Here’s a homeschool riddle for you: How are a muffin and a curriculum alike?
Answer: Whether or not we devour it!!
The story
Some years ago, I was asked to make muffins in a hurry by my mother, using a store-bought mix she handed to me. Since I enjoy cooking, I was glad to help her out. Unfortunately, I licked the spoon when it was over.
Mistake. The taste was awful!
The contrast
A few days later, I was to speak to a group of homeschoolers, so I decided to create a taste test in order to highlight the connection between muffins and curriculum.
I made a batch of store-bought blueberry muffin mix (with artificial blueberries), and a batch of homemade blueberry muffins (with fresh blueberries). The assembled folks got to sample a bit of each, and were then asked to comment on the flavors. Would you be surprised to hear that they each loved the homemade muffins (eagerly eating every morsel), and wouldn’t even finish half of the artificial-blueberry-store-mix muffin?
Why is that not a surprise? Obviously, nothing can compare with fresh, quality ingredients.
Quality in, quality out.
The same is true in education. To see this for yourself, try this experiment:
Offer a child a worksheet on bears from a textbook you know is boring, and watch his level of enthusiasm. Did it drop like a brick?
Then offer the same child a trip to the zoo to see bears. What happens to enthusiasm in the second scenario? It skyrockets, doesn’t it?
“Mom!! Those are BEARS!! Look at them!!! Wow, they are AMAZING!!”
I know what you’re thinking:
“No way! I can’t entertain my kids all day long.”
“No one taught me that way, and I did pretty well.”
“The real world isn’t like that, and they better learn now that life is boring.”
“How on earth would I keep up that kind of schedule?“
“How on earth would I teach all the subjects?”
“How on earth would we get anything else (like laundry) done?”
Did I miss your comment??? Though most of you wish that it were possible to give your kids fresh, quality ingredients in their education, you may have resigned yourselves to the necessity of an artificial, boring, standard curriculum.
But—what if it were possible?
Suspend your arguments for a moment and ask, “How much more would my kids enjoy learning if it were fresh and interesting (like making muffins with real blueberries)?”
Then ask yourself, “Could my kids enjoy learning if we tailored it to their particular tastes and interests (like making muffins with apples instead of blueberries)?”
If you are willing—for the sake of a satisfying educational experience—to break out of the box, then join me next time for Part 2, where I’ll offer some guidelines and suggestions on how to evaluate whether your homeschool curriculum is artificial or fresh.
Slight adjustments, not major overhauls.
Btw, I don’t subscribe to the you-have-to-do-it-all-by-yourself style of homeschooling—where you need three Ph.D’s to create detailed lesson plans for self-designed curriculum for every child, printed on your own printing press with paper you made yourself—in order to give them a “fresh” quality in their learning. Instead, I am talking about making some slight adjustments that could have your children eagerly asking, “Mom, is it time for school yet?”
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