I just had the most fun study time with my daughter today. For our Nature studies, we were discussing the book A First Look at Philippine Fishes. She's really excited about this book because she wanted to see if the fish she saw at Laiya during our snorkelling will be in the book. I love the enthusiasm. I had to break it to her though thay it wasn't included in it but promised we will make a side discovery study about it once we're done with all the fish in the book.
So anyway, I went ahead and started reading aloud to her. We were just in the second paragraph, where it discusses about the parenting style of fishes. In there I read that there are fish who actually take care of their young while there are fishes that just lay their eggs and leave them even before they hatch.
As a daily practice, I had her narrate what I just read, which she did so magnificently. And to make it even more amazing, she connected the parenting style of sea turtles. She watched a documentary before about the life of a turtle and that was what introduced her to the marine life. Then she remembered another fun fact she read from a book. She told me that when baby great white shark is born, the mommy great white shark not only neglects her baby sharks, she also eats them. So the first thing that the baby great white shark needs to do is to swim away from her as fast as they can because if they get caught, they'll be her dinner.
What she did right there, connecting all those little facts from different sources, that is what Charlotte Mason was talking about in her 12th principle: Education is the science of relations. Once children is fed with a vast curriculum of education, they have the natural ability to connect each information to each other.
I have been on the lookout for her connecting the dots when we do our study time. Nature has so much connections that it makes studying it so much fun and easy for the two of us. I never thought I'd say this but I have learned to love History - World History and Philippine history - including biographies because of the relations she makes on everything we study. When we studied about Thomas Jefferson sending Lewis to discover a direct path in the USA that leads to the Pacific, my daughter connected Magellan's voyage and route to the Pacific ocean. She also mapped out the route on our globe. All of those without any prompting from me.
When we started out in our homeschooling journey using the Charlotte Mason method, I learned that narration is the best way to see if she understood our lessons. For almost 2 years, we have been doing it and she is getting better and better at it. Now that we are almost done with our 2nd grade, it shows that relating all her previous lessons to our current lessons prove that not only did she understand the lessons, she also retained them in her memory. That is without the need for memorization and repeated dictation or reading of facts.
She is reading too many books. I was so scared that she might be too overloaded with all the information but it was quite the contrary. The only way that connections and relations is if the learner is served a full feast of ideas. I used to worry before that I might not be teaching her enough. I also worry that I might be teaching her too much. I practically just worry a lot. Hearing all of her narrations and how she connects our lessons, how she compares the things that happened in our world history versus the Philippine history timelines, it was just amazing, it makes me cry. It is proof that she is not just learning, but she is loving it and she is caring about it. And that, to me, is a huge milestone in our homeschooling journey.
