What does natural learning look like?

Our 13 year old spends quite a bit of time with a camera.   That is part of her natural learning lifestyle.

Check out her blog here

What does natural learning look like?

It's a question often asked, but always hard to answer.

TODAY this is what natural learning looked like for an almost 9yr old boy who had time, space, loose parts and imagination.

I love it!

THE BOOKS !

For details on the amazing Adventures In Natural Learning: Handbook

and Adventures In Natural Learning: Seasonal Journal 

please head over to my Facebook page:  Adventures In Natural Learning.

"Like" the FB page and/or receive notifications from this blog to gain encouragement and support for your family in their natural learning journey.

Bringing Treasure Home

The picture says it all.

Priceless.

Two Phrases to ERADICATE!!

These phrases are VERY UNHELPFUL.

They can make people angry, confused, feel misunderstood and put down. 

Worse than all that THEY PUT THE BLAME ON THE OTHER PERSON. The speaker does not own any responsibility.

We must ERADICATE these phrases from our lives:

1. I thought you knew!

2. How could you not know?
   
   
   
   
   
   

Fun Game To Make - Good Ole Hot Glue Gun!

This is a fun and easy game to make.

Collect some lovely little items from around your house (or from your box of "lovely little things" that you keep for times just as these!). Say seven of each item.

Carefully hot-glue one of the items to the top of a peg.

Get some nice big tweezers (like the kind used for stamps). Put everything into a lovely wooden box, a tray, or a little basket.

When child would like to play this game they:

- tip all the items out neatly

- put the pegs onto the ice-cube tray

- then use the tweezers to put matching items into the holes of the ice-cube tray.

Great fun!

This is one of those games that's easier to make if you keep your eye out for goodies each time you visit the re-use shop or opportunity shops (or if you are in America I think they are called Charity Stores).

Bear in mind these little things should NOT go into little mouths. 

Knit A Ball

We've had fun knitting balls so thought I would post a photo of how you construct these balls.

I used the pattern from here



Lovely that there is no sewing up to do!

Our favourite balls were made from pure wool, but I made a few in that fake fluff type yarn (the stuff that is hard to knit with!) - they made really lovely soft fluffy balls.

Give A Child A Jug

When we provide beautiful things for our children (like this lovely chunky pottery jug) our children may surprise us with what they will do with that item.

One day I walked into the bathroom to find this beautiful work of art. xxx

Give A Chlld Some Bells

We thought that five months old was just the right age for baby to have his first instrument.

The best part of this game, apparently, was pulling the socks off his feet!

Please don't let an older baby have bells on their socks if they are able to get the socks off and into their mouth!

An art idea from the Handbook

This idea is found in Adventures In Natural Learning:  Handbook

(You can see from the tell-tale dates on the photographs that we did this activity some years back!  Yes, my books have been a LONG time in the making!).






Using block crayons I coloured random patches of colour, some swirls and flowers.



One of my children did one alongside me.



Then I turned the paper over and drew pencilled squares, using a ruler.
(The picture below shows that I wasn't concentrating the first time I ruled them, and had to do it again!)

Then I cut the picture into little pieces.



Using a larger piece of coloured paper, I stuck all the little squares in a different order to make my patchwork picture.




Because I was in a hurry (I usually am!) I didn't set the pieces out to make sure they looked good BEFORE I glued them. Setting them out is a good idea. I just figured it would look ok as long as I didn't have lots of the same colour together. :o)

Neat Little Wooden Game

When our children were around 8 months old, till they're about 2, they've always liked the game where you carefully put the rings onto a post.


In the past we've had plastic ones that get broken.


But putting my "natural" thinking cap on I came up with this alternative which has been fun for everyone!

I found a "coffee mug tree" and asked a handy passing saw-user (one of the big boys) to saw the sticking out bits off.  You could also used a nice chunky paper-towel roll holder.

And now when we do our op-shopping we are on the lookout for any sort of wooden rings: curtain rings, or napkin rings etc. Quite hard to find, but exciting when we find them.

Give A Child A Scarf

Here's an old blog post I wrote in my "Give a child a ....." series some years ago.

Silk scarves are SO much fun.

Hunt in your local op-shop for some lovely colourful scarves for children of all ages!


Baby loves to

* chew them

* scrunch them up in their chubby little fists

* play "peek-a-boo" and "where has teddy gone?"

and

* roll on them after bathtime - feeling the silk on their skins.



Toddlers and older children may like to

* throw them

* wrap things in them, playing "presents for everyone!"

* make them into parachutes

* tents for teddies

* royal capes

* desert headwraps

* bedding for a baby doll

* wrap to carry baby doll around in

* sling for a "broken arm"

* bandage for playing doctoring

* blindfold



Let their imaginations soar!

Insect Habitat Project

Here's a project we did about 6 years ago.

We saw this  "Bug Hilton" at EcoFest, in our local town.



Very inspired, we came home and started to collect things to make our own.

We made a bit of a shopping list and visited our local re-use centre for some more bits.

And HERE is OUR version:




Not quite as tidy as the original model, but extremely habitable for lots of lovely bugs nevertheless - or so we thought.

We were careful not to touch it, although that was quite hard for some smaller ones ...

Sad to say, we mostly harboured wasps, but it was great fun.

We definitely wouldn't try it again right now as the whole region has been bothered by wasps over the last two summers, and we don't want to welcome them!   But if you live in an area that isn't so wasp-dense perhaps you could give it a try?