I feel excited about pursuing the creation of a cooperative learning center, and starting this as the community’s first project. The common house is already built and would be an excellent learning center during the spring when it gets warmer. The projects outdoors are endless including: organic gardening, natural building, carpentry, survival skills, wild edibles, medicinal herb cultivation, forest path building, rain water catchment, pond building, food preservation (including fermented foods), and all topics related to self-sufficient living.
I want to support people who want to home school but have to work. With a cooperative learning center, some people might work full time and other parents can get paid by those parents to be the teachers or helpers. Also, people who are just starting homeschooling might feel pressure to have curriculum and to teach their children in a more rigid way, similar to public schools. I want them to have the opportunity to learn about other ways of educating their children. I bought this book decades ago, Creating a Cooperative Learning Center, and I will use it for a guide. Can you believe it is right on my book shelf? I took a look at it, and I feel very encouraged and empowered.
The school will be set up so it is affordable. Some people can pay, some will trade work for tuition, and others will get scholarships.
When I came to be part of a Christian fellowship here at my neighborhood Living Springs, I was thrilled to find out that everyone was homeschooled. I was unschooling our children, ages 4 and 11, so I felt happy to have the support.
Both of our children learned to read when they were 9 years old. I wish I had read this article 18 years ago which shares reasons why we are programmed to believe that children should read early, and how children can learn to read in organic ways. I would have been better equipped to defend my position which was a source of concern by family and friends.
I found this article about Count Zinzendorf, who is known as the founder of the missions movement, famous for helping to start 100 years of 24 hour non-stop prayer and many other great accomplishments. I want the children to have a library of books where they can learn about such great heroes of our faith.
I found a great website about a life schooling conference which is Christian-oriented. Here are some questions and answers which might be helpful to people who are just beginning the process of educating their children at home.
Here is a definition of Life Schooling–a term I have not heard of until the writing of this article:
“Lifeschooling is the process of discovering your child’s God-given gifts and talents through real life experiences that happen within the context of your family’s unique situations and missions.
Lifeschooling is the freedom to educate as God calls you to, not as the Scope and Sequence, state regulation, or curriculum dictates.
The mission of the Lifeschooling Conference and Activities Fair is to encourage moms and dads that homeschooling can merge with a healthy family life and whatever life circumstances God brings, and to challenge the conventional model of age-segregated, subject-divided, desk-confined schooling that has infiltrated the homeschooling movement.” Find more about this concept here.
I was delighted to find that there is a Christian Unschooling website. Lots of great resources can be found here.
I look forward to writing more about the Cooperative Learning Center. I am thinking about calling it Shalom Learning Center. What do you think?
