Exploring Individuality

When we began home schooling I knew that straight academics was never going to be enough for my child. She is very curious and inquisitive. She has many interests and loves to follow tangents. I remember when I was young, reading encyclopedias and following the trail of “see also”, where at the end of each encyclopedia entry they showed other words or topics to look up. These topics were usually related, but could lead you a long way from the original thing you looked up.

I know that is an old fashioned example, but my daughter does a modern version of that same exercise. She surfs the web. She jumps from blog to blog, and subject to subject, searching for things that interest her, and in the process she learns a great deal about things that have nothing to do with school.

A great example of this is…her horse riding instructor told her that her assignment was to go and find different videos of people posting a trot. The videos my daughter found provided her with information about posting to the diagonal. Now this is a fairly specialized idea that she might not normally have even known enough to look up. When she went back to the stable, and the instructor started talking about diagonals, my daughter already had the information in her head. All she had to do was put it into physical practice.

Your child might have different interests, but any information he finds can help him become more knowledgeable about his hobbies, or goals. Who knows where that knowledge could lead. Our children have more access to more information than ever before. Letting them access that wealth of knowledge, at the very least, will make them well-rounded. It might make them brilliant!