The Headgate: Close Wrong Headgates

Tibbets open this section by relating a story of a farmer who opens and closes headgates to various fields to water them. This simple action of opening and closing headgates and allowing the water to freely flow within those bounds demonstrates how our children are. The are like the water, seeking progression and fulfillment. When we manage the headgates they will naturally flow to where they need to go to produce the best results.

A right headgate is defined as any activity you would want your children to voluntarily engage in, that would help develop their mind and direct their motivation towards wanting to read. A right headgate is determined by asking the following five questions:

1. Does the fun or the thrill of the play come from the child's own brain, muscles, or voice box?

• If it has batteries then the answer is generally No.



• Examples of lifeless toys that are great for the imagination: dolls, blankets, ropes, planes, cars.



• "This environment is much like the environment our children experience when they attempt to read: substantial effort yielding subtle rewards. Children reared in this natural environment will not think that reading is too hard for what pleasure it yields them."

2. Who was the creative one, the toymaker or the child?

• 
  "...the more creative the toy, the less creative the child will be for having played with it. The less creative the toy, the more creative the child will be for having played with it--the child will have to be creative in order to get any enjoyment out of it."

3. Is the activity using resources, or wasting resources?

• An example of wasting resources is allowing the child to draw, cut, glue, and create all sorts of things that usually end up in the trash a few weeks later. This happens because they have a seemingly unlimited supply of paper, crayons, markers, glue, fancy scissors, etc.



• An example of using resources is having one notebook for drawing and a limited amount of crayons or colored pencils to draw with. It is stored in one area and is only used when the child really wants to be artistic - it also is already bound and kept in a neat unit for the future.



• "When a child is allowed to consume resources there is a false sense of progression beyond the natural thrill the activity should provide." This reminded me that John Taylor Gatto often speaks about how we are trained by the public school system to be consumers. I say we need to work on being producers more than consumers.

4. If the child is creating something, what is the end result or product, should this activity continue? Is it something useful?

• I like the idea of having purpose for our creations that are useful. Not only will these be useful for the family but doing these things will refine skills for greater self-sufficiency. Brings to mind the idea of mini-factories that Oliver DeMille talks about in The Coming Aristocracy.

5. What has become of the child after the activity is finished?

• Is he/she improved in more areas then just trivial knowledge? Trivial knowledge can be gained by viewing TV or a movie but will not improve reading comprehension, spelling, punctuation, etc.

The Headgate: Require Work and Inspire Daily

I think, for this post, I will do it bullet point style: Require Work

1. I want to refocus on REAL work and not create a bunch of busy work for my family. To me real work includes:

• daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal chores




• Skill training such as: sewing, making needed items from scratch, knitting, wood gathering, fire starting, etc.




• Busy work is much of the type of "school" work children get in the public school system. I don't want to focus on this.

2. I knew this from the first reading but still need to work on it: My 2 oldest (8 and 9) should be able to do more work independently.

Which brings me to referencing another book: There is a free ebook on http://simplycharlottemason.com/ called Smooth and Easy Days. In it is a quote by Charlotte Mason, "What we must guard against in the training of children is the danger of their getting into the habit of being prodded to every duty and every effort." This is from Vol. 3, p. 39, I need to read that section as I know part of my problem with my two eldest is we have fallen into that very danger. If I am not by their side every second making sure they are doing what they should be they go off on tangents. I'll have to do a bit more studying, pondering, and praying about this issue! Suggestions welcome.

Inspire Daily

1. Tibbets says, "It is essential in this system that I choose the story, and they choose whether or not to attend." I think I need to refocus and start with this. We do not have a daily time where I read aloud to them. Our read aloud time is sporadic and I have not been choosing the best books. Honestly, the oldest are still in core (based on Tibbet's assessment chart) as they always want to play outside, then they then want me to read at inoportune times (like bedtime at 10pm). So, and this just hit me as I was writing this, I'm going to set a consistant time (during the day), announce it, and if they are playing they can decide to come in or not. We'll see how that goes!




2. Tibbets mentioned reading aloud from journals. We do this, not daily mind you but when they request it. Some years ago I got little notebooks to write in for each child things they say or do that I wanted to remember. They just love it when we read from them, I keep them handy so I can jot quick things down. If I find I must write something for one of them I try to search my recent memory to see if there is something to write in the others as well. I should try to write in them on a more frequent basis though.




3. "All of the core values can be easily learned simply by hearing great stories." Once again, I have to throw in some ideas from the book Poetic Knowledge I talked about last post.
   
   
   

   ...an example of poetic learning...the child...left alone,undistracted by methods and systems, so that the senses and emotions come naturally into play when being read to, where wonder and delight gradually lead the child's imagination and memory toward the imitative act of reading...the same approach can be used for the child learning to write, that is, by first simply listening to stories. Poetic experience and knowledge is essentially passive, and listening is above all the gateway, along with looking, to the poetic mode...we don't just learn about something...we simultaneously learn how we feel as we learn."





4. In relation to the types of stories we share with our children. Sunday, in Stake Conference a speaker related a story in which he shared the restoration story with a friend. When he asked his friend what he thought about that story the friend responded by saying, "that's the wildest story!" The speaker then stated that the world wants us to think it (the story of the restoration of the gospel) a wild story. I think by wild meaning: crazy and unbelieavable. Here are my notes on that:
   
   
   

   "If we, as a society as a whole, were more familiar with classic stories we would be more apt to believe in such stories/miracles and not think them "wild". All the modern stories of such a nature are recognized fiction. If our children grew up on scripture stories and Plutarch's Lives miracles and visions would be more accepted."

And...that's all for now folks!