Un/Homeschooling

Lesson 5: Learning Experiences

Learning at Home

“The trouble with talk about ‘learning experiences’ is that it implies that all experiences can be divided into two kinds, those from which we learn something, and those from which we learn nothing. But there are no experiences from which we learn nothing. We learn something from everything we do, and everything that happens to us or is done to us. What we learn may make us more informed or more ignorant, wiser or stupider, stronger or weaker, but we always learn something. What it is depends on the experience, and above all, on how we feel about it.” - John Holt, unschooling advocate and author of many books on education.

We learn through doing. Many of the things we do take place at home. What does your child learn from various home activities, solo and family-oriented, real-life and educational?

Real Life Activities: Reading, writing, cooking, baking, cleaning, home repair, pet care, talking to people, yard work, gardening, observing the stars, etc.

Educational Activities: Online courses, telecourses, videos, audiotapes, correspondence courses, books, textbooks, workbooks, experiments, etc.

What your child can learn from educational activities is more obvious since the goal of each learning source is usually clearly stated (academic subjects, disciplines, studies, special interest areas.) We can use books, purchased or borrowed, to help our children pursue their interests and find answers to their questions. Depending on their age, they may prefer that we are actively involved in the process or simply that we help them acquire the books. Mary Griffith, in her quote below, compares the use of ‘real’ books and textbooks.

“We are not limited to one or two textbooks that dispense information in ‘developmentally appropriate’ little nuggets. We can cart home a couple dozen books from the library and look at how ideas and knowledge about dinosaurs have changed since people first began to study their fossils seriously. We can learn about the lively debates among paleontologists over the nature of dinosaurs and how they are related to extant animal species. We can observe the huge variety of opinions on what they looked like, what they ate, how they behaved, how they survived for so long, and why they perished. We can read firsthand accounts of research and exploration, and begin to understand that the acquisition of knowledge is seldom as simple as presented in textbooks.

“When textbooks are used, they are more likely to be treated as reference volumes, used to find answers to specific problems or as one of numerous sources of information, rather than as a comprehensive, sequential means of mastering a particular body of knowledge. If one text is unsatisfactory, it is easily dropped in favor of a better one.” - Mary Griffith, author of The Unschooling Handbook.

Math:

Your child’s ability to learn math (or your ability to help him learn it) from real-world activities is a common fear among homeschooling parents. This is because most of us learned math in the sometimes painful way it is taught in schools, through lectures, textbook reading, drilling, and testing.

“The more determinedly ‘un’ unschooling families favor an approach to math that emphasizes conceptual understanding over simple rote memorization and manipulation of formulas. We make that choice on the assumption that our children will learn basic math facts and computation skills through their everyday activities. This often means that they learn those basic arithmetic operations at later ages than traditionally occurs in schools, but it also means that when they do, they learn more quickly and easily. Because they not only see the real-world applications, but participate in them directly, math skills are not abstract and arbitrary lessons but real, working tools.” - Mary Griffith.

The purpose of math is for use in real-world activities, not for tests. We use math as a tool in many ways we may not actively realize such as baking, building, gardening, and of course using money. It is these activities that spark your children’s interest in more advanced concepts.

”For example, a child baking bread may easily learn about following directions, measuring, using appropriate tools and equipment, adding and multiplying fractions, yeast and carbon dioxide, grains and gluten and salt, reading temperature settings and timers, heat convection and conduction, and division and subtraction as the bread is consumed.“ - Mary Griffith.

What is math, anyway? Math teachers tell their students that math is everywhere, but they only show it to them on paper. Math is more than many of us recognize: pattern recognition, sorting, measurement, logic, problem-solving, probability, statistics, etc. It’s doubling a recipe, building a playhouse, dividing garden plots, playing a board game or card game, buying a toy, etc.

Even if we are confident that we can teach our children the basics, how do we help them learn advanced math that we ourselves don’t understand? We help them find the information to learn from (books, computer games, DVDs, classes, a tutor, etc.)

“The important thing to remember about the child who is entranced and consumed by mathematics is that you will not need to keep up with her yourself. With only a little help, she will find her own way. She’ll make up her own problems and puzzles, just to see if she can solve them, and keep looking for new problems she hasn’t yet tackled. She’ll look for the kinds of learning materials and helpers she wants, and will let you know what help she needs from you. She is the one doing the learning, and you wouldn’t be able to stop her if you tried.” - Mary Griffith.

Reading and Writing:

Learning to read is often a controversial issue among educators if not among parents. Opinions vary for when and how is best. Unschoolers tend not to take sides in this debate since our children themselves often make those choices.

“With our natural emphasis on truly individualized learning, we observe the ways our children learn best, and help them pick and choose from among the many available tools to find the ones that work best for them. For most of us, helping our children learn to use language is an utterly pragmatic, undogmatic matter: whatever works is what we–or more properly, they–use.” - Mary Griffith, author of The Unschooling Handbook.

Truly, the best way to help your children learn to read is to read to them.

“It’s one of the basic tenets of the whole language approach to literacy: children will not learn to appreciate reading if they never see it being used. Reading aloud will do more to turn your kids into readers than any other single thing you can do. Reading aloud can be a daily event for the entire family, it can be a private time for one parent-child pair, or older children can read to younger ones. Many families continue to read aloud together, long after all the children have learned to read, simply because they have come to enjoy the ritual of sharing books.” - Mary Griffith.

The process of learning to read may take months or years, and it may begin at any age. Don’t worry though. Your child will desire to read as books and other reading material are all around. Her first sign of interest will likely be in letters and other symbols, with the realization that they have some meaning. Over time, she will learn to associate those symbols with their meanings. You may see her pretending to write. She may memorize a favorite book well enough to fool people into believing that she is actually reading. Eventually, she will actually be reading. Given the controversy, this description sounds deceptively simple, but decades or more of children have taught themselves to read in such a way.

“Unschooled children seem to derive enormous confidence from learning to read this way–at their own pace, with their own methods. Reading is a skill they have developed for themselves; having mastered one of the most crucial and useful tools for further learning, they are unlikely to believe that many subjects or skills will be too difficult.” - Mary Griffith.

Many other ‘subjects’ that your child becomes interested in will be first explored through reading and perhaps video. Your child will likely be satisfied for some time with you reading to her, but as she develops more interests, she will choose to learn to read for herself. Reading and writing are powerful tools for learning.

Science:

Science, like math, is all around us. Your children will demonstrate their interest in scientific concepts when they first discover hot and cold, when they ask you about the sky, the stars, the moon, the weather, etc.

“Children, from earliest infancy, are natural scientists. They spend most of their waking hours observing, predicting, and testing those predictions in a constant effort to understand their world. From smiling and vocalizing and noticing that some people return such gestures, to tossing food to the floor and discovering that it doesn’t usually come back, babies progress through scores of difficult concepts such as gravity, locomotion, and language. As unschooling parents of younger children, all we need to do is keep our kids supplied with fodder for their observation and experimentation (and keep them and ourselves safe in the process!).” - Mary Griffith, author of The Unschooling Handbook.

Show your children your own curiosity about the world. Answer their questions and help them find answers to the ones you do not know (through books, classes, videos, experiments, etc.) Don’t worry about scientific fields or terminology. Your children will pick up these labels in their own time. Just have fun exploring and experimenting.

“Beyond the love and pursuit of something specific, there’s another quality you might also call love of learning. It’s simple curiosity, which kills more tired assumptions than kills cats. Some people move around with their ears and eyes perked open like raccoons, ready to find out something new and like it. Do everything you can to cultivate this characteristic; it will enliven your life immeasurably.” - Grace Llewellyn, author of The Teenage Liberation Handbook.

History and Social Sciences:

History and other social sciences (the ‘people’ disciplines) may not be subjects many of us look back fondly on, but for our unschoolers these may be some of the most interesting. To them, these sciences are stories. In place of the textbooks we remember which emphasized facts, chronological events, dates, names, etc., our children have access to biographies, narratives, documentaries, docudramas, etc. They will read about real people, real stories, real times.

History doesn’t have to be pursued in chronological order. Your children’s interests will more likely be targeted at specific time periods, people, or geographic areas. The context for those times and places will develop as your child learns about different periods. Some unschoolers enjoy creating a timeline such as a long sheet of paper down a hallway on which to place historical interests, and perhaps a map on which to note the relationship of places.

Your child’s historical interests may be triggered by other areas such as art, cars, buildings, appliances, landmarks, etc. History, like other ‘subjects,’ is a part of everything else. We need not focus on or be limited by any particular ‘subject.’

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