Learning in the Absence of Education
Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine
Index
Homeschool
Australia
A Lego Curriculum
I remember visiting a friend of my parent's when I was ten, and their children had Lego. The little interlocking bricks, with their precise engineering and clean lines immediately appealed to me. I loved the tidy little houses with the opening doors and windows and smooth red roofs. Each birthday and Christmas I wanted Lego, only to be given some other construction toy. I knew that one day children of my own would not be Lego deprived.
Toy is a rather a demeaning description of this clever manipulative, construction material. My dictionary defines toy as something meant for amusement rather than serious use. Lego serves both purposes. It is a plaything and can amuse for many, many hours, but the real value in this children's 'toy' comes from the hidden learning quietly happening behind all the play.
Anyone who has visited our house can attest to our apparent addiction to Lego, with our ever expanding collection of plastic 'bricks' reaching mind boggling dimensions. When April turned three she received her first Lego car and trailer, a set that is still in almost complete condition. A Lego front-end-mover decorated the centre of Roger's first birthday cake. By four he could quickly assemble sets using instructions in less than half the time of kids twice his age. Thomas has never known life without Lego. All of the children know that the more bricks they own the greater the diversity of play and model building they can engage in. Over time they have become extremely selective, consciously choosing sets that will enlarge the usability of their collection.
I have always believed in the value of an educational curriculum that values play. For many years I would slot in 'school' type learning activities into my children's highly imaginative and constructive play, often interrupting the flow, with the result of placing emphasis on what I considered to be a more valuable use of time. However, time has shown me that the 'play' under way was far from just being for amusement and entertainment. My children, when playing, were actively engaging in a superior form of learning, teaching themselves many things that would have taken me much longer in a conscious manner.
Lego is an incredible tool for learning in this household. In the early years it encouraged manual dexterity, good hand-eye coordination, and helped with classification and spacial skills.
I watched the children move from solitary play, to parallel play and then to cooperative play. I heard April dictate play scripts for Roger, and then watched as the months and years progressed to hear him become more involved in the organising of the play structure as his confidence and assertiveness grew. I peeped in at games where the children 'role played' situations in their own life that needed assimilating over time in a less threatening way where they could control the variables. I saw them replicate many of their recent activities, duplicating scenes and building models. I saw them stretching their imaginations to devise simple and then more complex machines, set tasks and problems for themselves that challenged them into new cognitive thresholds. And I watched as they worked hard to earn the money they needed to continue building their amazing Lego collections.
There was the time when Roger, after being on the Glenelg tram for the first time, came home and a week later built an intricate model of the tram, complete with platform, track and overhead rails. A town grew up around this model and a game played for days. After a trip aboard the H.M.S. Endeavor Bark several sailing ships were built, without using instructions, to be used in a game where forts and towns were needed. This type of game can last up to a week, with intense periods of concentration and play interrupted only by meals or a spot of physical exercise.
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Excerpt from Learning in the Absence of Home Education: Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine, 1999
