I’m excited about the Mommy Jammies Night podcast by Marcy Crabtree on “Delight Learning” and will post the link as soon as it is available here –
Let me share my story. I had these preconceived notions of what my homeschool would look like. I was afterall a degreed teacher. I had a speciality even. I knew how to teach. I was trained. And, I knew that I wanted the best for my children. Until I actually began homeschooling with my oh, so perfect homeschool plans and found that my kids were exhibiting the same type of behavior as some of my students. They were bored. They were unruly. And, they thrived on anything-everything that wasn’t contained in a workbook or written pages.
Hmm…
I started observing my children. You know how we parents do this. When they are not looking we watch, we take mental notes and we store the information for later. I watched my children play after rainy days. Our rains in southwest Florida can be torrential and then the sun shines! The kids took their red wagon, rain boots and walked along our property looking for treasures. I was delighted when those treasures did not resemble living-breathing creatures, but sometimes they did. I’d have two excited kids on my hands, and the questions did not stop.
“Mom, what do frogs eat?”
“Can I press this leaf in my book?”
“Can I make a freshwater tank and catch some fish?”
“Can I keep the turtle in my room?”
“Is it red on black friend of Jack? Or red on yellow kill a fellow?”
Yikes! It was time to put aside my carefully laid plans and really look at the excitement on my children’s faces, then ages four and six and do something about it. My kids were focused on something of interest, something that did require learning, but something they were so excited about that they didn’t consider it learning. So, I did what any red-blooded, full-fledged homeschool mom would do … I turned it into school.
Just kidding. Well, sort of.
I printed out worksheets and drew some big boxes on this – and had questions for the kids to answer.
Delight Filled Learning Record Keeping:
- What did I find?
- What do I want to do with it?
- What does it look like?
- Draw a picture!
That’s it. Just simple questions for the children to record their “finds” and enjoy their nature walks. This turned into pages and pages of notes and something for me to file in my homeschool journal as “school” … when children are little delight-style learning is often the case if we sit back and observe. And, not only that – take some initiative in paving the way for our kids to learn.
Are you worried you will miss something? Don’t be shy. Raise your hand if that describes how you fell. Me too! Most of us are so worried we’ll miss some pivotal milestone. But, guess what? Most of the time your kids are learning so much, they are learning more than their in-school-brick-and-mortar-buildings-counterparts. Really. I know.
I have now graduated three totally homeschooled students and here is the result.
Child One: Still loves nature and while an adult takes more pictures of nature shots than anyone I know.
Child Two: Took the love of writing and created a book series she co-authored with her mom (me), here.
Child Three: Started a home business repairing small engines after successfully fixing moms mixer at 13.
Child Four and Five: Still at home and learning much from their “hobbies”.
So, I’d urge you to give it a try. What motivates your child? What makes them excited about learning. Not every delight-centered activity will turn into a long lived adventure, but you’ll be surprised what these impromptu events will spur on. Recently while studying Human Anatomy my daughter became excited about blood types. She went on and on talking about universal donors and wondering what blood type she was. So, we hoped online and ordered a blood-typing kit. What fun! We enjoyed learning about blood types (we … three of us, are universal donors) and learning about blood-type diets. Totally off-topic, but educational nonetheless. She is still trying to discover what her major will be in college and this was a good segue to additional field options.
So, I’d urge you to give it a try. What motivates your child? What makes them excited about learning? You may be surprised what you find.
Credits: Photo- @DepositPhoto.com copyright @FamVeldman. All Rights Reserved.
I love the openness you have! So many times I have been told that I HAVE to teach perfectly or my child won’t be given the chance she needs. I try to teach them in ways that I know they both learn the best and will get the most out of something. Thanks so much for your encouragement.
Thanks, Orilla – you know me – I’m pretty open about not being perfect, LOL – wouldn’t have it any other way. Hang in there, and I’ll be praying for you.
This was great.
Delightful directed learning was so easy when the kids were little but as they got older I got nervous and went directly to textbooks. One child needed that but the others became frustrated. It’s kind of opposite to my type A personality.
Thank you so much for your time tonight. There are many things that really hit home for me.
So much wonderful information!!!! Thank you!!!
I have no idea how to do delight based learning effectively. We tend to get stuck in the finding materials stage and never move on to the learning.