Tag: education

The Importance of Creativity: Feed Your Soul

17 Comments

You might have noticed by now that I’m pretty passionate about creativity, both for adults and kids. Creativity forms a bedrock of my family’s entire educational philosophy and is a primary reason for us choosing home education. Not to mention my chosen career of Writer!

Enjoying creativity is one thing…

But why is creativity IMPORTANT?

Aside from the fairly obvious things about creative expression being a good way to unwind and de-stress, creative writing, in particular, has some pretty impressive benefits for both adults and children. I’m going to cover a handful of them for you today.

There is oodles of research on this out there. But if dry research papers are not your bag (they’re not mine either!) then here is a handy summary.

Aids Crucial Areas of Development For Children

Expressive writing, which includes poetry, journalling and writing stories, has been proven to improve problem-solving abilities and facilitate creative thinking in different situations. This kind of lateral thinking is incredibly valuable in both personal and professional spheres. Encouraging children to engage in expressive writing now will help prepare them for their future.

In the more immediate term, creative writing gives children the opportunity to express their feelings in a safe and constructive way. Learning to manage big emotions can be challenging for children, especially if they are sensitive, as mine are. Being able to sort through their feelings by writing them down in creative forms can help them to process what’s going on in their life and feel better able to cope.

Developing the skill to express themselves also builds self-confidence in children. With so many negative messages bombarding this generation from all of the information around them, a bit of confidence in their own abilities to communicate and be themselves will be invaluable.

Picasso famously said that all children are artists. But is it inevitable that they cease to be?

Children Are Naturally Creative

It seems obvious to someone like me. But I realise it may need saying anyway.

All children are naturally creative. Think back to your own childhood, or focus on the early years of your child’s life when their imagination ran wild and free. Sometimes it didn’t serve them so well, (monsters under the bed), but how about all that time playing out stories with their toys? They are capable of creating vast worlds and complex stories spontaneously with just a few simple cues.

Some people would argue that this creativity naturally declines as a part of growing up. I disagree. I think it is a trait that needs nurturing, absolutely, but in incidences when creativity does seem to abandon children it is not because this is the natural result of maturing. Rather it is the fault of a society and education system that not only devalues creativity but is fundamentally anathema to it.

If you haven’t already watched it, I highly recommend all parents, and anyone with an interest in education watch Sir Ken Robinson’s influential Ted Talk: Do Schools Kill Creativity? This video has been viewed over 46.5 million times, all around the world, since it was published online over a decade ago.

Valuable for Mental Wellbeing In Adults

Expressive writing aids organisation and planning for people who engage in it. These are important skills for both children and adults. [1]

It probably comes as no surprise to those of you who have been reading my blog for a while, but I wholeheartedly endorse this research! As someone who is somewhat keen on organisation and planning *innocent whistle* this little fact is music to my ears.

What’s more, writing poetry has been found to reduce anxiety. [2] Research from Oxford Brookes University has found that writing poems and haikus can relieve work related stress and also stimulate a better work-life balance.

Journaling or blogging can enhance mood and writing a weekly gratitude log has been found to enhance motivation and generate a more positive outlook. [3]

Writing about traumatic events has also been found to be beneficial to long-term healing. [4]

What About Getting a “Real” Job?

Well, creative writing helps with that too. One study found that engineers who were out of work found new jobs more quickly if they practised expressive writing than if they didn’t. [5]

Writing notes by hand has also been proven to improve the retention of new information, which may aid in all sorts of professional and educational endeavours. [6]

Sir Ken Robinson, creativity and education expert has wise words for us all.

It is also widely recognised now that creative thinking is one of the most valuable skills in the modern job market. The world’s problems need increasingly creative solutions and employers are valuing creativity when selecting candidates for interviews. [7]

We Ought To Be Valuing Creative Careers Anyway!

Not everyone can or wants to be an engineer, financial advisor, or doctor. Wouldn’t the world be a sad and empty place without writers, artists, musicians and dancers?

Why are we telling children not to pursue these careers?

It sort of made sense 40 years ago, when people were guaranteed a job if they went with the flow through the industrialised public education system. Well-meaning parents wanted their children to enjoy a secure future and so advised them against the perceived “high risk” arts career choices where “failure” was almost certain.

But when university graduates are no longer able to find work and the modern economy is becoming centred around self-employment and entrepreneurship, it makes far less sense to blindly funnel people towards academic subjects at the expense of those that stand a higher chance of being a) useful and b) fulfilling.

I absolutely love this talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, on Your Elusive Creative Genius. It’s definitely food for thought.

Find Your Passion

I write novels, I blog and keep a journal. I found my passion.

  • What is your passion?
  • What were you born to do?
  • Are you doing it?
  • What about your children?
  • Do they want to write and create?
  • How can you help them?

First of all, model what it looks like to follow your passion and express your creativity.

Then nurture theirs. Give them space to create without criticism. Give them access to learning opportunities that will enhance their creativity.

If you’re looking for a creative writing program for your child, then you could always check out my online course, Fun and Ink *shameless plug alert*. I help young people learn how to write fantastic stories that they feel proud to share with other people.

Whatever your child’s creative passion, you can help them to flourish.

What are your thoughts? Have you found creative or expressive writing to be beneficial in your own life? Do you have a child who loves telling stories? Let me know in the comments.

Creative Writing has enormous benefits to both children and adults.

Unschooling – Why We Don’t Need Holidays

11 Comments

We’re an unschooling family.

With the schools breaking up for the summer, it seemed like the right time to talk about the fact that we don’t take a “school” holiday. There a lot of myths around home education, one of which being that we have to follow school terms. We don’t!

home education homeschooling taking vacations, we don't need holidays

What Is Unschooling?

There are a lot of special terms, or jargon, around education. So let’s just get this one out of the way. I described us as an “unschooling family”. What on earth does that even mean?!

Unschooling is an educational philosophy or style based on the principle that children have an innate curiosity and desire to learn and that traditional schooling actually damages this. The idea is that when children are allowed to direct their own education, they will gladly learn anything they are interested in, and crucially, retain the information far better than they do if they are force fed information.

When children come willingly to a topic, they genuinely want to know all they can and they will absorb the information, or develop the skill, with no need to be “taught” by someone else. They can acquire the information through a variety of sources, and it is the parent’s role to provide access to those sources.

No limits are placed on education, or no arbitrary ones, at least. We don’t follow a schedule, or have a bell that tells us “that’s enough maths, time for geography”. If they want to spend four hours measuring things, they can do so. If they want to obsess about dinosaurs for eighteen months, they can do so. This actually happened. The four hours measuring never did, that was just an extreme example to illustrate the point.

Educational Value in Everything

Those eighteen months where all the Munchkin and the Bean were interested in was dinosaurs were AMAZING. The level of obsession was a bit intimidating, sure, but they came through it with encyclopaedic knowledge.

We read books, looked at pictures, watched videos, did volcano experiments. They learned so much about the history of the planet, geology, palaeontology, fossilisation, and reproduction! Not to mention special effects in filmmaking.

That knowledge has stuck with them. The Munchkin is now reading, totally self-taught, and can confidently read words like “Carnotaurus”, “Diplodocus” and “Tyrannosaurus”.

Children are learning all the time, so by not placing limits on their learning, we don’t ever prevent them from learning something. That would damage their relationship with education, put them off, or hold them back. Likewise, we don’t insist on them learning anything.

We appreciate that learning is lifelong, they do not have to cram everything they will ever need to know into a fixed time frame. If there is something they need to know, according to their needs, not some prescribed idea imposed on them, they will learn it.

As they go through life, they may decide they need to know how to run a business, or bake a cake, or fix a car, or design a web page. Once they decide, they will know how to find out. That is the central ethos behind unschooling: ensure they love learning and know how to learn. Then they’ll be set for life.

We have never forced numeracy or literacy. Both of them are particularly attuned with numbers. We talk about maths all the time, we explain principles, we illustrate with examples – when they ask questions. As a result, the Munchkin has a profound grasp of the theory of mathematics. So he can figure out the answer to any sum he needs. He understands the principles. If we had drilled him in his times tables and made him learn by rote, I don’t believe he would a) love maths the way he does, or b) understand it.

Likewise with reading. I’m a writer and hubby is an avid reader, so this is super important to us. I was adamant that our children would love stories. I never wanted to put them off reading or writing. So there is no pressure to do either. The Munchkin is 8 now (yikes!) and has been read to almost every day of his life. Our home is filled with books and he sees his parents and grandparents reading all the time. In his own time, in his own way, he has learned to read.

It really only clicked this year, but I wasn’t worried because I knew that this is really common. That when children are given the space to direct their own education, they typically learn to read when they are ready, sometime between 6 and 10 years old.

Our education system pushes reading at ever younger ages. It was bad enough that four-year-olds were having to do reading home work. I hear now that some preschools are forcing toddlers into phonics lessons at two or three years old (parents talking in Facebook groups, I wish I could cite a source as I find this really shocking). To me, this is madness and the only certain outcome is a generation of people who, at best, tolerate reading when they must, at worst, despise it!

Learning While Living

Unschooling families don’t divide up learning from living. Education isn’t something that happens Monday to Friday, from 9 am until 3 pm. Learning happens all the time. When a child isn’t squashed into a time table, they are open to learning from all sorts of activities, at any time they are awake! Their brain even goes on processing information while the child is asleep.

We don’t have a “school room” or “learning area”, because of this basic philosophy. We don’t need to sit at a desk to learn. Really, home education is a bit of a misnomer. A great deal of our education happens outside the home. It happens at the park, in the woods, at museums, at the cinema, at friends’ houses. It happens in the car on our way places, around the table in a cafe.

We don’t follow an educational schedule and we don’t have term times and holidays.

Because learning is not separate from life, and because education is not a negative thing; hard work and unenjoyable; our kids don’t take breaks from it. They don’t get exhausted from needing to focus for six hours a day. They don’t need down time to just watch cartoons – they can watch cartoons whenever they like! They often choose to do other things, but even cartoons can provide learning opportunities.

I was once asked by a well meaning relative if I gave the Munchkin time off for the summer. This was when he was 4. I was so stunned by the question that I don’t think I gave a very good answer.

So let me say now what I wish I had said then:

He’s four. He plays all day, every day, enjoying his childhood. We don’t do sit-down, formal work. So no, I don’t “give him time off”. Time off from what? Being a happy, engaged child? No, I don’t. He is free to be that all the time, all year round.

He may be eight now, but the same is basically true. The Bean is five, so yeah, the above is totally on point for him.

freedom

We enjoy an enormous amount of freedom and I want my children to truly appreciate that.

When I say we don’t take holidays, I don’t mean that we don’t go away anywhere. We travel! We love to travel. But do we go to top tourist destinations in August? Er… no. We don’t. We avoid doing that deliberately!

One huge advantage to home educating is that we are free to travel all year round, whenever we like. We can take advantage of off-peak travel deals, saving us a lot of money! We can also pick quieter times, and avoid big crowds. We don’t have a school to answer to (or fines to pay) if we go off to the USA for three weeks.

Taking a “holiday” or “vacation” is a chance to get away from home and do different things, but the kids don’t “need” to do this in order to relax or get away from school stress.

Also, really crucially, because of our belief that learning is always happening, we totally acknowledge that there is a lot to be learned from travelling. Contrary to what the schools seem to be saying – that if you are on holiday, your child will fall behind because they need to be at a desk being forced to learn during set hours!

Some of it is obvious; visits to Rome or Athens or Egypt are obviously going to be enormously educational. History, culture, geography, art, architecture, politics, archaeology, all without really trying. But then there are the more subtle things, like using another currency, speaking and reading another language, coping with a different climate, entertaining oneself on a plane. These are all important skills.

Being part of the wider world, grasping globalism, understanding cultural differences; being shut in a school room simply doesn’t allow this sort of education to happen.

educational freedom, creativity, outdoors, learning through living

I hope this post clears up any misconceptions you may have had. I hope you like what you’ve read and have a greater understanding of unschooling.

What are your thoughts? Is this something you would like for your family? Do you disagree with this approach? Polite debate is always welcome 😉

While You Were Away…

1 Comment

parenting-word cloudAs some people may have gathered from my last post, something’s stirring over here at Spirited Mama!

I am indeed, still alive and still as spirited as ever. I decided that it was time to dust off this blog and breathe some life back into it. My life moved away from blogging for a while, I didn’t feel I had much to say and was focused on writing my fiction. But my mama bear is stirring and has things to say again.

It’s funny how life is this constantly shifting current, taking us from one place to another, often seemingly without us controlling it at all. There is definitely an ebb and flow to energy and that changes the course of our lives.

beach1So what happened while I was away? The Munchkin is now 6 years old and the Bean is 3. How did that happen? I’m also now a single mum. Both kids spent some time at a Montessori nursery, but are now both at home full time, so you can expect to see lots of posts about home education and parenting in general. I’m still nursing the Bean, and am a vocal advocate of full term breastfeeding, so that might come up from time to time too. I don’t have as much to do with supporting women and families with their births, but still admin a VBAC support group online and keep half an eye on the state of birth in the UK, so if something catches my eye I’ll probably mention it here. I want this blog to continue to be a resource for those with birth choices to make, even if that isn’t my primary focus these days.

Aside from parenting, what else has happened in the last few years? I’ve published two novels and a short story in the Echoes of the Past series, with novel number three due out this summer. I’m currently running a crowdfunder to raise funds for my publishing costs, so if anyone would like to contribute and help out this single mama trying to earn a living from her passion, then do please hop over to my Pubslush page and chip in what you can. But this blog isn’t about my books really, so I won’t be bombarding you with promos and the like, don’t worry. You might see a few book reviews of kids’ books though!

I’ve also really embraced Twitter, hence the title for this post. It’s become my favourite social media platform in many ways. It’s not great for holding conversations, but I love it for connecting with other people and keeping up with their news. Sometimes it is like shouting into a crowded room though, so I try to engage with people to make it meaningful to be there. Follow me via the link below!

I think that’s all from me for now. Check out my social media links below and hit the “follow” button to keep up to date with new posts here. I’m really looking forward to jumping back in to this crazy world of #pblogging with you all!

Facebook

Twitter

Goodreads

Montessori Nursery a Big Hit

Leave a comment

Typical Montessori Learning Space

Our plan is to home educate our children, for a variety of reasons, we feel it is the best option for our family. For some time now I have maintained that the Munchkin would not be going to nursery for this reason. Why prepare him for school when he isn’t going? But we have also always said that we would remain flexible and meet the actual needs of our children, rather than adhering steadfastly to some sort of super-plan.

Well, I’m getting bigger, slower and more tired. The Munchkin is getting bigger, heavier and faster. Oh man, is he hard work these days! An absolute joy, don’t get me wrong, but he is hungry for more interaction and more new people and places and I am struggling to keep up with him or get him out to enough groups to satisfy his thirst for activity.

There are lots of home education activities in our area, we have a thriving HE community, with several children three years and under, but “our area” is actually county-wide and not all of the activities are suitable for children as young as him. One of my main motivations for finally learning to drive this summer was to get him out to more groups, as it was proving impossible to do so relying solely on public transport. However, I’m still not getting to any HE groups and only sporadically managing generic under 5’s groups as my energy levels are somewhere in the sub-basement.

So, after some long discussions, hubby and I decided to check out our local Montessori nursery, with a view to the Munchkin having a couple of sessions a week there to give me some relief and him some much needed play time away from home. We have a couple of friends who send their little ones there and are very happy with it, we generally like the Montessori approach to education and are planning to utilise bits of it at home ourselves.

After exchanging a few emails with the principal, hubby and I took the Munchkin along this morning for a “quick half hour” visit before hubby had to be at work. That “quick half hour” turned into three hours of some of the most positive play I have ever seen the Munchkin engage in. Given that hubby had to be at work, we even left the Munchkin there alone for half an hour while I drove hubby to the office in the next small town and then came back again. Not once did he even ask for us while we were gone!

The Munchkin isn’t shy, he will very happily chat to complete strangers in a café , on a train, in the supermarket, etc. But usually when we go somewhere new that is clearly a designated child space; be it someone else’s home, or a group, he sticks close to me for a few minutes and prefers to play on his own for the most part. Even with other children that he knows well, it can take an hour or more to warm up to that child enough to play with them, as opposed to side by side but independently. In groups of more than two children I have never known him interact with others, he seems to prefer his own space and to do his own thing. For this reason, I have been convinced for some time that nursery would be the wrong setting for him and been content to stick to play dates with one or two mum friends and their children at a time.

Today was a whole different story. He was his normal, cautious self when we arrived. It took a bit of coaxing to get him into the main play room from the entrance way, but once he was shown where the train set lives he came completely out of his shell. Within five minutes of arriving he was not only playing happily without either of us, but he was engaging with the other children too. He did ask me to join in with him a few times over the course of the morning, and was keen to show me what he was doing, but I think had I not come back after taking hubby to work, he wouldn’t have missed me at all.

At about 10.30 the children decided to play outside. There is no structure to their day, they follow the children and apparently have at least one but usually two sessions of play outdoors every day, no matter the weather (love that part, hooray for puddles!). The Munchkin was in the middle of the group as they burst out of the door and he had a wonderful time sweeping the leaves and piling them into a little wooden trolley and then working with a little girl to bury a tricycle with them. We have had to abandon arts and crafts as he hates having anything he perceives as mess on his hands. Even meal times have become a challenge, with him asking to be cleaned every time food gets on his hands. But this messy play with the leaves was totally acceptable to him and he only asked for his hands to be cleaned once mid-play, there was even some reluctance when I cleaned them again as we were getting ready to leave.

I was itching to get off, feeling that I had had all of my questions answered and having other things planned for the day, but it took over an hour of gentle persuasion and bribery before we left. Even “Shall we see if nana is home and go to her house?”, which is normally enough to convince him to leave whatever and wherever we are, was met with the reply “No. Busy playing here.”

I was stunned, to say the least. Lunch at a café was passed up, home to his own trains returned “No, we can’t do that yet.” and all afternoon I was being asked if we were going back to “that place” again and his absolutely adorable “pleeeease”.

I managed to convince him to leave after using all of my usual tools, including the tactic of letting him do one more thing that he really wants to do and then doing what I want him to do. That was the winner in the end and we left with, surprisingly, no tears and a cheerful goodbye to everyone. We got my odd jobs done and had lunch in a café , as he was finishing his lunch he grinned and asked “We go to nana’s house now?”, clearly remembering my attempt at bribery from at least two hours previously. So one quick phone call to my mum and we were on the road to my parents’ place, via home to collect more clean nappies, as I hadn’t planned to be out all day!

He couldn’t wait to tell nana and “Ash” (his name for grandad) all about nursery and even when we went back to hubby’s office to collect him at the end of the day, the Munchkin was still asking to go back to play at “that place”.

I remarked to hubby about the level of development in the Munchkin from one short morning at this place; the confidence and independence, the willingness to get mucky and the eagerness to return are all fairly new to us.

It’s a good job hubby and I were as impressed with the place as the Munchkin is really, but I’m not sure what we’ll do if two half days a week aren’t deemed enough by him, as we really can’t afford more! Roll on third birthday and 15 hours of free childcare!

We certainly won’t be making any rash decisions at this stage about long term educational plans, but for now, this arrangement looks like it will be a winner for us all and maybe we can look at the idea of flexi-schooling later if this nursery gets its free school status approved for 2013. I’m still a firm believer in HE, and that is still my preference, but who am I to deny my little boy something that he gets so much out of?