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Learning Every Minute
Dateline: August 4, 2002
Chapter 7
The
McGraw-Hill Homeschooling Companion
by Julie Gattis and Laura Saba
Congratulations! You've moved past all the necessary legal,
organizational, and methodological issues and are ready to begin
homeschooling. Now you can look at what your days will be like.
Homeschooling can be much more than just burying one's head
in a textbook each morning. In fact, textbooks don't have to
play a prominent role at all if you prefer not to use them. Our
daily lives are teeming with opportunities for learning. If you
look at your life closely, you will realize there are a myriad
of teachable moments each day. When you check your car's oil,
you can discuss why a car needs oil or where oil comes from,
for example. Or you can explain why you add baking
soda when you bake
a cake. The possibilities are endless. You will discover
that if you learn to watch for teachable moments when they present
themselves, your children will learn all sorts of things and
are likely to develop a love of learning along the way.
What they learn will not always coincide with typical
scope and sequence, but does that really matter in the long
run? When your child reaches adulthood, will it matter whether
he learned to tell time at age four or six? Or whether cursive
writing wasn't mastered until sixth grade, while algebra
was studied in fifth? Sure, your child may miss a few questions
on the standardized test if he doesn't
learn according to prevailing customs, but this may not be a
problem in your situation. You are the principal, and you are
aware that you have 12 long years in which to teach your child.
It's your decision as to whether or not you will indulge Sally's
yearning to learn Web design
before she's mastered her multiplication
tables.
Impulse Learning
It's no great secret that people learn best when they are
studying something they are passionate about. Unschooling
families exploit this fact every day. Though your homeschooling
plan may call for certain information to be learned at certain
times, make sure you leave some room for impulse
learning. One of the benefits of homeschooling is that it
offers extraordinary flexibility. So it would be a shame to be
so schedule bound that you miss out on teachable
moments. No matter what your style, whether your homeschool
operates with military
precision or your approach is more laissez-faire,
don't forget that your schedule
is just a tool to help you get a job done. Make it work for you
as you wish, but don't become a slave to it.
Teachable moments can happen in a variety of settings and
circumstances. One evening, while a mother is boiling water for
pasta, a five-year-old
girl points at the steam
issuing from the pot and says, "Look, mommy! It's smoke!"
The astute homeschooling mom recognizes this as a teachable moment
and capitalizes on it.
"It does look a lot like smoke, Amanda, but it's actually
steam. That water is so hot that some of it turns into steam.
It's kind of like a little cloud over the pasta pot." If
time allows, the mother might grab an ice cube out of the freezer
and say something like "Ice is water, too. We have three
different kinds of water now. We have ice, liquid water, and
steam." Amanda might ask a question or two, and by the time
the exchange ends, she's got the beginnings of an understanding
about states
of matter, and it all happened before the linguine
was done.
Another example of a teachable moment occurs as a mother sits
at her desk writing
checks to pay bills. Her nine-year-old, wanting some company,
asks, "Whatcha doin' Mom?" She replies that she's paying
bills, and returns to her task, but then realizes she almost
let a teachable moment pass by. She thinks better of it, and
lays down her pen.
"See Chris, this is the
electric bill. Right here it shows how
much electricity our family used last month. This is the
telephone bill, and here's the MasterCard bill." Chris might
just shrug his shoulders and go on his way; but on the other
hand, he might ask his mother how
credit cards work, and the two could end up having an informative
discussion about credit,
interest, and debt. Perhaps she could show him an example
of how
interest is calculated on a simple interest loan. Since she
had explained debt to him, she realized she might as well explain
how credit works, important information many children learn in
early adulthood, oftentimes when it's too late. Because Chris
initiated this "lesson," he will likely retain this
knowledge, not even viewing it as school but as something interesting
he learned. Had his mom tried to impart the same information
while he was plowing through a series of sci-fi
novels, solely because she thought it was time for him to
learn this particular piece of knowledge, he might not have taken
as great an interest.
Of course, there will inevitably come times when a child expresses
an interest in something that you simply don't have the knowledge
to discuss intelligently without the aid of reference help nearby,
for example, "Mommy, if a great
white shark and a Portuguese
man-of-war got in a fight, who would win?" Don't worry.
No one can be an expert in all fields of knowledge. What can
you do? If you don't happen to have a shark or jellyfish expert
to consult, you could say, "I don't know, but I'm sure it
would be a mess! All those tentacles, yuck! We can look it up
on our next library trip, though." Just by listening to
the child and sharing in his curiosity, you're conveying the
message that learning new things is exciting.
Units Out of the Blue
Random situations can present teachable moments that lead
to bigger things. If you find that your children aren't satisfied
with the answers you provide, consider allowing the topic to
develop into an area that officially joins your curriculum. Some
homeschoolers are rather systematic in how they use unit studies,
incorporating them into a structured curriculum designed to teach
specific topics at set times, according to preset lesson plans.
However, others prefer to launch
spontaneously into a unit study when the time seems ripe
for learning, precisely what some teachable moments can develop
into. We like to call these "Units
Out of the Blue."
These typically begin with your children's
curiosity triggering a conversation. Your answer, instead
of closing the subject, captures the childrenís interest,
and the next thing you know, you're on the way to the library
to check out books on the topic. Soon enough, you're doing art
projects that are related to the topic and researching
it on the Internet or seeking out local experts that can
add their expertise to the new exploration. Congratulations,
you're now involved in a full blown Unit
Out of the Blue!
Units Out of the Blue are not part of a school
plan, so they can make your homeschooling "untidy"
because topics are covered in a haphazard fashion. Some parents
just can't cope with that sort of unpredictability, but others
find it to be a very relaxed, enjoyable
way for children to learn. Faithful unschoolers believe that
allowing a child's natural curiosity to spark such adventures
in learning is at the heart of what homeschooling should be.
If you can be comfortable with the spontaneity of this approach,
you may find your homeschooling life is greatly enriched by it.
Remember, you don't need to fully embrace the
unschooling philosophy to incorporate Units
Out of the Blue into your school life. Instead, you can
just design your curriculum to allow you the flexibility to incorporate
one into your program when it comes up.
©2002 by Julie Gattis and Laura
Saba
|
- The
McGraw-Hill Homeschooling Companion
by Laura Saba, Julie Gattis
- June 2002
- This all-in-one manual covers the different approaches to
homeschooling as well as the specific methods for setting up
the home learning environment, including legal requirements,
supplies, and lesson plans. Individual chapters examine the stages
of homeschooling: what curriculum planning involves, the indispensable
tools for the home classroom, computer use, and tips and techniques
on teaching all the core curriculum requirements. Special features
include comprehensive treatment of standardized testing, state
by state; practical counsel on integrating homeschooling and
living in the outside world; 10 favorite homeschool suppliers;
websites; and homeschooling laws for all 50 states.
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- Kid-tested and parent-approved techniques for learning math, science, writing, history, manners, and more for your homeschooling needs.
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