How Can I Teach You? Let Me Count the Ways.
Still other parents pick and choose from a variety of educational offerings: Saxon Math, perhaps, combined with Oak Meadow activities. Finally, there are those who find a child-led approach most effective and interesting for their family. This method called “unschooling” is the one our family uses. Whatever technique you choose, it’s important to remember that the successful homeschooling parents are those who can adjust their teaching style to accommodate their child’s learning style.
Multiple Intelligences
Homeschooling allows children to develop and grow according to their individual learning style. My kids thought counting by twos swinging high on our swing set was great fun. But doing it inside at their desks was a bore. Fractions were an abstract concept; baking a cheesecake made it clear. So the question is: How does a homeschooling parent figure out what or how to teach? An ancient Chinese proverb gives a clue: Tell me, I forget. Show me, I remember. Let me do it myself, I understand. Watching children play, one can see this proverb in action. Kids learn through the senses and absorb information at an incredible rate. Their curiosity is boundless as they question and explore everything around them. As homeschoolers, we know this curiosity gives way to interest, and interest turns into learning. Ideally, the parent becomes a facilitator rather than a teacher. By exposing your child to a variety of experiences each day, learning takes place with little struggle or effort. Homeschooling gives you the “room” to accommodate your child, and preserve curiosity and creativity.
Adapt to Your Child’s Learning Style
One interest they both shared was fairies. The girls jumped at the opportunity to build a fairy house with their dad, and my older daughter immediately made a drawing of the future house. They weren’t aware they were learning math, as the drawing became a house plan, and there was more measuring to cut the wood. Windows and doors added further math challenges. In figuring out the pitch of the roof, they learned the relationship of the sides of a right triangle. They were so happy with the results, they decided to build several birdhouses without our help! Approached this way, learning isn’t a chore. It’s part of the whole process of pursuing an enjoyable activity or interest. The visual learner saw her dream become a real (miniature) house. The active learner loved pounding the nails and sawing wood. For us, the math lesson was painless and fun! My older daughter loved drawing and planning our vegetable garden. My active little girl loved digging the dirt and playing with the bugs. They didn’t know they were studying horticulture as they watched the seeds sprout, then weeded, fertilized, and harvested a bumper crop of vegetables. Reading about worms, butterflies, bees, and pollination seemed quite natural, as we studied what we encountered each day.
Freedom to Learn
In his wonderful article, “How Children Learn to Be Intelligent” (Educational Leadership, March 1997, Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development), John Abbott writes, “The Process of Learning is wondrously spectacular and messy, and does not easily fit within a closely defined, classroom-based curriculum, particularly for the adolescent. Try as we might to accommodate children’s spontaneous questions, too often their natural enthusiasm is dulled by the needs of the (school) system for order.” Abbott’s solution? Empowering our youth to “learn spontaneously, independently, and collaboratively, without coercion.” Hmmm sounds just like unschooling to me!
