The simple answer is. I don't. We are all born with an innate capacity for learning, and are eager to do so all the time. From the moment a baby explores it's own body in the womb, and realises that when they stretch or move, they often get a response, and they keep doing it. They learn as babies, to imitate facial expressions, in those very early days - this is the beginnings of talking, and understanding emotions, developing relationships etc. It just keeps on going. I know that there are plenty of items for sale these days which claim to teach babies and toddlers things. I'll let you into a secret. They are lying. These objects, however all-singing and all-dancing they are, will not "teach" your baby anything. A definition of TEACH is "impart knowledge to or instruct (someone) as to how to do something".
Do we need to "teach" a baby how to do the things they need to learn, or will they naturally learn the things they need in order to survive. They learn to cry as tiny babies to communicate their needs, and human infants are pretty helpless in comparison to most of our mammalian cousins. Did anyone have to teach that baby to cry in order to produce these results? Not that I know of, and I certainly didn't teach it to my babies.
Okay, okay, I hear you say, I get all that about the baby and perhaps I see how that works for how a baby learns to crawl, and a toddler learns to walk. But letting them follow their innate survival needs is not going to help them learn how to read, complete a quadratic equation, or analyse and dissect a piece of poetry or a history text. I agree, that these other things, are not essential for our survival, in the way that communication and movement is, but I don't think that our amazing minds stop there. I believe that we learn what we want according to what we see relevant and if there is a real need to learn that thing. In addition, I believe that that learning is at it's best when it happens at a time, and place when we are most attuned to that thing. At this time, we are able to take on a large body of knowledge, skills and understanding as motivation is high, and the need for props and special things to entice us to learn the thing are less necessary. The need for excessive repetition becomes obsolete as we are much more able to retain things and use the information appropriately is far greater with this internal motivation to succeed at our task.
So going back to the question, "how do you teach them?" , I said "I don't". And when asked this question, which I am asked every time I mention that I home educate my kids, I usually say, I don't teach them stuff. I see myself as a facilitator of their learning. Attempting to support them on their learning journey by providing an environment they like that gives them opportunities to learn in some of the ways they like, with time to spend just being themselves, being with friends. I see every moment of every day as a learning opportunity. We are really learning all the time. Here are a few examples of what I mean by this.
Right now, as I speak the children are upstairs playing. I don't know exactly what they are doing, but from what I can hear it involves the following things: Story stones (using characters from the film Frozen), Lego, penguins, and occasionally dialogue and storylines from the television program Strictly come dancing and the computer game Minecraft. So apart from the things that I couldn't tell unless I did a full observation of them, here are just a few of the things I know they are developing and learning (in my opinion)
Learning cooperation and leadership skills ~ they take turns in the dialogue, build joint things and collaborate in large projects, not just physical, but as a story / game.
Practising complex vocabulary from stories, experimenting with putting them into context.
Enjoying life
Relating to a peer
Understanding shape and space
Developing creatively through stories and making lego structures.
Developing a deeper understanding of new information - particularly evident through the introduction of penguins into recent play, which has responded to our penguin project.
Other days we might have a discussion whilst travelling asking about anything from architecture, to baby making, or days of the week to the ethics of large businesses. I love it when we have these conversations, and I will be as helpful as they need me to be at the time, sometimes they are avidly interested and ask endless questions, and other times the moment passes without much conversation. This is a common feature in family life. We are super lucky that, as we have more time as a family together, these conversations and opportunities can be really capitalised upon.
I am relaxed about the learning process, as I know that my children are eager to learn, and when they recognise something as useful or important to them, they do all they can to gain the information they want.
We are often made to believe that our children aren't learning unless what they are learning can be ticked off on a curriculum checklist, but I would argue, that if the only learning that goes on can be ticked off on a curriculum checklist we are missing out.
I am not averse to providing a bit of structure to the children's learning from time to time, if they are receptive. They usually, however, gain this more structured way of learning from educational websites which offer a motivating way of learning more structured stuff. I don't know what my kids will be when they grow up, I don't know what they will have learned by the time they reach school-leaving age. However, I find that exciting rather than scary.
The work of Jerome Bruner - an educationalist who talks of intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, among other things.
Ken Robinson - Changing Paradigms lecture
John Holt - Learning all the time, How children learn
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