Cindy Gaddis' Collaborative Learning Process

A few years ago I made acquaintances with Cindy Gaddis's blog Applestars.  I really liked the method she has developed in homeschooling her children.  You might enjoy reading it too!

Universalis

My husband fixed it so that my browser automatically goes to this page.  I love it!  You can pray first thing when you sit down to the computer and I always know what day it is in the liturgical calendar.  I showed this site to my then 17 year old.  He prays lauds every day when he gets up (which may be in the afternoon, since, you know, he's a teenager!).

Starfall

Probably everybody and their mother knows about this resource.  But it is a great one and so I thought I'd mention it.

Mother Teresa and Unschooling

You know that beautiful quote that they found by Mother Teresa's bed after she died?   It goes like this:
   

Mother Teresa's Anyway Poem

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

This quote really helped me when it came to strewing. You see, when I first heard of the concept of strewing, I tried it out and it failed! I very carefully got these wonderful recommended resources, like books and kits and such and I strewed them around and my kids, by and large, ignored them. I was so frustrated!

My problem was I was impatient. I wanted to see my kids immediately pick up whatever I was strewing, and with joyful enthusiasm become absorbed in that particular thing. Then I could feel reassured about how knowledgeable they were without being taught formally.

Only this didn't work. Instead the kids, who knew I was watching them like a hawk, felt manipulated and this made them resentful of strewing. So I stopped. I decided my kids were different. They didn't respond to strewing! If I wanted them to learn something I just had to be straightforward and say: Kids, I think learning _________________ (fill in the blank) is important. Therefore I am going to read this to you or have you work on this particular thing. This actually cleared the air of all the manipulation. However, I could see how much more open to learning my kids were when they followed a natural interest.  Still, I told myself, no matter how much sense unschooling made to me, I'd given it a fair try but it just didn't work for us.

So we continued to homeschool.  I jumped from one approach to another.  I loved learning about different educational theories and trying them out.  I am an insatiable curriculum junkie. I loved researching different products, browsing through catalogs, searching the library for books I'd seen recommended on various lists. I'd spend hours planning out lessons.  I adored the planning part of it!   It was the implementation that didn't work out. My plans that looked so thorough on paper would transmogrify into something greatly reduced  as I attempted work my kids through them. I always had to qualify myself as 'lite' or 'relaxed' to others because I knew we didn't do nearly as much as other homeschoolers seemed to do. This troubled me greatly. I felt horribly insecure and inadequate. Then, as my junkie habits built up over time, with the accumulation of books and other implements of learning, I noticed something. The kids would gravitate to these things in their own time. Once I had lost the emotional investment of strewing and didn't look for a timetable that the kids needed to follow, strewing started to work.

So back to Mother Teresa. Here's my take on that quote: If you strew resources around your house and try to create a joyful, stimulating atmosphere that inspires learning, and it falls flat, do it anyway. It never was between you and them. In the final analysis, It's between you and your mothering conscience that wants your children to bloom beautifully in their own time. And it's between them (the kids) and their own developing minds as to when they learn something.

Once I got to that point, (and actually I lose that point often and then have find my way back again!)I let go and miracles started happening. Strewing started to work. I call it serendipitous learning. Maybe it's the Holy Spirit. I don't know. But once I got to a certain place emotionally. I mean really got there, where I was not expecting anything from my kids but instead just focusing on my own love for good literature and interesting, well-presented materials, things somehow changed for the better.

So instead of seeing strewing as baiting your child with tempting things that will teach them, which is how I viewed it at first, it is more like cultivating a garden where you the gardener make sure the plant is properly watered, fed and is growing in good soil.  It is up to the plant to do the growing!

Jeopardy!

Watch Jeopardy with your kids.  This does many things:

1.  If you can answer at least one question that a contestant can't, your kids will think you are really smart!

2.  This may spark their curiosity about a variety of topics.  Days later my kids will come back and ask about a particular question and want to know more about it.

3.  It is a fun bonding time with your kids.

We don't watch Jeopardy every night.  We can go for months and not watch it. I record the shows and when we have some downtime we'll watch a bunch in one fell swoop.

Enchanted Learning

I used stuff from Enchanted Learning a lot when my kids were younger.  Now that my youngest is nine, I don't use it much (in fact it might have been a year since I've gone to their site).  But when the kids were younger I found that it was a great resource.  If a child was interested in a particular topic, I'd check out Enchanted Learning to see if there were any neat print outs I thought my child would enjoy.  My youngest daughter likes cut and paste stuff and coloring. The boys liked puzzle pages and dot to dots better.  I'd print out the pages and stick them on our breakfast table.  Sometimes the kids would go right to them and sometimes they would sit there for a couple of days before being noticed.  And sometimes they'd just get used for scrap paper!  Sometimes there'd be something that I'd intentionally want to teach and then I'd use them as a basis for a short one on one lesson.

Pat Farenga

Pat Farenga is cool!  Check out his blog!