The Art of Learning

Boy likes art. Boy HATES anything that looks remotely like traditional school. Eager to expand his creative mind and burgeoning artistic talents we spend ample time on art projects and weaving unschooling principles into suggestions, presentation and home school work time. To achieve this I have had to unschool myself and treat Boy as my academic equal – as though he is one of my university students.

This morning he begged for art. He nominated a yearning for drawing mountains. Ummm, this did not fit my plan for reading and comprehension. How could I weave my requirements for overall learning with his need for creativity?

“No worries darling. I just have to put this book away. Actually, it’s got some great photos of mountains and volcanoes if you want to have a peek for inspiration.”

I was born and raised in Papua New Guinea: a mountainous place of constant earth tremors and erupting volcanoes. A friend, who also spent most of her early adult life in Papua New Guinea, gave us a coffee table book on Papua New Guinea as a present for our recent wedding. When handing it over she said it was to help new husband understand where and how I was raised and why I am the person I am.

I told Boy the story she told as she handed the book across at my hen’s party:

I met Megan when our biggest children were very little. The kids were attending a group and every week, Megan was huddled in a corner poring over books and writing notes. When curiosity got the better of me, I approached Megan and began a conversation. Megan said she was studying for another degree. After only 10 minutes of talking with her, I asked if she was a “territorial brat” (a white child raised in one of the Australian territories, Papua New Guinea). Territorial brats grew up thinking they owned the world, could do anything and allowed nothing to stop their thirst for knowledge, practical learning and artful navigation of life. Megan fitted the mould to a T. It is because of Megan that I decided to go to university. Now that I’ve gone back to do a Masters degree, would you believe that: that little territorial brat has become my lecturer!

Interested in my early life that turned me into a monster (his words, not mine!), Boy began flicking through the book and asking me questions. Enthralled by my animated stories of jumping out of bed in the middle of the night to stand under doorframes until the quake was over, Boy asked a myriad of questions around lava, poisonous gas and the weight of volcanic ash. While story telling, Boy began drawing a volcano (pictured with the inspirational book).

Even more interested in how to become a “territorial brat”, Boy questioned how he also could rule the world.

“It’s all in the way you ask the questions and respond to people. Listening, responding and standing up for yourself are skills. You can them in a helpful way or a not so helpful way. That book club surprise you got last month is all about how to rule the world.”

Eager to capitalize upon the teachable moment, I hoped that I could find the book in Boy’s incredibly disorganized room. Bingo. It was right beside his bed.

“I read that. It’s boring,” Boy scoffed.

“Really? You must have just read the boring bits because check this out: "This book is all about how to deal with other people and get what you want from them, whether it’s a new bike, a fair deal, or a little respect” and “What to say to Grown-ups who treat you like a kid.”

After reading the first chapter together, Boy changed his mind about the book being boring. He completed the pop quiz that resulted in an analysis of:

“You have an okay idea of how to handle yourself, but you don’t always make the best decisions about what to say or do. Don’t worry – that’s where this book comes in! Read on to learn how to get through all kinds of sticky situations.”

How Aspergers does that analysis sound?! As I type, Boy is at the kitchen table drawing a picture of how to get me to stop treating him like a little kid. What an artful way of learning.

To learn more about the art of storytelling, have a look at this article I wrote. Here is another one on being self-assertive. Both are useful ideas to teach to children and to use as home school lessons.

Finally, and just because I cannot fit them into anything else, here are some quilt squares I made for our Wedding quilt. I had terrific fun telling Boy my story behind the quilt square symbols and listening to him embellish the stories beyond belief.

Home Schooling Curriculum

Home Schooling Curriculum is again confusing me. Writing up our registration application for home school is doing my head in!

The Home Schooling Curriculum we have chosen to follow is Natural Learning (unschooling) with a small mix of other curricula.

Can any other home educators help me please? I am eager to share ideas on how to write up home schooling curricula for home school unschooling.

Here’s a previous post on our teaching philosophy to give insight into our personal values.

Boy…I almost need a Law degree to sort this out with our Education Department! Just on that point, are there any law firms that specialize in home school?

I look forward to hearing from somebody.

The Shelf Life of a Home Schooler.

The school year has ended and so have our constant arguments about boy child attending! Hooray.

Highly anxious in his last two weeks, we managed to encourage only one-day’s attendance at school. Hence, many unschooled home school activities focused our days and slotted their way around my heavy pre holiday work life.

One highlight for both Boy and myself was the building (well…putting together) of a set of shelves.

Purchased some four months previously, the shelves have lain boxed, stoic and lonely upon my office floor. Partner is not good at any manual tasks, I have been too busy, and boy oblivious to the pending task of construction.

In desperation to find a non-Christmas, non work sheet, unschooling activity capable of holding boys attention for more than five minutes, the shelves finally saw life from outside of their box.

Boy was terrific in his task of construction. Measuring, matching, balancing and erecting, boy put together the shelves WITHOUT the help of the instructions. Written in poor English, the instructions were destructional to our instructional plan of having boy complete a natural learning activity.

Once again, the greatest learning happened to me. I was amazed at how practical and handy Boy was. He measured with Aspergers dogmatic precision. He worked out how the plastic joins fitted together and calmly corrected my construction mistakes.

When I asked Boy if he had learned anything from the activity, he retorted, “Yeah, I’m better at building than you are.” Never a truer word spoken and how healthy for Boy’s increasing self-esteem. I smiled to myself and roused internally that I had expected an articulate answer that involved tenets of math, comprehension and construction.

Who needs to be unschooled here? ME!