A Very Nearly Tea

Last fall, we attended a wonderful program at the Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center where the children got to spend a day on the prairie with entymologists, herpetologists, and a woman from Raptor Recovery. By the end of the day, the children were enchanted, I was exhausted and I knew what I wanted to purchase for the spring: butterfly nets, aquatic nets and a few field guides.

Children are born with an innate desire to explore the world around them, to know what everything is and to figure out how it works. I see it in my five month old as her tentative hand reaches for my face while I hold her; I see it in my two year old as she unrolls a roll of toilet paper; I see it in my four year old as he watches his roly polies; and I see it in my eight year old as she draws in her journal. I want to give them the tools to explore their world, on their own and unhindered. I imagined my children exploring the field behind our house and assisting them in identifying the many insects they collected. I looked forward to sweeping the aquatic net through the water in the pond to collect tadpoles, dragonfly nymphs and whatever else we could dredge up.

But nice nets are expensive. I was glad to have a few months before making the purchase. Still, the price tag kept drawing me to other, more affordable nets. Nets made for children. Like those "cute" butterfly nets above. At $4.95 a piece, I could get one for each of the children and not worry too much if one got damaged. Never mind the fact that most things made for kids are not actually constructed to withstand the kind of abuse children put things through, the nets just looked like toys. I imagined university professors taking their students out in the field with a batch of these nets and wondered what kind of work would get done. Was that what I wanted to inspire in my children?

So I opted for the professional nets with the telescoping handles. One for insects, one for aquatic invertebrates and one for aquatic vertebrates. When they arrived, we established rules for use and practiced. We found a special storage place for them. And when the children use them, there is a seriousness and purposefulness about their explorations of the backyard that really was never there before. They collect, identify and add notes to their journals. Even the two year old does her best to emulate her older siblings even though she is not quite strong enough to sweep the net. They look like scientists collecting specimens rather than children pretending.

At one time, children were raised to become adults. They had very little in the way of toys, but instead were introduced to the work of the home and farm as soon as they were capable. Not everything about that life was good, and I have no desire to go back to such a time. But sometimes I notice how much my children want to be like their parents. They do not want toy dishes to play with, they want to bake things in my kitchen. They do not want cartoon underwear, they want "real" underwear like their parents wear. Am I holding them back when I get them toys to play pretend rather than tools to do real work?

Other posts in this series:

Horizontal learning vs. vertical learning
The treasure of experience
Sharing the wonder
Unanswered questions
The grace of a hippo


homeschooling, education

During our yearly trip to the Omaha Zoo, I stood captivated at the rain forest floor exhibit. The typically sedentary pygmy hippo was walking along the river bed and as we watched, an adjective came to mind I do not normally associate with the hippopotamus: graceful. It literally danced along the rocks at the bottom of his tank, as light footed as a ballerina. Smooth, fluid and beautiful, it was in its element, doing what it was created to do.

The characteristics which make the hippo perfectly adapted to its underwater home have made it awkward and slow on land. Prior to my first encounter with the pygmy hippo at the zoo, however, I had only seen hippos lazily floating at the surface or lumbering on shore. Since only their weaknesses were visible to me, I have always characterized them by these same weaknesses.

Since I tend to view my children's weaknesses as that which will hold them back in life, I tend to focus on them. I look at my daughter's school work and know she is weak in spelling and strong in math. I could simply say, "Well, you just are not that good at spelling so we don't need to waste more time on it. Spell check will help." But I do not think we should back away from challenges so easily. She can learn to spell, it may just be more difficult for her than it was for me. I could also overwhelm her with practice, taking time from the studies she enjoys to make sure that she meets some sort of arbitrary standard. And I think I am guilty of that a little. At least at times. I do not want her to have weaknesses.

But that is because I focus on them too much. She is weak in spelling, Why? Given the fact that she still flips her letters around, I am beginning to suspect the possibility of a learning disability, but there is more to it than that. She has a strong bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. She excels in karate, loves art, science, math...essentially everything in which she is doing something. She has strengths which help her to excel in many things.

To support her education, I need to more effectively recognize the relationship between her strengths and weaknesses. I also need to give her full opportunity to explore her strengths and challenge herself. As she tests her own limits and learns more about herself and how she thinks and learns, she may begin to be able to use her strengths to overcome some of her weaknesses. Some things she will glide through, but with practice she will also be able to move serviceably through those things which are more challenging. And she will have the grace of a hippo.

For more posts in this series, check out the reflective learning category.

Photo credits: The video is not by me, but it is of the pygmy hippo at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha. The photo is from the Smithsonian National Zoological Park.

A couple of weeks ago, I paused while drawing the curtains in my daughter's room and looked outside. The evening was just beginning to give way to night, and the fireflies were beginning to emerge. I thought about the hours I used to spend catching these little marvels, the countless jars filled with them and the inevitability that they would be dead in the morning. I thought about a girl I met on a picnic who showed me that disembodied firefly abdomens continue to glow. I stood somewhat horrified as she proceeded to press one onto my finger as a ring and then made a necklace for herself.

Then I thought, "What kind of a mother am I?" Firefly season is so short, yet my children had not yet been out to enjoy it. Dusk falls right at bedtime and for some reason, our relaxed schedule had become suddenly rigid as 9PM loomed. "Sorry, but it is bed time," I answered as my children begged to go out. And there I stood. What kind of mother can't find fifteen minutes to let the children go out and catch fireflies?

So I turned them loose. They bombarded me with questions, and I did my best to explain the mating rituals of fireflies and how they produced that eerie light. I opted not to tell them about how to make rings and necklaces.

"What do they eat, mommy?"

I didn't know. I had actually wondered that all my life, but never thought about it when in a place to find out.

"I don't know. Let's go see," I answered.

So we went in and asked Google what fireflies eat. "No one really knows," came the answer. No one really knows? We know the composition of distant stars, the nesting behaviors of extinct dinosaurs and how to turn electric pulses into information, but not what the fireflies in my backyard eat? While I pondered, the children shrugged and went back to looking at their fireflies. But several times since, my daughter has come to me with theories. They seem to like crawling around on the mulberries she put in their jar. Maybe they eat mulberries. Her mind is working, seeking an answer. She has been observing them closely, forming her hypotheses and testing them on me. What do I think?

I think I'm glad that Google didn't return a definitive answer. If we found out right then that they eat pollen, or nectar or other insects (or nothing at all), the question would have been over and the wonder extinguished. It would have added more to our growing bank of superficial, horizontal knowledge. There is certainly nothing wrong with facts and information, but when it is spoon-fed by a teacher, parent or even the ease of the internet it can take something away, as well.

I think I'm going to be more careful about answering my children's questions in future. I think there may be benefit in letting them wrestle with their questions a little longer before providing an answer or the means of discovering that answer.

Part I: The Treasure of Experience
Part II: Sharing the Wonder

photo credit: firefly, question mark

homeschooling, education, reflective learning

Picking up from where I left off last week with Koysdar's poem, To Know a Thing, I have been reflecting on how to encourage my children to "look closer." I found it interesting that in a quick google search, I found numerous sites discussing the benefit of observing children in education, including some research papers. I am yet to find anything about encouraging your children to observe. It is time-consuming, and seemingly unproductive. After all, how much more quickly can a teacher transmit information to a child through lecture than through even the best crafted opportunities in discovery learning? But as Professor Seymour Papert (pioneer of artificial intelligence) once said,

You can't teach people everything they need to know. The best you can do is position them where they can find what they need to know when they need to know it. Trainingzon.co.uk

In other words, you give them the tools they need. And observation is perhaps the foundation of learning. More than simply seeing, observing requires attention and perception. It is noticing fine details and subtle differences. It is looking closely. When you see a fern, do you see a fern, or do you see "tiny worlds framed in dew drops?" Observation is the beginning of wonder. The closer we look, the more we see and the more we find there is to know.

For a simple exercise, lay under a tree and watch the breeze rustle the leaves. All of my children loved this as infants. It is nature's mobile, something I never appreciated until I joined my then six month old son lying under a tree. The light dances and the undersides of the leaves appear to change shape and color in a fluid gambol.

To observe takes practice. It takes time. And it takes the patience to look at the same things in in new ways. The Impressionist Claude Monet practiced capturing moments and the impressions of those moments. As the first "painter of light," he explained,

I know that to paint the sea really well, you need to look at it every hour of every day in the same place so that you can understand its way in that particular spot and that is why I am working on the same motifs over and over again, four or six times even.

In many ways, children seem natural observers. A simple walk through the neighborhood used to take an hour because my son would stop every few feet and lie down to watch an ant. He studied it, touched it, felt its tickle. He placed obstacles in its path to see what it would do. It was in tearing him away from these observations that I began to wonder how much we train our children for a short attention span.

From this, I've discovered a few simple ways to encourage my children to observe the world around them, making discoveries and collecting experiences:

1. Get out of the way and give them time to explore.
2. Study an object myself.
   
3. Take things apart. Study their parts and the whole.
4. Draw things. It is amazing how often in a sketch you tend to draw what you "know" is there rather than what is actually there.
5. Ask questions. Draw attention to shape, color, texture, scent and even taste.
6. Play with nature. Looking at the plants around our home as potential play things has changed the way my children and I look at plants.

To know a thing, we must first observe it. Patiently, frequently, thoughtfully.

What do you do to encourage observation in your children?

homeschooling, reflective learning, observation, discovery learning

My reflections on homeschooling this summer are focusing on ways to building a reflective homeschool and promote vertical learning. My biggest criticism of public education is that it tends to barely skim along the surface of a subject area, remaining superficial and relatively meaningless. Inspired somewhat by Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv comes my first reflection:


It seems to me, we have packaged up and bubble wrapped the world. I remember hours spent outdoors, playing in a wooded area near our house, splashing in an old creek and playing with the tubifex worms which lived there. Since these can be a sign of extreme pollution, it probably wasn't a creek we should have been playing in. There are real concerns with turning a child out until the street lights come on, but there is a cost to that measure of safety as well.

I tend to plan experiences for my children which meet my educational objectives and do not always appreciate the time they spend on their own. Last week, we learned about emus. We read about them, listened to a song about them and watched some video of them. We've watched the emu at the zoo pace along the fence, occasionally bellowing out her call that is more felt than heard. We know about emus.

We don't know as much about fox kits, however. We haven't studied them, haven't seen too many shows about them and there aren't any at the zoo. But last summer, we watched three kits emerge from a den along the side of the road. They were small, a bit awkward and curious. Having lived all their lives along the side of the road, they were not the least bit concerned about the traffic. The blaring of the train horn did not phase them. Rolling down my window did.

It was only a moment. But my children were captivated. All of their senses were activated, including that one sense that cannot be activated according to plan: the sense of wonder. Every time we drove by, they would strain against their seat belts to try to catch another glimpse. We wondered where the parents were, and whether they ever ambled through our yard. We don't know much about fox kits, but we know them. They grew up near us.

There is a subtle but important difference between knowing about a thing and knowing a thing. Knowing about it relies on facts and perhaps some objective analysis. It happens in the brain and is distant and removed from the self.

To know a thing, on the other hand, invokes the senses. Sight, sound, smell, taste and touch work together to introduce you to the subject. It is deeply personal.

I cannot create such experiences in my children. They are about as easy to plan as those "teachable moments." But I can learn to recognize their importance and place appropriate value on them when they occur. While a good homeschool mom might have taken more advantage of our experience with the fox kits to study more about them, I also know that there was value in that moment that cannot be replaced by an encyclopedia of information about foxes.

And I look forward to seeing their impressions of Cinnabar when we get to reading that later in the year.

While many of us are taking advantage of the summer to plan for next year, I thought I'd share a quote which spoke to me recently. In his essay on New Mexico, D. H. Lawrence captures perfectly the essence of my thoughts on what education should provide and what the combination of public school and media exposure have created in us.

Superficially, the world has become small and known. Poor little globe of earth, the tourists trot round you as easily as they trot round the Bois or round Central Park. There is no mystery left, we've been there, we've seen it, we know all about it. We've done the globe, and the globe is done.

This is quite true, superficially. On the superficies, horizontally, we've been everywhere and done everything, we know all about it. Yet the more we know, superficially, the less we penetrate, vertically. It's all very well skimming across the surface of the ocean, and saying you know all about the sea. There still remain the terrifying underdeeps, of which we have utterly no experience.

The same is true of land travel. We skim along, we get there, we see it all, we've done it all. And as a rule, we never once go through the curious film which railroads, ships, motorcars, and hotels over the surface of the whole earth. Peking is just the same as New York, with a few different things to look at; rather more Chinese about, etc. Poor creatures that we are, we crave for experience, yet we are like flies that crawl on the pure and transparent mucous-paper in which the world like a bon-bon is wrapped so carefully that we can never get at it, though we see it there all the time as we move about it, apparently in contact, yet actually as far removed as if it were the moon.

As a matter of fact, our great-grandfathers, who never went anywhere, in actuality had more experience of the world than we have, who have seen everything. When they listened to a lecture with lantern-slides, they really held their breath before the unknown, as they sat in the village school-room. We, bowling along in a rickshaw in Ceylon, say to ourselves: "It's very much what you'd expect." We really know it all.

We are mistaken. The know-it-all state of mind is just the result of being outside the mucous-paper wrapping of civilization. Underneath is everything we don't know an are afraid of knowing. (The Spell of New Mexico, ed. by Tony Hillerman, p. 29-30)

This summer is dedicated to trying to figure out how to remove that paper wrapping around the world so that my children may experience it deeply, vertically, developing roots that will last a lifetime.

homeschooling, education, learning