Issue 13 - August Newsletter
by Diana Waring
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We have had many changes going on in our lives - including changing web mistresses and web servers. Missi McCarthy has been my webmistress for the past several months and did a wonderful job for us. Due to several factors, we decided to bring this job "in house", so Melody Waring, my daughter, is now going to be serving in this capacity. We have had many changes going on in our lives - including changing web mistresses and web servers. Missi McCarthy has been my webmistress for the past several months and did a wonderful job for us. Due to several factors, we decided to bring this job "in house", so Melody Waring, my daughter, is now going to be serving in this capacity. You may have noticed that you did not receive the August newsletter. Sorry! With the change in webmistresses, and Missi's being off-line for several weeks, we were not able to get the subscriber list up and running. However, you won't miss a thing! :o) Enclosed is the August Newsletter. Next week I'll be sending the September Newsletter, and the following week you will receive the October Newsletter. (That's why we named this "The Highly Irregular Newsletter"... ) "The Buffalo Jumps of Learning" A few weeks ago, in the midst of deadline pressures for two books, Bill and I decided it was time to take time. Bidding our teens a fond adieu, we headed off to parts unknown for the evening. Remembering the injunction, "Go West, Young Man, Go West!", we turned toward Wyoming. Wyoming is one of my favorite states. It teems with wildlife and scenery in nearly every nook and cranny. It is a good place to go to recover from too much bookwork, hence our journey thither. We took the scenic route from Spearfish, South Dakota to Beulah, Wyoming (just across the border), and continued along the deserted blacktop. The weather that summer evening was very unusual for the high plains. Rather than hot, sunny, and nary a cloud in the sky (the quintessential "Home on the Range"), it was cool, misty and laden with atmosphere. It had a wonderful ambience, a sort of mist-hung backdrop for our moment of solitude. Bill was looking for a certain site he had noticed from previous journeys down the freeway. A sign had indicated a "buffalo jump" - something used for several centuries by Native American tribes - which seemed like it would be worthwhile to visit. We found a small marker on the side of the road which indicated we had arrived, though there was certainly nothing yet to see. I guess thatÕs the deal with buffalo jumps. One minute youÕre running along over the plains, and the next, you fall - plop - into the hole. If it were obvious, the buffalo would have noticed. Signs warned that we were to approach at our own risk, that rattlesnakes were a hazard, and to stay on the dirt path. We saw pictures of archaeological digs previously completed at the site where twenty feet of buffalo bones had accumulated over the six hundred years of use. (Normally, the refuse at an archaeological site is measured in inches rather than feet!). Though we could still see nothing unusual, the signs were promising bigger and better things to come. We walked a dozen yards up the path (with my rattlesnake antennae well extended), and then, suddenly, the ground stopped. There was an immense, IMMENSE hole in the ground! It was about one hundred feet deep and two hundred feet in diameter. This was a serious hole! The utter immensity of this hole in the ground, and the unexpectedness of it on the continuous plains, helped us to understand how effective this was for the Lakota and other tribal peoples. In preparation for winter food, they would position men at the edges of the jump and bowmen around the inside of the hole (far enough away, hopefully, to avoid being crushed by falling buffalo...). Then a group would turn a herd of buffalo toward the jump and, at the last minute, frighten them into stampeding. Once a buffalo was moving fast and in the right direction, gravity took over. Many of the buffalo died as a result of the fall. Others died from falling neighbors. And the few who didnÕt die naturally were helped along by arrows from the men in the bottom of the hole. The archaeological digs have shown that the people who used this jump were able to "process" a lot of meat in a very short time. It was both a successful and relatively easy procedure, since they used the natural resource of the immense (Did I mention it was IMMENSE?) hole in the ground and the natural law of gravity, to help them. Now, you may be asking, "Just what do a buffalo jump and homeschooling have in common?" I am glad you asked! As I stood gazing at this incredible site, I suddenly saw the relationship between the two, and realized how fortunate we are to have the benefits of "buffalo jumps" in our own homeschooling. To begin with a contrast, do you remember when you were in school? Do you remember how often you were bored out of your mind... how uninterested you were in what had to be memorized... how all of that school work was so disconnected from "real life"? Did you ever ask yourself - or your teacher - "Why do I have to do this?" Personally, I felt like I was "doing time" with no chance of parole for twelve years... Occasionally, there would be a flash of interest, an insightful teacher, a momentary experience of discovery, but that was certainly not the norm. Perhaps, there are some of you who do not relate to these questions, but the vast majority of homeschooling parents I have met immediately affirm that this was definitely their experience. When we try to teach our own children, these school days experiences can come back to haunt us. Here are our precious offspring yawning, their eyes glazed over, asking, "Mommy, do we HAVE to do this?" Ouch! We understand exactly what they mean, but we do not know what to do about it since all we could ever do was sit and suffer for all of those years, and we never really knew the cause. Enter - the "Buffalo Jump!" On the other hand, have you ever seen your child absolutely self-motivated to learn more about something? Whether it was baseball, dead bugs, piano, or how to make fried ice cream, whatever it was, they were eager, rarinÕ to go, could not wait to find out. That natural hunger to discover and learn is one of the most powerful forces that you will ever find! The trick, you see, is to recognize it when it is happening and to provide opportunities for it to happen - then allow the full "weight" of their curiosity to bear them deep into whatever they are learning about. Let me give you an example. After we moved from Washington to South Dakota, Michael asked me one day, "Mom, why do steel ships float?" I looked around in dismay - not a single steel ship in sight! "Ummm... Michael, that is a REALLY good question, but I donÕt know the answer. LetÕs go to the library." With great expectations, we sailed off to the library. We asked the librarian, "Do you know why steel ships float?" She looked around in dismay - still not a single steel ship in sight. "Hmmm... Try this book." It was a college level book on boat building, and beyond me. "Michael, letÕs try looking through other books at home." And look we did. We looked high, we looked low. We looked through every book we could think of, as Michael continued to wonder, "Why do steel ships float?" It got so we were asking everyone in sight, "Excuse me, sir, but do you know why...?" Finally, one late night I suddenly remembered a book about how things work. "Mmmm. I wonder..." I sprang from the bed to the bookcase and quickly turned to the index. When what to my wondering eyes did appear but the listing, "Why steel ships float". EUREKA! Our answer was at hand. As the whole family learned about that principle of buoyancy, and about the ancient scientist/mathematician/inventor Archimedes, we thought up several creative ideas for experiments with lead fishing weights. We pounded and dropped and observed and recorded. By the time it was done, MichaelÕs curiosity about why steel ships float had motivated the whole family to jump into the thing with him, learning things beyond our ken and certainly beyond our lesson book! Many, many dinner table discussions have resulted in perusing encyclopedias, requesting library books, searching internet listings, and questioning experts. Questions have come up during mathematics that were totally off the point but worth pursuing nonetheless. Ideas have been generated during car rides that require lots of thinking and discussing (and, sometimes, putting on hold until we can get to a reference book!). There have been on-the-spot opportunities to learn while having an x-ray (How can you tell if my finger is broken?); while eating at a Chinese restaurant (What was your home like in China?); while visiting a cattle ranch (Where did those brands come from?). These moments, when someone wonders, "why?" or, "when?" or, "how?" or, "who?" or, "what if," are the Buffalo Jumps. They present the perfect opportunities to use the tremendous force of natural curiosity to propel a student into interesting, meaningful learning. Just as the buffalo jumps were used as effective, efficient means of procuring meat for the tribe, so are the buffalo jumps of learning a very effective, efficient means of getting knowledge into a child. Rather than the few inches of refuse found in normal archaeological sites, remember that buffalo jumps provided archaeologists with more than twenty feet of "stuff"! In the same way, learning that is motivated by a hunger to know - where the student rushes headlong into it - is far more productive; it leaves far more evidence of knowledge acquired than the normal method of "read the chapter and answer the questions in the back." "Okay, okay. But will our children, on their own, EVER fall into one of these educational buffalo jumps?" Good question! The buffalo, ambling along on their own, wouldnÕt have just fallen in. What did the Native Americans do? They knew where the buffalo were and where the jump was. All they needed was to move the herd in that general direction, and at the appropriate moment, "motivate" them! The natural law of gravity took care of the rest. In our analogy, the parent is the one who knows where their students are (in level, in experience, and in ability). A parent who has "spied out the land" will also be aware of what sorts of things really interest their children, whether it has to do with inventions, or biographies, or sports, or crafts, or hands-on experiments, or whatever. What the parent can do is to begin moving the students toward a possible area of interest (buffalo jump), and, at the appropriate moment, motivate some excitement into that area (in other words, activate their natural curiosity.) Do this by finding a fantastic book in the library and reading a few chapters out loud (like *Carry On, Mr. Bowditch*), checking out a video from the library which shows how cathedrals were built in the Middle Ages (like "Cathedral" by David Macaulay), taking a field trip to see a sculptor sculpting, visit an elderly gentleman who fought in the war, and much, much more. These motivating moments, that you help provide, will get those children stampeding right smack into real learning! Then all you have to do is stand by, ready to assist. Ah, the Buffalo Jumps of Learning - what an incredible provision of God! Blessings, Diana Return to the List of Newsletter Issues

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