A Case for the Early Years with Leah Martin from My Little Robins

Are you in the Early Years Stage?

If you have a 0-6-year-old, you are living in what Charlotte Mason referred to as “the early years.” In her first volume, Home Education, Miss Mason urged mothers 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.” If you think that’s a challenge in our hectic postmodern world, you’re right. But it’s not impossible.

Today I chat with Leah Martin from “My Little Robins” on how to make Charlotte Mason’s ideas a reality. We also discuss why the early years should be preserved as a “quiet growing time” instead of relinquishing them to academics as the culture continually calls us to do and some consequences we’re seeing as a society because of this unnatural shift.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• the story of a former public school teacher turned Ambleside teacher turned CM homeschool mama
• why academics in the early years is usually not developmentally appropriate
• why the Great Outdoors is the best classroom for the early years
• mental, emotional and physical benefits to holding off on academics
• how the segregation mindset of home and school is disrupting the early years

Show Notes

• My Little Robins Blog
• Home Education by Charlotte M. Mason (affiliate link)
• Balanced and Barefoot by Angela J. Hanscom (affiliate link)
• Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv (affiliate link)
• List of Attainments
• Maestro Classics
• The quote I fumbled through about children learning naturally at home (under Natural, Everyday Situations heading)
• A Thomas Locker picture book (affiliate link)
• What is Twaddle?
• Leah’s Podcast: Thinking Love
• Leah’s Facebook group