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Creating Teachable Moments When You Homeschool
by Ellery Cheever
http://www.homeschoolit.com
Teachable moments are a concept that has existed since time
immemorial. It's a centerpiece of 'child-centered learning',
and methods of teaching like the Montessori method. These
days they have the connotation of helping parents address
difficult subjects with children by taking advantage of
stray comments, television shows, song lyrics and anything
else that opens the door to a dialog.
Long before it was a behavioral concept, though, teachable
moments were at the center of teaching children. When you
homeschool your children, you have a unique opportunity to
spot and take advantage of teachable moments to give your
child the best education possible.
Teachable moments are not a substitute for planned lessons.
Rather they are meant to supplement the planned lessons your
state requires when you choose to homeschool your children.
By providing resources and lifting your lessons from
everyday happenings and events, you use every available
moment as a lever to reinforce the lessons that you're
teaching in more formal ways. While parents of children in
traditional schools can use the same tactics, they are not
in the same position as homeschool parents to know exactly
what is being taught and how a teachable moment can
reinforce it.
It may happen in the middle of a lesson. It may happen on a
walk to the park or a trip to the store. It may happen in
the middle of the night when you find your child sitting up
with a flashlight under the covers. It can be triggered by a
song on the radio, a comment by a stranger, a clear
fascination with a flower - in fact, anything at all that
alerts you that your child is wide open to absorb knowledge
NOW, at this moment.
Creating teachable moments isn't much more difficult. As a
parent who homeschools your children all you really need to
do is set the stage for them to happen. Provide your
children with sources of information and learning that are
fun to use. A telescope can trigger a lifelong interest in
astronomy and space. A collection of old textbooks picked up
at a yard sale can provide a research resource or open the
doors to analytical thinking. Children who are allowed to
learn are like sponges, absorbing knowledge at enormous
rates. A child who has been taught via homeschool hasn't
learned that textbooks are not recreational reading. They
will as happily read a college psychology textbook as the
latest Goosebumps novel.
Use your surroundings in your lesson plans. A trip to the
grocery store can be a lesson in math for all of your
children, depending on their level and age. By assigning
lessons based on real life experiences, you make math
relevant to your child's life. A pre-schooler can count
items, a second grader add prices using a calculator or
paper and pen, assign a seventh grader to work out a
shopping list based on the family budget and the Sunday ad
circulars. Believe it or not, teachers in traditional
schools are using exactly those methods to teach math. Take
the time to figure out what your child can learn in any
situation and work it into a lesson plan.
You can apply the same tack to trips to museums, the fire
department or a local park. Challenge your children to be
observant by surprising them with writing assignments that
they don't expect. Instead of a report on the museum, ask
them to write about the people on the bus, or what they
think a day in the life of the docent is like. Expand their
thinking by pushing them to think beyond the walls of the
box.
How about science? You have unique opportunities to teach
science in homeschool. Make use of teachable moments to
explain to your child why his stomach is rumbling, what
makes him hiccup or how a stalk of celery turns colors if
you put it in colored water, he'll be prepared to understand
lessons on the digestive, circulatory and respiratory
systems. Discussing the environment while you sort
recyclables out of the trash or dig a garden can be the
basis of an understanding of ecosystems and the complex
interdependencies of all organisms on each other.
The internet opens entire new worlds for teaching and
teachable moments. You can use it to encourage writing via
blogs and personal journals, 'visit' foreign lands via web
sites, and teach discriminatory reading by comparing
information on different topics that you find on the web.
Encourage a love of knowledge and an analytic mind by
discussing how to judge the reliability of information
found. Assign a lesson that requires them to communicate via
email with a foreign consulate or write a letter to the
editor of a magazine or newspaper. Homeschool makes it easy
to control exactly how your child uses the internet, and to
teach responsible, safe use.
Teachable moments aren't meant to take the place of formal
lessons, but rather to supplement them and to rise from
them. Take advantage of the fact that you have your child by
your side and learn to recognize when they're ready to learn
- and take full advantage of it.
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