12 Ways to Encourage Learning and 5 Rules of Engagement

Here are some good things I copied off of the site I linked to in the previous post.  Twelve ways to encourage children to learn:

1. Provide a safe and loving atmosphere for learning. More support, less pressure.

2. Create magic and anticipation. Provide inspiring materials.

3. Expose children to inspiring music, great art, good books, etc.

4. Read as a family on a regular, consistent basis. This has great benefits .

5. Inspire curiosity and then leave them to the wonder of experimentation and self discovery.

6. Leave plenty of time for thinking, playing and being with family. Avoid too many lessons, clubs and classes.

7. Remember that play is the work of children.

8. Be patient with the learning process.

9. Learn to recognize and respond to Sparks.

10. Learn and live the Five Rules of Engagement.

11. Enjoy learning yourself.

12. Share what you are learning with our children.

Here are her Five Rules of Engagement to help keep the children excited about learning.

Enjoy!  I'm excited to start applying these things along with the "spark station."

Thoughts Rolling Round and Round

 (Warning: this post is just me sorting out thoughts and is pointless for anyone else to read ;))
I've been pondering....my kids are young.  There are many homeschool methods that don't do any structured learning until age eight.  In the mean time, the children learn on their own, by living and exploring.  

I think I didn't initially go for this idea because the condition on which I get to homeschool our children (my husband says) is that they are not "dumb" as compared with other children their age.  Also, I did find a Christian curriculum that I really like, which I have talked about several times.

Well, after hearing of TJED twice in the same day last week (I  had also heard of it before of course) and learning that they don't do much schooling until age 8, I started pondering.  Whenever something comes up several times in a short period, I figure the Lord could be trying to tell me something, so generally I will look into that thing.  Also, I read an article this last week about exploratory learning through projects.

My brain is going round and round with ideas of loosening up our curriculum and focusing on the learning games, practicing reading, and writing just through letters and stuff. OR I could just do the parts of the curriculum the children enjoy, and the scriptural things, plus more exploratory learning time and materials.  Some of the blogs I've looked at just add math to an otherwise very loose and exploratory learning time.

I'm all over the place.  Here's what I want.  I WANT my children to love learning.  I WANT them to be able to learn creatively, and especially at their young ages I don't want to stifle their ability to do so by learning in such a structured way all the time.  They do enjoy learning things when it's in their own way.  I think it could be a cool and fun process to just let them teach themselves with experiences and materials that I help provide.

For now, I am going to create a "spark station" or something like it.  I like the idea of them only having access to it at certain times so that they are more excited about learning time.  Not sure how I'll pull that off yet though.  I am going to make sure that I am available for any self motivated learning ideas the children have, i.e. going on a walk and making a story with pictures, playing store, writing a letter to a relative, etc.  Also, we will continue, no matter what, to have a daily set aside learning time.

Outside of those things, I have a split personality because there ARE a lot of things I love about our curriculum.  It will be interesting to see what these thoughts all turn into.  

I am looking at putting "Superman" into a 1 day a week charter school for fun group electives next year or the year after.  Largely because he has wanted to play violin since he was 3 and they have a group violin class.  Also, they have a music/drama class that I think he would LOVE and a lego robotics class.  Maybe I'll try to go check that out in person sometime very soon to help me decide if I should wait until he's older.

Pasta Art Gallery

Well, time to finally put those colored pastas to use!  We did this on a Saturday, and big brother "Harry Potter" got to join in the fun.  He always enjoys getting a glimpse into our homeschooling.  (Side note for any who don't know, "Harry Potter" is my almost 12 year old step-son and is mostly with his mom AND he just switched from a regular elementary school to a charter school!)

Admiring his "train track"!

Busy creating...

Time for glue

"Superman" constructing his "ladder and slide."

"Harry Potter" wanted to test out something we had done when he wasn't with us....(click HERE to see the post on art with milk and dish soap as well as how we dyed our pasta)

The finished products of all of the children up in the family room, our current art gallery.

               :)  I love this wall!

Sun Time

This is from part of the week we learned about the sun.  The line "Spiderman" got to memorize, and the theme of his scriptures and mini-devotionals for the week was, "Jesus is the light of the world."

(These ideas came from the still fabulous curriculum we use, My Father's World)

Our science (aka fun learning activity) was to make a sundial.  I made the dough ahead of time and we made the sun dial together.  The kids marked the lines in the dough (you could also use clay) and I wrote the time.  It was fun and cool for them to see how you can tell time from where the sun is in the sky.  It was about 10:30am when I took this picture of the sun dial....the shadow falls a little before our line for 11am.

Here is the recipe we used for the dough (again from our curriculum), you can of course make it any color you want.

In a pan mix:

                                 1 to 1-1/4 cups flour

                                 1/4 cup salt

                                 2 T. cream of tartar

Combine and add to the pan:

                               1 cup water

                               1 T. oil

                               a few drops food coloring

You could take this lesson so many different directions with different ages.  You could do this as part of a Native American unit for history, a unit on seasons or one that includes moon phases, planets, and meteors, or just sometime when you're working on clocks and telling time.  

My favorite thing is that it tied it into Heavenly Father.  The sun is the light of the world just like Christ is.  And just like the sun shines indiscriminately on all people, Christ's love and the gift of the atonement are available for all people everywhere.

Weeds and seeds

Some of these pictures are repeats from our family blog....I just really like them :)

This web was PERFECT and beautiful...."Superman" drew it in his sketch book.  It is has been a good web to look at and see how spiders catch their food.

                      A couple weeks ago we learned about plants and seeds, and how plants reproduce and grow.  We ran into this perfect weed in the midst of spreading it's seed.  So cool right!

 All of the kids pulled out some of the seeds.  On the way home we saw a lot of this seed blowing around among other plants.

Pictures to grow on.

Loving learning from God and his creations!

Loving Homeschool

I feel the need to express in words what I hope is being captured through this blog mainly through pictures.  I LOVE homeschooling my children.  I LOVE my children, I LOVE the time I have with them.  I LOVE having the time to get to know them all individually, to learn their learning styles, how their minds work.  I love seeing what things excite them, what things make them feel creative, and what things make them feel accomplished.  I love pretending with them, cuddling with them (at times....I don't love them hanging on me--two TOTALLY different things ;)) reading to them, and finding fun and interesting learning in everyday life.  I love learning about values and how the Lord works with them as part of their curriculum.  I love that I can use curriculum, and that I don't have to use curriculum.  I love the feeling that I'm unschooling while also being structured, that we can take days off when we need to or when someone's mood would make school less than ideal that day.  We will still learn!  My five year old will still tell me how many flies were in the house if I've killed 4 and there are 3 more flying around.  We can still learn about how to control our emotions and be kind on a day when we don't sit down at the desk.  And what is more important in life, learning how to be happy, or learning how to spell?  In this journey of home-learning, family-learning, God-parent-child-learning we call homeschool, we WILL learn spelling and reading and math, AND we will learn that if we push something too hard, it's not worth the sacrifice of happiness.

I am so fulfilled in life right now, just being on earth, and learning how to really be separate from the world.

A Story from the Kids: Star Wars Fighters 1

Star Wars Fighters 1

     Anakin Skywalker leads Obi Wan Kanobi in the forest.

A skunk jumps down from the trees and Anakin slices it.

Obi Wan doesn't know where Anakin is.

                                                 R2-D2 is trying to find Anakin also.

Finally Obi Wan and Anakin find each other again.  They hear something in the woods.

What they hear is a bear!  A polar bear!

They creep up on the bear...

And they slice him!  It is hard to fight the polar bear!

They try and try and finally cut off its arm.

The polar bear dies and they have to make sure there are no more bears.  

There is only one more.

R2-D2 rolls over the last bear and hurts it until it stops fighting.

Master Yoda gives Anakin and Obi Wan a mission to protect the Republic.

Anakin and Obi Wan go to help the Republic.

On their way there, they see R2-D2 and one of the kids from the Republic. 

They are almost to the Republic and Anakin and Obi Wan protect R2 and the child well from some enemy droids along the way.

They get hungry and stop to catch some fish, to kill and eat.

After they eat an enemy droid kills Obi Wan!

Luckily Obi Wan comes back to life!

Then Anakin dies from an enemy droid!

The child is still happy!

Anakin comes back to life and turns into Darth Sidious (Darth Vader's master) and kills everyone (except the small, happy child and Yoda).

Then Darth Sidious turns into Darth Vader, who turns good and brings R2 and Obi Wan back to life with the force.

~THE END~

Bless Art!

We have had a SUPER fun week this week, thanks to some fun art time in the kitchen.  You'll notice all the kids look ecstatically happy in all the pictures! :)  It has just been so, so fun to see them enjoy creating and I never want to stop.

I put some flour in the cake pans and each of the 3 children drew pictures and practiced letters in the flour.  It reminded me of a Tao art thing I saw in a store before that erases your picture after a minute or so....we are practicing the art of not being attached to your art.   ;)  We are saving the flour in a Tupperware container so we can use the same flour next time.

Handprints

I got the next idea from a friend.  This was SO cool, and I highly recommend it!  You just need some kind of pan, whole milk, food coloring, tooth picks, small cups and dish soap.  We started out just with the milk and food coloring, stirring around the colors with toothpicks.  I guided them so their color combinations would not make brown.  That in itself was cool and made some beautiful designs.

After the kids played like that for a few minutes I put a few drops of dish soap in a dixie cup for each kid and they dipped their toothpicks in it.  It was SO cool to see how the colors and designs reacted.

I think this was the one "Spiderman" thought looked like a dragon.

This is "Robin's".

"Superman's" did end up a little muddy colored, but still cool.

Here the kids and I were dying some pasta with vinegar and food coloring.  We may need to have a year supply of food coloring if we keep this up!  Here they are each filling their own bags of pasta.

                            Adding a couple Tbsp of vinegar to each bag, that the kids would then squeeze around to distribute onto all the pasta.

Super Baby was happy just playing with the box and watching his brothers.

We'll probably use the Rigatoni pastas for stringing on jewelry and practicing patterns.  So much better than a worksheet on patterns right!?

      We added some food coloring to each bag and squished it around again to distribute.

They crack me up.

I decided that some of the pasta was a little soggy from a touch too much vinegar, so we'd better put them out on paper towels or they would never dry.  It worked out pretty good, but I think I'll look for a different method, like letting them dye over night or something next time to get more vibrant colors.  Also it was hard to cover the curly noodles.  I do think the curly ones could make some fun noodle art faces and hair though. ;)

Who wouldn't want to be around these little happy faces all week!?

Bless art, my husband for working so I can be a stay at home mama, and the choice we have made to homeschool!