Beginning, Preface

General notes:

Book is dedicated to Sir Esme Howard

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Summary of the Preface:

This book is based on the correspondence between E.F.L. and the mother of "Esther," a three-year-old child from a respected, well-to-do Eastern family with all the amenities of town and country life.   Many details of the family's life have been changed for the sake of privacy.

E.F.L says that she published them because one of her school assistants believed that mothers could benefit from this sort of book:

"'When you talk to them about beginning the child's education at home, their minds run to book lessons and nothing else.  How often does a mother write you that, although she graduated from college or normal school, there was nothing in her course that helped her understand her own children's needs or nature?'"

She also mentions a future project:

"Already I am overhauling my correspondence with the mother of a boy in the Middle West, for whom it was necessary to plan book lessons.  When this boy entered school at nine he was placed in sixth grade and a week later promoted to seventh.  The time given to daily lessons ran from fifteen minutes in the beginning, to two hours, but not more."

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and closes with encouragement that even the busiest mother can teach her children at home:

"If you are carefully teaching your young children for five minutes a day, you are doing more to give them a good education than the best college can ever do, because education takes its root in the wise management of the habit-forming period, the wonder-working period that reaches its greatest height between the ages of three and seven."