Are you on Periscope? Then we want to see your Enchanted Learning Spaces! At the kitchen table, in the backyard, on the front porch–wherever learning sprinkled with pixie dust happens in your home!
What is an Enchanted Education, you ask? It’s when time moves molasses slow and learning is pleasurable and playful. Learn more here.
Image by Flo’s shots 4 me (cc cropped, tinted, text added)
In all your planning to please, educate, and entertain your children, don’t forget that YOU are their greatest educational tool, resource, and role model. Your lifestyle teaches them more than you realize.
Think about the person you are as the primary curriculum. The best education you can give your kids is the one they witness every day.
As you live, so they learn.
Top image by Rosmarie Voegtli (cc text added)
Lucky you—home with your kids, watching them change and grow before your eyes.
Lucky you—reading amazing adventures set in other times and places, all of it considered “on task” and “good use of your time.”
Lucky you—experimenting in the kitchen, using your baking equipment, setting a nice table, eating treats, and listening to happy voices tell jokes.
Lucky you—poetry, music, piano lessons, carpentry, quilting, dance, karate, Shakespeare, science experiments, field trips, hikes, skiing, cycling, picnics—weaving themselves through the ordinary days of laundry, sock folding, grocery shopping, window washing, and sometimes, paid work too.
Lucky you—markers and pens and pencils and highlighters and rulers and scissors and glue sticks and paints and canvases all inviting strokes and words and fantasies drawn from the imaginations of your little ones, shared with you in joy!
Lucky you—folding chairs and Capri Suns, colored jerseys, cheers for the team, and cuddles of comfort in loss after the weekly match.
Lucky you—fresh air and sunshine, a dog on a leash, a baby in a stroller, toddlers walking on tops of fences, bigger kids running ahead to see the horses or the fire hydrants or the play equipment or the dead snake in the street.
Lucky you—hard day, bad news, small pudgy arms wrapped around your neck, “Are you okay?”
Lucky you—sleeping in, or getting up early: your choice, your privilege. Or naps. Definitely naps.
Lucky you—they grow up, they help more, they fascinate you.
Lucky you—last year’s stress washed away by this year’s hope.
Lucky you—curriculum, libraries, zoos, museums, nature centers, theaters, parks, the neighbor’s trampoline.
Lucky you—your instincts are good, your heart is right, your commitment is fixed, your resolve to do better is endless.
Lucky you—learning who you are while discovering the heartbeats of your unique off-spring, creating memories that will comfort you when you are older and wiser and kinder.
Lucky you—when loss or tragedy strike, you face it with a crowd: your cluster of people who walk you through it, out of it, into the light again.
Lucky you—home educator, parent, adult, brave human being.
Lucky you. Seriously. Lucky you.
