions that moms have is just if if someone asked you point blank for ideas about Geography with a little child, you would absolutely have no idea.
Emily
Or we get wildly inappropriate and start this is how you measure longitude…
Liz
And part of it is that we have for the most part become city people and we’ve kind of disconnected from being outdoors as much as earlier generations. But even growing up in the city, I remember my mom telling me as a little child, when you can see the shadow of the house, you need to come home for dinner. You know, stuff like that.
So just as you start to notice things, you’ll notice more and more things. You’re planting your garden and you talk to your children while you’re doing it about why the rows have to go this way across our yard and not the other way because we want the flowers to have the full sun from the south all day long, right? Little things like that.
And Nicole, I think you mentioned driving, but you know, I used to ask my children, well, if we’re going north and we’re at a stoplight, if we need to go east, which way do we go? And it’s a fun game for them. You know, noticing how plants turn toward the sun. Children have little competitions with each other about whose shadow is the longest and things like that.
So a lot of it is training ourselves just to be more alert. And I will say that children pick up on ideas even in their little picture books at this age. The Hole in the Dike was one that made a tremendous impression on me as a little child. Like, do you mean these people in Holland live in the ocean and have to keep it out?
Emily
Yeah.
Liz
You know, or The story about Ping and learning about China and the big river, the Yangtze and stuff like that. So there’s just myriad ways once you start paying attention.
Emily
We had a map that was well loved and I finally had a throw away because it was just getting so beat up on the side of our refrigerator for I don’t know…I maybe got it when Jonah was two from the Target dollar spot. But it was just such, it looked nice, you know? It was just simple – the states, the names. I don’t even think it had capitals. Maybe it did, I don’t know. And he would sometimes ask me, what state’s this? And all the states were different colors.
And I remember before he started school, so he was not reading, he recounted from memory all the states we would pass through going from where we lived in Virginia to Michigan for our trip. And then he did it for like if the Alabama cousins came, they would go through these ones. And just from taking it in.
And so that’s not a ton of active teaching, right? But we’re just strewing these ideas and giving them contact with maps. And some kids are gonna be fascinated. We’ve known quite a lot of those who just–
Liz
It was easier in the old days when your parents literally pulled a map down from the visor to check it out.
Emily
I think I bought a road atlas at a used bookstore when we were up in Michigan just for something for my kids to look at you know, on the twelve hour drive home.
We hope you’re inspired to try some of Charlotte Mason’s ideas with your own young children today. Next week, we’ll start to look at Geography lessons for Form 1 students, the beginning of their formal schooling. We hope you’ll join us.