What is a life learner to me? A life learner in my opinion
is someone who learns from the people, places and things in their environment.
This also includes people, places and things introduced intentionally into ones
environment. To me it also means being gentle and kind to all people, including
oneself and all living creatures. To me a child is not an inferior person. They
deserve consideration and even respect. This does not mean I do not believe in
discipline. Discipline is important, but it has its place and it is often
overused and abused in the current system of things. I speak to my child as I
would any other human being I encounter (perhaps with more love though :-D).
What does that mean? Well when we our scheduling our day/week instead of
saying: “we are going to do this, this week.” I say: “So what do you want to do
this week?” I include him in the decision making process and in return he
listens to my ideas and together we come up with a great week of fun and
learning. My child is only 5 years old, but I have found since I implemented
this style of treating him as a partner in his own life and learning. His ideas
are more educational, interesting and fun than anything I could have came up with
on my own let alone found in a textbook.
As I stated my little is five. So we really are just
beginning and growing. So let me tell you a little bit about how we came to be
where we are right now. When I was pregnant my husband said he wanted to homeschool.
I loved the idea of it, but didn’t see how it would be possible because we both worked full-time. I breastfed until my little was a year and half and I got infection, right
about the time I started a long distance job in which meant leaving the house at
5 am and not getting home until 8 to 9 pm in the evening (sometimes even much later if traffic or weather was really bad). This wore on me
greatly and I missed my baby too much. My child was in a daycare during this
time and beyond and started out loving it, but soon it got to where he would
beg not to go and I got a phone call from a staff member that told me that
something was fowl at the daycare and I had a sweet kid, to get him out of
there. I didn’t hesitate and never took him back. My little did ABCmouse.com for pre-k and he
loved it. He completed nearly 50% of the Kindergarten portion, but he was
desire to do more hands-on activities. So we held off on the online program and
I order Volume 1 of Five In A Row. I absolutely loved it and so did he, but in
the meantime I had done a lot of research and reading about radical
unschooling, unschooling, homeschooling, etc... None of these titles describe
what I feel out style is exactly and that is okay because we are all different,
right?
So what do we do all day? Everyday varies, but everyday we
are learning, but the neat thing is we are not doing it forced or out of
obligation or to prepare for a test. It is amazing to be learning about real
things, education that will benefit our child for the rest of his life. Because
he is partnering us in his educational journey we are taking an adventure of
discovery his passions and interest and watching him really connect with the
things he is learning. I am so excited to be a part of his amazing journey and
in turn discovery a lot about myself and our family. I love the connections I
am feeling with them.
In addition we are working on developing our little farm and make our farm provide for us. We hope this blog will include many tips and stories about the various things we are doing and hope to do in the future, including, but not limited to, raising farm animals, making soap, making candles, homemaking, cooking, recipes, fermenting, canning and so on!
Why did I name my blog Littlefoot Farm & School? When my husband and I got married we bought a small patch of land and our first pet was a goat. Yes a goat!!! We named him Littlefoot and eventually we began to call our home Littlefoot Farm and now that we are homeschooling we call it Littlefoot Farm & School. Learn more by following my blog.
My purpose for this blog is to keep a record/diary of our
learning experience, share and inspire other families. My intention is to
create some blog post about our past journey over the past “school year(s)”. Then I would like to do a blog post about
each day of our life learning if I am able to keep up that is. I also hope to
write about the ups, but the downs and challenges too. I will also include
things we are doing in our life that may not seem like “homeschool” but as a
life learner it all applies: like recipes, family experiences, pets, farming,
gardening, homemaking, financial subjects, etc. I like to write book and website reviews too. If you ever have a question or
a topic for me to write on I would love to hear from you.
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