I was asked recently why my boys seem to be more mature than many other kids their ages who were not homeschooled. I had my own thoughts about this, but decided to get feedback from my youngest son. He pondered the question for a moment and then replied, “Because I have time to think!” Ahhh, yes, of course! Being able to have time to think deeply about the things we are learning is one of the most beautiful advantages of homeschooling — we naturally have more time to just think about things! So the next element of my PEARLS education philosophy is Reflect.
The boys seem to have a better handle on this element than I do at times. Sometimes, I feel caught up in the desire to continuously whirl from one homeschooling activity to another. But if I don’t allow myself or the boys to take time to reflect upon the knowledge we have gained, the skills we are attempting to master or the character traits we are trying to form, we may very well be learning “in vain”. It’s like deciding to make a loaf of bread and, after mixing the yeast, water and flour, putting the dough directly into the oven to bake without taking the time to let it rise beforehand — which will make very flat bread. And if that is not what I am trying to do, then I’ll be sorely disappointed! And, usually, fluffy breads need more than one rise to turn out well.
So I need to constantly remind myself to hold back when I am tempted to overload us with inputs, remembering to ask my ambitious self, “Are we taking adequate time to reflect on the deeper meaning and relevance of what all these “inputs” mean to our daily lives? Are we keeping our understanding superficial or are we striving to penetrate beneath the surface? Am I allowing the boys time to reflect on their studies on their own as well as in family interactions in creative and meaningful ways?”
We usually start our days with family prayer time, which involves listening to the Daily Mass Readings from Holy Scripture, and then practicing a form of Lectio Divina, which is a method of contemplation and reflection, asking God to reveal to each one of us His message for us this day. Sometimes we draw on other meditations, such as from the Magnificat, or our Ignatius Study Bible to help us understand more deeply, and our shared reflections will range from a lengthy conversation among all of us (hubby participates by phone on his long commute to work), to single words or phrases that seem to speak to us. Then we make a private resolution based on our reflection for that day. This is how we usually begin our studies and I often discover that the day will reveal connections to our morning bible study in unexpected ways.
Connections are key. I love to find them and make them — tying in seemingly disparate concepts, into a thread of relational touch points that cause a gleam or a spark in my sons’ eyes as they discover a hidden meaning, a line of thought previously unexplored or the flowering of a creative insight. It’s no secret that the brain retains information better if we work at developing different neural pathways for the same idea. So reflecting consolidates and reinforces learning at the same time. The boys often surprise me with the connections they make too — I especially love when they relate incidents from the lives of long-ago-lived-Saints to our modern day activities!
With regard to the books we read, we can dig deep by thinking about the author and asking ourselves lots of questions — such as why he or she wrote the book, what inspired the author as a writer, what impact did the author’s real life have on his/her writing, what about the current events happening when the book was written? J.R.R. Tolkien is one of our favorite authors and we love to discuss both what biographies tell us about his thought processes as well as our own ideas about his writing The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Another way to reflect more deeply is to discuss the moral lessons (or lack of!) in a particular story that provide good (or bad) examples for our own lives — and that is easy to do across a variety of genres — from adventure series such as Ranger’s Apprentice, another favorite of the boys, to the dramatic living history stories of the Saints such as Mary Fabyan’s Windeatt’s Saint Dominic or Saint Louis IX and many others from her wonderful collection.
Skill building also benefits from reflection. My boys all play violin so I ask them to reflect deeply not only on the quality of the notes, but also of the story that they are trying to convey when they perform a particular piece of music. To this end, they will often explore other variations of playing a certain passage and by doing so, discover new understandings of how pitch, tone and rhythm work together to deliver a musical message.
Art appreciation can most assuredly be enhanced by reflection. A simple memory activity: look at a painting for a couple of minutes and then cover it and try to remember the details. Then dive into the questioning — Why are those particular details there? Why did the painter use blue hues and not any reds? Is there any symbolism going on here? Taking the time to examine the historical setting of the artwork and artist and then doing some self-exploration of similar painting or drawing techniques are all intertwined in the process of making connections and learning how to understand, appreciate, and think more deeply.
With regard to character building, growth in virtue goes hand-in-hand with reflection. A recent incident of a lack of self-control on behalf of my youngest son and his angry fit that followed one tempestuous action after another, hard as it was to endure, afterwards transformed into an opportunity to sit together and reflect about what it means to control one’s temper. We examined the series of events and discussed how at each point, my son had a choice to make and could have stopped the momentum of his rising anger; unfortunately, he choose wrongly several times in succession which ultimately led to a terrible acting out and then the imposition of serious consequences. Reflecting deeply on his actions led my son to shed tears of contrition that were the result of real regret for his lack of self-control and not just feeling bummed about the punishment he received. In fact, the very next day, my son was able to put a check on his anger when faced with a similar temptation!
Most homeschool curriculums provide loads of information presented in interesting ways. But quantity of content should never crowd out time for reflection. Frankly, in our family, we spend more time discussing the concepts we’ve read or thought about and less time worrying about whether the boys have completed all the assignments in a certain curricula. When I hear my sons offering thoughtful reflections, persistence in a line of reasoning, or an unexpected question, I am reminded that learning how to think deeply — to truly reflect — is indeed a skill that must be practiced, like any other skill. And it is this skill that allows us to mentally chew on the food of information/experience instead of just gulping it down or swallowing big chunks whole. I can’t help thinking of Christ teaching with parables, and how often the disciples needed to “go deeper” to truly reflect and understand what Christ was teaching them. So I pray fervently and often for God’s guidance and insight as we reflect, seeking the meanings to make the connections which He wants us to learn!