WHAT CAN A "NATURAL LEARNING" TEEN LOOK LIKE?

(Photography by our daughter)


When our daughter was 13 years old she made some lists showing a few things she'd been interested in over the last wee while.  All self-directed learning.

I'm putting this on our blog not to boast, but to show people HOW MUCH much learning a child can do when they're not under pressure to PRODUCE something to PROVE they are learning, and when they're not driven down avenues they have no interest in, labouring hours and hours reading dry text books and writing papers ...

Not every child at 13 would be interested in researching and enjoying such a wide variety of things, sometimes I think she is truly the "poster girl" for natural learning.  And I enjoy that all the more because our other six children are all boys who have EXTREMELY different learning styles.  

But if they were to make lists about their interests and recent learning areas I know I'd be pretty impressed too.
 



Late 2015

Manners and General Must-Dos of the 1900s
WWII and Winston Churchill
Royal Family
Natural Skincare and Health Supplements
Essential Oils
Instruments and Reading Music
Typing and Computer Skills
Natural Makeup
Scrapbooking
Embroidery
Needle Felting
Making Doll's Clothes
Soap and Candle Making
Knitting and Crochet

Early 2016

Childbirth and Motherhood
The Viking Age
Art
Natural Education and the reasons it Works
Foreign Languages
Making Short Movies
Gardening
Fitness and Exercise
Natural Health for Pets and other Animals
History of NZ and other Countries
Making Clubs
Discipleship
Jewellery Making
Interior Design
Acting/Performing on Stage
Maths
English
Stamp Collecting
Doodling
Birdwatching
Lettering and Hand Design Elements
Gothic and Medieval Castles
Making Blogs and Websites
Lecturing
Writing and Illustrating Books
Auschwitz



Mid 2016

Forensics
Special Air Service
Survival
Search And Rescue
SPCA
NZ Police
and Police Informants
Martial Arts
Self Defence
NZ Air Force
Civil Defence
Gun Handling and Target Shooting
Fictional Writing
Macro Photography
Bushcraft
Natural Disasters
Geography
Making Computer Games
Poisonous Plants and Animals
Persecution
Terrorism
Human Trafficking
Swords
Character Design and Animation
Designing Survival Electronics  -  i.e. GPS/Compass/Weather Forecast
Legal Studies
Armed Offenders Squad
International Contact and Codes

So Much To Learn

It's lovely for your children if you, as a home educating parent, can endeavour to be like a wise and knowledgeable friend - patient and kind, welcoming enquiry and humbly acknowledging when you don't know something ... yes, you're still the parent - and you MUST parent, but how lovely for a child to feel they can come to you with questions and discussions on life.

Today one of my children asked me 'What's quarter-life chaos?" 

Rather puzzled I said "Quarter as in half a half?"

"Yes"

"Life as in the opposite of death?"

"Yes"

"Chaos as in the opposite of order?"

"Yes"

"Quarter-life chaos?  Where have you heard this?"

"You said it."

"Me?  When?"

"Some time ago.  People having a quarter-life-chaos."

My light bulb finally went on. 

"Oh!  Mid-life crisis!"

Indeed we had been speaking of the old sterotypical male mid-life crisis involving a new wardrobe of tight jeans, unbuttoned shirts, a new red sports car, girlfriend in her 20's or 30's, parties etc etc etc.

And then I thought of how our children can be taking in SO MUCH information sometimes that often bits get forgotten, or stored into their memory banks incorrectly.

I imagined myself at a conference where I needed to take in hours and hours of new information, listen, absorb, remember ... sometimes our children's lives are like a conference every day.  More and more information, loaded into the memory banks.  When I was younger, at school, I was continually wondering if the information would start to spill out my ears at some point.

So much to learn.

And it's always a comfort for a child to know if something has been half-remembered they can always come back to ask for more information.

 

PLAY!

It is said that when a child plays they process past experiences, and make sense of the world (amongst other things).

I loved seeing this scene one of my boys made when playing with the dollshouse, furniture, random loose parts and Sylvanians.

 

Mrs Kangaroo, assisted by Mr Kangaroo and Mrs Dalmation (the midwife) had just given birth at home in the birthing pool.

Very, very precious.

xxx


 

 

 

Unschooling/Delight Directed Learning or NATURAL LEARNING

This means different things to different families, but basically these families do not used a pre-packaged curriculum, and they steer away from workbooks/textbooks, timetables, schedules, forced learning etc. This definitely works for some families, but is hard for those who have not experienced the success of it first hand to actually believe.  And this is the lifestyle that receives most criticism.

Our family have chosen what we call a “Natural Learning” lifestyle (this is no surprise to you if you've been following my blog or my Adventures In Natural Learning books!!) 

For us, natural learning means mainly unschooling/delight directed learning. Much learning is informal, but if one of our children want a workbook to go through from time to time then that’s fine with us - if it is natural for a child, then it works.

We provide many resources to be picked up and put down as appropriate. We “strew the path” (to quote Sandra Dodd) with interesting things and experiences and the children learn from these if they are ready/interested. 

This photograph (which is in the Adventures In Natural Learning:  Handbook)  taken a few years ago shows one of our older sons with his best friend on the top of a mountain where they both love to be!

A neuro-typical child learns to walk when they are ready, talk when they are ready and read when they are ready. If we build a relationship of love and respect with our children it is rewarding to see their love of learning grow deeper all the time.

Something that “traditionally educated” people may find odd is that many home educating families do not put various subjects into into separate “containers” (maths and geography can be easily found in history for example), and the learning is often very “deep” for a child due to the high level of interest in various topics. Also learning does not only take place between 9am and 3pm – 5 days a week with holidays off. The learning is exciting and constant: the games, reading, figuring out – it goes on all the time, and most home educated children delight in the increase of knowledge. 

 This aligns with how learning takes place naturally in an unobstructed life.

In its early days the Adventures In Natural Learning: Seasonal Journal was just a book full of sketchy notes taken from other educational systems and curricula, game books and other resources, interspersed with our own ideas.  I worked on it for several years, and then at the beginning of 2016 I started to get it into some sort of neat order.   I'm  so pleased it has been published now, for my own benefit and for the families who have bought it and are enjoying it!

I would hate for the Seasonal Journal to become a chore for a child to pick up and work on.  If a parent senses that it has become stale or boring, then perhaps THEY can keep the journal going in a skeleton form so there is still something there in the book for the child to look back on in the next year. 

When a child isn't interested in a topic, but I feel that they could be interested I will often start a project myself.  When they see me enjoying it they might become involved, but if not then there’s no pressure. Because of the lack of pressure they often pick up far more information than if they were forced to join in. I learned very early on that each child has their own way of being able to learn and retain information. Some need to bounce or move constantly when thinking or listening, others need to fiddle with things, others ask questions constantly, some are silent, some require NO DISTRACTIONS!!

Some families use what they call a “bus stop” system where they learn something together - with children of different stages, as is common in most families - and those who lose interest can “get off the bus” and go and do something else whilst the older ones (or those who are still interested) stay with the topic, delving further, or making an activity based on the topic.

It helps for the parent to keep in mind what the children show an interest in, and find more resources and present them to the child in a casual way.  Just recently one of our children became interested in knights and castles. I had a couple of fiction books suitable which were read and enjoyed, and then the learning went quite naturally for him into swords, knives and other weapons. We looked at the armour knights wore, watched a BBC documentary series about building a castle, he drew pictures, coloured pictures, played with the Playmobil re-creating parts of the story “Page Boy of Camelot”. We never “left” the subject, it is just dormant for a while and will come back up quite naturally when he’s ready to go further.

There is a very real danger of "killing" a subject by taking it further than the child is interested.  Keep the lines of communication open and watch where their interest is going.

High goals and low expectations often create a very healthy learning environment where the children thrive and enjoy life and learning. We have never given the children formal tests, it isn’t necessary. We’ve seen many times over that when home educated children who have been untested as children come across necessary tests (drivers licensing, entry exams for certain courses etc) in the adult world they do very well. I’ve recently seen a quote saying “Thinking that you can make children more intelligent by giving them tests is like thinking that you can make them grow taller by measuring them.” 

I hope you've enjoyed this wee chat about natural learning.  Of course, I could go on for hours, but I shall stop now.  

Bye!

Various Styles of Home Education - not my first choices, but you might like to know about them!

Some of my readers may be at the very start of their home education journey, and wonder about different choices available to them.

In this article I'll briefly introduce just three of the home education styles that some families choose.

PRE-PACKAGED PURCHASED CURRICULUM

This is basically buying a box/folder/set of instructions and perhaps workbooks containing pre-prepared lessons. Some include fiction/text books, others have book lists for you to source your own books. Buying books isn't as hard as it used to be thanks to the internet and sites such as Book Depository, Awesome Books, The Nile or the excellent little bookstore run by my friend Michelle over on Facebook called Homeward Bound (Michelle's book destash).  However, some families really appreciate the book-lists or supplied books with various curricula - trusting that the books chosen will be valuable additions to their home libraries.

Some curricula are teacher intensive, others are more self-teaching. Most have extremely attractive websites – often with samples of the curriculum, or overviews of content for each Grade. This information alone is very valuable for the eclectic home education system (discussed in a minute).

I am not overly familiar with pre-packaged curricula as this isn’t our chosen learning style, but I have consulted with other home educators on this topic to bring you some up-to-date information.

Using a curriculum can give a sense of “school at home” which suits some families. Of course a curriculum can be a spring-board for learning: rather than using it in the prescribed way a family may pick and choose topics or certain subjects from within a frame of a certain curriculum.

 At this point I'd just like to insert a very personal comment:  The above image is from the internet.  It is perhaps what people may think of as a wonderful environment full of "educational" things for children to ensure a great homeSCHOOLING environment.  Personally I don't like the message this sends to new home educators - making them feel they must buy and store (and keep neat) all these supplies.  The overwhelming message I hear from home educators is that many begin this way, but after the first few years of trying to gather all this stuff together they realise it's not necessary, and can cause more problems.  "What to have" for natural home education is a blog I will work on soon!

The word “curriculum” can be defined as the means and materials with which students will interact for the purpose of achieving identified educational outcomes.

Having said this, if you choose to have a pre-packaged curriculum you may feel you are short-changing your children as someone else has decided what “educational outcomes” are important. Nobody knows your children like you do. Once again, home education gives you the freedom to make your own decisions based on what works best for you all.

Some names to research on this would be Sonlight, Live Education, Oak Meadow, Math-U-See, ACE Curriculum, Christopherus, Weaver, ABeka, Saxon Math, Apologia, Tapestry of Grace, Rod and Staff, My Father's World, Christian Light Education, Robinson Curriculum (self-teaching), Ambleside Online (free) and Alpha Omega Publications.

I've heard that one of the hardest things about using a curriculum is being brave enough to get rid of it if it's not working. No matter how much a parent may love a particular curriculum/resource (and no matter how much it cost), if it doesn't suit the child's learning style/tastes then the child probably won't be able to absorb and retain the information presented.

CLASSICAL EDUCATION

There are two great resources I am familiar with for learning about Classical Education and the Trivium – The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise - and Teaching the Trivium by Harvey and Laurie Bluedorn.

In Classical Education three stages are recognised:

The Knowledge Level (or Grammar Stage) – before birth to approximately 12 years old. These are the years for receiving and gathering information.

The Understanding Level (or Logic Stage) – approx 13 – 15 years old. This is the age that (typically) the world becomes more arranged and information is connected in a logical order.

The Wisdom Level (or Rhetoric Stage) – approx 16+ where gathered information is put into practical expression.

UNIT STUDY/NOTEBOOKING/LAPBOOK STUDIES

 https://imanshomeschool.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/botany-notebooking-pages/

Unit studies can involves taking one subject (chosen by the child, or by the parent) such as “pirates”, “trees”, “pond life” or “the undersea world” etc or a book “Little House on the Prairie” or “Young Buglers” and forming a study around that. There is some cross-over here, where “unit studies” can also be used in “delight directed" learning.

Notebooking pages can be made by a child, or printed off and filled in by a child.

Lapbooks can be fun to make - lots of free templates are available on the internet.  Children also like to look back on lapbooks they've made in the past IF they have fond memories of making the lapbook.  NOT if it was a chore they were forced to do (take note!).

 https://imanshomeschool.wordpress.com/2014/02/08/oceans-lapbook/

ECLECTIC LEARNING

Eclectic learners take whatever workbooks/textbooks/fiction/non-fiction books/resources/videos/audios/community resources (library, parks, museums etc) they like the look of and use them as learning platforms. There is a lot of freedom in this style of learning.   However, this very freedom is the thing that doesn't work for some families.  Members of the family may feel lost without structure, or perhaps because of the season of life the family is in presently they want to keep track of where the children are "educationally".

Eclectic learners, on the whole, feel free to chop and change their style of learning as their journey progresses - they may do a bit of notebooking, make a lapbook, use a few textbooks ... whatever is right for them at the time.

Some names to research if you're interested in adding great ideas to your eclectic learning are:

• Charlotte Mason education
• Montessori
• Pikler
• Waldorf/Steiner
• Thomas Jefferson Education
• Democratic schools
• Free/liberal schools
• Enki Education
• Reggio Emilia
• NZ Government curriculum or other curriculum outlines
• Christian Schools
• Institute For Excellence In Writing
• Freya Jaffke
• Mary Griffith
• Sandra Dodd
• Ruth Beechick
• Dr Jay Wile
• Alan Thomas

Many of these styles/people have a lot to offer – but we tend not to agree with everything. Ahhh – the freedom of home education!

My next blog post will be on the topic that is dearest to me - the wonderful world of NATURAL LEARNING!

If something is easy then surely it isn't working? Is it?

There is a common misconception in life that something has to be HARD if it's going to work.

I have a few problems with that concept.

Even though we may feel a sense of satisfaction and assure ourselves of future success if we make BIG CHANGES, often we're only setting ourselves up for failure.  

Many people know the feeling of "Right!  Let's do this!" at the start of a project/diet/new schedule/set of rules for chores etc.   But when one encounters distraction, unco-operative behaviour from those close to us, illness, discouraging remarks, boredom etc etc etc it can be VERY hard sticking to the project/diet/new schedule or whatever the big change had been.

Sometimes that's ok -  better to let go of project if it's not working than to flog a dead horse.  Chalk the whole thing up to experience and carry on as you were before.

However, after this has happened a few times in a person's life it might be best to see if there is a pattern to it.  Does BIG CHANGE often equal BURNOUT?

Do BIG EXPECTATIONS often end in DISHEARTENED DISAPPOINTMENT?

If the answer is yes, then perhaps it might be best to go gently with any new project or change.

Some years back a physio gave me four sets of exercises for my back.  He said "Just do as much as you can, when you can, see how you go."  His relaxed attitude was just want I needed at that season of my life.  I did really well actually - a year or so later I was still doing those exercises.

The reason I'm writing this is two-fold.

1.   Something doesn't have to be hard to be worth it.  

2.  "Little by little, line upon line, precept upon precept" works.

I'm sad when I see complex "homeschool planners" filled with minute detail of what page someone was reading and what mistakes were made and need to be corrected, and who is completing which book, and how many pages they need to get done this term ...    I saw a picture of one such planner recently - an open double-page for one day's work - full of ticks placed by Mommy-Teacher and the caption for the picture was "Feels so Good!".    I don't disagree.  I'm sure it felt really good to achieve that much work - was the child co-operative and engaged?  I don't know.  Did the child retain everything that was covered?  I don't know.  But I do know that for MY family this would never work.

I could feel SO satisfied and actually enjoy setting up a system like that.   I like planners, I like books, I like writing things and filling in forms.   But the first day of actually getting the children engaged in the work, and carrying through ... it wouldn't work.    

The reason I am sad about this is because it's sending a message to other, perhaps newer, home educators - or those who feel they need to do more because what they're doing doesn't appear to be working.

 But listen:  

 WE DON'T HAVE TO COPY ANYONE'S STYLE 

WE DON'T NEED PLANNERS AND CURRICULUM

WE CAN TOTALLY DO OUR OWN THING!!!

WE CAN DO WHAT SUITS OUR FAMILY

WORK WITH WHAT IS NATURAL FOR US

Yes I was shouting.  Shouting joyfully.  It's not a secret!!!  It's Good News!!!!!

If planners, timetables, schedules etc work for your family then - great!    If they don't work then - great!

This is one reason I created the Adventures in Natural Learning Journal - for the families, like ours, who needed something different.  It's not a planner, it's not a busybook, it's not a nightmare to complete, it's not limiting, it's not SCHOOLISH.    It's a way to record a child's year easily and gently - for the benefit of the child to be able to look back fondly on.  If the child doesn't want to complete the Journal then the Mummy can do it - no problem.  It shouldn't cause a chasm between mummy and child/children.

And the other part of my two-fold thought here was - little by little, line upon line, precept upon precept.

Take the "Memorization" part of the monthly page-spread.  You might think "Hmm... only room for one small poem or quote.  That's not worth doing".*

But I would say to you that one poem, verse, quote, equation learned per month equals twelve learned per year.  

And more than the NUMBER of poems etc learned is the fact that a child's "memorization" part of their brain is switched on, and if they find that fun they will take off on their own.  

Several of my children have set themselves the task of learning pi to about the 40th digit - just because it's fun.  One of my older boys memorized an entire rap song in Japanese because it sounded like fun.  He also recited something in Olde English to me the other day that knocked my socks off - and this had small beginnings - learning Robert Louis Stevenson poems, AA Milne, hymns, fingerplays, songs, quotes ... little by little, line upon line.

Start small.  Get yourself an Adventures In Natural Learning Journal.  Learn about one person a month, one place in the world, one thing to memorize, play a few games (as found in the Handbook), stick in a photo of your family from that month ...  


Life and learning don't need to be HARD to be EFFECTIVE.  Life can be hard enough on it's own without turning LEARNING into a chore and a drudgery.   Left on their own children LOVE learning.  Learning and breathing come naturally.  Who made it a chore and in some cases a PUNISHMENT?

 

*If your child is keen for more memorization then each piece can be written/typed onto a bit of paper the same size as the "Memory work" box.  Then run a bit of glue along the left-hand side of the bit of paper and press onto the "Memorization" box - creating a little mini-book on the page.

Free Play On The Beach

We kind of stay away from the beach when the weather warms up - too many people for our children to cope with.  But today was PERFECT for a visit to one of our wonderful beaches.

One of the boys decided to plough a bit of beach, and sow seed (dry sand).

While his brother finished sowing the seed, he made a harrow to cover the seed.

Some beautiful beach finds.

 The tide goes out a LOOOONNNNNGGG way on this beach.  I love the freedom of the children being just that little bit older so I don't need to be right beside them the whole time.   The youngest of the "away" crew was 6 years old - the oldest is 14.   I kept the toddler with me!

And a publicity shot with the new books!