This book, Better Late Than Early, has been off the market for many years now. I was happy to see that it is now available as a Kindle book. If you have not read it, and you have young children, I would greatly encourage you to read this book.
Many of us as Seventh-day Adventists have possibly heard of the counsel to delay formal learning until your child is 8-10 years old. It seems odd to have that counsel when we don’t really follow that. The laws don’t always allow for this and so we just shrug our shoulders and figure everyone else sends their kids to school at 5 years old… or preschool at 3 years old… so it must be okay.
I admit that following advice that seems to cross the grain of everything we have known and everything we see happening around us, is difficult. It puts us in a place where we can feel like we would be judged. However, I find that many times, we simply need some knowledge to understand the counsel to give us “doubting Thomas-es” something to consider.
That’s where this book comes in. Written by the late Raymond and Dorothy Moore, this couple worked to encourage us with following the counsel we were given. They took that information and challenged it. Both being highly educated and working in the school system, they worked with others and did studies on how children learn. This book is a result of those findings. The more technical book with actual study cases is called School Can Wait II. This book, Better Late Than Early, is more user friendly with less technical terms, but still shares much of the same information with some practical ways to create a warm learning environment that is less formal for the early years of our children’s education.
So, I encourage you, if you have children under 8-10 years of age, even if you just had children and they are still babes in your arms, and you have money to spare to check out this book, you will find great encouragement and ideas for the younger years of your child’s life. Your faith may be encouraged to realize that God’s counsel was and still is a blessing for our children and our families.
You can find the book on Amazon at Better Late Than Early. May God bless you and your growing families!
*We have had some try the link and it will not work to purchase. I have had 3 different website links for this book. (not search links), so please search for the book on Amazon if the link does not work for you, if you are interested!) 🙂
My Sabbath School class is a unique group of children from ages 3 to 13, including a few with learning and developmental disabilities. A large portion of my class is new to attending Sabbath School. I have found the language of the lesson booklet to be accessible for all of the ages in my class. Having the device in their hands as we talk helps those who need a visual connection with what they are hearing. I will cycle through this book again in a few years to make sure the youngest students have another chance to learn the material.
It is not hard to adjust the difficulty of the requirements to fit a child’s individual needs. Customize the requirements by looking for library resources that extend the learning, as well as check for advanced or related honors. Become and expert in a particular area by completing the Master award requirements. Add in videos, trips to museums, community classes, and specialty equipment and you’ll be working on some serious productive interest-led science learning. The key is, you’ll only get out of it what you put into it.
I usually choose several awards that I think my children would benefit from experiencing, and ask my children to choose some that they would like to complete. Some years we have worked on only one or two honors, other years we have completed multiple honors. The interest level has always been high for my kids and as they grew into their high school years, my oldest two advanced from completing the honors themselves to teaching an honor to others at summer camp.
The Adventist Home Educator 