How we are Wired To Learn!

I found this on a message board, but it is truly clarifying. I love it. I want to read it again to more fully understand it. I am intrigued by the human brain, and how it works.

Life doesn't come in boxes. Life is stuff all jumbled together. From
that chaos we focus on what we think is cool.

While it makes more sense that we should learn better by isolating
what we are interested in so we could focus on it exclusively, that
isn't how we're hard wired to learn. We're hard wired to learn in
context, to see how what we're interested in connects to other
things. To see other things we're interested in relate.

While it would make more sense if kids learned one word at a time,
that isn't how kids learn. They're immersed in language and get
excited when they recognize something familiar in the chaos. And that
familiar thing connects to other things around it which become
familiar. And then there are more familiar things to catch our
attention in the chaos.

We *want* to pull familiar from chaos. We want to create our *own*
order from the chaos. *That's* how we're hard wired to learn.

Learning from boxes is like following someone else's instructions on
which puzzle piece to put where into the jigsaw puzzle. It's someone
handing you the solution to and crossword puzzle for you to fill the
boxes in from.

We want and need to discover things on our own. We want and need to
make the connections for ourselves.

Children need to feel safe and secure. They need to feel they can
depend on whatever makes them feel secure. What that actually looks
like in practice will be different for each child.

Some kids need to know what the day is going to be like. Some kids
enjoy surprises.

Check out Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

This is what we need to grow. If the lowest needs aren't met, we
can't attend to the higher needs. No where is there structure on the
list:

Basic:
Breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis (maintain optimal
body temperature), excretion

Next level:
Security of body, of employment, of resources, of morality, of the
family, of health, of property

Next level:
friendship, family, sexual intimacy

Next level:
self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, respect by
others

Top level:
morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of
prejudice, acceptance of facts.

Most child rearing practices view
children as though they were some species other than human. Children
are humans. They are more dependent on others to get their needs met,
but they have human needs and they react as humans to having their
needs thwarted.

Humans don't need structure to feel safe and grow. Some humans do
like to structure their environment. Some humans will even freely
gravitate towards someone else's structure. But no healthy human
wants others to dictate the structure of the environment for them
without having a say.

Conventional parenting tries to make life with kids more convenient.
We treat kids in ways we'd *never* treat a fellow (adult) human
being. At least not ones we cared about!

We do huge amounts of damage to our relationships with kids in the
name of forming them into better people, and into making life easier
for ourselves. And most parents' relationships with their teens shows
it! Society thinks teens are naturally snarky and rebellious. It's
not true. Respected kids grow into respectful kids and respectful
teens.

Friday, the 20th...

This morning we made flan. Never heard of it? Or heard of it, and never eaten it, or aren't sure exactly what it was beyond some type of food? Me too. It was on my list of one of those "weird" foods. Food I'd heard of, but would probably never eat. Maybe that's just me, though, since I was quite the "picky" child, and was never exposed to many different foods. My kids have eaten such a wider variety of foods than I ever did as a child.
So, Flan. I was looking in the pantry for breakfast when I spied a box of it in our pudding section. Hmm... Dh must've picked that up, because I surely didn't. No wait, maybe one of the kids picked it up thinking it was vanilla pudding. Turns out that's how it happened to end up in our pantry. We looked it up online before we made it, and found all sorts of interesting facts (and leads to other discussions). Travis (ds,age 11), and I read about it, and then he made it while I cleaned up the kitchen. We found out that the earliest evidence we have of it being made was in the Roman times, also the earliest recorded time of domesticated chickens. The Romans consulted the Greek's knowledge of cooking, and made a savory custard dish, nonsweetened. Over the centuries it evolved through different cultures. Spaniards made it into the sweet custard we know of today, and the English made their own version of flan by adding fruits and nuts, and also using a pastry crust for the bottom only. In English it is pronounced to rhyme with 'plan', and in Mexico (which was where the Spaniards took it to) it's pronounced to rhyme with 'faun'. I think the Mexican version sounds fancier, but will continue to use the English version as it is easier to prounce.
We also read about how the barbaric Medieval peoples, whose time was contiguous with Roman times, made flan. We had to use dictionary.com to look up what contiguous meant. There were other words that I was able to explain the meaning of to Travis (and yes, he asked what they meant), but that one wasn't one of them. Turns out that it means adjacent to in time, or close to without actually touching. So, our vocabulary words for today were: contiguous, savory, barbarian, pastry crust, and of course flan, as Travis had never heard of it. He now has an intimate knowledge of it, seeing as how he made it himself. :)

Other learning that has gone on today would be continued work with fractions and measurements during cooking, strategic planning and puzzle solving on the Twilight Princess Zelda game, science: Nathan, Jaidyn, and Aaron exploring and observing nature. They enjoyed the March 40 degree weather, and Jaidyn decided that she'd be better off in a coat, instead of her shirt. :) Those three have been playing with Lego knight figurines from a board game. They are really cool little guys that completely come apart and include a helmet, armor, a shield, and a sword, which is pretty amazing seeing as how they are about 2 inches tall. They played indoors and out with them, letting them slide off the trampoline on the slide that they'd set up a few days ago. I thought that the slide itself was pretty ingenious. We've had it around since I found it in someone's front yard, and dared to ask if they still wanted it. It'd cost about $100 if we bought it, but we got it for free!
My littles, Jaidyn and Nathan are now running nude, and I need to go do some more learning, instead of documenting.. :)

Travis' Friday the 13th Learning

Last Friday, I took the younger 3 kids out to McDonald's to play while I discussed birth and becoming a doula with a new friend.
Travis stayed home. Before we left, we were reading a History book and discussing why History is important to learn about, how it repeats itself, and also began discussing social justice. We talked about how leveling out the populace may or may not be fair to people depending on which person you are. I asked him to explain social justice in a competition to me, and he described a race where each person got weighted down equally to attempt to make the race fair. We then discussed the what ifs, such as, what if one of the runners was a 250lb. muscle man, and one was a lazy person who sat on the couch all the time, and one was a small framed girl who weighed only 100 lbs., and so on... I suggested that you adjust the weights to make it equally difficult for each runner, and we decided that that would be the best way to offer social justice in a running race.
I went to Mcdonald's, and Trav stayed home. Later in the weekend, he asked me, "Who's that black guy who was killed, and he tried to make things more fair for black people? And before him, wasn't it a fact that blacks had to eat on a different side of the resteraunt than whites?" That was Martin Luther King, I replied, and a discussion ensued, based on the fact that he'd spend that Friday the 13th, watching court cases on TV, and someone had mentioned Martin Luther King. History, with no prompting!

My Big Girl's first Saint Patricks Day at school.

Savannah went off on the bus a few minutes ago. Her green hair shining, as she walked beautifully across the still frosted lawn. She's one of my early risers, happy to be choosing her own path, walking off to her chosen mecca of friends. She knows that she has the choice to be at home, yet she likes the individuality she feels this year. Being always homeschooled, she was curious about school. She found out that there are good things, and bad about it, but overall, for her, the choice was to finish out the year.
We discuss friends, and how most people at school don't act like she and her other friends are used to acting, but she is learning to be a chameleon, and likes testing her skills for fending off their barbs.
She also loves to come home and be pampered! The other night I spend half an hour giving her feet the spa treatment, and sometimes, she just HAS to go somewhere, because she feels trapped with the whole school/home, school/home, school/home cycle of the week. And at other times, all the constant noise at school overstimulates her, and she spends a hour or two locked in our office singing to songs on YouTube, to balance her senses.
I love seeing the individuality in my kids.

Toddler/Little Kid Dreams

I love observing my kids grow and learn. One of the best things is when they figure out what dreams are. When my first daughter was 3 or so, she woke up one morning, and announced to me, that she had seen 'pictures in her head'! :)
I was reminded of that this morning when my 4.5 year old daughter Jaidyn, came into the office, and explained a very interesting realization that she had. Earlier this morning, she had told me that she had heard a beeping from the little round thing with the button on it while she was in bed. We discussed it a little more, as she wanted to know if there was a fire, and I realized it was the smoke alarm she was talking about. She wanted to know why it was beeping, and since it's not going off right now, I figured that the battery may be getting low, and told her so. We didn't discuss it anymore for about 20 minutes, and then she came downstairs, and told me that she'd realized that it had been a dream! There hadn't been any real beeping from the smoke alarm while she was in bed.
How did she figure this out? Well, she said that in her dream, the round thing with the light was on the ground. And she'd just looked up in real life and saw that it was on the ceiling. :) Therefore, she deduced that it must have been a dream. I told her that she was pretty smart to have figured that out. It is always so impressive to watch their little intellects grow untaught!! :)
A thought occurred to me after that. What if I'd said to her, "Oh Jaidyn, the smoke alarm is not beeping. You must have imagined that."? What if I'd assumed that little kids make stories up just because? What if I hadn't BELIEVED her? I may not have had the chance to see that little bit of magic happening in my child. I'm so glad that this trust I have in my heart is now here. When I first began my parenting journey, it wasn't. What a glorious change.
Thanks, Jaidyn, my first always free, undominated child!

My kids' choices

This month, I felt good enough to be able to take my kids out of PS, to homeschool them again. Travis and Aaron were elated, and Jesse and Savannah have chosen to stay in PS! I was a little surprised at Savannah, but feel completely wonderful about supporting her in making her own choices. We discuss her reluctance to go at times, the reasons why, problems with friends, her dislike of sitting in one room for most of the day... but overall, she chooses to stay. She likes some of the schoolwork, and she enjoys feeling independent, I think. She enjoys getting out of the house, and riding the bus (most days). Some days she asks us to drive her. I am just overjoyed at seeing my kids making their own choices.
Jesse is almost 13, is sprouting a mustache, and is enjoying hanging out with his peers, and blowing by most of the students in his class academically. After 3 years of unschooling, I might add. I loved telling his teachers what we'd been doing, when they told me at the first Parent/Teacher meeting that "Whatever you've been doing, it's been great! Jesse is one of the highest students in our class!" :) Hah! I could have laughed out loud to see the confusion on their faces when I told them we'd not done any textbooks, played video games, watched movies and went to museums.... I still smile thinking about it.
It seems that 7th graders get more freedom than 1st, 3rd, or 5th graders. Jesse gets freedom to eat in one of his classes, and seems to get a lot more interaction with his peers. Could be his outlook, though. He's suddenly popped out of his quietness, and become the happy go lucky teenager... :) Anyway, I love it that they are all enjoying their lives.

Screen Time Marathons and their Educational Value!

I know lots of parents freak out when their kids watch "too much" tv. A few weekends ago, my 11 year old's grandpa introduced him to a show called Solitary 3.0. He watched it on Hulu, and got hooked. We spent about 7-10 hours in a weekend watching an entire season of this show. We/ he and his siblings have also spent hours since that weekend catching episodes here and there. It has inspired he and his brother to build their own "pods" in the basement from blankets and boxes and grey tape. They plan to add meal slots as well.
We are going to "play" Solitary, and I am going to be Val, the computer overlord... :) Today the boys spent time in the basement constructing their pods, after calling the local grocery store, and finding out that they wouldn't have large boxes available right now.
We are planning our own "treatments", which are similar to "torture challenges", "how much can you take?" kind of thing. We are thinking that it may involve food.
Then, my 11 year old ds hit upon the idea of eating meal bars for food throughout the days they plan to spend in these pods, just like in the show. I said that I could purchase them, but because of their desire to have what they want "right now", they came up with the idea of searching online for recipes. :) This led my dh to reading many recipes, being introduced to wheat germ, sesame seeds, protein powder, and other ingredients probably unknown to him, as well as watching a chef's video on how to make protein bars, and the nutrition involved. I listened in the next room hearing the talk about protein and such, and smiled to myself. Self directed learning. Health class, cooking class, art/ingenuity, imagination, working together, public interaction with adults, resourcefulness.... all came out of watching "too much" TV.
I love having them home again. I am soooo thankful to be leaving that depression behind.

P.S. Travis has now made 5 additional meal bars, to play around with the composition. The first one turned out too wet, so he added less water this time. He then put them in the fridge. Some of them he repeated the too much water mistake, and some of them turned out great, the consistency of No Bake cookies. He is excited to begin he and Aaron's stay in Solitary this afternoon, with only his meal bars for substinence! :)