A is for Apple {But right now it's more fun to pick apples!}

Welcome to the September Carnival of Natural Parenting: We're all home schoolers
This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared how their children learn at home as a natural part of their day. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

***

My chiquitita is now 4 years old. For the same number of years, I have asked myself a million questions about her learning and education. I just want to make sure I do the right things when it comes to such an important thing as education. Will she go to preschool, and if so, when? Will she go to private or public school, or will we brave it out and home school? What activities should she do? How often? The list goes on...

And there is not really one right answer, I've come to realize.

What I have come to realize is that the best source of learning is all around us. It's called life.

Plus, it all comes down to knowing your child and catering their education to maximize their learning.

For example, I know Maddie (and I suspect many other kiddos do too) learns by playing. So we play. I sneak in numbers, letters, and life lessons into our make-believe worlds and she gobbles it up. My mom plays with her too a couple days a week. In Spanish. The games include grocery store, petshop, doctor, rescue missions...oh the list goes on.

Once in a while I have been known to sit down with her and do a proper workbook lesson but she gets restless and wiggly...so we pack it up and go outside to hunt for caterpillars, bird nests, or in-need-of rescue--earthworms all while I answer her many questions...including the recent: "Why do dogs poop?", "Why are there clouds in the sky?" and "Will the sun melt you if you get too close?"

I know for a fact she is learning because she comes to us for more.

The other day, as soon as she heard me clanking around in the kitchen, she ran over, pulled up a chair to the counter and said "I want to help you cook." I replied without thinking, "Oh, not right now." And she very intelligently reminded me, "But mommy, I need to help you cook so I can learn how to cook for my own self."

Wow. What a great lesson that was for me. I was immediately reminded about one of Elizabeth Pantley's stories in "Hidden Messages: What our words and actions are really telling our children" (which if you have not read yet, you really should). It is about a teenage boy who, excited to have recently acquired his driver's license, is sent to the grocery store by his mother to buy hamburger meat. He returns empty handed and his mother exasperated, asks him why. He replies that he did not find meat that looked like hamburgers. The moral of the story goes: do stuff with your kids because by doing you are also teaching them. And they need to learn this stuff from you.

In their early years kiddos just love doing what you do. They mimic your every move. It's the way they learn. So juice their little predisposed brains for all they are worth and do stuff with them!

Here in my house we: Make the beds. Prepare meals together. Feed the dogs. Go for walks and see, I mean really see, the world around us {Nature is full of amazing stories and lessons}. Do chores and make them fun. Grow a garden. Go to the Farmer's Market. Go apple picking in the fall. She helps peel and core them for freezing...

Pretty much anything we do she does her own mini-me version of it.

Also, we let her climb trees. We let her explore and get dirty {not too dirty!}. And we often let her make mistakes because she learns better that way {for example, she is always wanting to bring this or that toy with her when we go out, and I keep saying "no" because it might get lost or she might get tired of holding it. So one day she did bring it and just as I predicted, she lost it. Luckily we did find it, but now she knows to either be careful when she brings stuff or she just chooses to leave things at home}.

I think she has also learned to be street smart or better said, life smart. By this I mean she understands her environment pretty well and I feel confident that she won't take off into the street or not know how to play and interact with others or that she will help out a fellow human if need be. Honestly, I much prefer she first have street/life smarts. And I love being the one teaching her this stuff because this is the kind of stuff that stays with them forever. Being book smart comes all too soon and often parents have a secondary role in this kind of learning (like if your child goes to school).

We also talk about anything and everything and we don't shy away from difficult questions. Of course everything we say is age appropriate but it's so fun to see how you can adapt your answers/teachings as they grow and mature.

Workbooks and lesson plans are great too, but honestly they can wait {Only recently have I really noticed Maddie is interested in sitting for longer than five minutes to practice her letters}. I say we should enjoy the magic of our little one's early years because much too soon they won't want to play anymore.

So far, I have not decided what will happen next year when Maddie hits the age-deemed-by-society when she will be ready {?} for school. Oh boy that could really be a whole other post, a really long one at that! {Which by the way, I am really looking forward to reading and hearing about successful homeschooling stories}.

And as far as my boy goes, well he follows in his sister's footsteps. And thankfully his mama is more relaxed the second time around about things and lets him play in the dirt, and he's a boy so that happens a lot.

So, for now we continue living life to the fullest and learning all we can as we go along.

***
Visit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!
Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:
(This list will be updated September 14 with all the carnival links.)

• A is for Apple {But right now it's more fun to pick apples!} — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment has a four-year-old who wisely knows she must forgo the worksheets for now and do things with her mother if she's going to learn.
• Baby Talks — Amy at Anktangle talks, talks, talks all day long to her preverbal baby, about simple things and complexities. (@anktangle)
• Baby University: Little Man, My Teacher — The ArtsyMama shares how her relaxed and patient "teaching" at home resulted in a confident little one when she returned to work.
• Creating a Sensory Garden — A sensory garden has given Marita at Stuff With Thing and her girls practice in math, science, budgeting, fine motor skills, and more. (@leechbabe)
• Despite the Big Yellow Bus — Seonaid at The Practical Dilettante has surprised many friends by sending her kids off to mainstream schooling — but their learning doesn't stop there. (@seonaid_lee)
• Down on the Farm — Megan at Purple Dancing Dhalias describes the multitude of skills her children learn by homeschooling on a farm.
• Early Childhood Education — First Do No Harm — Laura at Laura's Blog provides an incredible list of tips to facilitate learning at home.
• Education Starts At Home — Luschka at Diary of a First Child was happy to realize that learning at home isn't limited to older children. (@lvano)
• Every Day Is A School Day — Summer at Finding Summer lists the ways her family learns in this poem of a post. (@summerminor)
• hands on — the grumbles at grumbles and grunts read her little one Sherlock Holmes in utero. She'll continue to make learning fun now that he's on this side of the womb. (@thegrumbles)
• Have a Happy Heart — Erica at ChildOrganics has days of poop on the couch and oatmeal down the pants when sending her children to school seems like the perfect solution — until she regains her perspective. (@childorganics)
• Home Sweet Home Schooling — Check out CurlyMonkey's Blog for a photo montage of how her kids are learning anatomy, architecture, and more — all at home. (@curlymonkey_)
• Homeschooling — My Needs? — Do you homeschool for the kids, or do you do it for you? Read some thoughts from Home Grown Families. (@momtosprouts)
• Homeschooling: A Way of Life — Kimberly at Homeschooling in Nova Scotia has children who meet learning with enthusiasm and are becoming self-sufficient at a young age. (@UsborneBooksCB)
• How We Homeschooled — Deb at Living Montessori Now details in retrospect how her two lifelong learners spent their homeschooling years. (@DebChitwood)
• Learning at Home With a Preschooler and Toddler — Need some inspiration? Michelle at The Parent Vortex shares her tips and resources for lifelong learning. (@TheParentVortex)
• Learning at Home: Are We All Homeschoolers? — Kristin at Intrepid Murmurings incorporates homeschool ideas even though she plans to send her kids to school. (@sunfrog)
• Learning From Life — Mamapoekie at Authentic Parenting doesn't even have to think about how her daughter learns. She just does it. (@mamapoekie)
• Learning Through Play — What better way to learn at home than through play? Dionna at Code Name: Mama lists the many ways children learn through play, whether they know it or not. (@CodeNameMama)
• Learning With Savoury Pikelets — Deb at Science@Home breaks down how cooking facilitates learning. (@ScienceMum)
• Lessons Learned by Bowling (Yes, Bowling) — What life lessons can you learn from bowling? Ask Jessica from This is Worthwhile. (@tisworthwhile)
• Life is learning, learning is life. — Kristin, guest posting at Janet Fraser — Where birth and feminism intersect, defends the truth that children are hardwired to learn. (@JoyousLearning)
• life learning... — Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children found that structured schooling is about teaching, whereas unschooling is about learning, and her family resonated with the latter.
• Live to Learn Together — RealMommy at True Confessions of a Real Mommy knows that children learn in all different styles, so only one-on-one attention can do the trick.
• Natural Parenting and the Working Mom — Jenny from Chronicles of a Nursing Mom shares how natural parenting in the Philippines — and learning at home — includes "yayas" (nannies). (@crazydigger)
• Not Back to School: How We Learn at Home — Denise at This Holistic Life has learned to describe what unschooling is, rather than what it isn't.
• Our Learning Curve — Andrea of Ella-Bean & Co. has a special bookshelf set up where her daughter can explore the world on her own terms.
• School at Our House — Where is learning happening at Kellie at Our Mindful Life's house? It is pouring all over the floor. It is digging down deep in the earth. It is everywhere!
• Schooling Three Little Piggies — Despite the mess and the chaos, Melissa at White Noise lets her children into the kitchen.
• SuperMom versus The Comic Books of Doom! — Mommy Soup at Cream of Mommy Soup realized that if "getting the kids to read" was the goal, it didn't matter what the kids read. (@mommysoup)
• The joy of learning at home — Heather at Life, Gluten Free has a daughter who sees magic in the stars and understands the honeybees. (@lifeglutenfree)
• those who can't teach — Do you need a superiority complex to homeschool? Stefanie at Very, Very Fine wonders.
• Too lazy to unschool? — If unschoolers aren't lazy, Lauren at Hobo Mama wonders if she's too lazy to live her dream of free-form education. (@Hobo_Mama)
• Unschooling the School of Me — Rachael at The Variegated Life considers what she's teaching her son about work as a work-at-home mother — and the extreme work ethic she doesn't want him to emulate. (@RachaelNevins)
• What We Do All Day — Alison at BluebirdMama discovered that it's easier than she thought it would be to quantify how her child learns all day. (@childbearing)
• Who taught that kid ‘exoskeleton’? — Nervous about how you will facilitate learning at home? Don't be - they will absorb things on their own! Joni Rae at Tales of a Kitchen Witch Momma shares her story. (@kitchenwitch)