The Writing Conservatory - Learn to Write Well

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Reason 1: If your children love what they do, they will learn without effort!

With all of their hearts, middle-school-aged children want to explore the world in which they live. They want to make things, to work with their hands. A child wants to fix a car, build a go-cart, cut mommy's hair, make a dress, build a dog house, grow flowers for the table, build a canoe, go fishing with Grandpa, ride a horse.

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Reason 2: While creating value for the people in their lives, your children will find a deep sense of self-respect.

Children know whether they are needed or not. Children want to create with their hands things that the people in their lives need. Those children who put food on the table, who design a shed Dad needs and help him build it, who teach other children how to play the piano, know that they have value. "You'll need to know this for some day," a line that never meant anything to anyone, becomes "We need this right now."

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Reason 3: Utilizing what they already know in real-life activities, your child may find his or her life-long passion, or more than one!

Children want to explore their world. We discover what we want in life, what makes us sing - what we are made for - when we have the opportunity to try many things. The middle school child has already learned to read and write, to add and subtract. They don't want to learn it all over again, and again, and again. A child wants to take what they already know and use it to discover life. School is simulation, even the best of school is simulation. Project-led learning is real.

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Reason 4: Your children will become motivated learners because they are fascinated with what they are doing. Choosing projects that interest them gives them ownership in their education.

Children who are busy doing what they love need little help being motivated. A child reads if he or she needs to know how to make a car engine run. A child finds fascination in natural science when it surrounds learning about those cute little rabbits Mom brought home. A child measures and figures, if that is what it takes to make the clothes he or she is making look good. Learning is important, because the project belongs to them.

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Reason 5: Does any child want to study "logic"? Hardly. But to learn logical thinking through the patterns of reality learned by doing projects will instill in your child the ability to conquer all "higher-level" learning.

Logical thinking comes from a continual connection between designing or strategizing with the mind, seeing with the eye, and constructing or tending with the hand.

Planting, tending, harvesting, and cooking beans will create a deeper ability to think than any number of worksheets or fictional math problems. Raising a lamb, helping in its birth, tending it when sick, taking full responsibility for its care, harvesting its wool, and creating useful objects from that wool, creates an ability to understand that will stay with your child for life.

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