Real World Learning...

One of the brilliant things about running Makes A Change is how many opportunities it gives the children to help out and learn new skills and practise old ones.  What motivates my son best (and probably the majority of people) to learn and to practise any skills (reading, writing, maths, spelling and so on)  is when he sees a reason to it.  Earlier today he asked to help out and here he is changing prices for our summer sale.  It brought in so much everyday maths for him and he was excited to see the changes he was making appearing on the screen.  Plus he had to do a lot of reading to figure out which bits to change.  Then I needed to write some new product descriptions, so there were lots of new words for him to type.  I think he'll be able to type 'fairtrade', organic', 'cotton', 'baby' and 'clothes' in his sleep now having done it so many times! 

If I sit him in front of a workbook, he doesn't engage half as much for half as long or get to practise so many different skills at the same time, so its not an approach we take as a rule as it just doesn't suit him.  Give him an opportunity to help out and feel that he's being useful and doing something real and he will sit for ages until he wanders off to potter at something else. 

Of course I get to learn patience as it takes ten or maybe twenty times longer to do the bit of work that I was wanting to do, but I love that it gives him the chance to learn in such a low pressure way.  No ticks and crosses - if its not right we just delete it and do it over and over and over and over again - and he doesn't mind this as he knows that it has to be right. 

This also means that we don't follow a timetable and don't have holidays from home education like you would from school - here he is at 6pm on a Saturday doing a ton of learning in the course of just living life  :)