5 Steps on How to Do Charlotte Mason Sight-Seeing Exercises

As part of nature study and outdoor time, Charlotte Mason recommends what she calls sight-seeing exercises.

What are sight-seeing exercises?

Here is how Miss Mason describes sight-seeing exercises–which she recommends to do AFTER you arrive at your location and the kids have had the time to run around, get loud, and let off steam!

II. —Sight-Seeing

By and by the others come back to their mother, and while wits are fresh and eyes are keen, she sends them off on an exploring expedition—Who can see the most, and tell the most, about yonder hillock or brook, hedge, or copse. This is an exercise that delights children, and may be endlessly varied, carried on in the spirit of a game, and yet with the exactness and carefulness of a lesson. 

Here we can see that the next part is to send the kids off to explore, expecting them to come back and tell as much as they remember about what they’ve seen. The following tells the details about how to do this: 

How to See.—Find out all you can about that cottage at the foot of the hill; but do not pry about too much. Soon they are back, and there is a crowd of excited faces, and a hubbub of tongues, and random observations are shot breathlessly into the mother’s ear. ‘There are beehives.’ ‘We saw a lot of bees going into one.’ ‘There is a long garden.’ ‘Yes, and there are sunflowers in it.’ ‘And hen-and-chicken daisies and pansies.’ ‘And there’s a great deal of pretty blue flower with rough leaves, mother; what do you suppose it is?’ ‘Borage for the bees, most likely; they are very fond of it.’…

Do you see how the dialogue can go? Of course, this is a scene with a few kids in the mix, so most likely it will look different if you only have one or two kids. But you get the picture! 

5 Steps for Doing Sight-Seeing Exercises

Here are the steps as taken from Miss Mason’s ideas:

1. Send the children off to explore.

Here, we need to restrain ourselves from lecturing or from pointing out what interests us, and instead let them go off to find what interests them.

2. When they come back, let them describe all that they’ve seen.

This is actually a natural habit of kids, to come back and tell all that they’ve seen. But some children will be more detailed than others, either through personality or habit. The key here is to encourage them to give an account of what they’ve seen.

3. Encourage full details and no exaggeration.

And she is training her children in truthful habits, by making them careful to see the fact and to state it exactly, without omission or exaggeration.

Volume 1, page 45

By listening and nodding, we encourage them to go into detail describing what they’ve seen. But as we listen, we need to be aware and quick to correct when they start to exaggerate.

4. Reward the most detailed descriptions with the name of the items.

The child who describes, ‘A tall tree, going up into a point, with rather roundish leaves; not a pleasant tree for shade, because the branches all go up,’ deserves to learn the name of the tree, and anything her mother has to tell her about it.

Volume 1, page 45

Here we can see that when our child comes back with very clear descriptions, he deserves to learn the name of the things he’s found, whether tree, flower, or creature. Then, this also gives us the go-signal to share interesting facts about the subject–but not too much! 🙂

5. Be nonchalant with the disinterested child.

But the little bungler, who fails to make it clear whether he is describing an elm or a beech, should get no encouragement; not a foot should his mother move to see his tree, no coaxing should draw her into talk about it, until, in despair, he goes off, and comes back with some more certain note—rough or smooth bark, rough or smooth leaves,—then the mother considers, pronounces, and full of glee, he carries her off to see for himself. 

Volume 1, page 45

On the other hand, what if our child comes back with a half-hearted, “Oh, I saw a clump of trees,” and no other detail? According to Miss Mason, we shouldn’t give any encouragement to this behavior, so we don’t take a step towards where he wants to bring us.

And I think this next part is the most difficult: “no coaxing should draw her into talk about it”? In my case, I would be really tempted to coerce my child to get talking and be more descriptive, because, after all, isn’t this what our day’s lesson is about?

But, let’s trust the process. Miss Mason recommends being nonchalant about it, and hopefully our child will get the idea that he needs to go back and come back with more details to describe!

Using Sight-Seeing Exercises for Outdoor Fun

Have you tried doing these sight-seeing exercises? It sounds like a great way to make fun memories in the out-of-doors! Share your experiences in the comments below!