Holocaust Memorial Day

Since Sunday was Holocaust Memorial Day, I took out a book I got at the homeschool conference last year. It's called "Tell Them We Remember," and it's very sad, because it focuses on the children and teens who were affected by Hitler's regime.

We only read a small part of it. The kids are feeling a bit of emotional overload, after the discussion of the Virginia shootings yesterday. When I mentioned that conversation again, my five-year-old plugged his ears and looked very upset.

The world is a rotten place. Thankfully, our home is a happy one. Said five-year-old is now out soldiering around the (perfectly safe, murderer-free) yard with the water gun he got for his birthday, patrolling for cats in the flowerbeds. That's the only shooting spree we have to worry about around here. Thank God for our life.

The Family Tradition of Dialogue

Although no one wanted to do much formal bookwork today, what with the first warm days of spring upon us, we did have some very interesting spontaneous discussions.

For one, a minor rebellion from the peanut gallery involved the question, "Why do I have to learn anything?" So we talked about the fact that society does not owe us a living, and moreover, that in this culture, people are conditioned not to give a care for the most part. We talked about the long-term consequences of a lack of education - social marginalization, employment problems, basic life management problems. All in smaller words, of course.

Somehow, this transitioned into a discussion of sexuality. (Yes, although the kids are age 11 and under, this gets airtime in our home, but at an age-appropriate level.) The topic was feelings of attraction and the long-term effects of relationship breakdowns. Much as we are a Christian family, the kids know I didn't live a Christianized lifestyle as a teen and young adult. When we talk about the pitfalls of premarital sex, we talk about the real-time heartache, and possible physical side effects such as disease.

Then, at supper, Dave brought up the Virginia shootings. I took out a magazine from Focus on the Family which featured an article called "Killology." I read most of it, and we learned some new vocabulary words: Desensitization. Operative conditioning. Psychology. Frontal lobes. First-person shooter.

The discussion featured several side trails, including the random attack on a school attended by relatives. We talked about conscience, about why kids would "act out" violent games - "Anytime you guys watch a movie, you go get your toys and play the movie, don't you? You play Cars with your Hot Wheels, and the Barbie movies with your Barbies."

Banana Brain, who is a very intuitive 9-year-old, asked, "If they turn their conscience off, then can they ever get it back?" The article answered this question as well. Since the article also mentioned the link between understanding consequences, completing schoolwork, and taking on adult responsibilities, we ended up revisiting our earlier discussion on the importance of a good education.

Discussion has been the primary source of embedded family learning for three generations in my family. I can recall being in the tent out at my grandparents' cottage, lying awake and listening to them discussing and preparing my older cousins for life away from home. The family shares its wisdom, experience and skills this way.

Also in the family tradition, I try to ask non-leading questions that provoke critical thinking by challenging their assumptions. They're now starting to get ahead of the game, spontaneously bringing concepts together to form networked ideas. We're slowly beginning to move into a stage where we can generate ideas and use each other as sounding boards to test those ideas.

It's a very natural, connected way of learning, and is a core facet of life-led learning. Learning by doing and by discussing go hand-in-hand as we mentor our children by daily experience. The main thing is that it's dialogue, not monologue. As the kids participate, they process and take ownership of ideas. In spite of the issue of audial learning retention being "least efficient" on average, this kind of discussion actually roots more deeply than many other, more formal types of learning, because of the way it actively engages the kids' minds.

Hated Subjects Need Snuggles

My 11-year-old has yet to be persuaded that a regular study of math is useful. We require him to do it anyway. In fact, since he's not willing to motivate himself, he's getting moved into a workbook-based program (as soon as it arrives in the mail).

He's also getting Language Arts and Science this way for the coming year. We're going to use this as a way to explain the structure and framework of textbook-based learning. One of my five key goals is that the kids know how to gather information from any format, so that they can choose any type of post-secondary training or career they wish.

In the meantime, I sat down with them yesterday, and we read and snuggled. It was quite funny to me, because they weren't there to learn. They listened to the story about ancient calendars, complete with multiplication, division, addition and subtraction equations embedded. It talked about the various ancient calendars and the problems with synchronizing them to the earth's actual orbit of the sun.

They weren't hugely engaged by the end of it, because two of the four are barely school-age. But I had four little leeches pressed into my sides, hanging over my shoulder, etc. They were there for the snuggles.

At the end of the chapter, we looked over the question page. I said, "Let's play a guessing game," and we did some of the questions orally.





Then we moved on to Joanne Stanbridge's Famous Dead Canadians, and a silly version of Samuel de Champlain's biography called "Samuel de Champlain's Underwear." The high point of the story is when he takes on the LaChine rapids to prove himself to the native people. They go buck nekkid. Sam insists on retaining his undershirt. The story has him sailing through the whitewater, scared to death, with his undershirt flapping in the breeze.

At the close of the story is a point-form timeline of the events of Champlain's life, for those who need slightly more serious factology. The story's purpose is to get kids interested in Champlain and history in the first place.

They're interested.

Impromptu Explorations

The kids got their hands on a very large book the other day. It's one I've had since I was a kid, and I picked up my basic facts of world history and a lot of other subjects from it. Spazzerific (age nearly-11) commandeered the situation, reading trivia about the 1066 invasion of England to the other three kids.

Then he required Banana Brain (age 9) to be silent while he quizzed the Littles (ages 7 and nearly 5) on a variety of insects, animals and birds from around the world, asking them to visually identify the pictures.

Totally not planned. Nobody had a hot clue they were fulfilling skills and knowledge on a par with and beyond their grade level. They just found a cool book and shared it with each other. In the meantime, I sat quietly in the corner and observed the following skills:

Narration
Reading
Vocabulary building
Teaching learned info to others
Leadership skills
Team-building effort
Taking turns
Team self-organization
Team sharing of needed info and skills
Acquisition of entirely new information

This took a total of maybe half an hour. They covered Social Studies and Biology topics. All I did was correct a pronunciation or two as they read new words.