Sereina's Delight Directed Learning

I was thinking yesterday afternoon about our Lifestyle of Learning journey, and I came to the conclusion that Lifestyle of Learning without the full leading of the Holy Spirit produces better fruit than any other way of schooling, but with the Holy Spirit produces the sweetest of fruit!  I commented in my interview that I spoke of in my last post that while I have been going through my education process I have allowed our children the free time to pursue their interests with very little intervention and just a little direction on my part.  The Lord is showing me new ways to begin to guide their education and we are currently beginning that.  I will post more about that at another time.  In the meantime:

It's been  interesting to watch my 17 year old who, last spring, thought she wanted to continue with her French co-op class this fall, change her whole position on it.  When she mentioned she would like to continue the class I suggested we pray and “listen”... she agreed and not more than a few days later we agreed that she could easily use an at home program like Rosetta Stone. 

I was struggling in my mind with 1) needing to know the purpose of her doing this and 2) feeling like a language is hard, if not next to impossible, to learn w/o using it and at bare minimum having someone to communicate it with.  In a conversation about this, Barbie reminded me that we often don't know the purpose of an interest.  I have also been learning that there are many things that God wants us to trust Him and obey Him with long before we get to understand what He is doing in our life.  Barbie encouraged me to let Sereina prove her interest before investing big money (such as for Rosetta Stone).  So, I still didn't have full understanding (and still don't), but I decided that I would encourage and support her interest sort of "blindly" because I really had no idea how it would come together. 

I talked to my daughter about the value of proving her interest.  At first I didn't see any activity towards it, so I thought perhaps there wasn't a real interest.  Then, all of a sudden all these books on learning French were coming home from the library with her.  Ever since, she has been researching books and methods on learning French.  A couple weeks ago she asked me to buy "The Magic Schoolbus" for her... normally I don't encourage books below my children's reading level, but she also wanted the French version of the same book to go along with it.  She explained to me that she finds it easier to understand what she is learning if she reads juvenile level books right now and that made complete sense to me.  I noticed Sereina has started a journal of French words that she has come across in the Agatha Christie books she’s been reading, and next to the word she has written out the definition.  She is beginning to learn to read and write French, she doesn't always know how to pronounce the words and I know that will come with a program such as Rosetta Stone (of which I feel like she is proving her interest and earning).  Or… Perhaps the Lord is preparing an opportunity for her to immerse into the language enough to be able to speak it fluently.  Or not... I just know that I am seeing skills developing in her that will benefit her for the rest of her life and I know God has a plan for this interest she is pursing that I may not know about for a long time (maybe ever).  I can see that she is learning the “skill of learning” and that will transfer to anything else she decides she wants to learn.  She has already begun developing her self learning skills in many other areas… some of the other things she has been teaching herself are:

Photography – she has been developing the skill of using manual settings (partially through a co-op class she took last year and then taking it further by doing additional studying and experimenting).  She has been experimenting with different lighting, different composures, and things I don’t know much about like “Bokeh.”  She has learned and gone beyond Photo Shop Elements and is now learning Photo Shop for editing, yet taking it beyond that and teaching herself how to make 3-D images.

She maintains two blogs, a personal one that documents things she enjoys and is learning and the second is purely photography.  The photography blog shows the progress she has made from the time she started it until now.  I am often amazed at her abilities.

She has played around with sewing, but has moved from small projects for her stuffed animals to clothes for herself this past year.  She has researched sewing online and through books at the library, found patterns and with a little help here and there from me made some pretty skirts.

Sereina has had the freedom for several years now to play with our video camera to make movies.  She has made a collection of her beginning videos which have progressed in skill up through her latest production called the “Hikers’ Fortune.”

As a result of her last production she began to research how to build her own website with a blog included.  This is something I could have never “put” on her, as she had ordered several very large books from the library and was teaching herself HTML and CSS, both are beyond me.  Although she hit the proverbial “brick wall” with the blog and set the project aside, I am watching for what she learned to germinate and for her to pick it back up.

Cooking has been something Sereina has been interested in since she was little.  She spent much time watching the Food Network when other kids her age (age 6) watched cartoons, etc.  She has been collecting recipes that she enjoys in a binder that is her cook book and she often takes pictures of her food, combing her skills of photography with her cooking skills.

Her latest interest has been researching natural recipes for shampoos, conditioners and cosmetics.  She has been experimenting with different variations for about a month now as a result of finding information online as well as from the library.  Her motivation comes from a desire to save money and to be using less chemicals on her skin and hair, a result of my own interest in developing a healthier lifestyle.