home ed: "teaching" things they don't like?

[thisisyesterday]

i was just wondering how you HE'ers tackle things that your children have little/no interest in

i mean, i get the whole learning as they are ready stuff, and incorporating learning in play and everyday situations and things like that,
but what about stuff like maths and things?
atm in school DS1 is learning about number patterns and it got me thinking that if i was HE him, how could i incorporate that?

are there certain things that you just sit down and teach them? do you try and cover everyhing in an "unschool-y" type way?

i guess i am just wondering if there are certain things that actualoy you think they NEED to learn, even if they aren't interested in them right now.... and if so, how you go about that?

[Tinuviel]

It depends on how you HE in the first place. We are pretty structured, so used workbooks and now have moved on to textbooks for many subjects. So we cover things fairly logically in the books. I don't make DS1 do lots of art on the other hand because he's not that great at it and doesn't really enjoy it.

OTOH an autonomous HE family may give a very different reply!

[SDeuchars]

Did you post this in the wrong board?

As an autonomous EHEer, for me that question does not compute, particularly with respect to academic learning. If a small child is not ready to gain a skill (e.g reading, writing, throwing a ball) then they are unlikely to show any interest in it and there is no reason to push them. When they are ready, they will show an interest. However, that does not mean that you cannot offer the skill as a thing to try from time to time. For example, you may say "let's bounce the ball to each other" or "let's see if we can get the ball into the basket". You'd be unlikely to say "OK, now we are going to throw the ball into the basket for 30 minutes in order to learn that", IYSWIM.

The thing about school is that it is an artificial situation, so the things that happen there are happening because it is school. At home, we learned maths in a much more organic way - we counted steps for fun, did puzzles, adjusted recipes in cooking. Number patterns are useful because they have a real-life purpose. That is not (usually) to extend a sequence for the heck of it. So the school activity is artificial and does not need to be replicated at home.

Very little of what goes on in a primary classroom has any proof that it is the best way to learn. Often the logic of teaching is there to help the teacher, not the learner. At home, things can be picked up in an unstructured way with questions asked and answered as they come up for the learner so we get to the same place but without the clear structured path. For example, some people can cope with certain abstract maths concepts at a very young age. There is no good reason, IMO, to restrict them from those concepts on the basis that they have not yet learnt number patterns.

As another example, as an adult I have tried learning several languages and I will never again attend an introductory class. I know too much about the way language works and the repetitive stuff is too boring. In future, I will expose myself to a speedy succession of verbal constructs in something like Rosetta Stone and then I will ensure that I can get my questions about grammar and difference answered.

In my 18-year experience of EHE, that is what children do naturally - they put stuff together in their heads and ask questions to fill in the gaps. Then they are learning. In a classroom, the information is being poured into heads where the appropriate gaps may not (yet) exist, so it may not 'take'.

[NotAnotherBrick]

What SDeuchars said! Children learn the things they need to learn when they're ready to learn them. They need to learn to walk, so they learn it. They need to learn to use the loo rather than a nappy, so they learn it. They need to learn to read at some point that is right for them (not when it's right for a school), so they learn it. When they are ready and wanting to learn something, it takes very little time indeed, compared to hours and hours and days and days trying to teach a child something they have no interest, no need (at that point) and no readiness to learn.

Bearing in mind that maths is one of the things most people worry about, this article is fascinating. The same goes for any other 'essentials' IME - reading etc.

[thisisyesterday]

no, i don't think i posted in the wrong board? my child is in primary education, and i am thinking about home schooling

i guess what i am asking is, if you don't push your children to learn things then what happens about the things they just aren't interested in?

do you just say well, that's ok they aren't interested then they aren't ready?
or are there things that you think well hmmm, they aren't showing an interest but i think they need to know this and encourage them to learn about it a bit?

[thisisyesterday]

thank you for the replies though, it's really helpful.
i am just feeling a bit scared that i can't give him what he needs....

[RebeccaKate]

we have all felt that way at one time or another. Rest assred you have a much greater desire to work with your own chid to learn in a way that suits them and you/your family style than any teacher with a class of 30 will have.

also as others have said if children learn when they are ready they usually pick it up much more quickly and absorb and retain it because it is somethibg they wanted to do and not something that was forced upon them.

finally it is amazing where the home ed learning journey takes you if you let your child guide you by what he is interested in either from what he knows already and is trying to make sense of in his own mind or from opportunities that you offer (some of which are not always taken up) for him to learn by whetting his appetite for asking more questions and getting into the subject.

all the best with whatever you choose to do

[NotAnotherBrick]

"do you just say well, that's ok they aren't interested then they aren't ready?"

Yup! I can't think of anything that children have to learn that they won't just absorb by living life with attentive, interested parents who are happy to talk with them and help them explore things that matter to them.

Some children like workbooks, and organised learning. Others don't. Autonomous means working with your child to find the way of learning/living that works best for them.

[thisisyesterday]

i think i'm just worried that we would miss stuff out that might be useful/important in the future?

i made the mistake of looking at the national curriculum and what they'd be learning in school in key stage 1 and it scared the shit out of me! lol

[NotAnotherBrick]

Well we all worry about that, but being in school doesn't guarantee that they'll actually learn what's in the NCT anyway! It makes it likely that it'll all at least be covered; and possibly that they'll be coached to memorise it for an exam; but actually learn it?

The NC is a made up thing and clearly not totally necessary as different countries have different things they think children ought to know. It also assumes children learn in a step-by-step, linear way, when actually they don't. Naturally, children learn in a higgledy-piggledy way; jumping from one 'subject' to another, absorbing bits from one conversation and bits from another, adding it all together etc.

They will spend weeks engrossed in one particular thing, totally obsessed with it; and then suddenly stop...and then you pani and worry that they're not doing enough, and you ought to crack open some workbooks...but you don't get round to it and suddenly you realise they've got stuck into something else.

If you seriously want to HE, then it's worth really thinking about what your aims are for your children. For me, I don't mind what they learn i.e I'm not about to set out to ensure they learn certain things. But want I really want to ensure is happening is that they remain curious about life and are happy and confident. I figure that if those three things are happening, then the learning will just follow. You'd have to shut a child in a cupboard with no books, no tv, no nothing for them to not learn all that that particular child needs to know to live his life.

Just this morning my oldest two (7 and 5) were making one of those plastic marble runs together. I heard all sorts of conversation that would have been exactly what a maths or physics teacher would have wanted to hear, but may well have had to contrive a fake situation to get it to happen! They were talking about how high they'd have to make each column so the slopy bits matched up; how they'd have to have a third column to stabilise it etc. The 7yo explaining concepts to the 5yo that she's just worked out for herself. Just like Einstein worked things out for himself (he was HE'd you know!). And Newton! And all the great mathematicians of the world .

[NotAnotherBrick]

And you may find it helpful to read books by John Holt, who was a teacher in the US in the 60s, who tried to reform schools, and then gave up and decided HE was the only way to ensure a child could learn as efficiently as possibly.

The best book, though, IMO, is How Children Learn At Home by Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison, which is the result of proper research.

[CharlieBoo]

Really interesting post ladies, I totally can see where SDeuchars is coming from.

My ds goes to a very pushy academic school where everyone has to fit in a box and not all kids can. I am lucky because he is bright, not a brain box but middle of the road, but he struggles with the length of the school day, the rules, structured learning etc. In a ideal world I would love to HE him, I thought about it for a while.

Hats off to you all that do.

[SDeuchars]

Sorry, OP, I just meant that I wondered if you should post on the Home Ed board.

I agree with NAB. To set the scene, my DD and DS are 18 and 16 and neither have attended a UK for more than a term. We have been wholly autonomous and mostly unstructured in our whole EHE journey.

DD started to do ballet and to read at about 2.5yo. She joined Girls' Brigade at 5 and was always happy to go to activities. DS did not start to read until about 8yo and was not happy to be left in groups until after that.

We always did stuff together, so DD helped run the church toddler group I ran and DS attended. Both of them were assistant childminders. When they were little I concentrated on practical skills - cookery, craft, map-reading, physical skills (bikes, gymnastics, swimming), housework and music. We also did reading, writing and number work as it was relevant to life. I read a lot of books and they listened to lots of audio books. I don't know how they learned to read but I could see that they were doing it in many ways as a side-effect of achieving real-life goals. We also did very little maths. What we did was in the form of games, often on the computer or board games. We also used a few BBC magazines at KS1 age.

DD shows ASD tendencies and my main goal for her education was to ensure she reached 18 as an adult who could function reasonably in the world. At 9, she asked to go to school so I enrolled her in the primary at the end of the road - and deregistered her at the end of term. At about 11, she asked to learn violin and went to a Suzuki teacher for three years. She and her brother both joined the local Saturday music school, which she attended until about 17. He still attends and is about to do a week's related work experience.

Six years ago, we formed an EHE robotics team and we have competed annually in the FLL competition. This has involved building Lego robots, programming, teamwork, presentations, engineering. We have won a number of the competitions and have been to international events - most notably in Tokyo in 2008, so we learned a bit of Japanese.

At 13, DD spent 6 weeks in German-speaking Switzerland and then went on a 6-month exchange to Germany. Prior to the Swiss trip we all learned to speak a bit of German using computer software. After coming back from the exchange, we decided it would be a good idea to get a qualification to show for it and DD enrolled on an Open University course. She then went on to do 190 points with the OU and was accepted onto a university course that will result in her becoming qualified in both English and German law. Apart from music grades, this is the only structured work she did during compulsory school age. All the prerequisites she needed to understand the OU material and to write essays, she had picked up from being involved in life and not being put in a ghetto of other young people.

DS started OU courses at the same time as DD started on her second (so he was about 13.5yo) and has achieved 90 points so far in maths and science. He and I are also learning Russian because we have contacts in a Russian-speaking country and it seems like a good idea to add a GCSE-level language (but we'll probably take the official Russian-as-a-foreign-language exam, rather than GCSE).

That is long, but basically I am wondering what you think "should" have been included. You said

are there things that you think well hmmm, they aren't showing an interest but i think they
need to know this and encourage them to learn about it a bit?

Well, there were lots of things that I suggested that they might be interested in and we tried it. Some we dropped, others they decided to continue with. Seriously, I cannot think of anything that should be contained in a curriculum. Skills, yes: reading, writing, counting, arithmetic, shapes, maps. But they do not need to be taught, as such, because the need for them is clear and obvious and they come up in everyday life. The need for every child in the country to have studied the Romans, Vikings and Tudors, or to hand-write fiction, is less clear...

[SDeuchars]

That should read "neither have attended a UK school"

[Saracen]

"i think i'm just worried that we would miss stuff out that might be useful/important in the future?"

If you miss it out, and your children later discover that they need it, they will learn it at that point... if they haven't absorbed the message that learning must be done in a school environment, that no one likes maths, that it is too difficult for them, that people don't choose to learn things after the age of 16 once school is out of the picture. Home educated children tend to have less exposure to those messages, and reach adulthood with confidence and curiosity intact.

Moreover, an adult with a drive to learn will pick up skills in a fraction of the time it would take for an unwilling or unready child to pick them up. Forgive me for repeating an example I've trotted out several times lately.

My dh, though not home educated, has never doubted that he can learn. As a roofing carpenter aged 32, he decided trigonometry would help him in his job. He sat down with a book every evening and learned it virtually on his own in just a few weeks. My class at school had spent an entire year on trigonometry, and I very much doubt any of my former classmates can remember a single bit of it. The other people on the building site are rather in awe of my husband's ability to work things out and make corrections to the architects' drawings. He pulls out a calculator and offers to show them a trick or two, but they look alarmed, say "I never was good at maths" and switch off.

There is no deadline. Provided you nurture enthusiasm and confidence, you don't have to pack the knowledge or skills in by a certain date.

[SDeuchars]

Applauds, saracen!

The big message is that the deadlines for learning things are all artificial and can be ignored with impunity. People who are not scared to learn and have not learned they are stupid will learn. For me, the main problem with school is that it defines what you cannot do and imposes a rigid hierarchy that implies that age defines ability.

TIY, jump in, the water's lovely and warm.

[Goblinchild]

I like this thread, packed with common sense and understanding that is lacking in much of the upper ranks of mainstream education.
Much good stuff being shared.

[juuule]

Agree with everything on this thread (still have the usual HE wobble, though). But can someone point me in the direction of Einstein being home-ed (NAB?)as everything I've come across seems to say he was at school until he was 15.

[thisisyesterday]

ahh i didn't even realise there was a home ed board!!! lol

i am still a bit scared about it all though lol. am just going to search yahoo groups and see if there is an HE group near me

[NotAnotherBrick]

OMG! I hope I'm not wrong, Juuule - I've been telling people that for yonks!

Well, at least I can safely say Plato and Pythagoras etc. were HEd

TIY - do it! HE is fantastic - a whole, wonderful lifestyle of growing strong, rich bonds within your family. It is so special to be with your children so much. It is hard, hard work, and relentless, but as long as you remember to look after yourself, and allow yourself time to rest and to do things just for you, then the rewards are more than worth the benefits

Going upstairs and seeing my 5yo had written a whole load of sums on her paper stuck on her wall; hearing them playing 'air raid shelters' under the coffee table and counting for 'doodlebugs'; watching them getting excited about working out how to make different tie-dye patterns on their t-shirts; seeing them playing with their friends and being able to help them learn how to cope with difficult situations because you are there when they need you - it's wonderful

[NotAnotherBrick]

Famous, successful home educated people:

Agatha Christie
Ansell Adams
The Queen
Yehudi Menuhin
Daniel Bedingfield
The Williams sisters
Charles Dickens

And it says here that Einstein was too...although can't find any better evidence in the five minutes I have online now!

[juuule]

I know that on HE sites it says he was home-ed and I've had other home-educators say that to me but I can't find that fact anywhere else and wondered where it originated from. Any biographies about Einstein say he was at school until 15-ish. Which then makes me doubt claims of other famous people being home-educated although that's not to say that I don't believe a whole lot of famous people were home-educated.

[NotAnotherBrick]

I think the key point, for me, is that most of the incredible discoveries and inventions in our world (ie. things as unliveable-without as the wheel and how to make fire; indepth mathematics and physics etc.) were made by people who didn't ever go to school...which just means that there is no reason why you couldn't become very educated and successful if you didn't go to school now. It's a very new invention, but suddenly we think we can't live without it.

[NotAnotherBrick]

You appear to be quite right, though!

From this websoite

"Moving first to Italy and then to Switzerland, the young prodigy graduated from high-school in 1896."