Through a Child’s Eyes: Snow, Wonder, and Truth
This past week, we had multiple opportunities to experience the gift of snow on campus. Those opportunities were the highlights of my week because I got to see why Charlotte Mason said that the “object of education is to put a child in living touch with as much as may be of the life of Nature and of thought.” (Vol. 1)
Miss Mason shared that the power of a winter walk cultivated the habit of attention, and we know that the habit of attention cultivates wonder in and reverence of our sovereign Creator.
“It is possible to see more in winter, because the things to be seen do not crowd each other out. … Winter walks, too, whether in town or country, give great opportunities for cultivating the habit of attention.”
Charlotte Mason (Vol. 1)
On Friday, I experienced snowflakes like I’ve never experienced and felt like a six-year-old in my excitement and desire to tell everyone I could! They looked like stars and maintained their shape when they landed long enough for us to gaze in wonder! I could not get enough of the reactions and excitement I saw from our students enjoying this, and I even got to see my own six-year-old outside enjoying it too. We debriefed the experience at bedtime on Friday night. We talked about how God cared enough to design each and every flake and how creative He is in how he made snow in a way that a 44-year-old woman had never experienced before!
Jackson looked at me and said, “He made each snowflake unique, and he made me that way too.” How often do we pray that our children and students not only know but also embrace the truth that they are fearfully and wonderfully made on purpose by our loving God? What a precious gift it was to hear Jackson utter those words without my prompting, but because He had the opportunity to grow in reverence of God because of His creation.
“We should so teach as to give them the feeling that, however much they learn and however easily they understand, they never can think that they have grasped all things, or that they can make their own intellects the measure of things, or that the human mind can do this at all. We want to make them feel the sacred mystery of things, even in teaching them the exact sciences or mathematics. These things properly taught should, above all things, give them a sense of the unfathomable wonder of things.”
Parents Review: The Inculcation of the Spirit of Reverence by Miss Carta Sturge, Volume 10, 1899, pgs. 493-501.
