Although Bear is still young, we do have what we call our 'intentional learning time' in a day where we sit down together at either our kitchen table or the space we have in our living room, and we learn something specific. Whether that be maths work, where we are currently looking at times tables and an introduction to money, literacy, where we are looking at when to use capital letters versus lower case letters and trying to use full sentences, science, which we are still exploring the human body, or our topical work, where we use our Whimsy & Bug subscription box. I try to do something that fits this heading of 'intentional learning' daily, even if that is just Bear reading a book, as I also prioritise getting out and about as much as possible.
What I am very much an advocate for, however, is that learning, even intentional learning, doesn't need to happen at a desk!
Some days, our intentional learning is a pre-booked Home Educators day at a venue like Eureka! Children's Museum, where we recently attended to learn all about the digestive system via their interactive workshop, as well as all the possibilities from the museum itself, or the Home Education Day at Boston Park Farm where we learned all about lambing. Other days, our intentional learning is sit down work, but not at the table at home. Recently, we have gotten out of the house for a change of scenery and taken our work with us. We went to the pub for dessert and took some maths practice and a reading book with us to work through after sharing ice cream together and chatting to a few familar faces and we headed to our favourite Cafe, Grimm & Co and took some more maths practice, another reading book, and some card games with us to play while talking to the staff there.
Aside from all this intentional learning, Bear is a very inquisitive little person, and we are always finding something out from either a question he has thought up, or something random that he has read or heard that he has asked about. Where possible, I try to let him follow a train of thought to his own conclusions, and then give him what facts I know before resorting to looking up answers.
We also spend a lot of time outside, which means there is always something new to discover. A recent outing was just an excuse to get out of the house and enjoy the unexpectedly warm day we had and we took their bug hunting gear with us and their outdoor journals. This turned into a full on bug hunt and we researched the bugs we caught and did some drawings, but we also checked out one of the experiments in their outdoor book which had us making a compass out of a stick and using the shadow from the moving sun to find North. This was an accidental learning curve and we got talkaing about shadows in general which led to the boys doing their own experiements over the course of the afternoon.
All the 'unintentional learning' is probably my favourite at the minute, as I love watching them follow their own theories and finding ways to check out what they are thinking. This probably leans into the idea of unschooling as far as a home education term is considered and I can understand why so many families choose this way as a general idea for their educational path. I also love when we get together with friends, and what starts out as something intentional, quickly gains traction as they bounce their ideas off each other and some up with new and exciting ideas that they then want to investigate.
Even their play matters - this morning for example, as I sit writing this post, the boys have been playing together, really beautifully, for ages. They are building with Duplo and I can hear Bear helping his brother to choose the right blocks for what they are trying to build together. Bear's structural skills are impressive and he can build almost anything, often without any help or direction, and work out how to correct mistakes when his builds don't quite act how he intended them to. The fact that he can apply this to teaching The Cub too, I find impressive and all great building blocks in his conversational skills.
I'd love to hear what your approaches to learning are like in your home educational journey. Do you plan and deliver 'intentional learning' or do you lean more towards the unschooling ways of letting your children lead their journies?
Mama Bear x
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