Background/“Approach”/The Why

I home educated Daniel many years ago and we struggled to find our way. It led to him asking to return to school, which was okay but I still wish I’d done it better. Wading in this time I’ve sat with our “why” continually, contemplating what features of non-school learning will best meet the needs of our “why.”

The “why” for all three of the kiddos I am supporting to learn these next two years comes down to Habits of Mind.

As I look at each of these kids’ profiles as learners the need to awaken curiosity stands out as their most essential immediate need to become engaged learners and citizens. There’s much more but this is first and greatest.

An approach designed to support this waking up calls for maximum initiative from the kids, a lot of trust building cognitive and emotional safety), and freedom. Having read extensively over the last 6 months I found that Montessori and Charlotte Mason approaches both make a lot of sense to me but for now, the best choice is to use rigorous, interest-led learning with heavy doses of strewing and other forms of content exposure.

There is another term that is often used interchangeably with interest-led learning, and that term is unschooling. My approach is similar to unschooling. If you ask the kids they probably don't see much difference between my approach and unschooling. My hope is that they experience our learning time to be one in which nearly any interest they have is taken seriously and worthy of pursuit; but also I intend to find ways to elicit their sincere interest in areas that are really important to being a well rounded citizen with good skills for success. 

So much more I can say about this but I need to be brief today. Just wanted to get this put down early in documenting our process.