Unschooling 10 : An example of 'how children learn'

Tara came up to me and said I want to tell a story and I want you to write it down. I was just getting ready for a Duo meeting of some of my school friends. I stopped short of saying, 'later dear' as I yet had about five minutes before our scheduled call. 'Let's do it' I said with enthusiasm. She hopped to our room to get me some paper and pencil and was back in a jiffy... eager to begin. 

This little girl has never sat for more than five minutes to read a book with me. Though for the past week she has been listening to 'read aloud' books on an e-library app (get-epic) that I have downloaded on her iPad and at times has made me read the books on Khan kids. However reading has never been on her list of favorites. 

She has always surprised us with use of words - like the other day - she asked me whether the fruit she picked up from the woods near our house was edible. I was like 'edible' you got to be kidding me - how do you know there is a word called edible? She also knew what it meant. She has used words like 'actually', 'research', 'challenge', 'independence', 'accidentally', 'improvement' and many others correctly in the past. Every time she uses a tough word correctly, I am reminded of my oldest son, Aditya - who has an impeccable way with words. Where has she picked up these words? We haven't taught her or given her lessons on words. She doesn't even like reading books with us. She has probably picked them up through her sense of hearing and being part of our conversations. She is full attention when we are chatting at home or anywhere else. She picks up words, processes them in her mind, assigns meaning to them and then uses them when she feels its right to do so. She also hears them while watching videos, playing games on her iPad. She prefers to be by herself while doing so. There is so much going on in her mind while she is engaged with her gadgets and language acquisition is just one of those many things in her mind. 

She yet doesn't know how to write. Actually, I am not totally correct when I say that - she loves to make to-do lists and always asks me to dictate spellings to her. She uses capital letters and does attempt to write the small case at times. However, she is yet figuring out the formations of the small case and often switches back to capital letters.

We don't push her. Nor do we start teaching her assuming that she is interested in learning how to write. We just let her be and rejoice in her learning and achievements. She doesn't even think on the lines of achievements. All this is just part of her life - part of living. Learning language and acquiring new words comes very naturally to children.

Now to get back to the story she dictated...I am reproducing it just the way she dictated - these are her words...

" Once upon a time, there was a cat named Cookie. He had two other friends. Their names were Cupcake - the horse and Nemo - the Owl. They all went to look for food. Cookie found some cat food outside. But everybody cannot eat cat food. It's not good for them. Cupcake found an apple. Nemo found some insects and a rat. They all ate up their food.

They went to find other animals because they were only three and they wanted more friends. They found Jimmy the cow and Sammy the minion. They went to sleep and they found a talking apple. After that they went and they found a dead end. They were surprised that Jimmy was eating worms and a grass salad. After that they all went to sleep. 

When they woke up, they saw that Sammy was eating cabbage and not banana. They all walked and found a dog who was dirty in the woods. They gave him a bath in the lake. The dog felt hungry after bathing. Jimmy found some dog food. Dog ate all the food and went to sleep."

 The End

As I was writing this post, she asked me to untie the string she had tied to one of her plastic cases. The string was all knotted up. I asked her, "why do you need this string?" I heard her say it was her 'lassle of Truth'. When I asked her to tell me more about it she said - 'Lasso is like a rope - a weapon that Wonder Woman uses'. I asked her what does 'truth' mean to her. She gave me an example - "if I tell you I saw a tree and I actually saw it and it is there, I am telling the truth." I was amazed at the clarity with which she explained. Since I hadn't watched Wonder woman - I thought she was saying 'lassle' and was perplexed to see that 'lassle' wasn't a word in any dictionary. So I googled Wonder Woman and found that I was spelling it incorrectly - it was 'lasso' and not 'lassle'. 

She also drew the characters of her story with prompts from her dad. She enjoyed drawing the characters while he read out the story to her and they both chatted about it. It was so much fun to watch them...

 

This is an example of 'natural learning' and 'child led learning'. Learning where the child has complete autonomy.  The child drives what they want to do and gather together the resources needed to do so.