Intentional Parents

Mom’s Journal, Tuesday evening:

“Good day today. Josh’s interest in cars continues to grow. I think he has about fifteen models in his collection now. Today he copied a drawing of a hybrid engine from a library book. I think he’s going to label the parts before he puts it in his car notebook. This hobby may come in handy when we investigate a new family vehicle next year! Reminder: Invite the Wilsons over so Josh can talk cars with Harold.

“Ben spent the afternoon over at the Andersons’ farm. They had several cows calving this week. He’s really enjoying the James Herriot books we found at the library. Reminder: Check the library catalog to see if there are any more he hasn’t read yet.

“Sarah really seems to be enjoying the Burgess Bird Book we’re reading at bedtime. She identified a wren outside her window today. Idea: Maybe get her a birdfeeder for her birthday.”

Regardless of your schooling choice (public school, private school, home school), your goal, as an intentional parent, should be to cultivate within your child a love for learning that will last a lifetime. It is a tragedy to raise a child who considers graduation to be the end of his learning, who never reads a book after high school or college, or who views education as something to be temporarily endured.

Look at any toddler or preschooler and you will see that God created our children with a desire to learn. Too often that desire is “schooled” out of a child by manmade expectations and requirements. Give your child the gift of a lifetime love for learning. Three easy ways to cultivate that love for learning are (1) by example, (2) by creating a conducive atmosphere, and (3) by supplying the three R’s: real books, real people, and real life experiences.

First, model a love for learning. Does your child see you seeking to learn new skills or information? Does she see you reading for leisure as well as for learning? Modeling a love for learning does not mean that you constantly correct her grammar and turn every shopping trip into an arithmetic lesson. Modeling a love for learning means that you, yourself, are eager to learn new things and that you put forth the time and effort to continue educating yourself no matter what your age. With all of the resources available to us today – interlibrary loans, the Internet, bookstores, videos, computer programs – we have no excuse for clinging to ignorance. So pick a topic you’re interested in and start learning more about it.

Second, create an atmosphere conducive to learning twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Surround your child with excellent resources and plenty of time to explore them. Invest in a large map of the world or a globe; then every time a country is mentioned, look up its location. Don’t make it an elaborate or formal process. Simply express interest yourself and have the child help you learn more. In the process she will be learning too. Buy some inexpensive field guides to take along on trips to the park. When the children find a bug, figure out its name together; when they find a beautiful leaf in the autumn, identify the kind of tree it came from. Invite to dinner missionaries or other friends from around the world and ask key questions to learn about those cultures. Do everything you can to make learning a natural and enjoyable part of living.

Third, supply your children with the three R’s: real books, real people, and real life experiences. (I believe Clay and Sally Clarkson first used these key phrases in their excellent book Educating the Wholehearted Child.

Real books are books written by one author who has a passion for his subject and are usually written in narrative (story) form. Real books capture your interest and involve your emotions as you are learning about the topic. Real, or living, books are the antithesis of dry, encyclopedia-type articles like those found in most modern textbooks. Our family currently has collected over 900 real books for our home library. (We hope to someday make our book list available to you.) [Update: We have created a searchable database of our more than 1,000 books over on our sister site, Simply Charlotte Mason. The database is called the CM Bookfinder. We also have a list of our favorite books for the Early Years.]

Real people can be gold mines for learning. Introduce your children to people in your church, family, or neighborhood who have interesting hobbies and arrange for them to spend time together. Remember the mom’s notes in the journal entry at the beginning of this e-letter: “Invite the Wilsons over so Josh can talk cars with Harold” and “Ben spent the afternoon over at the Andersons’ farm”? Those events are examples of learning from real people.

Real life experiences provide excellent learning opportunities. Don’t just read about dolphins in a book, go look at some real ones. Don’t just teach your child how to budget money as a math assignment, depend on him to oversee your vacation expenses. Work together to build an addition onto the house. Participate as a family in a community theatre production. Go on a family mission trip. Take a CPR class together. Ride bikes. Fly kites. Live a life of learning, and love it!

Q & A

Q: Why Do You Homeschool?

A: The answer to that question could take up a whole e-letter by itself! The short answer is that we homeschool because it is the best way to give our children an excellent education, to disciple them in the ways of the Lord, and to keep their hearts turned toward us, their parents. If you want a longer answer, read the list below of additional advantages to homeschooling. It’s in no way an exhaustive list, but it should help you get started thinking.

Spiritual Advantages:

• We live, and thus teach, a Biblical worldview twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
• We can guide the child to practice critical thinking skills consistently in actual life situations.
• We can demonstrate daily how the Bible is integrated with all of life.

Emotional Advantages:

• The child’s self-concept is reinforced by loved ones, not attacked by sometimes vicious peers.
• The child can develop independence from peer pressure and confidence in his abilities.
• We can develop strong family relationships.
• Homeschooling gives the opportunity to remain modest (for example, no group showers for PE).

Academic Advantages:

• One-on-one tutoring is the best way to teach and learn.
• I can tailor-make individual lessons designed with each child’s needs in mind. This advantage is especially important for children with special needs.
• The child is not limited by the progress of others (for example, having to wait for the rest of the class or study something she already knows).
• The child has increased computer access. He has to share the computer with only a few other children instead of twenty or more and has more time windows in which to use it.
• We have virtually no limit on the abundance of excellent resources to foster a love for learning.
• The child has freedom to pursue changing interests.
• Individually tailored lessons and fewer children in the “class” make more hands-on learning possible.
• We can set our own schedule. Our family schools year round in order to keep feeding the habit of learning and not waste a month every fall reviewing what the children forgot during the summer.

Physical Advantages:

• The children have less exposure to germs and are not forced outside during inclement weather.
• We can feed them a nutritious lunch every day.
• We have flexibility in our schedule to allow for late nights and illness. If the children stay up late one night because of an extenuating circumstance, we have the freedom to — at a moment’s notice — reschedule school work instead of “beating our heads against a brick wall” the next day when everyone is half asleep.
• The children have more free time to play, create, and pursue personal interests. It takes much less time for one student to complete a math worksheet than for a whole roomful of students to try to progress through the same worksheet all together.
• The children have protection from the dangers associated with school bus trips, strangers who might accost them en route, and violent peers.

Social Advantages:

• Homeschooling gives the child training and practice relating to all ages, instead of a preference for their own age group and a disdain for any others. They learn to respect the elder and help the younger.
• Learning at home helps children adjust to inevitable interruptions, just like real life.
• Keeping the children at home all day gives plenty of supervised practice in Biblical conflict resolution.
• The home environment is real life; the school classroom is a simulated environment. Homeschooling gives the child real-life learning in how to function in the real world.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 1st, 2004 at 4:45 pm and is filed under Academics, The Five Gifts of Intentional Parents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.