Hands on Science in a CM Education

Most people who have heard anything about Charlotte Mason and science know that nature study is largely the focus in the early years- and this is definitely true.  Much has been written about this.

But just as narration, while inherently a part of a Charlotte Mason Education,  is not the only way to use books, there is more to the early science studies than birds, bugs, and flowers (although let me stress again that these are absolutely vital to a CM education, indeed, to any well rounded education).  But there is also something more.

In Charlotte Mason’s Home Education, the book she wrote for educating children 9 and under, she presents the work of a village schoolteacher named Mr.Richard Dawes as a good example for science teaching in the younger grades. I’ll quote from that in a moment.

The Right Reverend Dawes was a bit more than a local school schoolmaster. Later he would serve as Dean of Hereford until his death.  His work as a ‘village schoolmaster’ occurred when he served as Rector at King’s Somborne, Hampshire, where he established and taught in the first and only school in the parish.  He developed many educational ideas not commonly  found in schools at the time, and he put into practice his somewhat radical (for the time) views on education and the poor (such as charging his students on a sliding scale, and permitting parents to exempt their children from teaching on the catechism if their own consciences forbade it).

One Mr. Moseley in the minutes of the Committee of Council on Education 1847 described the parish at Kings Somborne as:

 “parish thoroughly demoralized by the operation of the old Poor Law… I have reason to believe that there was no parish in the surrounding district which stood in respect to the character of its inhabitants so low. The wages of a labourer vary from 65 to 9s a week. There is no person resident in the place above the condition of the farmer except the rector.” 

Reverend Dawes’ work at the school gained renown, as he accomplished things nobody thought possible with his rural students in a backwards area.

In the field of sciences, his goal was to teach:

“…what may be called the philosophy of common things of everyday life. They were shown how much there is that is interesting, and which it is advantageous for them to know, in connection with the natural objects with which they are familiar; they had explained to them, and were made acquainted with, the principles of a variety of natural phenomena, as well as the principles and construction of various instruments of a useful
kind. A practical turn was given to everything the uses and fruits of the knowledge they were acquiring were never lost sight of.”

“Some of the properties of air, explaining how its pressure enables them to pump up water, to amuse themselves with squirts and popguns, to suck up water through a straw; explaining also the principles and construction of a barometer, the common pump, the diving-bell, a pair of bellows. That air expands by heat, shown by placing a half-blown bladder near the fire, when the wrinkles disappear. Why the chimney-smoke sometimes rises easily in the air, sometimes not; why there is a draught up the chimney, and under the door, and towards the fire. Air as a vehicle of sound, and why the flash of a distant gun fired is seen before the report is heard; how to calculate the distance of a thunderstorm; the difference in the speeds at which different materials conduct sound. Water and its properties, its solid, fluid, and vaporous state; why water-pipes are burst by frost; why ice forms and floats on the surface of ponds, and not at the bottom; why the kettle-lid jumps up when the water is boiling on the fire; the uses to which the power of steam is applied; the gradual evolution of the steam-engine, shown by models and diagrams; how their clothes are dried, and why they feel cold sitting in damp clothes; why a damp bed is so dangerous; why one body floats in water, and another sinks; the different densities of sea and fresh water; why, on going into the school on a cold morning, they sometimes see a quantity of water on the glass, and why on the inside and not on the outside; why, on a frosty day, their breath is visible as vapour; the substances water holds in solution, and how their drinking water is affected by the kind of soil through which it has passed. Dew, its value, and the conditions necessary for its formation; placing equal portions of dry wool on gravel, glass, and the grass, and weighing them the next morning. Heat and its properties; how it is that the blacksmith can fit iron hoops so firmly on the wheels of carts and barrows; what precautions have to be taken in laying the iron rails of railways and in building iron bridges, etc.; what materials are good, and what bad, conductors of heat; why at the same temperature some feel colder to our touch than others; why a glass sometimes breaks when hot water is poured into it, and whether thick or thin glass would be more liable to crack; why water can be made to boil in a paper kettle or an eggshell without its being burned. The metals, their sources, properties, and uses; mode of separating from the ores. Light and its properties, illustrated by prisms, etc; adaptation of the eye; causes of long and short-sightedness. The mechanical principles of the tools more commonly used, the spade, the plough, the axe, the lever, etc.”

“It may surprise some who read carefully the above list that such subjects should have been taught to the children of a rural elementary school. But it is an undeniable fact that they were taught in Kings Somborne School, and so successfully that the children were both interested and benefited by the teaching. Mr. Dawes, in answer to the objection that such subjects are above the comprehension of the young, said:––

‘The distinguishing mark of Nature’s laws is their extreme simplicity. It may doubtless require intellect of a high order to make the discovery of these laws; yet, once evolved, they are within the capacity of a child,––in short, the principles of natural philosophy are the principles of common sense, and if taught in a simple and common-sense way, they will be speedily understood and eagerly attended to by children; and it will be found that with pupils of even from ten to twelve years of age much may be done towards forming habits of observation and inquiry.’ Such a fact, I think, suggests some valuable practical lessons for those who have the responsibility of deciding what subjects to include in an educational system for children.”

Charlotte Mason acknowledged that in reading about the late Dean Dawes, a parent’s first impression would be an urgent desire to hire somebody just like him to tutor our own children, and of course, that is beyond most of us.  Public schools are sometimes fortunate enough to find such a person to teach their science courses, but just as often fail.

If we can’t hire somebody like Richard Dawes, she encourages us to recognize that there is value first in being aware of the sorts of things they should know.  The list above is helpful as a starting hint, but not so much as a list of things to teach our own kiddies.  The *why* here is important- common things, familiar things, things in every day life, things it useful for them to know.  Some of the things listed above are still applicable, but many of them are no longer common or part of every day life- not many of our children have an open fire in the middle of their homes as the only source for fuel, for heat, for cooking.  There is little call for or opportunity to observe iron hoops on carts or barrows.

Miss Mason had a couple of recommendations- both out of print (one was out of print when she suggested it) and now out of date as well.  However, she does give us another big of guidance which still applies today:

“…nothing should be done without its due experiment. “

While there are many fun little books, websites, and television shows which may explain the sorts of everyday things and how they work, the children need to work things out themselves, in the round, so to speak.  A Charlotte Mason education is largely literature based, but it’s not only literature based. They need to be doing things as well.

I found a little biography of Dean Dawes online, and I think this paragraph describing his aims is very useful (the picture at the top of this post is taken from this statement):

More advanced pupils were initiated in the elementary truths of the physical sciences, especially in such as bore directly on the practical business of life… all illustrated as far as was practicable by simple and impressive experiments. In short, it was the grand object of Mr Dawes to rouse into activity the slumbering faculties of children, to teach them to observe for themselves the objects of common daily life, and to inspire them with an intelligent and thoughtful curiosity.

When my children were younger, this is what we used in the early years to accomplish the same goal:

It was a box of cards, 34 of them, with a few items that you might need to complete some of the activities.  It’s called How Things Work, part of a Adventures in Science collection by Educational Insights.

They do have new versions (I’ve had mine for at least 20 years), but in looking at the catalog, I don’t know that I like them as well. Part of that is a crotchety old “I dislike change” attitude.  But partly that is because some of those changes aren’t an improvement- there seems to be less emphasis on doing and more on reading and writing.  The reading and writing is appropriate in the later years, but for early years, children should be spending a lot of time actually doing things, not just reading about them, or, anathema, watching somebody else do things on an electronic screen.

The thing that impressed me with these simple little cards with their cartoon sketches in black and white is that the focus was on the doing, not the pictures, not the telling. The children thought about them, and later applied what they had done to their free play.

Learning is a powerful thing, and sometimes a little dangerous- it was during the weeks we were going through the cards on force and motion (pendulums, pulleys, levers, block and tackle) that our sixth child convinced our seventh to allow her to hoist him up into a tree using a rope and a branch as an improvised pulley to see it if it really was easier for her to lift him that way.

It was.
It was also easy to drop him that way, since her hands got sweaty and she loosened her hold on the rope to wipe them dry and get a better grip.  In previous experiments with the using the rope over a branch, the things she'd lifted were much lighter and so when she let go, they simply hung in place.  Her brother was heavier and so he fell, much like Winnie the Pooh falling through the bramble bush, only he fell through a lilac.

He was uninjured, other than a few scratches.  But I suspect that both of them have a deeper understanding of pulleys and how they work than most of their peers.

We eventually had to make a rule that those two could do nothing with a rope without checking with a parent first. You may also need to make a couple of rules for safety.  But children learn through trying things out, through making emotional connections, and through trial and error as much as they do through stories.  They really need both approaches.

Give them things to think about.  Ask aloud, "I wonder whether this toy car rolls faster on the floor or the carpet? "  Notice things- "That's interesting.  Have you noticed my church shoes are more slippery to walk in than my tennis shoes?"   "Why does this can make that hissing noise when I use a church-key can opener to open it?  "What would happen if we slid down this hill on a cardboard box?  What if we rubbed a candle on the bottom of the box?  Why?"

and then... do the things.

For further research check out these two websites:

Arvinda Gupta, science teacher in India, and his toys from trash (phenomenal!)
Application of physics in every day life

Books to look for (try the library or an internet library like archive.org, Hoopla, Overdrive, or Libby)

Junk Drawer Physics

Entertaining Science Experiments with Everyday Objects

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$5.00- Education for All, vol 2- the Imagination (and more) issue!- transcript of the imagination talk from the AO Camp meeting, with additional material I had to cut to save time.  

   
 $5.00- Education for All, a new CM journal,   Feed Your Mind!  This issue contains several articles on handicrafts, outdoor play, nature study and science. See sidebar for purchasing options if you are in the Philippines.

 $3.00 Five Little Peppers and How They Grew Copywork (grades 2/3, carefully selected with an eye toward finely crafted sentences, lovely bits of writing pleasant to picture in the mind's eye, and practice in copying some of the mechanics of grammar and punctuation typically covered in these years.

  $3.00 Aesop's Fables Copywork for Year One!  Carefully selected with an eye toward well written sentences, memorable scenes, and some practice copying sentences that model the basics of capitalization and punctuation.   Suitable for use with children who have already mastered the strokes and letters for basic penmanship.

Picture Study!  Miguel Cabrera's beautiful, diverse families, painted in 18th century Mexico this package includes 9 downloadable prints along with directions for picture study and background information on the artist and his work. $5.00

Common Kitchen:  What's for lunch?  Isn't that a common problem in homeschooling families?  What to fix, what is quick, what is frugal, what is nourishing?  How can I accomplish all those things at once?  We homeschooled 7 children, and I was a homeschooling mom for 29 years on a single income.  I collected these recipes and snack ideas from all over the world.  These are real foods I used to feed my family, my godsons, and sometimes my grandkids.  Includes some cooking tips and suggestions for sides, and for a variety of substitutions.  I think every family will find something they can use here. $5.00

Learning as we please... (Not always a joy)

Mason says education requires effort, sometimes strenuous labour, and it is not a casual and desultory matter. 

Desultory: No set plan. Haphazard. Random.  Jumping from one thing to another. Disconnected.  Lacking purpose or effort.

If we hold that light and easy view of education, she warns, our children are likely to turn out like the character of Edward Waverly, protagonist of Sir Walter Scott’s novels about Waverly:

“Edward Waverley, we are told, 'was permitted in a great measure to learn as he pleased, when he pleased, and what he pleased.' That he did please to learn and that his powers of apprehension were uncommonly quick, would appear to justify this sort of education. But wavering he was allowed to grow up, and 'Waverley' he remained; instability and ineffectiveness marked his course. The manner of his education and its results are thus shortly set forth:––

"Edward would throw himself with spirit upon any classical author of which his preceptor proposed the perusal, make himself master of the style so far as to understand the story, and, if that pleased or interested him, he finished the volume. But It was in vain to attempt fixing his attention on critical distinctions of philology, upon the difference of idiom, the beauty of felicitous expression, or the artificial combinations of syntax. 'I can read and understand a Latin author,' said young Edward, with the self-confidence and rash reasoning of fifteen, 'and Scaliger or Bentley could not do much more.' Alas while he was thus permitted to read only for the gratification of his amusement, he foresaw not that he was losing for ever the opportunity of acquiring habits of firm and assiduous application, of gaining the art of controlling, directing, and concentrating the powers of his mind for earnest investigation––an art far more essential than even that intimate acquaintance with classical learning which is the primary object of study."

Waverley but illustrates, what Mr. Ruskin says in plain words; that our youth––whatever we make of it––abides with us to the end…

So it behoves us in youth to apply both Strenuous Effort and Reverence.– strenuous attention is a precondition for being receptive to making the most of the connections and forming the affinities and relationships that we are made for.  We don’t magically know what we ought to know. To be producers, makers, rather than spectators and mere dilettantes  we must apply ourselves and “must learn the rules with all diligence and get skill by his labour. It is true, 'the labour we delight in physics pain,' but it is also true that we cannot catch hold of any one of the affinities that are in waiting for us without strenuous effort and without reverence.”

 The student who would grow and learn, even for things he or she loves (the things we love especially deserve this) must apply “attention, labour, love, and reverence. He gets joy in return, so is perhaps little conscious of effort; but the effort is made all the same.”


It's okay if your child has to work at lessons.  Strenuous effort is the starting place, and the rewards don't really come without it.

For understanding reverence, she recommends reading about Brother Lawrence

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$5.00- Education for All, vol 2- the Imagination (and more) issue!- transcript of the imagination talk from the AO Camp meeting, with additional material I had to cut to save time.  
   
 $5.00- Education for All, a new CM journal,   Feed Your Mind!  This issue contains several articles on handicrafts, outdoor play, nature study and science. See sidebar for purchasing options if you are in the Philippines.


 $3.00 Five Little Peppers and How They Grew Copywork (grades 2/3, carefully selected with an eye toward finely crafted sentences, lovely bits of writing pleasant to picture in the mind's eye, and practice in copying some of the mechanics of grammar and punctuation typically covered in these years.

  $3.00 Aesop's Fables Copywork for Year One!  Carefully selected with an eye toward well written sentences, memorable scenes, and some practice copying sentences that model the basics of capitalization and punctuation.   Suitable for use with children who have already mastered the strokes and letters for basic penmanship.

Picture Study!  Miguel Cabrera's beautiful, diverse families, painted in 18th century Mexico this package includes 9 downloadable prints along with directions for picture study and background information on the artist and his work. $5.00

Common Kitchen:  What's for lunch?  Isn't that a common problem in homeschooling families?  What to fix, what is quick, what is frugal, what is nourishing?  How can I accomplish all those things at once?  We homeschooled 7 children, and I was a homeschooling mom for 29 years on a single income.  I collected these recipes and snack ideas from all over the world.  These are real foods I used to feed my family, my godsons, and sometimes my grandkids.  Includes some cooking tips and suggestions for sides, and for a variety of substitutions.  I think every family will find something they can use here. $5.00

Studying Customs and Cultures

Whether you do this through visiting other countries and cultural groups, reading about them, watching youtube vidoes or documentaries, or watching television shows and movies from that culture, shopping at a grocery store that features ethnic or foreign to you foods,  (and it should be a combination of these approaches), I have some open ended questions to share to help you and your kids notice and observe things.  You can ask to help your children make some deductions and think through these things for themselves.  HOWEVER- please don't turn this into a drill session.  Look over the questions, and think about them as things to notice.   Occasionally, ask one or two questions, wonder about something, notice something.   Geography is important, but people are more than their geography.

Who are their heroes and why?  What traits do they admire?  Look at historical figures, national heroes, as well as cultural figures and contemporary sports and entertainment.

Clothing styles- note different styles based on age, gender, and/or social status.  I once saw a really exhibit of the work of a photographer who took portraits of older relatives and their teen or 20 something kids or grandkids wearing each other's clothing.   It was quite fascinating.  I can't find it now, but this page of information on Thai culture is informative.

Education: are there schools? What are they like? What ages do children attend? Who teaches the children? What are they expected to learn? What are their parents expected to teach them?  Colleges and universities? Who attends?  how long are kids in school (both daily and years), how many days a week do they go to school? Are there commonly after-school programs?  Are they serious academic events or fun and games?




Food: this is a big one.  How is it prepared (inside, outside, fire, stove, oven, is it sliced and diced so it comes to the table bite-sized, does it require a lot of time…); Who is most likely to prepare it?  Where does it come from? What food groups are most common? What is considered a staple food (rice? bread? tortillas? beans?)? How often do they eat? How is it served (individually, or a central bowl or plate from which the entire family eats)? How is it eaten (chopsticks, fingers, forks, knives), is there something different about family seating (I notice in several Korean family dramas the women all eat at one table, the men at another; the table is low and the family sits on the floor)?  What would be considered good table manners?  Do they say grace before a meal?  Is there a proper order for serving (in American you aren’t supposed to start until your hostess is seated and takes her first bite, in some cultures you wait for the father to take the first bite, in some you wait for the adults to finish before serving children).

Housing: What are the homes typically made of? What are the floor plans like? Size of the house? Arrangement of furniture? Furniture style? Is there a yard or outdoor space? What does it look like (a front and back yard? a courtyard? Fences?), What are the rooms and their purposes? What does the bathroom, if there is one, look like?  What is the neighborhood like? Are other homes near or far? Shoes in the house or not?  (here's an interesting description of one person's visit to a Japanese home)

Manners: What is considered a polite greeting? What is considered respectful? Who must show respect and to whom and how? What are some things you ought never to do in that culture (blow your nose in public? Sneeze? Discuss your bowel movements? Touch a person of the opposite gender who is not a family member? Kiss? Belch?)?

What security measures are taken for granted? (in  Davao City Philippines, armed guards at schools and restaurants and grocery stores are typical)

Who lives in the house?  What is a family unit? Who visits the home and why or why not?  What are typical sleeping arrangements? Shoes inside or not?
Where do people live?  When we were in the Philippines I was surprised to see that the closer you were to the water (rivers or the sea) the worse the housing was, until you get to shanties and make-shift shacks.  Rich people don't build on the seafront outside of first world countries with excellent insurance.

Family relationships: How do members of the family treat each other? What do they call each other? How are children disciplined? Family size? Age of marriage? Arranged marriages or …?  Who’s the boss (if there is one)?   What is a wedding like? Who has which responsibilities in the marriage ceremony and after? Is divorce acceptable? Is it common?  What is the average number of children?

What can you learn about the written language, if there is one, and are there any conclusions you can draw from that.  Japanese has an entire alphabet specifically for the purpose of writing foreign words or loan words- and that tells you something about the culture.  What ‘loan words’ do they use (by loan words I mean words that are borrowed from another language and just incorporated almost as is into the daily speech and language), and what does that tell you about the culture?  There’s almost an entire chapter on this in the beginning of Ivanhoe.

Work:  What are common jobs? What are respected jobs, and what jobs are held in lower esteem?  Are jobs divided by gender, if so, how?  What’s a work day like? What are work safety measures for risky jobs?  What are the wages?

Fun and games: What games are common?  What are common leisure activities? What amusements and hobbies do people pursue, where and how?  Toys? Music? Holidays and ceremonies?

What age is considered mature or grown up? Is there a coming of age ceremony or ritual? How old do the children leave home?

Collectivist or individualist?  An explanation of what that means here.

Lifespan?

How are the very young, the very old, the infirm, the disabled, or foreigners treated?

Art and architecture? What styles would be considered typical?  Why?


Religion: What do they believe about a deity/deities/ worship?  An afterlife? Death and what happens afterward?  A soul?  Burial rituals?  What is a ‘good person?’  Monotheistm, polytheism, atheism, or ….? What do they believe about what is requires of them by their deity? Where do they worship and how? Religious books? Leaders? If there is more than one religion typical of the region or culture, how do they get along? What do they believe about human beings and where we come from, our purpose (if any) in life? Our relationship to God (or gods, or…?)?

Government: What form of government? Who rules, how, and why? What attitude do people have toward that government?

What do the people look like? Is the society is homogeneous.  What do they admire when it comes to personal appearance You can find this out by looking at plastic surgery rates and typical cosmetic surgeries, by looking at the cosmetics and skin care products used and sold and advertised, by looking at advertisements.  Do this with your own culture, too, asking yourself if a stranger came to visit, what conclusions would that stranger draw from your culture's popular entertainment?  In other words, what are their standards of beauty?  How do you know? 
For instance…. (I would screen this first, it isn't all family friendly)
One woman sent a photograph of herself without makeup to photoshop experts around the world and asked them to make her beautiful.  Here she compares the results and shares a few stats on beauty standards and make-up practices.


Most of these come from Kathryn Stout’s Guides to History Plus (Design-A-Study)
And you really want to have the audio or video sessions of David Livermore's Cultural Intelligence series (at audible or Teaching Company)- not the books. There's a huge gap in information and interest and I consider the books inferior. 

These are just a few of the questions you can ask, and it’s merely a beginning.  From there you might ask, “Why?” and “What does that mean for daily life?” and “How is it different here?”  Studying the geography and climate of a country is important too, for understanding the customs and culture. Naturally, island nations depend more on the sea than on large scale animal farming for dinner, for example.

How do people spend their money? How much does it cost to live?

You can ask these questions about modern cultures and countries you are studying, and you can ask them about historical cultures.

Learn at least a few phrases from the language.  E. A Parish, in her excellent article on imagination says: "teacher and taught must be inspired by the sympathy towards those who are strangers to them and whose language has hitherto been but a sound in their ears."

"It is by the aid of imagination that a child comes to love people who do not belong to his own country, and as he learns the history of their great deeds and noble efforts, he is eager to learn something of the country in which they lived… of the causes that made the people what they are. "

Other Resources:

You may also find the book What the World Eats a useful resource.This is a project done by the same team who did the book Material World, another book that I highly recommend for studying other countries and cultures.  In Material World (you can see some photographs here), they traveled the world and took photographs of an average family in various countries with the family’s possessions.

In What The World Eats, the photographer and journalist  went to 24 countries and photographed 30 families with one week’s worth of groceries, most of the families the same families who were in their first book.You can look at a short story about it with some of the photographs here.  You can see other photographs from the project here.   They include data about how much the food costs, how some of the food is prepared, recipes, and a list of the food.
At Audible.com, look for : Customs of the World: Using Cultural Intelligence to Adapt, Wherever You Are
At the Teaching Company, wait for it to go on sale. Everything in their catalog goes on sale a couple times a year, it's their business model.  I listened to this before we moved to the Philippines and I found that I often was able to explain situations to missionary friends who had been there for 20 years thanks to the information in this course.  Invaluable.

My husband carrying our disable daughter down the steps to our church when we lived in the Philippines.

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$5.00- Education for All, vol 2- the Imagination (and more) issue!- transcript of the imagination talk from the AO Camp meeting, with additional material I had to cut to save time.  
   
 $5.00- Education for All, a new CM journal,   Feed Your Mind!  This issue contains several articles on handicrafts, outdoor play, nature study and science. See sidebar for purchasing options if you are in the Philippines.


 $3.00 Five Little Peppers and How They Grew Copywork (grades 2/3, carefully selected with an eye toward finely crafted sentences, lovely bits of writing pleasant to picture in the mind's eye, and practice in copying some of the mechanics of grammar and punctuation typically covered in these years.

  $3.00 Aesop's Fables Copywork for Year One!  Carefully selected with an eye toward well written sentences, memorable scenes, and some practice copying sentences that model the basics of capitalization and punctuation.   Suitable for use with children who have already mastered the strokes and letters for basic penmanship.

Picture Study!  Miguel Cabrera's beautiful, diverse families, painted in 18th century Mexico this package includes 9 downloadable prints along with directions for picture study and background information on the artist and his work. $5.00

Common Kitchen:  What's for lunch?  Isn't that a common problem in homeschooling families?  What to fix, what is quick, what is frugal, what is nourishing?  How can I accomplish all those things at once?  We homeschooled 7 children, and I was a homeschooling mom for 29 years on a single income.  I collected these recipes and snack ideas from all over the world.  These are real foods I used to feed my family, my godsons, and sometimes my grandkids.  Includes some cooking tips and suggestions for sides, and for a variety of substitutions.  I think every family will find something they can use here. $5.00

Affinities and Picture Study

In Childhood, the Prelude, William Wordsworth refers

“To those first-born affinities that fit
Our new existence to existing things,
And, in our dawn of being, constitute
The bond of union betwixt life and joy.”

Webster’s 1828 Dictionary gives several meanings for ‘affinity:’

1. The relation contracted by marriage, between a husband and his wife’s kindred, and between a wife and her husband’s kindred; in contradistinction from consanguinity or relation by blood…

2. Agreement; relation; conformity; resemblance; connection; as, the affinity of sounds, of colors, or of languages….

According to Dictionary.com, it is more than merely a synonym for liking. It involves bonding, forming a connection, a relationship:

…3: kinship by marriage or adoption; not a blood relationship…
5: a close connection marked by community of interests or similarity in nature or character; “found a natural affinity with the immigrants”; “felt a deep kinship with the other students”; “anthropology’s kinship with the humanities” [syn: kinship] 6: inherent resemblance between persons or things 7: a natural attraction or feeling of kinship; “an affinity for politics”; “the mysterious affinity between them”; “James’s affinity with Sam”
Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University (see Dictionary.com for more, much more)

Charlotte Mason referred to Wordsworth’s poem when she said that one of the chief duties of parents is to help our children

“make valid as many as may be of – –
‘Those first-born affinities
That fit our new existence to existing things.”

She says that

Education is the Science of Relations;’ by which phrase we mean that children come in to the world with a natural ‘appetancy,’ to use Coleridge’s word, for, and affinity with, all the material of knowledge; for interest in the heroic past and in the age of myths; for a desire to know about everything that moves and lives, about strange places and strange peoples; for a wish to handle material and to make; a desire to run and ride and row and do whatever the law of gravitation permits.” (Charlotte Mason, Volume 2, pp. 222-3)

Elsewhere in her six volume series she explains that that part of the idea that education is a science of relations entails an understanding that

“fulness of living, expansion, expression, and serviceableness, for each of us, depend upon how far we apprehend these relationships and how many of them we lay hold of…
Every child is heir to an enormous patrimony, heir to all the ages, inheritor of all the present.”
(Volume 3. pp.185-6)”

Towards that end, she says that

“[Every] child should leave school with at least a couple of hundred pictures by great masters hanging permanently in the halls of his imagination, to say nothing of great buildings, sculpture, beauty of form and colour in things he sees.”

School didn’t do that for me. My parents did a wonderful job of introducing us to poetry, literature, classical music, nature, history, and song, but we didn’t ever visit an art museum or discuss art that I remember. We had, however, one picture hanging on our walls that was not department store home decor. It was a print of a young girl in profile. She is reading a book. We did not know the name of the picture or the artist, and we never really talked about it, but I looked at it often while I curled up on the couch reading my own books.

A few years ago I was working on an art project for our homeschool, and I discovered my picture. It is ‘A Young Girl Reading’ by Fragonard. I was thrilled. I emailed my mother to tell her about it. I printed out a copy from the computer to look at. I excitedly told my children and husband that I had ‘known’ that painting from a child. Simply by seeing a copy of it on the wall of my childhood home, I had developed an affinity for it, and I believe that painting acted as a door to the world of the visual arts when I grew to woman’s estate. That print became a connection to a whole new world. How thrilling.

Even more thrilling was standing before the original in Washington, D.C. a few years ago at the National Gallery of Art. I was unprepared for the emotional response. Two of my daughters went ahead of us through the museum and discovered the painting first. They came back for me- “Mother, mother, we’ve found your painting.”

We rushed to the gallery where ‘my’ painting resides. I stood in front of it in wonder and profound happiness. I choked back tears. I tried to explain to my husband how much it meant to me, that this was the first, the very first painting I had loved, and how long I had loved it and now I was seeing the original. I was incoherent.

We saw many wonderful things at the NGA, most of them far superior in quality and subject matter than my girl reading. As it turns out, Fragonard could produce paintings like this in about an hour, using broad, sweeping brush strokes. I later read that he painted the girl’s collar  by first globbing on a thick mass of white paint, and then using the pointed end of the brush to quickly scratch the lines of the ruff through the wet paint, producing that lovely ruffle in a few seconds. I don’t care. I love it. I love it because of the connections I made with it as a child and the connections it made for me as an adult.

It keeps on making connections for me. Later I read this post on Rembrandt over at a blog called Suitable for Mixed Company. She says,

“Many years ago, I was broke and bored, and wandering around Vancouver, British Columbia. The Vancouver Art Gallery had a free day (or cut-rate day, I forget which) and was advertising The Dutch world of painting and it was handy. Expecting nothing more than a half hour or so’s diversion, I went in. And changed my life. Honestly, I was floored by what I saw. I was astonished to find that some of the Dutch Masters were drop-dead funny in their art. I wandered into another room and found myself in another exhibit, where I lingered over a case with da Vinci drawings, grasping for the first time the difference between good drawings and great ones. But Rembrandt. My gosh. I lost myself in Rembrandt and the other Dutch Masters.”

I got all choked up all over again just reading about somebody else getting choked up at an art exhibit.  I knew that feeling!  Here is a kindred spirit.  You will meet many others in your CM journey.  They won't all be using AmblesideOnline or even Charlotte Mason's ideas.  That's okay. 

There are several ways into the world of art appreciation- by which I mean the world where a piece of art has the ability to move you, touch your life, hold your attention, to matter to you, which is the only kind of art appreciation I really care about. It probably doesn’t matter so much how you get there. But do go, and take the kids with you.

For Further reading on CM and the science of relations, see here and here.