Homeschool Friday

On Tuesday, we went to our homeschool group meeting, and Silje heard a speaker who talked about bird migrations, and gave them each a bird sticker book.  (Did you know that there’s a bird who migrates from the near North Pole to the Antarctica every year?)  On Wednesday morning, Silje asked if she could make a bird book using the stickers.  She wanted to put one sticker on each page, and write down as much as she can about that one bird.  She wanted to start with the Robin, since that is the newest bird we are seeing outside our window.

So I gave her yet another $.25 composition notebook that I bought in bulk during the back-to-school clearance times.  Then I did something I haven’t let her do before.  I went on the computer and found what seemed to me to be a reputable bird site, typed in Robin, and let her snoop around there.  This is the first time she was allowed on the internet, and I was terrified.  We’ve been meaning to, but haven’t yet, set up safeguards for the kids so that they could do research like this. That is certainly at the top of our list now!

Silje thought it was great.  She learned so much about Robins, and wrote it all under the Robin sticker on her page.  I asked what kinds of things she wrote down, and she said she wrote things, or clues to look for when she’s outside, so she can use the book outside and maybe find more clues.  I love this idea of her picking some things to learn.  I love seeing her imagination grow, as well as her thirst for knowledge.

The more I read books like The Well-Trained Mind and other such home educating philosophies, I feel like I’m getting a crash course in teaching.  Like I’m in college again, but my textbooks are ones that I choose, and my professors are mom’s along side me, and moms who have gone before me in this journey.  There are so many techniques out there.  So many ways of doing things.  One look at Silje’s bird book, and you may think that we hold to the “unschooled” philosophy.

Have you heard of this?  It’s basically child-lead learning.  Your child picks what they want to study that day, and you just let them go at it.  Let them follow their curiosity and see what they learn.  I would say that I believe this, but in regard to play.  I believe in child-lead play, and that it can be the most educational kind of play there is.  It would be silly for me to say, “No.  You must not study birds today.  For science this year we are studying astronomy and not other science is allowed.”  It would also be silly not to bring laughter and joy and fun into a subject as much as possible.

The idea with in the “child lead” learning theory is that if you make something fun, then they’ll always want to do it.  If they always want to do it, than they will be learning all the time.  Now the problem I see with this theory: how do you teach them to do things they don’t want to do?  How do you teach them to do things even though they are not fun?

I guess what I’m getting at is that learning should be as fun as possible.  However, it won’t always be fun.  I won’t have the guilt on my shoulders that if my child doesn’t enjoy a subject, it’s because I haven’t made it fun enough.  I don’t want them to quit a subject because they don’t enjoy it.  Possibly, like the “Chinese mother” I think if they are not enjoying a subject, it’s because they’re not good at it yet.  So far in our studies, when Silje has been dragging her feet with a subject, I assign her more of it, and more often.  When she starts to get the hang of it, she begins to adore the subject.

I think God gave my kids parents for a reason.  So that we can teach them.  Not so they can teach themselves.  We need to guide them, and not let them walk alone.  This takes an awful lot of prayer so that there is balance.  That’s something I need to be doing so much more.  It can be so easy to guide our child along the path that I want, or to fall into the other side, and let them go along whatever path they want.  Both are wrong!  As parents, we need to be prayerfully seeking God’s guidance on what path HE has laid out for them.

Part of that will be the parent making a child do something that is not fun.  Part of that will be the parent recognizing the design God has put into a child, and taking cues from that, and using it to the best advantage.  It’s such a balance as a mother!  It continually reminds me how much I need to be praying!  Because God designed my child to want to learn, and to be industrious.  However, with that design we must also recognize the sin nature my child was born with.  The tendency, like all of us, to be lazy and selfish.  It’s so easy to just attempt to teach my child discipline, and forget what is even more important than that: the source of discipline.  To teach a child to rely on Christ…is there anything more mind boggling?  It’s in this area that I feel the most inept.  It’s in this area that I continually pray that God will take on this task himself, because it feels too great for me.

I feel sometimes, that I’m cheating on teaching when Silje spends an hour on learning something independently, and I push “school” back for an hour while she does it.  It’s confusing, but so good to let learning and playing smush together.  It is good.  I mean, come on…my daughter asked me if “after” school she could work more on her bird book, which is basically a scientific observation/research project.  I’m very aware that I’m totally spoiled with her as a student.  I’m trying very hard to allow her her “fun learning” as much as possible while not getting lazy and letting that be the only kind of learning that she does.