What I love about providing a multi-faceted "main lesson" is the way a simple subject, or unit of study, can morph into something completely unexpected as children are naturally curious and inquisitive. I chose to start our first year of homeschooling with a study of our new home state- North Carolina, but as I introduced the state, I found myself (and my kids) exploring American history, art, culture, food, literature, and making connections to modern life.
As a former public school teacher I was expected to come up with lesson plans for individual subjects such as reading, writing, math, science, social studies. The students were often studying, and working on, five (or more) areas of study. Perhaps in Reading they were reading a fiction novel about an ogre, in Writing class they were working on "How To Wash a Dog", in Math they were learning place value for 3-digit numbers, studying magnetism in Science and then learning about community helpers in Social Studies. What do these things have in common? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's confusing, boring, choppy and inefficient. It requires the teacher to switch gears every 30-45 minutes throughout her day as well and the kids struggle to stay engaged.
Let's flip the script a bit. Before our schoolyear began, I had started reading "Andrew Jackson: Young Patriot" aloud to my boys to create a foundation for our learning. They knew Andrew Jackson was from the Waxhaws, but didn't understand how both South Carolina and North Carolina claim him as a native to their state. So, I introduced "North Carolina" with a few non-fiction books and we learned the Carolinas were one territory once upon a time. We made a 3D map of the state with salt dough and modled bodies of water and landorms discussing the different features of reach as we shaped them "true to form". The boys discovered the statemotto, state flag, state flower, state tree, and state mammal and wanted to illustrate them in their journals. Then, we decided to go to the arboretum and try to find these things in nature, which we did! Plus, their was a plaque on a bench dedicated to someone with the last name "Crawford", which the boys realized was a family name of someone in Andrew Jackson's story as well. This sparked curiosity over family histories and geneology...
Our study of North Carolina took on a life of it's own and will be taking us through Queen Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh's interest in the "new world", Queen Charlotte, Charles Town, Roanoke and the lost colony, Jamestown, and the American Revolution. We learned the Cherokee were the first inhabitants of the state so we started an exploration of the Cherokee, traditions, food, trade, and found a few novels about the Trail of Tears. I could go on and on, but you see, what happened was child-led learning with adult guidance over adult-led teaching forcing a child to memorize.
The boys have spelling words and vocabulary words assigned to them that relate to the subject of study and today, they're writing a paper on their theory of the "Lost Colony of Roanoke", but only after reading two non-fiction books on the subject as they must provide supporting evidence for their theory. They'll also need to show me on a map they illustrate how their theory is supported.
We also will be visiting historical sites in the area, keeping a historical timeline, and cooking traditional foods from the colonial time period to incorporate measurement, time, temperature, budget into our learning. We learned that North Carolina manufactures electronics so we stopped by the Moogseum in town and explored sound waves, electric charges, and their effect on music over the pastfew decades using a synthesizer created by a local scientist. As their guide, not "teacher", I stayed mostly quiet. I allowed the children to explore freely, read timelines and draw their own conculsions about things. I prefer to be brain dead around kids. If I know nothing, they're responsible for figuring things out independently. I guess we'll need to pick up a few books about sound waves and instruments from the library this week!
Happy learning. Be well, Chelsea
Comments