I'm over the moon excited about the girl's school year thus far and their learning experiences through books. Its amazing the places that you can go in a book. In regards to homeschooling and teaching history, what's just as neat about journeying through a book is when its based on true, historical events and you're able to grasp what it might have been like for people in history to experience life as it was in varying times throughout history. The sights, the music, the government, and the culture, all from a different time period that we can never experience for our self. When you read about history in a textbook and are made to memorize and then regurgitate dates and facts, you lose the enjoyment of what history is all about. History isn't just facts and dates, the events of history help explain the "why's" surrounding the people and cultures of today. The saying, "You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been" might be said too much and very cliche, but the saying is true.
As the kids read books about early American History and we discuss them and they write their thoughts about life in the past, it puts the world around them into a perspective that a date alone isn't able to do. In the books that they're reading they have been exposed to journeys from the past. They've chartered along with characters across the Atlantic to the New World as they read the journals of seafaring men and they get a chance to be a juror in a witch trial during the time of the Puritans. These experiences along with so many others are difficult to grasp solely reading through a textbook. I can relate because after having the textbook education as a child, to now participate in my kid's education through the reading and discussion of books, I'm seeing what a difference this style of learning can make.
While the girls have enjoyed individually reading their own assigned "readers", collectively we use the technique of "reading aloud" for the more challenging, historical books. The Read Aloud books that the girls are to listen to as I read them aloud have a more challenging vocabulary and so they are challenged to understand the stories in context as they listen and form in their minds a visualization of what is actually happening in the book. As they listen, they are transported back into time. It's a gift to be able to learn in this way. From an educational perspective to enhance, promote, and encourage children to read one author put it this way,
"Reading aloud is a commercial for reading. ...Think of it this way: McDonald's doesn't stop advertising just because the vast majority of Americans know about its restaurants. Each year it spends more money on ads to remind people how good its products taste. Don't cut your reading advertising budget as children grow older."
-- Jim Trelease in his book The Read Aloud Handbook
I can't help but get excited about many of the books that we've read so far into the school year, so in many ways Mommy's excitement about reading becomes contagious. I find myself tearing up as we turn the corner and head into the final chapters of books. I've said it many times before as I've journaled about our homeschooling experiences that being a homeschooling parent opens up the door of learning again in ways that I didn't experience as a child. There is a freedom that the homeschooling community has access to as they teach their children. There is the option of teaching in a similar fashion with textbooks and multiple choice tests to assess how well a child has learned, but there is also the opportunity to challenge the status quo of educational techniques by allowing children to simply learn and their comprehension be assessed through conversation and written expression or creative writing. There's something unique about being able to "experience" history through the journeys and life experiences of characters that come to life in an era far ago.
For this little guy, we'll simply start with ABCs
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| Oh, the places we will go... |
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| In a Book! |
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