There is an old saying that I know to be true after years of teaching. It goes something like this, "Tell me and I will forget, show me and I will remember, let me do it and I will learn it." I would add, sing it, paint it, cook it, sew it, create it, experience it, turn it into a game, make it magical and Voila! You have more than a child who learns you have a child who is interested in learning, who wants to learn because suddenly learning is not a chore but a natural part of life that brings joy as well as knowledge.
So our days are spent listening to Bach as we dance around the living room laughing together, acting out Shakespeare scenes with puppets we made, cooking foods, making crafts and reading "living books" about the people who lived during World War II. We play Go Fish with cards made by cutting up a couple of periodic tables and we make up stories about the children in Mary Cassatt's paintings, we launch rockets, make models of Mount Olympus and make it explode a hundred times. We watch birds, build pyramids and excavate chicken bones in the backyard. We spend hours in the supermarket estimating the weight of produce, reading labels, converting oz. to lbs, rounding up, finding percentages, subtracting coupons. . . We cried with Gilgamesh as he lost his best friend, we survived the Oregon Trail, we celebrated Hawaii becoming a state with a Grand Luau, and right now we are studying the stars wrapped up in blankets and trying to find constellations. This is but a glimpse of how we live in the spirit of learning I hope you are inspired to join me, as a parent, a teacher or a homeschooler to live, love and learn together with your children.
