I have been thinking about this subject quite a bit lately because I have been reading Nebel’s Elementary Education book. One of the main things that has stuck with me from the book is that we, as teachers, are not to give the children all the answers to their questions. As Nebel said, if you have the answer, that’s the end of the lesson. You should always have another question. Now he relates this directly to science, but I think it applies to all subjects. Generally speaking, someone wants to learn because they have a question to answer.
Another thing I have stopped doing is connecting information for them. I am allowing them to make their own connections. I realize that this may take years. For example, we have recently studied the American revolution and the french revolution. We didn’t try to bang it into their heads that the french rev. was really a result of what had happened in America. Now, the kids might not make that connection until their next pass through that time period (4 or 5 years down the road). But I’m okay with that because, you know, most adults don’t know really know that.
The other thing we have been doing for the last year and a half is what Nebel refers to as “seminaring.” He points out, and rightly so, that this is what is missing from the education of most children. I personally think this is especially true in homeschooling, since we are just a family and not a classroom. Seminaring is basically having the students sit around in small groups and discuss and digest their learning together. (We started this long before I read Nebel’s book, but I didn’t have a name for it.) We have been doing this in our home through our morning table time. We might read a chapter of Outdoor Secrets and then let the discussion go wherever it goes. I have found that we are doing great amounts of learning this way.
One more change we have made is that I am really trying to let the kids express what they have learned through notebooking or some similar method. For instance, when we finish a section in Outdoor Secrets, we will observe the subject in real life or on video, independently read a couple of library books, have another child read about that same subject from a nature reader…. then after a week or so of doing this, I have them open their science notebook and make a page about that subject. I have been amazed at how much they have learned and at how much time and care they take with these pages. I think the key to it is that I have put no parameters on the assignment so they don’t really think of it as school work.
I wholeheartedly agree that the more relevent you can make the learning, the more interested they will be in learning it. My son, who hates to do his math, now gets out his Pet Shop math from SCM first thing every morning because he feels like he’s doing something real. I am looking for more resources like that where they can practice skills in a more realistic way. Now, I don’t ever expect him to come to me and be excited about doing math facts drilling, but he definitely sees the usefulness of learning about math now.
I have been really encouraged lately that we are heading in the right direction with our style of learning. The other day we were talking about the fruit of the spirit. I asked my kids if they remembered where to find that in the Bible. My 11 y.o.d. said, “I think it’s in Galatians, but that doesn’t make sense.” I asked why. “Well, Galatians is a letter that Paul wrote and that doesn’t sound like something that would be in a letter.” She said this because we had been seminaring Galatians the week before. This exchange, of course, led to a whole discussion for all of us about Paul’s purpose for writing the letters he wrote, etc.
Yesterday we were driving home surrounded by lots of lightning. Six year old asked what lightning was made of. My kids told her “electricity.” 10 year old asked, “Why can’t we swim when it’s lightning?” I told him that water conducts electricity and explained what that meant. After a few minutes of thinking he asked, “Is that why there’s lightning when it rains… because the water is conducting the electricity down to the ground?” I had never thought of that myself. Now, of course, that’s not why, and we did discuss very briefly about charged particles being all around us all the time and the friction that causes lightning.
Now the point of both of these examples is to show that they are actually THINKING. Even if their thinking is not correct, they are THINKING. I can’t tell you how exciting this is for me.
One more thing and then I will quit babbling. I have the advantage of having a 22 year old who I homeschooled, so I can see that many of the things we are looking for in our kids don’t actually happen when they’re 10 or 12 years old. She didn’t do a lot of independent, interest-driven study until she was closer to adulthood. I think we might be expecting certain results from our kids when we are still in the foundation building stages of education. (I hope that makes sense.) This is just a theory I have and I realize that it is, perhaps, wrong. Maybe we’re expecting something that we’re not supposed to be expecting yet. Maybe we are really just supposed to be putting pegs in place for them to hang their thoughts on later in life. I’m not sure yet.
