Green Child Magazine Back-to-School 2014 | Page 48

Learning @ Home
while engaged in age-appropriate play with
homemade ingredients that will nourish hungry bellies. Playing with dough, then, becomes
seamlessly integrated into your day instead of an
extra playtime activity. The same could be true
of starting a simple herb garden with your child,
picking strawberries or applies, visiting farms
and farmers’ markets, making jam, or searching
for wild edibles on a nature walk around town.
All of these activities are connected to your
daily rhythms of feeding and caring for young
children, and all present extraordinary learning
opportunities.

- Ritual Children learn much through rituals. Different
from routines that are rigid and structured and
automatic, rituals are fluid and evolving and
designed to celebrate daily, weekly, and seasonal
moments. Enjoying a cup of tea every afternoon
with your child. Celebrating Friday nights with
breakfast-for-dinner and a family movie. Welcoming the autumn equinox with apple-picking
and a harvest meal. These are all examples of
rituals that you can incorporate into your home
life. They help children to mark the passing of
time, to appreciate the changing seasons and
the natural cycle of the earth. They foster family
togetherness and position home as the central
source for growth and discovery.

- Nature -

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Prioritizing nature, and integrating the
natural world into your everyday rhythms,
can be an important way to spark natural
learning with little ones. Take a daily nature
walk. Go puddle stomping. Jump in autumn
leaves. Catch snowflakes. Create a seasonal
nature table, gathering items from your
neighborhood to bring into your home and
weave into your child’s play.

Collect nature-based “toys” for your child,
such as acorns and tree bark, shells and
rocks. These simple activities connect
children to nature in important ways and
spark curiosity.

- Community Learning at home with little ones is not
an isolated endeavor. Build community by
joining your local homeschooling network,
most of which have designated play dates or
park days for preschool-age children. Seek
community resources for learning, such as
museums and libraries, nature centers and
farms, colleges and non-profits, local shops
and community-based organizations. Many
of these community resources have classes
for young children and all can serve as
helpful hubs for fostering natural learning.
When we begin to see our home and our
daily rhythms as an integral part of our
child’s learning, the whole idea of living
and learning at home with our little ones
becomes much less daunting. We spot
simple ways to integrate our children into
the daily learning all around us, and provide
the important conditions of freedom and
play, warmth and nourishment to make
learning happen. We can live and learn
joyfully with our children, using their
natural zest for discovery as our beacon.
1
Gray, Peter. Free To Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct To Play
Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better
Learners for Life. New York: Basic Books, 2013. p. 6.

Holt, John. Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of
Homeschooling. New York: DeCapo Press, 2003, p. 101.
2

3
Barker, Jane E., et al. “Less-structured time in children’s daily lives
predicts self-directed executive functioning.” Frontiers In Psychology,
June 17, 2014: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/
fpsyg.2014.00593/abstract