I wrote some two months ago about our Book of Centuries, which in a way is new to us this year, thanks to talks this past summer by the lovely Laurie Bestvater. Previously, we only kept a communal timeline notebook (the littles still add to this one), but this year my boys have been keeping their own; adding entries on a weekly sometimes daily basis.
Javen's 4th century A.D.
...a detail from one of Javen's pages
She inspired us all at the Living Education Retreat in Windom, MN to use the Book of Centuries along with a number of other books as "forms of vitality" for our children. Though I'm quite sure I don't know how one could not make one's own while the children make theirs... so of course I had to have one too :)
Here's my 20th century, shows all of our immediate family's birthdays :)
Charlotte says,
"One thing at any rate we know with certainty, that no teaching, no information becomes knowledge to any of us until the individual mind has acted upon it, translated it, transformed, absorbed it, to reappear, like our bodily food, in forms of vitality. Therefore, teaching, talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child's nature."
This was Cullen's sketch after a visit to a local museum.
::
I LOVE the term "form of vitality", don't you?
What does it make you think of as related to education?
::
Posts
