Posted in My Homeschool FAQs

One of the things I love about homeschooling is that my children are learning how to learn.  I do not kid myself that I am going to teach them everything they will ever need to learn in the few short years I have to teach them.  What I really want to accomplish is to teach them how to learn and to love learning.  So how can this be accomplished? 

One way we have done this is to let them be active participants in their education.  Yes, we use a currciulum.  But to me the curriculum is more of a guide than set in stone rules. 
Here is an example: 

When my oldest son was in 2nd grade we read a book that was part of our Sonlight curriculum called Emily's Runaway Imagination.  It  was a story of a little girl who wanted to read the book Black Beauty.  Her cousin who lived in the city had read it and wrote to her about the book.  The little girl decides that the best way to get the book is to get a Library to open in the small country area she lives in.  It is a great book and when we finished my son immediatly asked if we could read Black Beauty.  We set our curriculum aside and started in on Black Beauty.  Reading Black Beauty also stirred an interest in learning about horses.  We checked out every book we could fine in the Library about horses.  Then we asked a family at church that has horses if we could come out to their farm and learn first hand about horses.  Finally my son decided he wanted to write a story in the style of Black Beaty and wrote a fabulous story from the view point of our dog.  None of this except the orignal story was part of what I had planned for us to learn that year!  But, while he was interested in it I knew that was the best opportunity for him to explore the topic.  Had I have said "We'll we need to do xy&z that I already have planned and then we can study horses next year."  I would have killed off his interest in the topic and killed off a little bit of his desire to learn.  I must admit there where moments when I was thinking "Yikes, we are getting behind in our curriculum!"  But, you know what?  We finished all of our Sonlight that year even though we did this side study!

I know being this flexible may fill the hearts of many a homeschooling Mom with fear.  I admit, I struggle with it sometimes too.  But, I can tell you over the years similar senarios have played out at our house over and over.  These are the times when the kids really learn to love learning! 

I could be a stickler about staying on task.  But, I think if I was I would be cheating my kids out of what is most important about their educations....The love of learning.