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Thursday, August 15, 2013

Freeing my free range learner




I feel like right as the wind beneath my homeschooling sails picked up, I got an unexpected tidal wave. Surprise! You're pregnant.


My first trimester was exhausting, to say the least, and to be honest, the majority of Collin's "Homeschool Activities" would be curling up together on the couch to watch The Lorax. Now that I've made it to the second trimester and I've got a little more energy to spare, I'm regaining homeschooling momentum. Only this time, I'm coming at it with a completely different perspective. You see, before the pregnancy, I was all about doing projects every day, and buying a preschool curriculum right away, and just diving right in. The down time I had, being too sick and tired to do much of anything else, gave me respite to really reexamine where I wanted to go with homeschooling. I realized that two-years-old is a really precious age, a midway point between babyhood and childhood. I need to focus less on projects that Collin is frankly uninterested in, and focus more on being outside, fostering imagination and exploration.

I knew, in theory, that part of the magic of homeschooling was allowing your child space to be in nature during the day, as opposed to confined to a room and only allowed a limited amount of outdoor time. However, I had this weird notion that Collin should be sitting in his learning corner all day, "Learning Stuff." What? I suppose growing up in a conventional school system has made its impressions on me, even when I know better.

So what, then, have we been doing lately? We haven't been following a schedule, or learning from a pre-packaged preschool curriculum, or even spending much time in our learning corner (Except to moon watch or make a puppet show).


We've been making big messes while we experiment with baking.

 
We taste test everything.


                                          


Sometimes, we even experiment with cleaning up our big messes.

We like to practice our table alchemy.


We follow our passions.

Like our passion for being wrapped up like a burrito.

We play with our friends whenever we can.




We go on field trips whenever we get the chance.

We relish the simple things.

We paint with Q-tips, and dixie cups, and empty toilet paper rolls.


And we paint our bodies, too.




                                          
We observe.

And, most importantly, we connect with nature.








We are learning, every day. We are homeschooling, every day, with every simple question we ask and every walk down the street we take. We are discovering, and experimenting, and soaking up the summer sunshine, while we still have it. We are looking forward to the future, to the change of seasons and the upcoming holidays and festivals. We are enjoying being two-years-old, being "Too-ye-ahs-olkg."