Learning naturally re-visited

I have written before about our very personal approach to education and some of you might have seen our family featured in the Green Parent magazine. We adopted a philosophy of education that runs quite close to the Steiner model. We believe that children find their own ways of learning and that school, by definition, can not meet the needs of all. We believe that the process should be organic and develop from creative and challenging questions.

With our children much of our learning develops from carefully constructed questions. As a family, or individually, we seek the answers to the questions. Where there are no definitive answers we just enjoy the search!

With this strategy we allow the children's learning to occur in natural rather than forced states. We do not have a set curriculum but we do study in enormous breadth and depth. Three of my children have tried school and all left at different stages. Molly (now 14) was the last to leave at 12. Secondary school was not what it promised to be. At induction they were promised exciting learning journeys where independent study and exploration would be encouraged. The reality was worksheets and more worksheets and tests and more tests. Disillusioned, she took the opportunity to join her younger brothers in home school and has never looked back. Molly wants to work with animals so she spends a great deal of time researching the animals that live on our planet. Her knowledge of geography, biology and history has taken huge leaps forward.

All the children have their own learning passions and they are all different. This blog will reveal these over the next few weeks and months.

And this morning's session? We have been studying ice caps and climate change. We record the footage from web cams place near the south pole on a daily basis and we were putting our evidence together this morning in pairs. When a 6 year old can tell you, in some detail, why the ice is melting and the possible consequences of that you just know that you are doing something right! When an 11 year old tells you that he wants to live in a carbon neutral state when he is older you know that this planet might stand a chance! Lovely mornings work analysing data and interpretating the latest evidence from our research and all of the children 'jumping' with so much to say! Loved it!

More soon (promise)!

Fiona