Brynna When it comes to learning, life is SO valuable. Besides the obvious (just having a beating heart, lungs that breathe in and out, a functioning brain…), here is a handful of fun things I have watched my kids pick up, on their own, with little to no guidance (but often, eventually, encouragement):
☀️Baking and cooking (full meals at all times of the day!)
☀️Animal care
☀️Meal and proper diet planning
☀️Gardening
☀️Writing books (like full-on chapter books)
☀️Paining gorgeous canvases
☀️Learning to identify herbs and wild plants
☀️Putting together an herbal study reference guide
☀️Organizing a pretend “town”, including the business, creating a currency, and electing official to run it
☀️ Writing fan fiction
☀️ Cataloguing their own books into a library☀️ Excellent swimming skills
☀️Creating a crime lab, complete with fingerprinting, camera evidence, mug shots, and a trial
☀️Rock and gemstone identification
☀️Math (yes this is a school subject but I have never really “taught” any of them math, they just pick it up and work pretty much independently from threre on out! It’s always amazes me)
☀️ Creating and editing stop-motion videos
That’s just off the top of my head, I know there’s so much more. My point is, we don’t have to “teach” kids on nearly as much as we think we need to. They’re smart. They watch and learn. They thrive when allowed to pursue their passions.
So let me encourage you if you’re taking on your child’s schooling yourself this year. Don’t fret over how much you do every day, or how much you schedule for the year, or if you feel you need to take a “de-schooling period” before you get started at home. Just letting them play when they’re little and fostering their interests as they grow is going to teach them SO much more than they can learn from a textbook, and it’s likely going to be the very things they need in life. ❤️
