Home School Tips
We'll increase the steps to take to ensure renaissance learning here in part II of II. In the first segment of this installment we looked into peer to peer and global socialization needs of the home schooled child and some ways we might ensure we get this socialization. Then we looked at the concept of learning from different environments, getting out of the house and exposing the home school student to experiential learning in the world we live.
A parent/educator must know they are not the end all for their child's education. It's okay to recognize one's limits, in fact it's healthy and offers a great learning opportunity to a child: seeing a parent know their limitation and how they respond to it. For example, much is to be learned from team sports, not all are equipped to be a football coach, etc. In this case, the parent looks outside his/her self and enrolls the child into a sport league. Perhaps it's camping or tying knots or painting or building or working on cars, etc., there are many opportunities to expose a child to the world at hand, to provide learning opportunities by recognizing ones own limits and responding positively to the limits.
Even still, the parent/educator may be able to teach the fundamentals or the concept of a subject but may choose to enroll the child in a class, club or camp simply to change up the learning environment, the voice of authority. This has been alluded to a couple of times in the article. This is not an indictment of the parent/educator it's simple human nature: the child is going to tune you out. Heck, most parents who aren't teaching their children find the children will tune them out. Add to the normal job of parent, teacher, and your opportunity to be tuned out increases exponentially. So, be aware, look for safe opportunities to switch it up.
Once limitations are owned new doors can be opened to provide the home school child an unlimited education of life and learning.
Often home school kids aren't physical enough. In school there is physical education, recess and or team sports. All of these offer physicality an important element in learning. Studies have shown tying physicality to a lesson or during a lesson increases memory retention. Too, there is the physical awareness of ones own body: balance, coordination, spacial awareness, muscle tone, etc. This isn't to say all kids should be athletes but being physical, being in motion is positive for health and vitality, learning and recollection.
The home school parent can find many venues to offset the lack of a PE class: park and recreation departments, community service districts, public pools, gyms and independent sports clubs are all excellent avenues for physicality and interaction. There are also more solo type activities or programs you can look toward: cycling, rope climbing, hiking, walking, jumping rope etc. Earlier it was noted the adventure camp offers more than just socialization, this is another element a camp can touch on, physical challenges and endeavors. Opportunities for physical/body education are many.
Spinning off of physicality is the need for self-awareness and self-discovery. There is a powerful self-empowering aspect to challenging oneself and achieving a goal. This empowerment can come from engaging a new situation and leaving the situation feeling good about one's self, how they handled the situation. Even more comes from taking on a challenge that has an initial response of, 'no way, I couldn't do that', and then doing it. Students, and adults for this matter, feel better about themselves when they accomplish something. This is why people swim the English Channel, run marathons, enter spelling bees etc. These experiences make us better people, make us stronger and give us a stronger sense of self and conviction to stand by our beliefs.
An interesting thing happens when a child is thrust into an entirely new environment stripped of old safety nets and patterns of behavior. In the adventure camp setting, with new friends (other campers) and new teachers (counselor/guides) encouraging and dictating what is to be done, a child will go farther, extending themselves beyond what they previously thought they could. They won't turn for help or ask to quit the task nearly as quickly as they would if a parent was near. There are established patterns of nurturing and needing between parent and child and if the parent is there, the moment the "I can't do this" flag comes into the child's mind, they'll turn and ask for help. The parent, conditioned to rescue and protect instinctively reaches out. In the new environment this doesn't occur. Everyone involved is encouraging the completion of the task. Of course, it is completed and the personal awareness, confidence and new self-definition of who one is is amazingly powerful.
For concentrated and skilled doses of: socialization, peer-socialization, experiential education, new voices of teaching, physicality and self-discovery look to an adventure camp. An outdoor setting is suggested simply because learning increases out of doors and these camps are most likely going to have a focus on physical/engaged learning with ropes or hikes, whitewater rafting, camping etc. This type of summer camp provides a whole host of learning experiences. The learning grows exponentially if one chooses a residential style camp wherein the kids stay the night. The concentrated experiences lend themselves to tremendous growth and prove extremely healthy to the home schooler who not only finds new confidence but friends to keep in touch throughout the year.
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