Teaching a Child Who Won’t Be Taught

Text: "Teaching a Child Who Won't Be Taught" "yellowreadis.com" Pictures: Boy in blue shorts and top lying on wooden bridge, minecraft pig on a white rock, pea pod on vine, young child in striped top playing with a tablet

How to educate a child who won’t be taught? It’s not a question I thought I’d ever need to answer, but life (and my daughter) decided this was the path we needed to follow.

Today, I’m going to talk about a few of the strategies I use to create a welcoming learning environment that steers my kids in the direction they need to go, without explicitly ‘teaching’ them.

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Campervanning Across New Zealand on the 2e Bandwagon: Strewing Education

Campervanning Across NZ on the 2e Bandwagon, yellowreadis.com. Image: Lake with mountain in background

One of the greatest experiences about visiting NZ was a chance for all of us get some hands-on learning that would not be available in Australia.

Knowing my kids and their preferences and attention spans, I had to carefully select what we visited – so good-bye long guided tours, talking heads or demonstrations. We would need something a little more hands on. And being science people, there was naturally a focus on science education. And boy was it fun.

Here are some of the great places we visited – in roughly the order we visited them.
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Educational Tricks for Keeping Up With a Natural Learner

Educational Tricks for Keeping Up with a Natural Learner, yellowreadis.com Image: You dog in white bucket

What are the tools and tricks I use regularly to help with educating my kids?

It’s a mix, really, but there are a few things that have helped make the journey a little easier.

C learns best when he is the one creating his own learning journey. And it is a privilege to watch how his mind works through problems. But it does occasionally leave me with a conundrum. How do I spontaneously have all the resources on hand that he needs, when he needs it?
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Physics Experiments

We’ve been doing a few experiments lately in “C’s Science Workshop”. Most of these have been inspired by minute physics videos, and Mythbusters. But a fair chunk of that inspiration and experimentation has come from this awesome physics simulator.

This has inspired C to try some classic potential and kinetic energy experiments. Some of the questions he has had to ponder when designing, setting up and implementing his experiments include:
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Derailed by ‘Le Grande Project’

You know, I had a post planned for Christmas. I had it half-written. All I needed was an hour or so to polish it off….and then wham!

We were derailed by ‘Le Grande Project’. You see, we’d been asking the kids, particularly C, ‘what do you want for Christmas?’ for a while now. And received the dreaded shrug. Variations on ‘is there anything you really want?, elicited similar responses….until three days before Christmas. Yes. Three Days. That was when he wrote his letter to Santa. And oh boy, what a letter. Go have a look at it. Go on. It’s no particle accelerator, but – oh boy!
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