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© Beverley Paine
Learning to translate every day life activities into educational jargon was a turning point for me in understanding the nature of learning naturally. Before then I thought it was my role to provide a huge smorgasbord of activities and knowledge in the hope that my children would find something to excite or interest them. This led to 'burn out' and I felt like I was continually in danger of falling into the trap of edutainment - needing to make learning fun in order to capture their enthusiasm and keep attention high. I felt like an overworked teacher, but with only three children instead of thirty!
Burn out was actually good - it taught me that when I didn't do anything at all, because I was emotionally and intellectually drained, the children still learned an amazing amount, especially the things I considered core values and skills, the stuff around the house, like chores, taking care of each other, looking after pets, etc. I realised that when they initiated activities I didn't need to be involved much at all, except in a peripheral way, hovering in the background, mainly gathering and supplying resources. I spent a lot of time sorting LEGO bricks to enable them to quickly build fantastic models and layouts!
I discovered children are like sponges. When kept wet they don't seem to mop up much at all, but leave them alone and when a puddle happens they soak up so much. I realised that my job was to stop interfering and intervening so much and got rid of the hot-house, smorgasbord approach to education. Let them get on with the business of learning. Our house is an amazingly interesting place, largely because Robin and I are reasonably interesting people with consumate passions of our own. This is what the children needed - a background buzz of productive activityin an atmosphere that celebrated learning.
There are many things we wanted our children to learn. I think it is within the scope of the 'Natural Learning' approach to bring resources and activities in our children's life that they would otherwise not come across or think of by themselves. I'm sure that children would never clean their teeth if we did not insist! It's the same with teaching children how to do simple sums on paper, in order for them to be able to do more complicated sums, should the need ever arrive. First the children watch us clean our teeth meticulously every night, or listen as we calculate simple sums aloud whenever we have the need. Then we invite them to have a go, an an appropriate age for the development (eg being able to get that brush into their mouths with their chubby arms, or gradually introducing simple questions such as "how many people want juice? One, two, three. Can you get three cups please." And so on as the child grows.
It's easy to come up with examples for tots because most of us are really attuned to what and how they are learning at this age! The trick is to begin to think like this again for our older children.
See Beverley's other article on jargon:
- Understanding Educational Jargon
on this website is of a general
nature only and is not intended as
personal or professional advice.
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Pioneering members of the home education movement in Australia,
Beverley and Robin Paine
are passionate advocates of true educational choice for families.
They began homeschooling in 1986 and three years later started the
South Australian Home Based Learners
network. Beverley continues to write for homeschooling newsletters
and magazines as well as hosting several websites dedicated to promoting
and supporting home education in Australia. Her aim is to demystify the
education process and make it accessible to all parents. Enjoy Beverley's
wealth of practical knowledge, homeschooling and unschooling tips and
ideas through articles and books and online at
www.homeschoolaustralia.com.
Since the late 1990s Robin and Beverley have been building their home education
publishing business - Always Learning Books - from home with the help of their son Thomas.
"Education is not a preparation for life. Education is life itself." John Dewey
Please visit the following websites for information on homeschooling in Australia:
Homeschool Australia : SAHEN : Australian HS Curriculum : About the Paine Family
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