Phonics and the Body
Welcome back, fellow Romans and free thinkers! Today we will be checking in with my beautiful wife Dusty Rose and two of my wonderful children Lincoln and Eli as we continue this homeschooling journey together. Today we are focusing on Phonics and the Body!
One of the main problems Dusty and I found with our own education in the public school system is that we were taught what to think, instead of being taught how to think. The best way I’ve ever heard it put is this: take the example of playing the piano. It is hard, hard work to learn an instrument like the piano. First you figure out all the individual notes, then you begin to learn finger placement, chords, and then eventually how to read and write music. The problem is: the public school system only teaches you how to memorize and associate certain songs, such as “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. Sure, its easy and much faster, but if you ever want to learn a new song, you are a slave to your teacher, and that is not what the Liberal Arts were supposed to be! The Liberal Arts were intended to free a man from the need of any teacher but himself. It is for that reason that we take our time with the basics, ensuring a strong foundation upon which we will build our child’s educational home that will stand their entire lives.
This is why we’ve opted to go the Phonics route. Phonics teaches a child how to sound out words themselves, rather than the shortcut of memorizing and associating words with pictures. The memory is a fantastic thing, and association is extremely helpful, I use it every day, but these boys will run across words they don’t know on a daily basis. With their knowledge of Phonics they will never be a slave to a teacher, they will control their own intellectual destinies when it comes to reading.
The Body
Our boys’ bodies are constantly changing. Lincoln grows every day and Eli recently hit a sizable growth spurt. They are constantly wrestling and getting plenty of exercise when we play at the park. But do they know whats going on inside of there?
Turns out I’ve been asking the wrong question! Do I even know what’s going on in my own 31 year old body? The answer was no! Not until we began teaching ourselves to teach the boys did I fully understand the glory and wonder of the human body. God is so good, and his creations are beyond full comprehension, but while we’ve been blessed with these dirt-suits (human is humus (dirt) + man) we ought to know what’s going on in there and how best to take care of them.
That said, Rose had the boys lay out on old leftover Christmas gift wrapping paper and cut out their body shape. We then taped both Lincoln and Eli’s bodies to the walls of my home office. Boy, were they proud of those! Then, Rose being the resident artist that she is, began drawing, cutting out, and helping the boys to color a different body part/internal organ and place it where it goes in or on their specific bodies. They love this! And honestly, so do we! It was so refreshing to see the excitement and wonder in their eyes when taught them about the heart, where it is, what it does and how they could feel it beating (or beeping if you’re Eli) whenever they wanted to!
It is important for children to feel wonder. It is our duty as parents to preserve that sense of wonder, as a renewed sense of wonder will lead children to worship. When we lose our sense of wonder, its easy to lose our appreciation for the Creator and his infinite wisdom and creative ability. What an incredible machine he made in man! When children learn the unimaginable complexity within their own growing bodies, they tend to be healthier and take care of them more when they are older.
So that’s the end of our homeschooling update at the Cadle house. I hope you enjoyed this blog. Please consider being a fan and also sharing it. Special thanks to Andrea Clark for her recommendations for books and teaching methods. The books used in this blog post were “Alpha-Phonics: A Primer for Beginning Readers” by Samuel L. Blumenfeld and “My Body” by Teacher Created Materials.
May the Lord remember you in his Kingdom!
Be sure to check out my short story “Duty Before Honor", out now!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086RX1G4X/ref=cm_sw_r_apa_i_xMuIEb8B880E7
