Children must master the language of things before they master the language of words- Friedrich Froebel

For years, I've believed what Froebel wrote in 1895, "Children must master the language of things before they master the language of words."

For my son, I want to introduce him to world so that when he does learn to read a word such as river, he has seen one.  As a public school teacher, I've worked with readers that have a story about snow in December, yet had children in the class who have never seen snow.  I automatically imitated snow, and now there are even snow boxes, my son got one for the holidays.

Are children expected to learn too much, too early?  There is much speculation about this, but it is hard to slow down as what used to be 1st grade is now kindergarten.  The article, http://educationnext.org/much-too-early/ is thought provoking.