Home educated kids are no different to kids who go to traditional schools – there are subjects they like and subjects they don’t, they have hobbies and interests outside of the classroom and can be resistant to challenging themselves if a subject feels difficult to master. A scattering materials approach helps to guide them towards trickier things without feeling any pressure to succeed.
Demystifying subjects and validating their interests keeps natural curiosity burning and for us like so many home educators, that’s the goal. Gentle guidance, strategic strewing, eclectic topics and materials help expand their curiosity in ways we can tweak into academics.
Home educating, over time you’ll discover how each child has a unique learning style and the best way to make materials appealing to each pupil; but in the beginning, home education gives you (the parent AND teacher) the freedom to figure it out with no pressure on either you or the child themselves. The words ‘test’, ‘exam’, ‘class’ only need to come into their vocabulary when you decide the time is right.
Our children are way past nursery now and yet we still approach preparing their learning environments in the same way as Montessori nurseries – with scattering. Books shelves and board games are routinely rotated, art materials are always available yet some are easier to access than others, and the home page websites of internet browsers are regularly changed; we subtly push materials, subjects and topics without making any of them compulsory.
Mr 11 – possibly as a result of my own resistance towards math – found the subject as a whole stressful. When we started leaving sudoku and Fibonacci puzzles around, he discovered for himself how fun numbers could be and now counts maths as a top five favourite subject. When Mr 10 became obsessed with fast car videos, we left books around that encouraged him to look at the engineering and design processes behind the cars in the videos.
Being able to choose the activity they engage in depending on how they’re feeling that moment gives the child has a sense of control over their environment, giving them safe spaces to explore bigger things in. They trust in the environment you give them, so just as toddlers will pick up a pine cone, dip fingers into funny coloured liquids or stick their hands in a box to feel new textures, by exposing older pupils to new concepts in a test-free environment means there isn’t the pressure on them to do anything specific with any particular resource which puts control back into their (still) little hands.
Gradually, if the child is softly exposed repeatedly to materials or concepts, eventually they’ll step out of their comfort zones and explore a bit further, and if they get stuck on one thing, the environment can be tweaked to introduce the ‘lesson’, ‘concept’, ‘topic’ they’ve chosen to ignore, or the activity/topic/resource they’ve chosen to stick with can be developed further in an academic sense.
Our homeschoolers are in the discovery years period of education and as such, the resources they have access to have grown with them. We now scatter websites into bookmark tabs and apps on their devices as well as continuing to make sure the books they can access (whether ebooks, audiobooks or ‘real’ books) are diverse, and the ‘play’ resources available are in some way educational or skill-reinforcing.
Following a child’s interests is a great way to keep them actively engaged in the process of learning and any interest can be turned into ‘school’. Keeping the environment of home-ed as interesting as the environment kids want to play in enhances the desire to learn and encourages them to become self-led learners – the ultimate home-ed goal.