My wife sent me an article about fascinating realities about education that you may not expect. If they had asked me to re-title the post, I would have labeled it 31 Reasons to Homeschool.
Here are a few things that jumped out to me:
Psychologists are drawing the conclusion that early academic learning structured around directive teaching not only inhibits creativity, but stunts a child’s natural curiosity to discover how the world works.
There are many reasons we built our preschool curriculum to be a gentle introduction to learning together. One of the big motivations, however, was to enable you and your children to discover the joy of learning. This will give you an excellent starting point for more rigorous academics in the years to come. More and more research confirms that this is the best way to approach early education.
In a primitive society, children learned necessary survival skills by mimicking their elders. It was essentially, learning in action. In modern times, academics are often taught rather than 'shown'- removing this type of opportunity from the educational process.
I think rich literature gives us the opportunity to, in many ways, "show" ideas to our kids.
...students who used e-books with sound effects, narration, music, and video were able to find and recite more information than the children who used a traditional printed text.
It could very well be that ebooks are the future. However, this point seems more to reinforce the idea that reading-aloud is an essential part of experiencing books. Just one more reason I'm thrilled that Sonlight's curriculum includes so many Read-Alouds.
Daydreaming is often seen as wasting time and sometimes a lack of the ability to focus. But recent research found the opposite is true.
Personally, I've spent quite a bit of time daydreaming. Glad to know doing so was such a great idea! <smile>
What points resonated with you? Do you disagree with any of the conclusions?
~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester
Sounds reasonable to me, Anne. Thanks for sharing [smile].
~Luke
Current study show that nothing builds a better strong esteem in a person than spending the first seven years of their life 24 hours a day with their mother. This builds strong feelings of love and safety. The lack of mother’s presence does the opposite. So the more of the early years that a child is homeschooled, the better.
Anne
http://HomeschoolingOption.com
Mrs. C, Go Dog Go! was a favorite with the girls at our house too. So, I hear ya [smile]. And, yes, already having a culture of reading is excellent. However, as we experienced with the girls, even if your culture has not been one of reading together, you can quickly build one with great books.
Thanks, Jill! I love that I had so much unstructured time given to me by homeschooling. That time allowed me to be creative.
~Luke
Luke, I totally agree about daydreaming and love this quote, "Psychologists are drawing the conclusion that early academic learning structured around directive teaching not only inhibits creativity, but stunts a child’s natural curiosity to discover how the world works."
I have long argued for kids to have MORE unstructured time to dream, think and create. I had no scientific evidence to back this up, but knew in my heart that children need unstructured, unplanned, unscheduled time to become themselves.
Thanks for this post.
The best and most gentle introduction to books happens in families where there are already books and a culture of reading. Though I have a preschooler and have to tell you that Go, Dogs. Go! is evil. I swear, it takes for-everrrrr because she wants to do the whole thing herself. If I try to just read a line or let her know what a word is, she'll get huffy and say, "I'm reading here, okayy?"
And I'd better listen, too. It's a lot of fun most of the time.