Nothing lazy about natural learning
by Beverley Paine, Sep 2009
I've heard some people say that natural learning - aka unschooling - is a lazy way to approach home education.
There is nNothing lazy about natural learning, that's for sure! For our family it means a very busy, productive lifestyle full of exploration, investigation, experimentation - full on being and doing.
An example of why I love how we home educated our kids:
Robin and I were installing a wardrobe at my parent's house yesterday and had left our two sons (age 22 and 26, both unschool grads) at home to install our new and rather complex pull-out pantry. We arrived home to find little progress. No problems there, but Roger was excited about what they'd been doing instead...
He'd hunted down a blow fly and dropped it into our inside fish pond. The fish were interested and started nibbling it, but a spider dropped down from a web above the pond and started 'fishing'. They watched and took photos as she reinforced her web, attached lines to the fly, poisoned it, and began the process of hauling it up out of the water. They had questions like 'would she be able to break the surface tension of the water?' They described to us in the detail how the spider had made the web stronger, how she drew out the web and wrapped it around the fly. The spider was a fraction the size of the fly. We think she is some kind of widow spider, related to the redback. I reckon she could be a juvenile redback...
This kind of observation and learning about what is happening around us goes on all the time at our place. I'm rapt that natural learning and unschooling didn't stop when my kids turned 18. My kids are appreciative that they could do this kind of thing all day instead of book work. They make time to learn about the world, are observant and reflective. They know that they are always learning. They want to learn. How cool is that?
A lot of people would have simply seen two fellas shirking work, larking about instead of completing the job they were supposed to do, being lazy...
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Beverley Paine with her children, and their home educated children, relaxing at home.
Together with the support of my family, my aim is to help parents educate their children in stress-free, nurturing environments. In addition to building and maintaing this website, I continue to create and manage local and national home educating networks, help to organise conferences and camps, as well as write for, edit and produce newsletters, resource directories and magazines. I am an active supporter of national, state, regional and local home education groups.
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Welcome to the World of Home Education
and Learning without School!
We began educating our children in 1985, when our eldest was five. In truth, we had helped them learn what they need to learn since they were born. I am a passionate advocate of allowing children to learn unhindered by unnecessary stress and competition, meeting developmental needs in ways that suit their individual learning styles and preferences. Ours was a homeschooling, unschooling and natural learning family! There are hundreds of articles on this site to help you build confidence as a home educating family. We hope that your home educating adventure is as satisfying as ours was! Beverley Paine
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