What does "learning" look like?

Following the same path as my previous post about what 'play' looks like, I found myself thinking the same about 'learning' recently after talking to family and friends about expecting our first home visit from the local authority to meet Bear.

I started Bear's education journey with quite specific ideas in mind for how I wanted to plan and deliver things like phonics and basic number skills, but, as home education allows... and one of the big reasons I wanted that freedom, it soon became obvious that my methods weren't right for Bear, and over the course of his Foundation Stage 1 year, I adapted how I delivered the material numerous times over until I settled on a way that I thought worked for us.

Since Bear took an actual interest in learning to read this last month or so, those ways have changed again as it very quickly became apparent to me that Bear picked more up by actually reading books than he was by me 'teaching' him phonics. So, I ditched the 'lessons' and workbooks and we just read. We talk about new sounds as they come up and think about some examples, then keep reading, and so far, his recollection of sounds he has come across has been ace. 

But, aside from the obvious 'learning' moments, I'm talking about what learning looks like in the everyday moments, the unplanned ones where your child just learns... no books, no lessons, no guidance, the world around them just provides the education.

For us recently, that's looked like Daddy finding an old Choose Your Own Adventure book at a charity event and him and Bear sitting and playing for over an hour, Bear listening to the story and choosing his path, or rolling dice and flipping coins to find out what happened next. It's playing board games with Nannie and Pops, or teaching his friend who works behind the bar how to play draughts at the pub because it wasn't a game she knew how to play. It's reading a bedtime story, and asking questions about something he saw in the pictures and Daddy finding him a video to show him exactly what it meant alongside his explanation, or reading the map while we were out following a local scavenger hunt. It's picking out the keyboard/piano in songs that we listen to in the car because Mummy has been trying to teach herself how to play, and learning song lyrics because he wants to sing along with Daddy. It's realising that there are numbers on the coins in his purse and then putting them in order and trying to make things sink or float while playing in the water tray in the backyard.

I could keep going, but I think you get the idea... And what do I do with all these moments? I let them play out... I bought more Choose Your Own Adventure books and board games and I picked up a magnetic draughts set so that he could play for real at the pub. We selected new non-fiction books from the library to follow his interests. We chose new songs for Mummy to learn on the keyboard and got all the coins out of his purse to look at properly and discuss which ones make up the others so that he can start to count out his own change when buying new things...

The biggest draw to home education for me was that Bear would be able to learn about the world around him, from the world around him, not just from books while sitting at a desk. He can converse with people of all ages, backgrounds, and in lots of different settings. He isn't shy about going up to cashiers in shops or speaking to wait staff in restaurants. He listens to them, makes conversation and learns from them as much as he teaches random facts back... He wants to get outside and be around nature. He has a love of non-fiction books that even I don't understand because I am firmly a fiction lover, but he's like a sponge for facts and recalls them and asks more questions to further the knowledge he already has because he's inquisitive like that. And at the end of the day, I can't help but feel that the school system would squash that out of him because he'd have to learn what they wanted to teach him...

That's not life - life is for living, and he is living and learning every day in a way that is truly setting him up for his future and I am so glad that we are in a position to provide him with that opportunity!

What moments have you had recently that slide into this category of just learning by living?

Mama Bear x