Posted in Homeschooling General
Creating a Love for Learning in Your
Part II of III January 2005 Donna Reish I. Focus on Your Learners Focus on learning styles Throughout my twenty-plus years of homeschooling, there have been many buzzwords and trends—just like in any other endeavor. The problem with buzzwords, so to speak, is that they often alienate those who are not in the know. I can remember when I first began homeschooling my sister—and I had just graduated with an elementary education teaching degree—and every thing I read about homeschooling seemed to talk about learning styles. Even as a trained teacher in elementary education, I felt intimidated by this buzzword. Let this be a lesson to us seasoned homeschoolers not to make this lifestyle seem too difficult or out of reach for others. I see this happening all of the time as everything gets new labels and definitions. Homeschooling our kids doesn’t have to consist of some unknown skill that only those educated in Latin can comprehend! That said, what about these learning styles that intimidated me so? Well, I found out later that the bare bones of learning styles is figuring out what makes your kid tick! Yes, they fall into three categories: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. And yes, they each have their own characteristics—but once I got past the labels and definitions, I could see my kids clearly in each category. From the beginning, Joshua and Kayla could listen and comprehend anything they heard, it seemed. Both of them had poor penmanship and were not artistic. Neither one was musical. While they both loved building with Legoes—even this time had to be accompanied by talking books and radio dramas. Cami, on the other hand, wanted to sit right up against me as I read morning reading—in case there were any pictures to look at. She adored those little Learning styles—just seeing what makes our children tick. And trying to cater to that as much as possible. For Joshua and Kayla, this meant read aloud a few hours a day, radio dramas by the shelf-ful, presidential speeches while they did their educational coloring books, etc. For Cami, this meant hands-on math, workbooks at a young age (despite the fact that I did not care for workbooks for young children), and not relying on verbal explanations of things only. Even multi-tasking is directly related to learning styles in my kids. Kayla and Joshua both get bored if they only do one thing at a time—they have to be listening to something while they do repetitious work (like circling all of their verbs in the Checklist Challenge) or they get bored. Cami, on the other hand, is usually telling the little guys to turn Oddyssey off while she does her CC. Let learning styles help you determine your child’s best work environment, curriculum picks, types of books for research based writing (i.e. visual kids love Usborne books!), and more. But do not let the idea overwhelm you or dictate your kids’ behavior. Even kids who like to be doing need to learn to sit still when told and even kids who are auditory need to do their penmanship book as directed. Be sure you do not confuse learning styles with poor character—or poor parenting! Focus on interests/strengths/bents In addition to learning styles, kids are motivated by their interests. I remember during my master’s degree we spent a good two weeks discussing the need for high interest books for remediation in reading. The theory was (and I have seen this borne out in my own kids) that if the material is interesting to a student, he can read at higher levels. Thus, the second graders who are reading CS Lewis! It is true in all areas of life that when we are presented with something that interests us, we work harder, listen better, etc. to understand the information. We can use this to our advantage as homeschoolers too. We have purposely watched our children’s “loves.” What is it that they just adore. For Joshua, academically speaking, it was history, geography, and literature. For Kayla, it was anything academic—but especially Bible. Cami adored music, photography, cosmetology, and people! We took each of their interests and basically shaped a high school program for each one around them. Yes, they completed their “Core 40”— Out of these tailor-made high school programs, each student discovered a lot about themselves. While Joshua loved the capitol environment, it was too time consuming and at times disappointing to him—he discovered a love for teaching (which goes along with his history, literature, etc.) by teaching speech and debate classes with us. Kayla was able to study the lives of great missionaries all through high school as she wrote the curriculum—building even more of a desire for missions within her, ultimately helping her to choose nursing over physician, due to the length of time it would be before she would be ready to get on the mission field. Cami is still in process—but has learned from her month-long cosmetology experience that her skin problems (allergies, eczema, etc.) will prohibit her from becoming a beautician. All of this—from our kids’ loves and interests! Delight directed studies Our first born, Joshua, did not like math. I made so many mistakes in so many areas with that poor kid that it is amazing he loves to learn the way he does today! (I didn’t have other homeschoolers’ mistakes to learn from yet—consider yourself blessed to learn from “older” homeschoolers’ trials and errors!) Anyway, I had a workbook series without the teacher’s materials (thought they were only needed for the classroom) in early elementary—and I was not strong in math, so I didn’t do the material justice. Then in his middle grade I used a math program that simply took too long each day to complete. All of this added up to a math phobia, and dare I say math disdain, for Joshua. It didn’t take long for Ray to remedy this situation, however. You see, while Joshua didn’t love math—he did love sports—watching them, playing them, sorting sports cards into teams and creating “dream teams,” figuring stats, etc. And we had been to three Gregg Harris workshops by this time—where Mr. Harris had encouraged us to practice “delight directed studies.” Delight directed studies are lessons based on things our kids are delighted in. What delights your kids? For Joshua, it was obvious. Ray began working with Joshua on math in all types of sports scenarios at around age eight, and they continued these sports-math lessons practically until Joshua’s high school graduation. They began working with geometry on a baseball field on paper. They worked on statistics extensively with Joshua’s sports cards. And the lessons that stuck the most—stats in the driveway shooting free throws together. We have seen this over and over again—Kayla learning geometry through quilting; Kayla and Joshua learning sentence and paragraph structure through their love for writing fiction (and my editing!); measurements in the kitchen; and much more. Delight directed studies work. II. Give Children the Gift of Learning Teach children how to learn In addition to giving our children a love for learning, one of the best gifts we can give to them is the how to’s of learning. We have found dozens of ways to teach our kids to learn through the years. The first way is one talked about extensively in this article—discussion. We love to talk to our kids! We talk to them about how to organize information. We talk to them about how to make decisions. We tell them stories of our past—and what we have learned from it. All of these discussions aid in our children learning how to learn—because they usually revolve around thought processes, how we came to a certain conclusion, etc. Another thing we have done is take advantage of library programs—our kids have learned local history, CIA secrets (okay, not really secrets—but that was what the presentation was called—that got our kids’ attention!), internet use, card catalog use, and much more through the local library. We have attended these classes with them and learned ourselves. Another added benefit of taking kids to these is that they see that learning is a lifelong process—and that adults need to continue learning too. Teaching our children proper and extensive internet use is another way to teach them how to learn. We need to have filters on all of our computers to block out the bad—but the internet is a tool and of itself is an outstanding way to help kids learn to learn. I am amazed as an adult how much I can learn by researching online. Of course, internet research opens up other avenues of learning—discerning truth from fiction, appeals to emotion, interpreting statistics, and much more. Internet research combined with discussion is a doubly good way to learn to learn. We teach our children how to learn when we provide them with independent learning tools and books. I discovered early on that I was training my children to become too dependent on me for learning. Yes, I homeschool them. Yes, I love teaching them and being with them. But they will not learn to learn on their own if all of the curricula and all of my approaches center on my feeding them knowledge. I began providing my children with independent learning tools—talking books, radio dramas, independent math drills, self-checking games and activities like Geosafari and Mathsafari, and much more. I developed a daily list of meeting with Mom, working independently, and working with siblings—on school, chores, Bible, and more. Sometimes teaching our kids how to learn involves nothing more than goal setting. A discouraged student assigned a four hundred page biography doesn’t need somebody to read it to him or for him—he just needs coached in how to complete the task. Simply helping him see that if he were to divide that book in half (half this week and half next week), then he can have ten 20-page sessions a week and have it done! It is being more of a learning coach than a teacher as our kids get older. Organization is such a huge part of learning—and kids are not born with that (!). It is taught and it is caught. Stock up on learning. My friends’ husbands often tease them about staying away from me and my “catalogs.” (At least I think they are teasing!) They hide the checkbook when I’m coming for fear that I will talk their wives into buying the latest, greatest educational item I have found. I always say, “We get our clothes at Goodwill and our groceries at Aldi’s, but we get our books everywhere we find them---on sale or not!” We build a learning environment when we fill our home with good books and educational items---computers, good software, learning games, cassettes, videos, and more. It’s hard not to love learning when learning items are surrounding you! Nowadays, home school materials, in particular, and learning materials, in general, are everywhere! And the prices couldn’t be better. I have gotten complete sets of readers at garage sales, expensive creation science books at Goodwill, and educational videos at thrift stores. Ebay and other online used buying and selling sites abound with educational materials. Home school swaps are prevalent online, as well. If you see a learning item somewhere, you can more than likely get it used or on sale. Start out with general materials and Bible/character materials and branch out according to your students’ interests. Our initial “home school” purchases when our first born was a baby, twenty-one years ago, were the complete cassette series of Your Story Hour (of Uncle Dan and Aunt Sue venues), Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories, The Coriell’s Books of Character Building, and The Family Bible Library. Guess what? We still have all four of them---and we still use all four of them almost weekly! Our oldest child Joshua was nine months old when we began this adventure by home schooling my younger sister. At the time, I had no idea what his interests would be (except maybe the packaging and boxes the tapes and books came in!). Begin your home school library and supplies with items you have found others to enjoy and with items that anyone might enjoy. Of course, you can’t go wrong beginning with Bible-related and character-related materials. As your students grow up, you will see certain bents and interests developing. Capture these. Do not get so locked into learning the “essentials” that you do not take time out for their interests! Pursue the art books and classes for the one with artistic talent. Check out every book the library has on airplanes for your future aeronautic engineer. Read the classics aloud to your literary student. |
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