I was just browsing through a newsletter from one of the homeschooling companies that offer a complete packaged curriculum (fourth grade in a box) and optional support services. There were a few good ideas, but one tip came across completely wrong.
The suggestion was to establish a specific area to use for homeschooling, and to use it only for homeschooling if possible. Well, that’s fine if you have the space and it works well for your family.
What set me off was the reason they offered: having a space designated only for homeschooling helps students see it as “a place for learning.”
Well, what’s wrong with that, you may wonder. A place for learning sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it?
Here’s my beef: if there’s a specially-designated place for learning, students will associate it with learning, sure, but they will also likely learn that learning happens only in that room.
It’s almost like a reversible mathematical formula: If we use this room only for learning, learning happens only in this room.
Now, to be fair, I doubt that was their intention. But to me it’s the great hazard of the designated schoolroom in the home.
I don’t want my children to think that only our formal instructional times are learning.
I want them to know that all of life is learning.
They learn when they sit at a desk or table to do a math lesson or penmanship exercise. They learn when we snuggle on the couch—or gather under a shade tree in the front yard—to read aloud from The Swiss Family Robinson.
They learn when they use their Playmobil people to re-enact a history lesson. They learn when they crowd around the dining room table to make electricity with a flashlight bulb, aluminum foil, and a battery.
They learn when they help me make bread (why does the dough get higher, Mama?). They learn when we comparison-shop at the grocery store. They learn when we find a dead bird on the deck, look it up in a field guide, and sketch it (from a safe distance, of course).
My oldest two learn about business when we watch The Apprentice together and try to predict during commercials which team will win and why, and who will be fired and why. They learn when they’re playing outside or perched on top of the monkey bars with a book. (Yep—that’s my 10yo’s favorite place to read!)
They even learn in the emergency room! You can read that story here:
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/Entrepreneurs/255/
Where do your children learn?
Mary Jo Tate
i agree.. sounds like that would teach your kids that learning can’t take place anywhere else.
Some fav places at our place….
for ‘seat work’, they like to take turns (on a weekly basis) using the teacher desk (my personal little computer/work station). They also love to find a compfy floor to lay on. which is often the heated kitchen floor in the winter. Sometimes they will work outside. My 10 yr old sat on the tractor/lawn mower for his language arts recently and his brother lay on the trampoline to read. My perfectionist 9 yr old likes to sit a desk.
then the car trips and feild trips and projects…….
I really enjoy your blog, Mary Jo. After reading about your ER experience, I’m looking forward to the other entries on your Entrepreneurs blog as well.
We learn when we sit at home and when we walk along the road, when we lie down and when we get up. Neat idea of God’s, that. 😉
I have had well-meaning friends and relatives tell me that I should have a room for homeschooling, as well as a specified time-period. LOL That’s all I can say, “LOL”
I mean, they memorized most of the books of the Old Testament WHILE scootering, rules of grammar WHILE on the swing, and lots of other things while doing something else they love to do. It’s my strategy to make some of the duller stuff not so dull and so far it’s worked like a charm. Why try to fix something if it’s not broken? I love the fact we can get comfy on the couch and learn together. Wouldn’t trade it for all the cold, hard, sterile desks in the world LOL
Hey Mary Jo – I am having a “tizzy” of a week with my computer…..I couldn’t log on so am having to post as “anonymous”……Hmmmm….maybe I need to be anon….
anyway – back to my comment:
LIFE does not occur in One Room…..ooh, brainstorm……”consequences of a one roomed life” ~ we (our society) have been so brain washed into the industrialized form of what we deem “education” – we want to pump out educated children like automobiles are produced on an assembly line……….We congratulate this Class of 2006 – I present to you “The Ford/GM/VW/”yadda” model T4000 graduate”….folks, it was a good year for auto-assembly-line-education production……….(wonder if rebates are offered or are there any “lemon laws” for students who failed to learn to read? – I am, of course, speaking w/regard to government schools)
Our children are not assembly-line products. They are individuals that need to explore – outside the room – touch, feel, taste, smell – run through it, on it, over it and then question it again and again. I still have to do all that ~ so where does this put my children in the grand scheme of learning? oh yeah – in a room…..
Blessings to you, Mary Jo~
Harriette Jacobs
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/Harriette
I know it was just “a little suggestion”………but with big underlying meanings.
Mary Jo, I started reading the first couple paragraphs and thought, “well duh, the world is a place for learning” and then saw where you said the same thing! Being “electric” homeschoolers ourselves (oops, I mean “ecliptic” homeschoolers), we see this as one of the many problems with the “curriculum in a box” approach, or “the home classroom” as we call it (we always think of one prime example, and without naming names, their initials are ABEKA!!!)
I totally agree with you. I think that the world is our classroom, and we don’t have a designated area to learn. We love the comfort of the main bed for reading as we get to loll about, we do most of the writing at the kitchen table, and much of the discussion goes on in the lounge. Of course, learning doesn’t stop just because you leave an area 🙂
I have really enjoyed reading your postings, and have put you on my list of ‘friends’, I hope that is okay.
As usual, I’m reading your blog and nodding my head. I, for one, am glad that learning can happen anywhere, because I’d hate to have to spend my life in one room.
And I agree that The Apprentice is just FULL of great lessons!
AMEN!!! I completely agree!! My boys use our entire house inside and out to learn. We don’t DO school everyday but we learn EVERYDAY!!
Oooh…I completely disagree with that learning only in a designated spot…don’t know all your worldview on this, but that is close to a trap a lot of people fall into. Do we really pull our children out of public school merely to school them at home? If they are going to sit at a desk and stare a chalkboard while the teacher talks, may as well save yourself the time and the headache and send them off to school. If you want to give them a true education, take full advantage of the medium your home and schedule can offer. We learn at a desk in front of a “white board” a little…we call it desk time, and do a bit of copywork there. But mostly we learn while baking, sewing, and cleaning. We learn while snuggling up with a good book. We learn at the zoo, the children’s museum and in the ditch off the gravel road. We even learn in Wal-mart.
Good post! Although we do usually have a set area for our more structured stuff–at one point when we had the space to spare we even had a schoolroom, learning is LIFESTYLE, and happens everywhere. That’s a great advantage of homeschooling!
Love your blog in general. Of course, with the name Bibliophile, I’m BOUND to love it!
We have a designated area for keeping books and supplies, but “learning” takes place everywhere. Emily and I watched one of those extreme home makeover shows the other night that featured a homeschooling family receiving a “school house”, complete withi desks, blackboard, etc. I told my daughter that within a week they would probably be bringing their books inside and be scattered all over the house! Blessings ~ Patricia
One place for learning doesn’t sound like Deu. 6:7–walking and walking and lying down and LIVING—does it? ~warm smile~
Here’s to books and learning and praising being EVERYWHERE!!
Warmly,
Ann V. HolyExperience/Child’s Geography