I was reading the post in JP and Marie's blog where they were talking about their home school ideas. I liked their 3 H's.
I was thinking about our home school and, at least for now, I think my best description of our style home school is Experiential Education.
I asked Marie for a description or definition of Experiential Education. She said that Learning takes place through our experiences and the teacher facilitates recognizing the learning. (Not exactly.... Marie, Help me with this....It was too long ago).
We know that we were put on the earth to get a body. We also know that we came to the earth to learn. When we were in the pre-earth life as spirits, we were learning and developing our identities. Now, on the earth, we can use our bodies that we didn't have before to facilitate learning. We call that learning, "experience".
There are many forms of experiential learning. I am looking for as many examples as I can find. Feel free to comment and add more examples of experiential learning.
Cooking. Talk about cooking all you want, but realy cook it and you will know a lot more.
Swimming. Have you ever tried to learn to swim by watching someone else, or reading a book about it? It is a skill everyone should have. Swimming is an example of many sports skills but is the one we are focusing on this year.
Relationship skills. The more you try to relate to others, the better you get at it. And there is nothing like putting your foot in your mouth that will teach you what not to do.
Music skills. It is impossible to become a musician without experience with music. Listening and Practicing. Making mistakes and training our bodies to do what creates music to the ear.
I believe all facts that we may be taught at school are more easily learned when they relate to our experiences. For instance Travel is a better way to learn about countries than reading books and memorizing facts. Just ask Emily.
I think our bodies are ideally suited to facilitate real, long term, meaningful learning. And learning things in an integrated environment where things relate to other things helps us learn.
Marilyn
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
The simple definition of Experiential Education that I gave was, after an experience the facilitator helps to draw out the learning. The experience can either be natural or manufactured. There are many ways a facilitator can help facilitate the learning, including: questioning, analogy, writing, drawing, expression, correction, etc... these are extremely varied.
Another I would add to mom's list is Learning an Instrument. Especially if it is taught like Ed Sprunger, my teacher trainer, suggested: using less words, and more experiences. That's one of my goals.
Post a Comment