Posted in Homeschooling General
Creating a Love for Learning in Your
Part II of III January 2005 Donna Reish
I. Understand the Effect of Readiness on Love for Learning Start early and go for the long-haul When I say “start early,” I don’t mean start out with workbooks and assignments early! I mean start out with learning early; make learning a lifestyle from a young age. We decided that we were going to homeschool when our first child was a little over a year old. (And we actually began home schooling my eighth grade sister at that time.) Everything in our life became school—morning devotions, chore time, story time, evening devotions, listening to tapes while traveling, etc. Ministering at the nursing home, hosting Bible studies in our home, and preparing the church bulletin board all quickly became “school”—with a toddler in tow, learning as we went. I always got so upset when my children learned from others that school means book learning---and specifically workbooks—and as preschoolers and kindergarteners would say, “I want to do school.” My mantra through the years has been something like this: “Did you do your dishes this morning? Did you read the Bible with Daddy? Did you do story time with Mommy? Did you play a math game with sissy? Did you help brother make bread today? Then you just did school!” Starting early means beginning in their very first years to develop a love for learning in our children by providing learning activities that are worthwhile and enjoyable—giving them a good taste for learning. Do not put pressure on children to learn things not ready for Some of the best advice I ever received concerning educating my children came form Dr. Raymond Moore’s books, Better Late Than Early and School Can Wait. In these books, he detailed the way children learn—the stages of learning, the signs of readiness, and the importance of taking our cues for “formally educating” our children from the children themselves (not a magic age that the child turned or what our child’s little cousin is learning in school at that same age). The funny thing about his books is that they contained the same information I had just learned in college (and continued to learn about that same time in my master’s program). The research, statistics, and proof of the importance of readiness in learning were the same as those I had been studying. The major difference? Schools are usually unable to do anything about those variances in children’s readiness (aside from small groups, teacher’s aids, etc.). If little Johnny comes to first grade at the appropriate age of six, the school is unable to say, “Well, Johnny’s signs of readiness show that he might not be ready to learn to read until he is eight.” They simply must push him through the best they can. However, we do not have to! Every time Kayla (our late blooming, dyslexic, dysgraphic learner) has another success, I praise God for Dr. Moore. Kayla received perfect scores on the verbal ACT portion not once, but twice. She has co-written curriculum with me since she was fourteen years old. She attends college very successfully while still in high school. And much more. These things bring me even greater joy when I realize that Kayla would probably have not had the success she has had if she had gone to school. She did not learn to read until she was nine. She was unable to spell or write much at all until she was thirteen and began using the computer (and spell check). Her penmanship is still in process as a senior in high school. And yet, she has come out of all of this with great success—because we learned the importance of waiting for readiness and not pushing a child to do something that is out of her control to accomplish. So many times we parents get this completely backwards. We insist that a child learn to potty, read, spell, or pen words when he is simply not ready to do so, not fully realizing that these things are out of that child’s control. A child has no control over whether he is ready to potty train at two or at three. A child has no control over whether he is ready to learn to read at six or at nine. Yet we often insist on pushing in these areas. However, in areas in which a child truly can control himself, we might let slide by. Areas such as kindness, diligence, responsibility—these areas of character can be learned (at their appropriate levels) by children as young as three. These are areas of which a child truly can control. Our children will love learning much more if we wait on readiness to occur before teaching things that they are unable to learn without readiness. Without readiness, we have tears, frustration, and a disdain for learning. With readiness, we have joy, success, and a love for learning. II. Effect of Read aloud from the beginning. If you have not been a read-aloud home schooler, it is never too late to begin. If your students are older (junior high and high school), you might have to dangle a deeper colored orange carrot (along with some ranch dip) in front of them to get them to enjoy reading aloud together, but it won’t take long…and it will certainly be worth it! There are complete books available telling how to begin reading aloud, good books to choose at various ages and stages, and more (such as The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease or Honey for a Child’s Heart), so I won’t go into much detail here; however, if you have boys and/or older children, start with adventure---educational can come later! The first goal in reading aloud is to make your children love reading aloud. If they don’t love read aloud time, you will not do it regularly—and all of the great goals and objectives of reading aloud will never be seen anyway. Some people ruin “read aloud” by trying to make it too “schoolish.” I can remember when, fresh out of teacher’s college, every part of my little two year old’s story time became a possible “reading comprehension lesson.” (Of course, I have since learned that those are not true reading comprehension lessons but rather just “quizzing sessions”---which have their place to “assess” or “test” comprehension—but they definitely do not “teach” comprehension---unless they are followed by discussion.) Anyway, my little guy just wanted me to read the story already! He didn’t care if he knew the minor character’s name—nor if he knew the motivation (for a two year old!?) of the major character. Enjoy the process. Yes, discuss it (far better for building comprehension than simply quizzing your students). Yes, talk about why this happened or that happened, cause and effect, how the character felt, whether his responses were biblical, etc.---but not all the time—and certainly not after each paragraph! These things will usually come naturally if your children are enjoying their read aloud time. It will become just like a good movie---everyone discussing it around the dinner table, in the car, or at Grandma’s. If it’s just adventure you’re after (with a good dose of Christianity thrown in), you might start with Frank Peretti’s junior novels, Cooper Kids Adventure Series---an If the thought of sitting still while Mom reads aloud makes everyone feel a boredom attack (or in Dad, a sleeping attack) coming on, you might consider allowing your children to do something quiet while you read. Our older children often quilt, do handwork, or other non-thinking activities while I read. Our little guys usually do puzzles, build with Legoes, or sort Legoes. Many times, Dad will do something quietly with the little ones while we read, so their hands and minds are engaged in something. (Currently, this is a one thousand piece Civil War puzzle.) Build strong and enjoyable reading skills Recently Cami was typing an outline for a presentation I was giving about language arts. When she got to a certain point about building a love for reading—and the portions that described “rewarding”—and even bribing—your children to get them to love reading, she nearly had a fit. “Mom, your parenting standards are really getting low here….I mean, bribing your children to read!!!” Then I reminded her of how she went from reading picture books to chapter books. She smiled, nodded, and went back to her typing. There have been many turning points in our children’s reading processes here at the Reishes. One of these was Cami going from picture books to chapter books. She loved for me to read aloud to her—we literally read (aloud) every American Girl, Boxcar Children, Three Cousins’ Detective, Cul-De-Sac Kids, Sugar Creek Gang, Ellie (Amish series), Cooper Family, Josh Ladd, Baker Streets Sports Club, Kayla O’Brien, and Sadie Rose book ever printed---I mean hundreds of them. However, when it came time for her to move from picture books to chapter books, she was sure that she could not do it. I tried timing her, alternating reading with her, etc. etc. But she was sure that she could not get through an entire chapter book by herself. I knew the importance of building a love for reading in my kids—and I did what any desperate homeschooling mama would do—I paid her. I paid her $5 for the first chapter book she read herself—and $1 per book for the entire summer. She hunkered down with her little forty page chapter book (Three Cousins’ Detective book) and earned her five dollars. Before she knew it, she had read several chapter books—and absolutely loved it. It might seem extreme—and it is somewhat out of my character to pay my children to do something I want them to do—but reading was so important to me, that I often did so. (Note: I never paid for daily chores or good behavior. Those were “freebies”—expected, not just preferred.) Each time one of our kids learned to read, I enrolled him or her in a “book of the month” club. As he was learning to read, he received a book in the mail each month. When my kids took part in summer reading programs, they would receive the rewards from the library—and from home. I often doubled what the library gave, or offered them “extra credit” prizes (Chuck E Cheese’s, Build a Bear clothes, etc.) for doing above and beyond the library program. Whenever I felt that there was a critical point or important milestone to cross in a child’s reading development, I made sure that happened—even if it cost me a few bucks or several hours of “trading reading” (“for every hour you read, I’ll read aloud an extra hour to you”). Of course, many of the tips throughout this article aid in building a love for reading—especially reading aloud. Reading aloud, paying the kids, trips to bookstores, and even McDonald’s (!)—all show our children that reading is important and fun. That it can provide them with hours and hours of fun, entertainment, and learning--while we know that it also opens the door to a life of learning and education. III. Prioritize Learning Make time for the important things. Sometimes the difference between read aloud success and failure is timing. The same is true of many home learning adventures. We learned fifteen years ago from Gregg Harris at one of his workshops that the way to be sure something is done in your school is to attach it to something you always do. Of course, his main suggestion here was attaching things to mealtimes, since seldom do we miss that event! Anyway, attach your family read aloud time---or any important learning or devotional activity---- to something already in your schedule all of the time: rising time, breakfast, lunch, dinner, or bedtime are all good choices. We began following Mr. Harris’ rule of thumb when our first couple of children were little, and soon had attached everything important to something in their schedule, then had attachments to our attachments until each day was one big, well, attachment. It was a great rule of thumb for us as new parents, and it provided a stable, scheduled environment for our preschoolers, toddlers, and babies. They always knew what to expect. For added incentive, you might follow our family’s more-often-than-not rule: If an activity is important to us (devotions, memory work, discipleship meetings with children, read aloud time, etc.), we should do that activity more often than we do not. If our occurrences of an event do not exceed our skipped times of an event, then it isn’t very important to us (if we plan to do something four times a week but only do it once).It’s not a real priority in our lives. It either needs moved up in our priority list or dropped—and we need to be honest with ourselves that it really isn’t a priority. This guideline has become especially important to us as our children have gotten older, and they are away from home more and more for college classes, music lessons, and other special classes (foreign languages, debate, etc.). It is so easy during these years to just give up “family learning together” time---simply because it seems impossible with everyone’s busy schedules. “More often than not” has given us the security that we are, indeed, doing what is important to us, but yet it is not legalistic or burdensome. (I might note here that many things that are important to us are now done in a moving vehicle going to and from church, potlucks, debate and speech tournaments, conventions, visiting relatives, etc.!) Evaluate often A big part of creating a love for learning is evaluating what works and what doesn’t work for your family. For years and year, I wanted to do everything just like other successful families I saw. While I believe that copying after someone else is the highest form of admiration, and I believe that we can learn a lot by emulating others, we cannot get stuck in the rut of doing what others do regardless of whether it works for our particular family or not. Specifically, I remember putting a lot of pressure on my husband to get up earlier and do more school with the children, especially Bible studies and character studies, since that is what I saw other families doing. Never mind the fact that he was nearly always up late one-on-one with our older children, discipling and mentoring them. Never mind the fact that he worked sixty hours a week at his job. He wasn’t doing things the way I wanted him to do them and the way I saw others doing them. I have since learned that yes, I can gain much from observing and modeling after others who are successful in various areas of parenting and home schooling, but if it doesn’t work for our family (due to time constraints, job restrictions, ages of children, interests of children, etc.), then it just isn’t for us. I don’t have to make my husband fit into a mold of what I see someone else’s husband doing. I don’t have to schedule my school day just like another mom does. And my children do not have to be just like other children. Thus, we need to evaluate often. Is what we are doing here really working? Is this causing our children to learn---and love to learn? Could something else work better? Am I trying to make my school like someone else’s—even if it is not the best for us? Of course, part of that evaluation may be observing another family, asking questions, and trying something new that you think will work. However, if it doesn’t work, be willing to re-evaluate and try something else. Skip the good to do the best With that evaluation process comes what to do once you have evaluated something: skipping the good to do the best. Twenty-one years ago when I began home schooling my sister, home schooling was in its infancy in Yet there were many positive aspects of those early days of home schooling---deep camaraderie among the few brave home schoolers who existed, long days at home (without dozens of activities screaming at me to participate!), a more laid back approach (since there was no “parental peer pressure” to be or do more and more), etc. Even having a small number of choices wasn’t always bad. Now, nearly daily, we home schoolers (especially in such a home school-friendly state as Today, more than ever, it is vital that we evaluate our school, extra curricular, sports, church, youth, and music activities. We could easily spend every day running only a couple of children to activities, much less the six I have in school this year! We can (and I have) easily “school” until five or six each evening, trying to fit in all the wonderful materials available. I realize this evaluation process is highly personal; however, we have found some methodology to our evaluation process that others (especially large families) may benefit from as well. One of our first benchmarks for evaluation is, of course, our relationship with the Lord. Does this activity/curriculum enhance our relationship with the Lord? Obviously, there are many things that must be learned that do not have much spiritual content---math, foreign languages, etc. If those things do not interfere with our walks with the Lord by consuming too much time away from Him or our family and they fall under another criterion we have developed (such as preparing for the future), then, of course, we include those things. Secondly, does it benefit a large number of our family? I realize those with less children may not need to ask this question, but for us, when we had six children twelve and under, each child got to be in one thing (basketball and piano, at that time), and other than that, we did things the whole family could do—such as family roller skating, field trips, hospitality with whole families, etc. It was a wonderful time for our family that I look back on with fond memories. Now, with older children, we are somewhat divided in this area. We still try to do things altogether whenever possible, but we prefer to do many things that at least our three teenage daughters can do together (they love learning together!) or that our three young sons can be in together. Thirdly, does it build or tear down family unity? This goes somewhat with the second benchmark and may not have a lot to do with a love of learning (although I could probably easily find many connections if I pondered it long enough), but it has always been an important benchmark for us. Too many outside influences, too much peer interaction (especially too early), and too much busy-ness away from the family seems to pull our children away from us and their siblings. We also watch out for these things. Next, does it prepare our children for a future we think God is leading them into? A few years ago, I jumped on the musical bandwagon. Our daughters all played piano, and each of them took at least one more instrument. Now, don’t get me wrong. Music playing is great, but it is definitely not for everyone. I saw successful families around me all playing instruments together, and I thought we had to do the same thing. We spent a lot of time and a lot of money pursuing something that the girls really weren’t interested in (violin, viola, and flute). This activity did not prepare them for their futures; it didn’t give them an area of education they really needed (since it wasn’t in their skill areas); and it didn’t increase family unity. Our daughters are writers, speakers, and two pianists. We now put our time and effort into those areas as we feel that those things help prepare them for the futures God has for them. (For others, it will not be writing or speaking, but it might be violin, viola, or flute.) Lastly, is it something our students are interested in? I know for us, our children’s love of learning has always increased when we studied things they were interested in learning. (See next month for more on this!) Every family’s priorities and circumstances will be different---and each family’s “good” and “best” will be different, but we all need to be in the evaluation process at all times. Here at the Reish home, we often find ourselves immersed in “good” things instead of the “best” things. Our evaluation benchmarks help us narrow down our curricula, activities, family life, and more to be focused on the “best”! IV. Make Learning Fun—When Possible Use non-book teaching tools whenever possible One thing that I do for my kids to help them love to learn is keep us well-stocked (often from the library) on non-book items. I have our children listen to presidents’ speeches while they clean, science tapes while they peel potatoes, fiction books on tape (especially historical fiction like Amos Fortune, Free Man or Across Five Aprils) while they are doing “handy” school like sewing, crafting, etc. (Alright, your son might not like sewing or crafting. My little guys welcome a few hours to sort Legos for their next project or color in their educational coloring books while listening to talking books.) If you do not have access to a big library, you might want to go to another library's website to look up non-book items, and order them from your local library through inter-library loan. That is a free service at our library. Also, the local home school group here is big enough to have a good library of materials to check out. When my three oldest children were little, they were read to by me or Ray three to five hours everyday, five days a week or more. Ray read the Bible and character-related materials to them in the mornings and after dinner. He read again to at least one of them before bed. Usually throughout the short evening he had at home with them, he ended up reading something else to them. In between, I read to them every chance I got. (At that time, Ray worked twelve hour days five days a week and most of Saturday. I had too many little kids to go anywhere (and no help anyway), so I did what I loved the most during all the time I had: school the children!). We had special names for all of our special reading times that my older children still remember fondly---morning Bible, content study reading, chapter book read aloud, afternoon Bible, Bible story time, story time, big kids’ reading time, matching-sweat-suit-read-aloud-time, (no kidding! I know it’s corny, but it makes me smile!) and more. Nowadays, life isn’t quite so simple around the Reish home. Some days I am blessed if I get to read for thirty minutes to my little guys; and Ray usually only gets to read once a day with them. I use non-book teaching tools to take the place of Mom and Dad. (I know, instead of electronic babysitters, I am using electronic home school teachers—but it works for me at this stage in my life, which is what all of us home school mothers need to learn to do—what works for each one of us.) On any given day, my three little guys, ages twelve, nine, and six, (not all of these for one little guy!) may be assigned the following: 1) Do math drill on Mathsafari; 2) Do geography on Geosafari; 3) Do reading comprehension fun activities on Geosafari; 4) Listen to George Sarris dramatize/read the Bible on cassette; 5) Watch a Magic School Bus science video; 6) Do Saxon Math DIVE cd; 7) Do Math U See video; 8) Watch a Reading Rainbow program from the library over a book we are reading; 9) Listen to a Diana Waring cassette about something historical we are studying in history; 10) Listen to a cassette of a famous composer from the period of time we are studying while coloring a coloring page that goes with the cassette; 11) Watch a Ken Ham creation science video that goes with our Bible study; 12) Do story book and tape sets from the library (while Mom works with older sister on her research paper and skips out on story time!); 13) Listen to a Sugar Creek Gang chapter book tape (while Mom helps older brother with his speeches for the upcoming tournament and skips out on afternoon read aloud time---there’s only so much time in a day!); and more. The point to this lengthy discourse is to show that non-book teaching items can be valuable additions to your home school---and even substitute for Mom to ensure that learning takes place when Mom can’t be the “teacher”! Not to mention, they truly help my children have a love for learning---and utilize different learning styles. Make home school memories One of our favorite pastimes for the two weeks prior to my son’s wedding last summer was for the older four children (Joshua, the soon-to-be groom at that time, and our three teenage daughters) to gather in our bedroom until the wee hours of the night and talk about memories. One of them would get started on something….the most fun vacation, the best field trip, the day one of the little boys was born, when I used to threaten to send them to school (!), when we moved to near Do you remember the old saying “"Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I'll understand"? I think building home school memories falls under the last part of that quote. Children understand (and remember!) what they do---whether it is digging for earthworms in the “bug room” at the zoo, getting the maple sugar from the maple tree at the sugar bush, taking their fingerprints at the science museum, or guarding the fort from invaders at the old fort. Building home school memories builds a love for learning. It has been my experience through my twenty plus years of “field tripping,” that the more unusual the field trip or event (or activities at the field trip), the more my children remember it—and the more home school memories are made. It is not normal for Mom to get up in the morning and announce to the children that school today will only consist of eating finger foods and reading together on the sofa all day. It is unusual for Mom to tell the children they have to go to bed early tonight because tomorrow we spend the school day at the state park. It is rare for a child to get to have a “day away” with Mom to do whatever he wants. It is unusual to be able to tap a sugar maple tree, fill a bucket with maple syrup sugar, carry it to the sugar house, and watch maple syrup being made (and eat it on pancakes that you cook over a fire). It is unique to go on a field trip where you are in a slave’s role for the day. (I know, why do the things kids like the most have to require so much of parents?) Even harder to accept for me and Ray as home school parents who have hit the forty-mark is the fact that our oldest children’s three favorite field trips hands-down involve major discomfort for those of us who are…well, seasoned home schoolers: sleeping at the top of the jungle gym at Science Central; sleeping on the straw cots at the old fort; and sleeping in the snake room at the zoo. (Did I say “sleeping”? Well, “staying overnight” in those locations might more accurately describe what we did there.) Yes, we paid the price of a night in a comfortable Holiday Inn to sleep in uncomfortable, and I mean, very uncomfortable, quarters at the museum, the fort, and the zoo. But we paid for much, much more than a room and a “continental” breakfast. We paid for home school memories that will last a lifetime. Home school memories that make me cry as I type this. Home school memories that cause my older children to tell my younger children, “You’ve got to have Mom and Dad take you there! It was the BEST!” **Watch this spot next month for the final installment of “Creating a Love for Learning in Your Homeschool.” |
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