Child-led Learning - HOW

Originally, these thoughts were part of my first entry on child-led learning. I made them a separate post for two reasons. First, it was becoming an awfully long blog post to digest. And second, if one isn't convinced of the why's of child-led learning, the hows don't really matter. In other words, it's easy to feel that homeschooling is a daunting enough task in and of itself. Why complicate it with the additional goal of letting the content and method respond to each child? The schools don't do that, and we all turned out fine, right? In the WHY of Child-led learning I argue why this goal is worth the extra effort. And below I'll confess how that goal looks in my home.

My confession is prompted by these questions: "So, how do you let your child lead when you have lots of them, and none of them can read yet? I can't answer or research every question they think of IF I even heard them?" This was asked by a mom who had read my blog post, Courage to Be.

THOSE are great questions. They reminds me of my knee-jerk opposition to homeschooling when my husband first brought it up. I said something like, "That would never work. I want time for me. AND I want to have more than one kid. I don't think I could meet all the needs at once when all the kids are different ages."

Years later I can answer these concerns only with how I've done it. And while it might not be a formula to follow, perhaps my experience can serve as encouragement to find the hows that work for YOUR family. Because giving up on child-led learning is letting go of one of the best parts of homeschooling.

I interject here that our family's version of child-led learning is not as child-led as some families. Some families really do let their kids do whatever strikes their fancy, whenever. I have nothing to argue against that approach. But it' isn't how our child-led learning looks. There are a few reasons our child-led is less extreme than that. But certainly, if you are coming from a mind-set of recreating school at home, our approach may feel like a more comfortable toe in the waters of giving the kids more control over the adventure we call learning.

My first recommendation: Remember how wonderful it is to wonder.
Not every question needs an answer. When my own kids ask questions I don't know the answer to, I think it's really fun to join that questioning mindset. Can you marvel together? Can you come up with answers together? Inviting your kids to suggest what they think is the answer is a marvelous way to gain insight into their minds. My girls, when I do this, usually suggest fanciful and magical answers. I love this. I love hearing their imaginations run wild.

If the question isn't incredibly important, or if it's a question without a right or wrong answer, these imaginative theories are probably better than any fact that might be rattled off. These answers can morph into stories to share - your family's own fables. Or a wonderful guessing game where each person tries to outdo the next in wild suggestions.

Even if there IS a right answer, depending on the child, an answer which engages the imagination might still be a better answer. Is this encouraging our kids to live apart from the REAL WORLD - from the reality they'd better get used to, because life isn't always fairies and flowers? Yes.

But the cold, harsh realities of life have a way of hunting us down, it seems. Not to mention, if you pay attention, you will likely find some of the cold, harsh realities as themes in your child's imagination. So our kids, as they play and imagine, ARE preparing themselves for the world if we let them. And finding silver linings in rain clouds is a life skill too.

At some point, earlier for some, later for others, mom's best guess or a pretty story isn't enough to answer a question. In fact, some minds hit this point before they are able to read, and that is wonderful too.

Second recommendation: Allow curiosities to rise to the top, so to speak. My oldest used to ask "why" all the time. So much sometimes it was as if the question was an automated verbal response to anything I said. I might not spend too much energy researching answers to this sort of questioning. Not because I didn't value giving my child an answer, but because if the answer was complex, and he wasn't REALLY curious, he wouldn't really care or get anything out of the answer anyway.

But there were "why's" that came up more than once, or that my best guess didn't appease. These "rose to the top." Once there, these can be written down for reference at your next trip to the library. Or used to search for a good youtube video. The marvelous thing is, if YOU don't know the answer, YOU get to learn WITH your child. And most information suitable for kids not reading yet will be delivered in a way that is engaging to all ages on some level. So one child's why can be used to engage a whole family's discovery.

So your schedule may not include a regular science curriculum, but it might include a regular trip to the library. Or a regular call to grandpa, who is a science buff.

Which brings me to: Outsourcing. HIGHLY recommend it! I know in the post on the Why's of Child-led learning I asked why we might outsource something as fun as learning. Most parents who send their kids to school have other things that need to be done. Well, don't we all? We have food to cook, clothes to wash, a house to keep, and the non-learning needs of all our kids to meet. We might find it difficult to learn the science principle well enough to teach, or tricky to find the time to figure out how to make math engaging, or hard to let the house cleaning take a back-seat to a messy art-project. So I am all for outsourcing PART of learning. And one upside of doing so, aside from getting the expertise and enthusiasm of whomever we have outsourced to (AND not needing to cover whatever it is we'd be teaching if we hadn't outsourced), is that when one kid is off getting his math/science/art questions and needs met, we have time to meet the educational and life needs of our other kids. Now, finding help and tutors that are able and willing to allow learning to be child-led and not curriculum dictated IS tricky. But it CAN be done.

And you just might have a science curriculum too. We do. I'm not a science buff so I felt I needed one to explain my kids' science-driven questions. (We've also used a science tutor.) We use our curriculum in a few child-led ways. First, I offer to do science with the kids on a regular basis and see when they take me up on my offer. They have never experienced science as "something mom makes us do" so to them it sounds like an offer to have fun, and I can usually get them to say yes to the offer once a week or so. And WHAT I'm offering is child let too. Rather than say, "Would you like to do science?" I notice what they have been wondering about/experiencing, and my offer sounds more like, "Should we learn more about why our muscles get sore?" or "Let's play with the magnets in our science kit!" So though it may negatively affect test scores, we don't follow the curriculum order but insert it's content into the learning we feel inspired to do.

So that's my first big confession. I use a curriculum in our child led learning. The second is that we follow a schedule at home. Like the pirate code that's more guidelines than rules, our schedule is more of a rhythm that we try to sync up with that follow. And I chose the rhythm, but I based it on what I observed the kids naturally do. My son wants to knock any unpleasant or mandatory tasks out in the morning and have the rest of the day free. So our rhythm includes time for him to self-manage through all of that first thing, and a lot of free time whenever he finishes. And unless we have an engagement, I do mean whenever he finishes. The schedule has time frames in mind - they are broad and generous - but it usually means something like, "When we are done with breakfast, whether it's 8:30 or 10, THEN we'll move on to XYZ." The girls, on the other hand have each other to play with, and when they are well rested, they love to play. I don't interrupt that. Handily, their best play time comes when my boy needs more school support. My daughter gravitates towards school activities after lunch so I support her then. And we all like to relax after working hard, so when chores are done, we have family reading time.

My last confession is that I do require my kids to work on certain subjects. I wait until it seems they are developmentally ready, though. My boy didn't grasp math 'til second grade. So he didn't do math 'til then. He is older now, and math is a requirement. And he self paces through his math instruction online. Or we play a math game. Or I invent engaging story problems when he's bogged down in annoying long division work. (I myself HATE long division, but really enjoy figuring out how much I need to save each month so I have an adequate Christmas budget.) My school-age daughter still is frustrated by doing things anyone else's way, so we are still waiting to work on stroke-order for penmanship. When she gets there, it will be something I require because the muscle memory involved can't be built over sporadic sessions. (Math is another "practice subject" in my estimation.)

If I were more extreme in our child-led approach I would probably wait for the kids to initiate both the interest and consistency in these disciplines. Like I said, I have no objection to doing so. We don't.

Outside of those things which need practice (3 R's),  we are opportunistic in what we try to learn. For example, next week someone organized a cheap trip to a historical reenactment park. Knowing my daughter's interest in poetry and powerful women, I suggested she and I learn a bit about a famous poet/prophetess from the time shown at the park. She'll present what we learn together in our Biography Club, and the next day get to step back into the world her subject lived in. Cool!

So that is how child-led looks in our home. Practicing can be done alone. And we do practice. But a lot of our learning we do together. We don't worry too much about whose suggestion or curiosity it is to do so. It might be mine, or one of the girls', or my son's, or pertain to a curriculum, or relate to where we are going or what we are doing in life. We don't try to find answers to all our questions. We do try to ask more than we can possibly answer, and enjoy both the learning and the wondering. And all this is done in snatches between and woven into the lives we live together. It is a fun, sometimes crazy, sometimes stressful, always adventurous life!