This week’s theme for Home School Blog Hop? – What’s Your Style?

This week’s theme for Home School Blog Hopper – What’s Your Style?

We live in a very relaxed learning environment. 
Our style has changed over time,
using different methods of learning over different ages.

For younger ages, I believe that they should have plenty of time to explore, indoors and in outdoor nature.  I believe that the parents should provide in their home or a nearby library a rich and plentiful source of answer books.  DK. Field Guides. Encyclopedias. Good Picture Books. My only rule for us in the younger years was to never give “I don’t know” as an answer – but to reply with, “Lets Find Out!” Sometimes the answers are one word, one line, one specific. Sometimes the answers lead to more questions, or times when we immersed ourselves in the time and culture of the question itself. (Food, Castles, Tribes, Tide Pools)

For Older Elementary – I believe that skills should be taught to document the answers. That the child should take part as participants for finding the answers, and then sharing them with others. YouTube Videos, Picture Albums, Reports, Posters. There is plenty to discover and share.

We are currently in the Junior High period.  I believe that Project Led Learning fits what we do.  Our questions now focus more on “what does this mean to me?”. Is there more depth I can learn to understand? Is this something I would like to do with my life? Are there more details that will help with my learning? Again – with the sharing – that they should take an even more hands on approach to finding  their answers and then sharing them with others. I believe in Absolute Truth, and encourage the boys to find it. We joke about the Staples Commercial of the Easy Button.  I have been trying to disengage from my previous habit of jumping up at each question to research the answer, be it in math, spelling, or trees.  I am trying to answer their questions with more questions, or with an instruction on how to find out. Encourage them to forage on their own. My Youngest asked me – “Mom, When did you decide not to be the Easy Button?”.  So that is my new answer, “I’m not the easy button.” 🙂 I can see that their love of discovery has joined with their love of curiosity. Learning times have become a joy of accomplishment and achievement – seeing questions that we  did not know  – spending time forming the question – and then figuring out where we would need to go for the answers
– and then bringing those answers into understanding. 
It has been  really great start to Junior High for us.

Our goal for High School will be to fine tune the learning, require more of the discovery stage and allow them plenty of time providing a lot of encouragement to seek out internship opportunities. An in depth field trip would hopefully turn into a volunteer time for the organization.

Daily discipline and practice builds talent and learned skills –

We are using Nature Studies by Claire Walker Leslie to encourage us in journaling.

We use Miquon Math and Saxon Math for ongoing practice in disciplined math learning. Daily discipline and practice hones a skill. However we recently took a 3 week break to go through Basic Math and Pre-Algebra for Dummies as we were all not getting the many concepts in fraction manipulations.

We have used Daily Grams and ACE English PACE’s for ongoing skill building of Grammar.

In the early years we used Teaching Reading at Home by Wanda Sansari, or The Writing Road to Reading by Spaulding. It was before the WISE Guide and Spell to Write and Read. I highly recommend a solid base in phonics and language. We are working on English from the Roots Up now.

This is our style, and it works for us.  We find that we learn all day long, and that our questions far exceed our time to answer them.  I do not see a time in the future where we will run out.  While on a trip to the Oregon Coast Aquarium – we were told by staff, “You are family of really great questions.” I could not think of a greater complement.

What’s Your Style?

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