A Slice of Our Learning Lifestyle!

"Education is an adventure...It's about people, children, life, reality!"

The above is a quote by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, author of For The Children's Sake: Foundations of Education for Home and School. I am thoroughly enjoying reading this book after I spotted it at a used bookstore in Irvine, KY. I was thrilled to pick up this very important book. The Lord is really opening up some wonderful truths to me in this book, and I am so excited!

I just wanted to give you some slices of our life at home and our "lifestyle of learning" at the present time. I am learning every day just to let go a little more of my own false perceptions and conceptions about things, and it is truly liberating. The famous educator Charlotte Mason (1842-1923) was a huge influence of Maucaulay's, and she quotes her extensively throughout the book. Here is a quote on the topic of PLAY:

"There is a little danger in these days of much educational effort that children's play should be crowded out, or, what is from our present point of view the same thing, should be prescribed for and arranged until there is no more freedom of choice about play than about work. We do not say a word against educational value of games (such as football, basketball, etc)...But organized games are not play in the sense we have in view. Boys and girls must have time to invent episodes, carry on adventures, live heroic lives, lay sieges and carry forts, even if the fortress be an old armchair; and in these affairs the elders must neither meddle nor make."

Another portion of the book I would like to include is written by Macaulay, who is, by the way, the daughter of the famous Francis and Edith Schaeffer (author of How Should We Then Live?). Ponder her words here,

"When a baby is picked up, spoken to, and loved, he is starting his education as God planned it. For all our lives we are human beings, in an active state of learning, responding, understanding. Education extends to all of life. In fact, an educational system that says, "There. Now you are educated. This piece of paper says so," is doing me a gross disfavor. The truly educated person has only has many doors of interest opened. He knows that life will not be long enough to follow everything through fully."/strong>strong>

Abraham and Micah like to do a "puppet show" for us quite often, making up stories with little paper figures. Also pictured here is Abraham working in his "office." One day, out of the blue, I saw him pulling his desk into his room. When I asked him what he was doing, he said matter-of-factly, "I am going to work in my office!" Well, okay! I then printed him a sample blueprint of a mechanical/plumbing design that I found on the internet, and he proceeded to copy it onto his own paper, thus creating his own design! How fun and imaginative! Legos and lincoln logs are favorites around here, as well as painting and a LOT of outdoor playing. There's a window into our lives at home!