Life is an Education

An In-Depth Look at Homeschooling, Child-Led Learning and Child Development

Home Learning is Real Life

A degree doesn't make someone caring, considerate, knowledgeable, and understanding of children. It doesn't make them love someone else's children, and often doesn't even mean a vested interest in a child's development.

The larger issue is "Who is responsible enough to influence the mind and thoughts of a developing human being?" The most important focus should be, but isn't always, a child's needs. The situation that serves the best interests and growth of a child is learning in a secure and responsive home environment in which caring, respectful parents are the teachers.

There are not many satisfactions in parenthood that compare to being able to watch the joy in your children's faces as they explore their environment, create, learn, grow, and develop.

Learning and loving with dependable, committed, nurturing and involved parents is the way children have learned since the beginning of time. It's time to realize that this is the way children were meant to be educated. The lessons they are learning are life lessons, which cannot be learned in any institution.

In "real life" children can learn all the time...

Stimulating All Forms Of Intelligence:

• Linguistic Intelligence:
  books, tape recorders, typewriters, computers, story-telling, writing, public speaking, debate, reading, and writing.
  
• Logical Mathematical:
  strategy games like chess, checkers, and Monopoly, strategy games like Rubik's Cube, math puzzles, crossword puzzles, and word searches, science kits, computer software, thinking games and puzzles.
  
• Spatial:
  Films, slides, videos, diagrams, maps, charts, art, telescopes, Lego, building toys, optical illusions.
  
• Bodily-Kinesthetic:
  playgrounds, running, hiking, swimming, gyms, model-building kits, wood carving, model clay, machines, animals, costumes, make-believe.
  
• Interpersonal:
  clubs, groups, social programs, cooperation, interactive games, group projects, discussions.
  
• Intrapersonal:
  self-paced study, individual projects, free time, private spaces, diaries, solo activities, hideaways, tents, and secret places.

Gardner feels that children have the capacity to be a genius in at least one of these areas of intelligence, if they are allowed to develop at their own rate of readiness.

We should all take a lesson from Gardner and realise that all children learn differently, at different speeds, at different times, with different interests. Nurturing individuality and encouraging creativity when it comes to education and learning is one of the greatest lessons a parent can teach.

Do you have a question about homeschooling?

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