More Learning Links!

I had the privilege of writing a few magazine articles for a homeschool publication (which subsequently went out of business, but I digress) so I thought I'd post a couple that weren't published here, as they relate to the general theme of my blog. 

This one is from May 2013

Staging Our Learning

The other day I sat at the kitchen table, surrounded by my school of four, reading aloud our latest book* as my students munched carrots, soup, crackers, sandwiches, apples and whatever else I could find to make the meal - and the reading - last as long as possible.  As I read I marveled at how they could all sit together gripped by this same story.  The oldest was technically too old, the youngest two, too young; only one was the target age of the publisher of this book and I can't say she was enjoying it any more than the others.  Each was taking from the story what they were ready to hear, processing it at their own level and storing it away in their frame of reference.  I didn't need a multiple choice test to see that they were learning, it was evident in their questions and comments:

5 year old:  "Is this real?  I think Momo must have really loved her dog to go all that way!"  (still establishing reality versus fantasy and, wow, more love equals more effort!)

7 year old: "She must have been very afraid to see a car for the first time! I guess they didn't have any cars in Tibet…"  (laughter) (some people have never seen a car!)

11 year old:  "Wait a minute, did you say she was going all that way alone

?"  (Geography of Tibet to Calcutta as it relates to a lone 12 year old.)

13 year old:  "I guess when China invaded Tibet it would have pretty much wiped out her way of life the way we read it"  (our story takes place before China's invasion, a lifestyle is a precarious thing.)

(And, regardless of age, we were all amused to learn that if a Tibetan sticks his tongue out at you, you should feel utmost respect!)

We've done a lot of this type of group reading over the last 7 years and as my student-body gets into a more schoolish age group I'm more convinced than ever that if I throw the content out there the learning will happen.  Life throws content at us all the time without asking our age or grade and we take from it what we will, and learn from it and make it part of ourselves.  Part of the thrill and appeal of homeschool is a more "natural" learning experience, rather than one that tries to recreate reality falsely inside a classroom.  Re-establishing reality inside our homeschool with arbitrarily graded textbooks is counterproductive to what may have lit the fire of a homeschool in the first place.

This is not to say that textbooks are bad.  We use many in our homeschool and they can be used to serve your purposes just like any other resource.  Many times we've been able to skip a grade or two in a text or start earlier or later than the number on the front indicates in order to accommodate the learning stage of a particular child, sometimes we stop half way through and move on!  It may seem obvious to many but the freedom I felt when I realized that I could use texts instead of them using me was the day I really took control of our school and began to think outside the box of curriculum.

When people think of "outside the box" learning they don’t' usually gravitate toward the Classical paradigm; however the Classical method, known for its "trivium" of learning stages is a beautiful complement to the freedom we can desire for our homeschool.  Understanding the broad view of the Grammar, Logic (or Dialectic) and Rhetoric stages allows us a framework on which to build our learning and expectations.

As I consider my children's comments about our reading I can easily see that the 5 and 7 year old are still mostly gathering facts in the Grammar stage; the 11 year old is starting to mull things over a bit and forming some ideas about reality; the 13 year old is a step ahead in that mulling stage and applying his thoughts to reality in a different and deeper way - both of them working in the Logic stage.  I can see where they are and where they need to go and gently prod them along the way - without even using all those workbooks I bought.

If you're feeling the need to loosen up your homeschool or integrate learning with all your students, take the plunge.  Make your homeschool what you want it to be.  You can investigate the classical learning stages through a great book like The Well Trained Mind and other classical resources.  You can start slow, experiment with the resources you already have: do you have to use the next text in the series?  Is this child ready for some deeper thinking?  Sometimes your kids can surprise you and make a leap in their learning that you didn't expect.  If you have the classical framework in mind to map where they are going, for example from the Grammar stage to the Logic stage, go ahead and move on.  Maybe you  just have this underlying sense that suddenly something doesn't fit anymore, maybe they're ready for the next step.  You can hang your learning on a tried and true framework and fill in the content with your favourite topics.

* "Daughter of the Mountains", Louise Rankin