Mess or Research?

I recently reread Marilyn Howshall’s Wisdom’s Way of Learning Book 1 – The science, Art, and Tools of Learning (WWOL) and for the first time the SAT’s of Learning is beginning to make “real life” sense to me.  It’s amazing how hard it’s been for me to shed (or truly begin shedding) man’s educational process that I grew up in.

I thought I would share some pictures of what my living room looks like pretty much daily.  I often wish I had a different room that we could let their educational process take place in, but perhaps God wants to use our current home situation to do a deep heart work in me, such as loving my kids enough to let our main living area look like this more than not.  

These pictures represent the Research part of the Five Learning Tools described in WWOL.  All the kids play with the Legos, but Daniel plays with them the most, so I’ll use him as an example of describing the education process that is taking place here.  I have to confess, this is a slightly cleaned up day!  

Research:  Daniel’s informal research has shown up in building and rebuilding various pieces. Some pieces he would build and rebuild, others he would modify as he rebuilt them. His formal research would be the time he spends looking at Lego kits and how they are put together. He spends time studying the kit instruction books. It was through one of these books that he got the concept of building a bird, which he turned into a chicken, then eventually designed a penguin, which then turned into robot penguins, until he came up with the “Ultimate Protobot 10,000” designed after a computer game figure. This Protobot is a large robot penguine.

Record:  I believe this tool occurred through his repetitive building and rebuilding different pieces. He told me that he has a green army jeep that he would build, blow up and rebuild over and over until he could build it without the instruction manual and is now making modifications to.

Reason:  When he decided to build the Protobot, being that it was so much bigger than the penguins he had to figure out what worked and didn’t work, sometimes through the thought process and other times through trial and error.

Relate:   Daniel got the idea for making Lego birds from a Lego instruction book, but added a piece to turn it into a chicken. Then from that he started thinking about how to make a larger penguin (relating what he knew about making the chicken to how he would develop the larger scale penguin), which then led to robot versions of penguins (relating previous experience/knowledge to his new creations), which then led to a much larger robot version of the penguin (again relating what he picked up from his previous creations to how this new larger version would come together, each time going back to research to figure out how to make the larger scale work out). This is an area that I have had a hard time comprehending and have just "gotten" today.

Rhetoric:  Daniel shares each creation with everyone in the family, he shows how it works (whether real or imaginary), how he came up with the idea, and thing he tried until it worked out the way he wanted it to.

Daniel’s Lego creations are starting to look much different than his original creations from last fall.  His creations have more detail and are showing more complexity.  Daniel is living a Lifestyle of Learning.