| Home Learning
is Real Life
A degree doesn't make someone
caring, considerate, knowledgeable, and understanding of children.
It doesn't make them love someone else's children, and often
doesn't even mean a vested interest in a child's development.
The larger issue is "Who
is responsible enough to influence the mind and thoughts of
a developing human being?" The most important focus should
be, but isn't always, a child's needs. The situation that
serves the best interests and growth of a child is learning
in a secure and responsive home environment in which caring,
respectful parents are the teachers.
There are not many satisfactions
in parenthood that compare to being able to watch the joy
in your children's faces as they explore their environment,
create, learn, grow, and develop.
Learning and loving with dependable,
committed, nurturing and involved parents is the way children
have learned since the beginning of time. It's time to realize
that this is the way children were meant to be educated. The
lessons they are learning are life lessons, which cannot be
learned in any institution.
In "real life" children
can learn all the time...
Stimulating All Forms Of Intelligence:
- Linguistic Intelligence:
books, tape recorders, typewriters, computers, story-telling,
writing, public speaking, debate, reading, and writing.
- Logical Mathematical:
strategy games like chess, checkers, and Monopoly,
strategy games like Rubik's Cube, math puzzles, crossword
puzzles, and word searches, science kits, computer software,
thinking games and puzzles.
- Spatial:
Films, slides, videos, diagrams, maps, charts, art,
telescopes, Lego, building toys, optical illusions.
- Bodily-Kinesthetic:
playgrounds, running, hiking, swimming, gyms, model-building
kits, wood carving, model clay, machines, animals, costumes,
make-believe.
- Interpersonal:
clubs, groups, social programs, cooperation, interactive
games, group projects, discussions.
- Intrapersonal:
self-paced study, individual projects, free time,
private spaces, diaries, solo activities, hideaways, tents,
and secret places.
Gardner feels that children
have the capacity to be a genius in at least one of these
areas of intelligence, if they are allowed to develop at their
own rate of readiness.
We should all take a lesson
from Gardner and realise that all children learn differently,
at different speeds, at different times, with different interests.
Nurturing individuality and encouraging creativity when it
comes to education and learning is one of the greatest lessons
a parent can teach.
Do you have a question about homeschooling?
Ask our Muslim
Home Education Network Team.
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