The Outdoor Life of Children by Charlotte Mason

I loved this little book of writings by Charlotte Mason on nature, compiled by Deborah Taylor-Hough. As she says in her forward, "Basically, go outside with your kids as often as you can. You'll all be healthier, happier, and will learn a thing or two in the process." I was incredibly inspired by this book to appreciate nature even more, and learned some practical tips on how to start all learning from nature. I still have a few years before Adelaide can keep a nature journal, so I am taking advantage of them to learn as much about tree, plant and animal classification as I can. I know NOTHING. Here are some of my favorite quotes

"People who live in the country know the value of fresh air very well, and their children live out of doors, with intervals within for sleeping and eating."

"Never be within door when you can rightly be without."

"In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mother's first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it spent for the most part out in the fresh air."

"A great deal has been said lately about the danger of overpressure, of requiring too much mental work from a child of tender years. The danger exists; but lies, not in giving the child too much, but in giving him the wrong thing to do, the sort of work for which the presente state of his mental development does not fit him."

"Whoever saw a child tired of seeing, of examining in his own way, unfamiliar things?"

"It is infinitely well worth of the mother's while to take some pains every day to secure, in the first place, that her children spend hours daily amongst rural and natural objects; and, in the second place, to infuse into them, or rather to cherish in them, the love of investigation."

"A love of Nature, implanted so early that it will seem to them hereafter to have been born in them, will enrich their lives with pure interests, absorbing pursuits, health, and good humour."

"The mother's real difficulty will be to keep herself from much talk with the children, and to hinder them from occupying themselves with her. There are few things sweeter and more precious to the child than playful prattle with her mother; but one thing is better - the communing with the larger Mother, in order to which the child and she should be left to themselves."

"But, pray, let him work with things and not signs - the things of Nature in their own places, meadow and hedgerow, woods and shore."

"The child who does not know the portly form and spotted breast of the thrush, the graceful flight of the swallow, the yellow bill of the blackbird, the gush of song which the skylark pours from above, is nearly as much to be pitied as those London children who 'had never seen a bee'."

"It would be well if we all persons in authority, parents and all who act for parents, could make up our minds that there is no sort of knowledge to be got in these early years so valuable to children as that which they get for themselves of the world they live in."

"We were all mean to be naturalists, each in his degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things."

"He must live hours daily in the open air, and, as far as possible, in the country; must look and touch and listen; must be quick to note, consciously, every peculiarity of habit or structure, in beast, bird, or insect; the manner of growth and fructification of every plant. He must be accustomed to ask why - Why does the wind blow? Why does the river flow? Why is a leaf-bud sticky? And do not hurry to answer his questions for him; let him think his difficulties out so far as his small experience will carry him."

"In Science, or rather, nature study, we attach great importance to recognition, believing that the power to recognise and name a plant or stone or constellation envolves classification and includes a good deal of knowledge. To know a plant by its gesture and habitat, its time and its way of flowering and fruiting; a bird by its flight and song and its times of coming and going; to know when, year after year, you may come upon the redstart and the pied fly-catcher, means a good deal of interested observation, and of, at any rate, the material for science."