My wife and I have started homeschooling our daughters since the last year. Personally, I’ve been pushing for it long before COVID. But, since that’s become such a concern, we decided to give it a shot and see how it goes. One year in, we’ve all fallen in love with it. I can’t imagine that we’ll ever go back to public or private school for a NUMBER of reasons, most of which I won’t get into in this post.
Goal Number ONE of home schooling is to help my daughter find a “Love for Learning”. That in mind, we’ve taken an Eclectic approach to Homeschool. Initially, we started schooling the way we were all used to. Several classes, in well accepted common areas of study, consecutively spaced throughout the day. But what we’ve found is what I think everyone already knows. That’s a super tedious slog for ANYONE. Why is it most kids dislike school? Disinterest in the content, probably in large part. “Eclectic Homeschooling”, as well as “Unschooling” are good remedies to keep the attention of even the most over stimulated ADHD children.
What is “Eclectic Homeschool”? After some difficulty keeping on track, we started ditching some of the subjects that don’t really have a lot of value. In fact, the only traditional subjects that we have kept are Math, Language, and Reading. You know, subjects that she’ll actually need day to day in the real world. In addition, we’ve found angles at presenting these subjects in much more engaging ways. For instance, we use BeastAcademy.com for Math. And, for reading, Eva gets to pick what she wants to read.
This has approach has opened up a whole lot of unstructured learning time. Time for her to explore her interests, find new interests, and pursue them. We’ve tried piano, violin, drawing, digital art, typing, cooking, video making, exploring the outdoors, etc etc. Anything that peaks an interest at the time, really. She’s 9. She isn’t going to know what she “want’s to do for the rest of her life”. This is a time to explore, to “Poke the Box”, to see what it does, as Seth Godin might prescribe.
Eva has naturally found a love for animals and Veterinary studies. So we feed that interest as best we can. We’ve found a wonderful teacher on Outschool.com, who she meets with a couple times a week. She is WONDERFUL, a creative writer and author of several kids books. Her husband is a Veterinarian. So, much of her writing is about the one subject that Eva LOVES right now. She learns a lot about veterinary studies, but also about creative writing at the same time. Some of the time, they are looking at X-rays and learning from real Veterinary case studies. Other times she is coaching Eva through story telling and authoring her own story about our neighborhood animals. Like eating a good meal, you can eat the peas and the mashed potatoes separately, sure. But, when you mix them up…. MAGIC HAPPENS !!
Education is starting to decouple from the institutions that have monopolized this area throughout the Industrial Age. The Information Age is here. The internet is FULL of excellent educational resources. Free courses from top universities. Many many niche subjects, taught by experts in their specific discipline, often for a small fee. In other words, the best education money can buy, for the skills and expertise that students WANT to acquire. The problem is, these lessons are disorganized and typically found ad hoc.. Homeschool parents, like myself and my wife have to sniff it out and dig up the good bits. Then figure out where it fits into a larger curriculum of learning. Different content is spread out across different websites. While Youtube has a TON of extremely useful content, Youtube is not an educational website per se, nothing is organized. And, there is plenty of inappropriate material for kids to run into, so you don’t want them doom scrolling. Gosh, wouldn’t it be helpful if someone were to build a site to help organize all of this good education from various sources on the net?
That is the goal of Learnalot.net. Like “Camelot”, but for Homeschoolers. A place where kids and parent can go, together, to build lesson plans and courses that kids are excited to dive into. Consume the good parts of the internet in a systematized way. Learnalot will help you build an initial schedule, help track progress, and facilitate when you need to change course as you and your children evolve and find their way. Learning is a journey not a destination. The path is rarely straight.