At our house, the difference between summer and other seasons was the fact that summer brought more children to play with. Sure, the kids might have focused a bit more on some subjects in the cooler months, but they were learning all the time no matter what page the calendar was open to. Having gone to school myself, I always loved summers more than anything. I loved being able to read, draw, hike or participate in whatever activity I chose on any given day. My children had that freedom every season of their life.

I recall others asking if I was spoiling my children by homeschooling them, or damaging them somehow by not forcing them to follow the norm of leaving our home and following a rigid schedule. I don’t know what our interrogators thought our life was like, but we did have a schedule, chores and our own list of what we thought was important in an education and what we would do to help our children achieve their goals and desires. Still, having gone to school, I will admit that when public school let out I sometimes felt a bit less responsibility to make sure I was doing all I could to help my children ‘learn’. However, as the seasons passed, I learned to relax as if it were summer all year and I enjoyed seeing what the freedom to learn, live and explore offers a child and it was delightful. Below are some articles and resources that look at learning.

Playtime – A Time for Children and Parents to Share and to Grow – Amber P. Keefer

Studies show that some of the most creative children are those whose parents have played with them. From my own experiences as the parent of a highly active and resourceful child, I know how important it is for children to channel their creative energies into constructive and rewarding outlets. Child development experts remind us that parents are among a child’s first and best playmates, and for this reason, we must actually involve ourselves in our children’s play.

Learning from My Kids – Helen Hegener

I learned the value of learning, and I think it’s a lesson my kids will need to learn for themselves. Like so many things in life, it’s not something you can just tell someone else and expect to have any meaning , it really needs to be experienced, to have a context all its own.

Early Years Child’s Learning Assets – Linda Dobson

Homeschooling uses childhood energy instead of constantly trying to dam it. Now, curiosity creates interest, interest increases attention to the task at hand, and attention gives rise to learning.

Why Independence Is Essential To Homeschooling – Larry and Susan Kaseman

Homeschooling offers parents tremendous learning opportunities. Thanks to our children and our homeschooling experiences (both the stunning successes and the flops), many of us have developed a new understanding of learning, revisited and recovered from our own difficult school experiences, discovered or rediscovered the joy of learning, and done things that we wouldn’t have if we hadn’t been homeschooling.

A World of Learning by Barbara Theisen

I’ve never believed that the only way to get an education is to sit at a desk with four walls around you. The world is our classroom and our home – a 41 foot sailboat – takes us there. My husband Tom and I dreamed of sailing around the world before our daughters were even born. Their arrivals only increased our desire to live the “cruising lifestyle” – a way of life that has given us the opportunity for lots of quality and quantity of family time.

Educating our two daughters while living afloat on our sailboat, Out of Bounds, has added a wonderful new dimension to our lives. Kate is in sixth grade this year and our youngest daughter, Kenna, in third grade. Homeschooling hasn’t always been easy. But it has been fun.

Five Steps to Unschooling – Joyce Kurtak Fetteroll

And, finally, forget the linear approach to learning we grew up with. For instance, we learned that the way to learn is to read “all the important” stuff about a subject gathered and packaged for our convenience in a textbook and then move on in line to the next package of information.

Self-Inspired Learning - Karen Vogel

But, despite living an unremarkable existence in the depths of suburbia, my kids all manage, at one point or another, to develop an interest in a subject I never bothered to introduce. As most of my friends know, I regularly suffer paroxysms of guilt over my complete neglect of science as a school subject. Aside from having a birdfeeder outside our kitchen window, with a bird identification book handy (well, when we can find it) and a cheap pair of binoculars (which are often missing as well), my children’s parent-led science education is nothing short of woefully inadequate. But my oldest, at the age of nine, followed me around the house with a bird book, demanding that I read it to him. In fact, we ended up buying him the aforementioned birdfeeder for a birthday present. He has since developed an interest in gardening and botany, both subjects at which I am an abject failure.

The Many Faces of Home Education – Tamara Orr

During the summer of 2002 and 2003, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to meet dozens of homeschoolers across the country. I came home filled with their enthusiasm, their curiosity and their wonder. I also came home knowing that no matter how many families I met, not one of them homeschooled exactly the same way. Like snowflakes, they may have had many commonalities, but when it came down to how they actually homeschooled, from day to day, they were each wonderfully unique.

Other Resources

Teach your Own by John Holt
I Learn Better by Teaching Myself by Agnes Leistico

Homeschool Seasons

“Avoid compulsion and let early education be a matter of amusement. Young children learn by games; compulsory education cannot remain in the soul.” – Plato

When I first became a mother, I started reading child development books to help me better understand this new little person who had entered my world. Similarly, when we started homeschooling, I began to explore how children learn and discovered the many different educational methods that are out there. I have to confess I was pretty obsessed with the whole process and like many new homeschool parents, I wanted to make sure that I was doing it “right” and was providing all the proper resources that my children needed. As I read about the different learning styles, I began to see that no matter what style best matched my child, children learn best in a calm and nurturing environment. At that point I knew I needed to relax and make sure that whatever learning method we might use would serve my child and that we would not become a servant to any particular method.

Understanding their development, knowing what made them tick and how they enjoyed pursuing their passions helped us determine what method(s) of learning would best work for our children. We wanted them to retain their self-directed passion for learning and we found that an interest based, or child led method felt like a good fit. Since we were not tied to any method we could switch gears anytime to best meet our child’s needs.

The articles and resources below provide a wealth of information and support for understanding Learning Methods and Styles.

Articles

Learning Logs - Ivy Rutledge

By writing down the things that do and don’t work for her, she is becoming aware of her best methods, helps, strengths and weaknesses. Metacognition, this is called in professional teaching circles, but it’s not rocket science and doesn’t need a fancy name; we’re just teaching her to know what she likes and where she would like to go with it.

Learning together has been a wonderful adventure for us, and we have been rewarded with the wonder of watching our children’s exploration and discovery turn into ideas that unfold in unpredictable and special ways.

Learning to Love Math by Alison Moore Smith

There are methods of teaching mathematics which encourage a love and interest in math, and those which tend to kill the joy. If I could give you one piece of advice, it would be this: Please avoid the drill-to-kill, memorize-to-mummify, repetition-without-reason textbooks!
What can you do to bring out a love of math in your kids?

It’s OK to count on your fingers1or pebbles or candies or pennies or rods or sticks or blocks even for advanced students. Use hands-on stuff and always have a manipulative to fall back on. Mess with real stuff first; experiment, discover. The algorithm comes last!

Leaving Public Education by Ellen C. Bicheler

One of my biggest challenges came from the scrutiny we received from the general public and in particular the neighbors about our methods of homeschooling. When the neighbors first asked Lindsay what she was doing for homeschooling, she would say, “Nothing.” She would say this because we were no longer studying out of textbooks. We were going to the pond to study pond life. We would supplement this with talks from naturalists and books from the library. Lindsay was no longer studying a prescribed curriculum and I guess nothing resembled her classroom from the previous year.

The Many Faces of Home Education - Tamara Orr

Perhaps homeschooling’s most precious advantage is that it is completely malleable; it can be shaped to whatever you need it to be. Instead of forcing your child to fit into public education, you have the chance to mold education around your child. While this is empowering, it can also be frightening. Where do you start? Whose theories are right? The decision to homeschool demands that you do some real research. First, you have to find out what your options are and then slowly, you can select the one that you think will fit you and your partner’s personality/philosophy of education, your children’s personalities and your lifestyle choices.

A Visit with Mary Hood – Janine Calsbeek

Chat with Mary Hood about learning centers, and you’ll get a short course on unschooling.

Pull the books and educational “stuff” out of the closet, she says. Put them where kids can see them. Keep things somewhat orderly, clean, and well-lit. React to your child’s initiative. If you really want a kid to read a certain book, don’t assign it. Just throw it on the couch.

This is Mary Hood, author of The Relaxed Home School, touted by some as “the Christian John Holt.” She is somewhat of an unusual item, you must admit. Her theology leans towards the conservative end, yet her educational style is, in a word, loose.

There’s no conflict in her mind. She sees how her children learn, and knows they learn best when they’re motivated. Her goals for her family include supporting everyone’s natural love of learning, not beating facts into their heads.

A Birthday a Day by Rebecca Rupp

Our kids’ learning styles seem to mesh better with what are popularly called “unit studies:” assorted projects, activities, and readings centered around a topic of kid-chosen interest. Here again, we’ve always invented our own, accumulating craft and science kits, and turning out piles of homemade activity books on such subjects as the Civil War, whales, stars, frogs, the heart, the eye, trees, bees, and map-making. Many of our past unit study topics were generated from the calendar, centering around the birthdays of famous persons, historical anniversaries, and unusual holidays. In past years, for example, we’ve celebrated – in detail – the birthdays of George Washington Carver, Benjamin Franklin, Louis Braille, Amelia Earhart, Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Boone, P.T. Barnum, Frank Lloyd Wright, Hans Christian Anderson, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Susan B. Anthony, and Helen Keller; commemorated the launching the Sputnik, the Wright Brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk, the opening of the Erie Canal, the completion of the transcontinental railroad, Boys’ Day in Japan, the opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb, the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, and – month by month – the entry of all fifty states into the Union.

An Interview With Dr. Thomas Armstrong by Janie Bowman

Question: For parents teaching more than one child, any tips on how to juggle different ages and learning styles in the same family?

Answer: I think the more kids you have the more you should rely on peer tutoring, cross-age tutoring and having kids teach each other. You know, going back to the old one-room schoolhouse where kids of different ages typically did a lot of teaching of each other certainly takes a lot of the strain away from the parent of having to meet everybody’s needs.

Resources

• How Children Learn by John Holt
• Considering Methods & Styles of Homeschooling by Lillian Jones
• Determine Your Children’s Learning Styles from A-Z Homescooling
• Learning Styles from Brightkids@home
• Learning Styles & Homeschooling Styles from Homeschoolchristian.com
• Myth #4 “You Need Teacher Training, Dearie” -Linda Dobson
  (An excerpt from the book The First Year of Homescholing Your Child)
• Nurturing Children’s Natural Love of Learning by Jan Hunt, M.Sc.
• Plan from Ann Lahrson-Fisher
• What’s Your Educational Philosophy? from Life Without School

Closer Look: Learning Methods and Styles