Tara and Aadya have engaged themselves in watching plants sprout, observing trees, little creatures - bugs, insects, snails, slugs, earthworms all around them. They have attempted to make 'pets' out of these creatures by putting them into boxes and trying to feed them leaves, grass etc. I have been a silent observer, watching their excitement and fun. They have followed some of these creatures to check out where they go. Our cats too have added to their curiosity about insects and other small creatures and every time a cat brought in a creature, Tara, her brothers and her dad have worked together to rescue and release them in the place where they belong. At present her curiosity is limited to finding out what they eat and where they sleep. The other day, she made a video pretending to be one of the you-tubers she follows.
She has been asking questions too - not many about insects - but mainly about rain and about corona virus. She has displayed curiosity to know more about the solar system and volcanoes. I can see that her world is becoming larger and she is now prepared to let other things beyond her usual vision enter her world.
A few days ago, she came to me and asked, "Where does rain come from?" She had already watched a few videos and expressed that she didn't understand everything. Water goes up in the air because of the Sun and then clouds are formed said she. What she couldn't make sense was about how the water goes up in the sky as she hadn't seen water go up and has only seen it fall down. I watched the videos she had already seen along with her and then decided to do an experiment. We boiled a bowl of water and put a lid on it. After a few minutes, I took the lid off. We saw steam emerging out. I explained that the steam was also water in a different form. We then checked the lid and saw water droplets on it. She immediately said, "oh so the steam settled on the lid and became water again." and then added - "The Sun heats the water from the top, you heated it from below." She was happy with what she learnt. I know that she has a lot to process and make sense of and once she does so - she will have many more questions.
I couldn't help thinking about my childhood days and asking myself - was I ever so curious? I recollected how I would get confused with the big terms of evaporation, precipitation and condensation. I realized that I had never really let myself experience and make sense of things for myself. All I did was try and memorize everything that was taught and also regarded it as the ultimate truth that can never be challenged. Unschooling has taught me to not 'give too much information' than what a child can process and gently guide the child in their process of learning. Thus for now I have to wait patiently for her to come up with her next set of questions about rain.
Last night, while I was working on a doodle mandala, she declared in a loud and firm voice that she was bored. As I had mentioned in my earlier blogs - she feels bored at times and often expects me to drop whatever I have been doing and spend time with her. Depending on various factors, I decide whether to halt and do be with her or to let her dwell in the feeling for sometime. Most often I let her stay with her boredom and most often she comes out of it all be herself. She did... this time too - she spotted her clay and engaged herself in making a figure and transformed it into a beautiful creature. Post that she went around playing with our cats for sometime and came back saying she wanted me to give her math problems.
Usually when she is this specific about what she wants, I oblige. What emerged was an hour of math. We had been doing skip counting for a while now - we do it when she hula hoops, or is counting her toys or jumping and playing around. This time I asked her to circle the numbers she would say aloud if she was skip counting by twos. Then I asked her to do the same with skip counting by 5s. We did some addition and counting in sets of ten and then I just chanced to give her addition sums where the answer for all sums was 7. She immediately noticed this and found it very amusing. She said, "Oh now I get it. Lets do more. You give me a number and I will form various sums that have this number as the answer.
We looked at various single digit numbers and she gave me the addition sentences. After one sum, she looked at me with a mischievous twinkle and wrote down a subtraction sentence that gave the same answer making me super intrigued and proud that she had figured this out by herself. There was no teaching - she had observed, made sense of it in her mind and associated it with what she already knew. Watching her do so increased my confidence in self learning. Children do have the ability to self learn. Keeping myself away from my urges to 'teach her' was bringing this beautiful learning in her.
Here are some pictures of what she self learnt last night. If you look at her work, she writes mirror images for some numbers. We do not correct her when she does so. We do not want any obstacle in her learning journey and at this stage it is important that we focus on conceptual understanding. Also my past experience of children who mirror has been that they lose confidence when corrected and often stop learning. Children grow out of this as they grow up especially when we do not overthink their errors and work on correcting them and fixing them.
That's all for now..I will write more about 'How Tara Learns' as I fill up my potli with a lot more experiences and pictures to go with them. Thank you for reading and hope this post helps you as a parent.
