Science Genes Switching On

This Saturday morning I was rudely awakened by a small, insistent whisper and someone pinching my nose closed....

"Mom! Mom! Mom wake up!"

"Euugh, ork, aghh....."

"Mom! This is important!"

"Huh? What, what's amatter?"

"How do worms move?!"

After fighting down my recurring fantasy of bunging them off to a military boarding school, we rustled up some breakfast and got down to worms.

The science gene is well and truly switched on. She picks out and laughs at things in her story books...like the Elephant Eggs in the glorious alphabet book Bad Kitty.

"Elephants are mammals! They don't lay eggs!" and "There's no such thing as Butterfly Milk! Butterflies are insects, not mammals!"

She's four. We've been following the Waldorf thingie of delaying academics to give them limitless time for imaginative and outdoor play. Now, as part of my ongoing spontaneous drift towards radical unschooling, I'm questioning the whole idea of 'delaying' things, as though the universe is divided up into 'subjects' which are mine to 'delay.'

I've gotten to the point where I'm not chopping things up into School Subjects (Oooo, she wants to know how worms move, that's BIOLOGY!) I mean, sure it is, but what is science? Just the ancient and noble pursuit of knowledge, the desire to find answers to questions....here comes the Einstein quote...

"It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom. Without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail."

In spite of a lack of organized academic instruction, Scooby knew her colours and shapes before she was two, and has taught herself to count, read, write, add and subtract. Lately she's been messing about with negative numbers.

Scooby: "What's two take away two?"

Humble: "I don't know..."

Scooby: "Zero!"

Humble: "Zero!"

Scooby: "What's two take away THREE??!!"

Humble: "I don't know..."

Scooby: "STILL ZERO!!!!"

Humble: "Ahhhh!"

Scooby: "Still zero when I TALK about it, but I can make it go down farther if I write it out!"

Humble: (offering paper) "Oh?"

Scooby: (writes "2 1 0 1 2 3" on the paper and taps the crayon on the negative one while saying "bloop!")

Humble: (shows her how to make a negative sign - she's got the concept, just didn't know about the symbol!)

Last week she shrieked so loudly I thought she'd fallen into the compost bucket and came rushing into the kitchen like a worried Mother Hen. She was sitting at the kitchen table with her finger sticking down into her glass of water. "Look! My finger is HUGE and CROOKED! Why? Why!?"

Baby Man, at just-turned-three, also with no formal instruction, knows his colours and shapes, and can count to twelve (why twelve? I have no idea!) in English and to five in Spanish.

He can identify numbers up to 10 and identifies words and letters as "ABC's" but doesn't seem obsessed with them, as Scooby was. He's obsessed with how things are put together, and busies himself with ripping everything apart and putting it back together again. He also builds things, destroys them, and builds them again. This tendency is coded on the Y chromosome, I believe.

Which brings us to a little Plato....

"Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each."

I was planning to start with a formal Waldorf kindergarten curriculum this coming fall, but have been so astonished at the miraculous unfolding of Curiosity and Desire to Learn going on here, that I'm thinking it isn't really necessary.

Now I'm thinking about simply using the Waldorf concepts, which I love, and which resonate very deeply with me, to create the underlying structure and rhythm of our home environment, rather than following a formal curriculum.

I feel I must follow their lead, and if they love "academic" subjects I'm not going to prevent them from running wild with them. On the other hand, I'm not going to push them either, I'm just going to watch and learn, baby, watch and learn!

HW