Turning Chores into Education

A lot has been written about unschooling, that is, teaching through living life instead of teaching with text books, workbooks and a desk. I believe there is value in both and I do much more teaching through life than “school time” where we read or write or whatever.

For example, we turn our chores into school lessons. My daughter's favorite number is 98. Anytime we see a lot of something, she says, “there must be like 98 of them!” So, looking at our large pile of laundry, she made another such comment. So I said, “Well, let's count them and find out.” We turned doing laundry into a counting activity and that day we had 115 pieces of laundry to sort and fold! I like to have the kids help me fold clothes, either help with sorting, or folding their own clothes, or putting away the kitchen rags or whatever. It gives us an opportunity to work together, for me to teach them life skills, and sometimes we get to talk about stuff. (Of course, there are many days when having kids help is more stressful, trying to keep them on task or keeping them from fighting with each other. So, its not always fun!)

Another chore that children can learn much from, is taking care of a garden or other plants. We don't currently have a garden, but many of our friends do. Children can learn a lot from the hands on activity of gardening. At one time, we had an indoor AeroGarden, where we grew lettuce. We had to add water and nutrients and then when the plants had grown enough, the kids could go pick their own lettuce leaves to go on their tacos. Even with out a garden, kids can learn a lot about earth science from other yard work activity, such as trimming the trees, pulling up weeds, raking leaves, etc. All these activities can lead to discussions about how plants grow, about rain and the weather, about seasons, etc. When I go out to tree some branches with my big cutters, I let the kids have some scissors to cut weeds. We can work together to accomplish something and talk about it while we work.

And I desire to teach them not only life skills and academics but to teach them to enjoy working together. In our world that is so big on multi-tasking, why not do chores and school at the same time? I enjoy accomplishing two things at once!! (Hey, and it keeps the kids out of trouble, making more mess and chores to be done, if they are actually with me, helping me.)

Of course, there are lots of things to do together in the kitchen that lead to good school lessons, but that will have to be for another post....