[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne of the things I talked about in my original Learning how to Live post is the idea that the best teachers teach out of overflow. These teachers are learning and growing and thinking and living in the most important sense, and all of that bubbles over into what they do with their students. I don’t mean that it expresses itself in huge projects, but something far more simple. These teachers have been fed upon ideas and love, and they are therefore contagious. When they teach, it all comes out; it all comes together.
When I asked the DHM for a guest post on this subject, I learned that she had already written one years ago. {I should not be surprised! If you know the DHM, you know that she’s … I suppose prolific would be the word. Is there a subject upon which she has not written? I’m not sure.}
So, anyhow, I told the DHM that I would just excerpt her original post and then refer you all over to it, rather than copying the whole thing.
Sometimes we over-complicate what we’re doing. The DHM takes us back to simple: learn about something you love, and then share it with your children.
That can’t be the entirety of their education, of course, but it’ll certainly fill it out nicely!
What have you always wanted to know more about, but never had to time to learn? Study it! Talk about it as much as you can with your little ones, or at least in front of them.
I’ve long been interested in marine life. Years ago when we lived near a beach, I started a seashell collection, cataloged and labeled with the latin names- and I included my little ones (then just 2 little ones, ages 1 and 3) as much as they wanted to be included. I saw no reason they couldn’t learn the names of seashells just as easily as the letters of the alphabet, and the seashell names were more meaningful to them, too. I picked up a few extra shells on the beach for them to sort in whatever categories seemed good to them, or just to arrange in patterns that pleased them (I think the Equuschick gave hers names and personalities, and that was fine, too). My fancy collection was really a very mundane and ordinary one, and I kept it mostly in egg cartons and divided fruit boxes from the grocery store.
Click here to read the rest! The whole thing is definitely worth reading.
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