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.
