The peculiar value of geography lies in its fitness to nourish the mind with ideas, and to furnish the imagination with pictures… The child gets his rudimentary notions of geography.. in those long hours out of door… He gets his first notions of a map from a rude sketch.. or with a stick in the sand or gravel.
…Let him be at home in any single region; let him see, with the mind’s eye, the people at their work and at their play, the flowers and fruits in their seasons, the beasts, each in its habitat; and let him see all sympathetically, that is, let him follow the adventures of a traveler; and he knows more, is better furnished with ideas, than if he had learnt all the names on all the maps. The ‘way’ of this kind of teaching is very simple and obvious; read to him… bit by bit… any interesting, well-written book of travel.
…Here as elsewhere, the question is, not how many things does he know, but how much does he know about each thing.
– Charlotte Mason, Home Education
