Is Nature Study Old-Fashioned?

This is another recycled post from my old Heart of Harmony blog that I thought you might enjoy reading.

Why are we spending time in nature study? Is it old-fashioned? Do we really need to expose our children to this type of learning in our modern age, where everything is at our fingertips as far as finding answers to anything we want to know in books or on the internet?

I think outdoor time and nature study are as fundamental to good learning as you can find. Charlotte Mason agrees.

“And this is exactly what a child should be doing for the first few years. He should be getting familiar with the real things in his own environment. Some day he will read about things he can’t see; how will he conceive of them without the knowledge of common objects in his experience to relate them to? Some day he will reflect contemplate, reason. What will he have to think about without a file of knowledge collected and stored in his memory?”
Charlotte Mason, volume 1 page 66

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