Good Day

A few years ago on some of the blogs I used to read people asked "what makes a good day of school/learning?" At the time Harry was in kindergarten or first grade and I only had three kids instead of the four I have now. (Let me tell you, adding the fourth was both fabulous and crazy.) A good day of learning was when I read to Harry and Sam from one of our 5,043 read-alouds, we did a little addition and colored a lot. A really good day of learning was when I kept Annika from eating our math manipulatives. But there was also this intangible something that you could feel--connections made and understanding achieved. It was something that you couldn't put on a list but you kind of knew it when it happened.

Now that life is more complicated with running kids hither and thither and keeping track of what they are all learning and what they've had to eat during the day and oh my goodness, everything else a mom of four does I decided to revisit the idea of what makes a good day of learning.

For me, right now, a good day of learning involves staying home more than going out. We live in a place where the kids can go outside and play pretty much any day of the year, so outside play is important. Reading to the kids is important, whether it's a "school" book or just a story book. I need to make time for Emma every day. She gets her own read-aloud time and special books, but so often it's easy to just tell her to wait and then it never happens. Of course we have our formal lessons, those are important in any day. But I'd like for the kids to take what they are learning in one subject and make the connection with another. That may be the intangible part of what makes a good learning day. The importance of connections is also why I love doing classical education the way it's set up in The Well-Trained Mind. If we study a time period and talk about a author from that period and also study an artist from that period it really cements what that time period is about.

I'm sure there's more and I'll probably think of it as soon as I hit post, but for now, this is what makes a good day of learning.