Gina made a comment on yesterday’s post about classrooms that really deserves its own post. As well as asking where don’t we do school?, I could just as easily ask when don’t we do school?
I have found homeschooling to be a real journey, and the further we go the more I can see that the world is our classroom. Technically I knew that when we started, but it’s taken living it to see all the possibilities this entails. Some days I’m not sure who is learning more–me or the kids–but I must say that my recent reading of Free Range Learning (Laura Grace Weldon) really pushed me to think outside the school box. As it happened, I was reading it during the already busy holiday season: the perfect time to take a break from our conventional books. . .and observe my kids. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much they were learning even when I wasn’t “teaching.” Since the first of the year we’ve picked up some (though not all) of our books again, but we’re working at using them as tools rather than being their slaves.
In case you’re worried, I’ll be honest. Yes, we do spend time doing frivolous things with no redeeming value. But it also turns out that a lot of seemingly frivolous things teach lessons that are quite tedious taught in conventional ways.
