One of the beautiful things about homeschooling is that I get to help pick what methods we use for learning. Of course publish schooling mothers know that not all learning happens at school. Too many though admit they hardly have time with their children as so many things demand their attention, and steal the attention of their children. Children come home with hours of homework almost all instructional and when given open ended homework often the child and the parents get upset over not having more instruction.
I think this is the issue. In Kindergarten children are so busy exploring and learning to learn. More quickly than once upon a time children go from learning to memorizing as schools have gone from teaching children to thrive in the world, to teaching children to test.
The world that is here and so quickly growing is not in need of more people who will blindly do as instructed and not think for themselves. Public schools where created in America to produce a malleable work force that would not go on strike. This worked well in the days of mass industry and is a good model for retail work like Walmart. However our planet and society can not survive this model I fear for very much longer. We thinkers and builders, those who can see outside the box.
No matter how we school our children we need to make sure we are preparing them to thrive in the changing world. Research Exploratory learning and explore together. Don’t give the children the answers, let them find it, let them show you. Challenge yourself to think outside the box, be brave, color without the lines!
Tip: Leave some interesting item out in the open for children to explore. Don’t leave instructions or directions and don’t have expectations. Just see what happens. This is something many unschoolers do and something I think more of us should do.
With Exploratory Learning there really is no Failing, even when everything falls. Something is learned! Lessons like this will be remembered far longer than a wrong answer on a test.
Even homeschooling I have times when I get so focused on lesson plans that I forget to allow enough time for exploring. Then I go through other times where we do tons and tons of exploring.
Sometimes leaving things out works for us, other times I find if I start trying to create something it helps draw the children into the area and direct their attention to the materials. Then I let them take over or work beside me on whatever they want to make.
Even in college I struggled with open ended assignments! I think it is an issue too. Bless you for having the patience to home school. 🙂
I try my best to do this with my son. He is nearly 3.
I admire you for homeschooling. My kids attend a Christian school. One will be in high school next year and refuses to be homeschooled. The alternative is public school. Yuck.