So how do you teach them? I couldn't do it.

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.

Things I found really helpful when developing my ideas about learning include:

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

Reading: Reflections and perspective

This last month has been one of hunkering down and getting on at home more than anything else.  Outings and other activities outside the house have been fairly limited.  Evan is at the tail end of an ear infection, and Autumn, I am hoping, is at the tail end of a urine infection.  The illnesses have caused  a period of reflection. Here is part of the thought journey I have been on.

With Evan turning Seven I have had the inevitable panic at his level of reading and writing, feeling a tad insecure about his comparative level, as if I had to send him to school for some reason, at this point, I know that his levels would not be looked on too favourably by his teachers, and would lead to many difficulties, as the school curriculum invariably relies heavily upon the ability to read and write to access the whole curriculum.  Which, in my opinion, is why schools see it as so important to get at an early age.  I can understand this, having been a teacher myself, I certainly used it a fair amount when I taught Key Stages 1 and 2.  It is my perception that the gulf in his ability, in this particular area, between him and his peers means that school, for the time being, would be out of the question as a possibility.  I suppose up to now I have kind of assumed if circumstances necessitated, school could be an option open to us.  Now, though, I realise, that unless he has some sudden breakthrough, that option is lost to us, for the time being at least.  I reacted to this feeling of lack of control and insecurity fearfully by thrusting worksheets in front of both of my kids, in an effort to ensure this option could remain open.

I decided in order to keep the children in control of the majority of their time, I asked them to have kitchen table time with me for the 20-30 minutes whilst I prepared breakfast.  Any other time in the day is so variable, I felt it would be unlikely I could capture their attention regularly.  For the first 4-5 days this was fairly successful.  I found that Reading Eggs, Evan's favourite website, had a new worksheet section.  So I thought this would be a nice complementary thing to add to his knowledge and understanding of the subject, and have characters and things that were familiar to him.  At first he enjoyed it, but as time wore on, he became increasingly reticent to complete even the most simple of tasks, which I knew were within his capability.  Some simple information he seemed incapable of taking on board.  Looking back I realise that this is not in line with my philosophy of learning.  Evan seems to work much better when he is self-directed and absorbed in the task, rather than pushed into completing and arbitrary number of tasks at a set time.  His learning at these times is most likely to be low level, and not long lasting learning, certainly lacking in intrinsic value or motivation.  I had begun using fairly high stakes bribes, against my better judgement, to push him into engaging with the materials.  Suggesting that if I couldn't help him to learn to read or write, then I would have to send him to school and they would do a better job.  If I had been a fly on the wall I am sure I would have been screaming at myself that this was against all the ideas I had about learning, and very unlikely to produce the results I sought.  To be honest, I had that fly on the wall in my head... I screamed this at myself as I slammed down a spatula in frustration.  Thankfully after a few weeks I stopped and really looked at Evan. Was this doing him any good at all?  No, definitely not.  I kept coming back to the messages I had received from John Holt, in "Learning all the time", and from friends who have successfully home educated their children in an autonomous fashion, whose children are bookworms, but came to reading a little later than is considered "normal".  Children learn everything they need to learn if they are given the time, space and rich environment to do it in, rather than learning everything because we feel we need them to in the manner and time scale we feel is appropriate.

 Sadly, my reaction to my fear was not necessarily one which served my children's best interests, even though I had convinced myself that it did.  I am really grateful for finding the path back to working with my children again.

Things have shifted though, we have begun using this early morning time, as a productive time rather than vegging in front of the telly, which had begun fairly habitual, and started the day in a sedentary fashion which bled into the rest of our days.  I don't feel it necessary for the children to be productive at all times, far from it, but I do see the benefit of a little structured together time in the morning to set the day off to a positive start.  I no longer do the worksheets with Evan, but Autumn has keenly begun some workbooks which she is enjoying.  Evan, meanwhile does some games on Reading Eggs with my support and encouragement.  We took a week and a bit off all of these things whilst they had been ill, and I let them be...  Lots of hanging around and resting and cuddling; whilst also enjoying plenty of play.  When they were up to it the play between them seemed to flow in an amazing way, games would go on for days and arguments seemed to have almost completely disappeared.  A few days ago I realised that I hadn't had to support them in sorting out any battles for quite some time.  Instead, when I heard a slight impasse, I heard Evan negotiating and carefully and skilfully supporting Autumn, and backing down when necessary.  This was music to my ears, and I realised that this is what I needed to be doing.  Listening, supporting, creating rich environments, not shoving worksheets under his nose.

Since my revert to going with the flow life has suddenly become much lighter.  We are all enjoying ourselves much more.  Yes, I would still like Evan to be reading books independently and getting great enjoyment from them, but I realise that it will happen at the right time for him, and he isn't all that far off anyway.  I know that if I kept my regime going he would kick against the constraints and avoid any reading for a good long time.  I don't want to take that risk, and I love how much fun he is having.