Natural Learning

I mentioned natural learning, interest-led learning and unschooling in a previous post. As you may recall, this year we have been experimenting with a slower pace of homeschooling.

A New Approach
Unschooling Update
Oh Yeah...Homeschooling...

If you read these posts, you may wonder how our year is ending up? Well, we have lost steam in some areas and picked up in others. But overall, our new "less is more" approach has been working really well. In fact, I think we have decided against the virtual school options I was considering for next year for B13. Little things keep reinforcing to me the beauties of natural learning--and what we'd lose if we returned to a highly structured model.

Natural learning assumes that learning is happening all the time, that informal learning is just as important as formal academics. When we are driving to a piano lesson and we talk about life, attitudes, their discoveries and questions, that is learning--perhaps the most important kind. It can't always be planned, and it is driven by the learner's own questions and motivations rather than by a curriculum. And that's why it sticks!

As a teacher, I am amazed at how much I "teach" that my kids quickly forget. I am shocked at how little my older kids remember from their early years of homeschooling! They are most likely to remember experiences we had and people we met, including memorable characters from books. And skills, of course, like handwriting or piano chords. But facts? No.

Of course I believe it's all in there somewhere. But the point is that I'm worrying less with my younger children about "getting it all in" or "covering all the bases" with curriculum. If they read a lot and are read aloud to--good books--they are exposed to history, science, grammar, vocabulary and good writing models, without a lot of extra worksheets, textbooks and projects that take time away from reading! If there is one thing I could go back and do differently with my older kids, especially Blondechick and B13, it would be giving them more time for reading.

My children are reinforcing this notion, too. The other night at dinner, B13 complained about the time he had to spend every morning listening to our read-aloud. (He was in full teenage-boy, Mr. Negativity mode.) Blondechick16 (who entered public high school this year) cut him off. "Listen, bro, that is the best thing about homeschooling! I can't believe how bad the other kids in my class are at reading aloud. Their reading is so choppy, they can't pronounce words, they don't know how to pause at the right places--and I just naturally know all that because I've been read to so much. You don't know how much you're learning, but you really are!"

Thank you, Blondechick!

Then the other day, Bantam10 laid down his book with a contented sigh. "Mom, it feels so good to finish a book. I love that feeling. I love reading. It's my favorite subject in school."

Now, B10 was the one that used to groan every day, at the beginning of the year, about my new requirement of reading for an hour a day. I didn't even require one whole hour straight! But now, he reads solidly for a whole hour with great enjoyment.

He has always been a bathroom reader, but I discounted his interest in The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield until recently. Now, I am beginning to realize that even comic books can be educational! Often, B10 will ask me about the humor or the science in a Far Side situation or about a vocabulary word he encountered there--when he's nowhere near these books. So I know they've made him think!

More tomorrow...about what we've actually been doing this year!