Getting Started with Homeschooling
Practical Considerations for Parents of School-Aged Children
© Beverley Paine
Index
Homeschool
Australia
Capitalising On Spontaneous Learning
Most of the learning illustrated in the example about the grandfather and the aeroplanes was generated spontaneously and naturally without the need to resort to deliberately recording an educational plan in advance. As you gain experience with home schooling your children, this process becomes automatic and easier.
Often the children will take the lead, as in the following excerpt from "Home Education in South Australia", written in 1995 by Sue Osborne. Notice how one idea naturally leads into other areas of learning.
"My young daughter was painting with her feet one day. She then compared her foot with her brother's and mine and talked us into foot printing our feet too. She then measured them which led us all to a discussion on imperial measurement.
Then she printed our pet mice and guinea pig's feet and compared them to her own and we discussed why they were different. We made animal footprints in play dough, filled them with plaster to make casts leading to a discussion and research on archaeological casting. This fitted in well with a museum visit we had planned.
My daughter had enough after studying all the different types of animal feet and making up [and recording] stories to illustrate this, but my son took a different angle. He worked out how to find the area of a foot print. He divided it up into many smaller areas and used mathematical formulae from the area of a square to the area of a circle segment.
All this from feet. Everything that my children discovered during this adventure; art,
math, history, language arts, science ... they have retained. It was interesting, meaningful
and fun."
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Excerpt from Getting Started with Homeschooling, Practical Considerations
© Beverley Paine, 1997
