On our second to last week of the Summer Planning Series, Susan from Educating Today is delighted to share with you all how to plan a delight-directed education.
Oh, What a Delight
5 Reasons Delight Directed Learning Helps Children to Focus
First,
let’s start out by defining delight directed learning. (By
the way, this is a great study skill to teach your kiddos.) Always
know the definition of what you’re talking about, know what your
terms mean, and make sure those you are talking to understand your
meaning of the terms or ideas. Don’t take it for granted that they
think the way you do.
Delight
directed learning simply means, that as much as possible, your
children’s education is built around their interests and delights
rather than on generic textbooks, workbooks or a curriculum’s scope
and sequence.
What
delight directed learning is not:
- Delight directed learning is not choosing a subject for your children and then letting them choose how they want to learn the subject by watching videos, doing workbooks, or assigning special readings for them to do.
- It is not giving your child a choice of one or two courses from a certain curriculum you want them to use.
There
are many reasons to center your children’s education around their
interests and delights.
Today
we’re going to talk about five of them.
1. Your
children will focus on whatever they are interested in. Spend
some time watching and observing what your children spend their free
time doing. Do they have a special pet? Do they like to collect
things? Do they like playing pretend adventures outdoors? What do
they choose to read about?
Delight
directed learning will also work great for junior high and high
school students, too. Our family even did some delight directed
studies together, but broke it up into different topics. We wanted to
learn more about homesteading so one child chose to learn about our
water supply by investigating water aquifers in the United States
with a special concentration on Texas.
Our second
child chose to study about animals on the homestead with a
concentration on miniature cattle breeds.
My husband
and I centered our study around gardening techniques, composting,
double digging methods, and heirloom seed varieties.
About once a week we’d share our findings with each other which
would spark other interests.
One son
decided he’d like to learn about double digging gardening methods.
Our other son said he wanted to learn more about animal shelters.
Other
times, the children wanted to study a topic of their own. Some of
their choices were learning about interesting and famous people
(missionaries Jim Elliot and Nate Saint, Thomas Jefferson, Robert
Goddard, Thomas Edison), model rocketry, rock collecting, knives,
fishing equipment, survival skills, stamp collecting, etc. I bet you
can tell by their topics of choice that we have sons. (Grin)
If your
child can’t think of anything they would like to learn about, ask
them to make a list of questions called “Things I Wonder About”
or ask them to make a list of things they want to learn more about.
If they’re not used to thinking about what they are really
interested in learning about, it may take a little while for their
curiosity to kick in.
2. Other
subjects can be integrated into any delight directed study.
They will
learn the vocabulary associated with their topic choice without you
insisting that they have a vocabulary list.
They will
learn the words, how to spell them, and what they mean just by
reading, studying, building systems, designing display boards, and
writing special reports to share with others. They will also learn
the history, science, and geography related to their study, all
because they need and want the information.
3. Delight
directed learning will help them to focus on the details and at the
same time, see the big scope of things.
Some
children are great starters but they get stuck in the details so they
have trouble following through. Other children can see the beginning
and what they think the end will look like, but they have trouble
breaking down the details.
By doing a
delight directed learning project, they will be investigating
something they really want to know about so they will want to know
the details as well as following through as far as they want to go.
4. Your
children can learn to use wonderful tools to document their learning
which will also help to keep their attention.
There are
so many tools available to help your children learn and organize
their information. They can learn how to use PowerPoint to give
presentations on what they’ve learned. They can write special
reports, do audio reports, take pictures of their projects, plan
their own notebooks, interview experts, or even write a Kindle book.
As they
investigate their topic of interest, they will find other people who
are also interested in the same topic. This is a great opportunity
for learning how to interview experts by making an audio recording, a
written report, or a blog post. For older students, they might start
or join a local discussion group on their topic.
They also
can develop a reading list of the title, author and date completed of
books along with the documentaries/movies they want to see, a list of
places they’d like to visit.
All of
these tools help develop very useful learning objectives such as
brainstorming, record keeping, list building, etc.
5. Delight
directed learning will fuel your child’s passions and help them
develop into life long learners.
That’s
your goal, isn’t it. You want your children to be life long
learners who love learning.
Some
children will want to learn some information about a topic and then
move on to another area of interest, and that’s okay. Some children
will want to dig deeper and deeper into a topic and they won’t want
to study anything else for a season, and that’s okay, too.
Your goal
is NOT to teach them everything they will ever need to know by the
time they graduate. Your goal is to teach them how to study,
research, reason, and record what they’re learning and enjoy doing
it. If they know how to study, then they can learn anything they
want or need to and that’s a skill worth having.
So when
you’re planning your lessons for the new school year, remember to
include some curiosity time by letting your kiddos question and
wonder about something they are really interested in.
Susan
Mueller taught public and private school in her life before children
and is a “veteran homeschool mom.” She and her husband
homeschooled for more than 20 years from birth through graduation and
have helped launch their children into adulthood and business.
Susan
blogs at Educating Today where she offers encouragement and help to parents who want to
instill in their children the Love of Learning for a lifetime. You
can also find Susan on Facebook
(https://www.facebook.com/EducatingToday)
and Twitter (https://twitter.com/educating_today)
.In This Series:
Week 1: Who Plans Homeschool?
Week 2: Planning an Eclectic Homeschool School Year Type A Style
Week 3: Planned Unshooling . . . Why?
Week 4: Meal Planning Made Easy
Week 5: Managing Your Home When You Have an Irregular Schedule
Week 6: Block Scheduling in Your Homeschool
Week 7: Creating Your Own Unit Study
Week 9: Steps to Planning the Year
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