Cultivating A Love Of Learning In Children

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Raising children to have a lifelong love of learning is one of the central goals of homeschooling. Like other great ambitions, it’s challenging to know how to do this when you are first starting out. I’d like to share some of the best ways that we’ve found to cultivate a love of learning in children, and how to encourage their natural curiosity and wonder. 

A Strong Foundation: First Things First

Children are born learners. From a very early age they have such a genuine curiosity in the world around them. Their keen perception and attention to detail far outpace the adults teaching them. At best we can only hope to keep up, but in my experience that is a vain attempt. The inquisitive nature of little ones is a wonder to behold! Young children naturally have a love for learning and delight in the small details of a blade of grass and insect wings and how the wind blows. 

Ways To Instill A Love Of Learning During The Early Years

Picture Books– Reading aloud is one of the best ways to start your child down a path of academic success. There are so many benefits to doing this including letter and word recognition, developing vocabulary, learning speech and communication, and instilling in them a love of reading which will unlock the world to them when they are older.  

Hands-On Activities– Learning by doing is a powerful way to master skills. If a child begins kneading bread when they are 3, they will learn what the dough should look like and how it should feel beneath their fingers. After a few years it will be intuitive to them, and they will begin to ‘just know” when it’s ready and how it should behave. This also applies to gardening, construction, cooking, sewing, and so much more!

Play Opportunities– The main way to do this is just to let them be! You don’t have to schedule endless playdates or buy all the latest toys or make sure they are “entertained.” I’ve found that the fewer things children have available, the more content and resourceful they become. Too many toys leads to chaos and mess which quickly overwhelm them. Truly, rocks and sticks and dirt are things they naturally gravitate towards when given the opportunity.

​In The Middle

There are so many fun ways to engage elementary school and middle school students, if you even want to call them that. We honestly don’t go by grade levels in our homeschool, but that is another topic for another day.

These years are known in the classical education realm by the terms grammar and logic, which are the first 2 parts of the Trivium. Children in the grammar stage of development soak up new information like a sponge, and memorization comes easy to them. Once they get a little older and a little more head strong, they enter the logic years where the question “why?” begs to be answered 10 times a day. Cultivating a love of learning in children this age requires a greater time investment. They want to understand the inner workings of ideas, and how that relates to life. Some ways to explore learning with children these ages include: 

Science Experiments– these can be as simple or as complex as you want to make them. From a simple magnifying glass to chemical reactions, batteries, magnetism, and mechanics. Hands-on projects are great for children at this age.  

Their Own Books– When children begin reading chapter books they tend to devour any and all available to them. They discover favorite authors and genres, and love having their own special copies to read again and again. Definitely utilize the public library, but consider buying used or new copies for their own personal library.

Field Trips– these are a great way to focus on things you’re learning in a deeper way. Do some local research and see what’s available in your area. Zoos, museums, caves, historical sites, and so much more provide great experiential learning opportunities.

High School Students And Beyond

As older children enter the final stage of the Trivium, the rhetoric part of their academic journey, they are ready to put their critical thinking and problem-solving skills to the test. You will begin to see remarkable fruit from all of your hard work teaching, correcting, and educating your children. The love of learning in your children will prompt them to try all sorts of new things. These are some of the most rewarding years as a homeschool mom! Even though older kids still benefit from and enjoy some of the same kinds of things as the younger ones, their learning process expands.

Their Own Interests– As children get older they will develop an affinity for a particular subject or two. Some of these will require a lot of time, and it is best to structure their school days so they have freedom to pursue new skills. They might try 10 different things and 8 are quickly forgotten. However, one or two will probably result in a lifelong passion. And that is a great long-term goal to strive for.

Academic Pursuits– During these years, your child’s enjoyment of learning becomes evident when they begin to tackle more difficult subject matter. You will be amazed at the ease with which they learn and master concepts. Home education provides so much freedom during the younger years to wrestle with challenges. By the time they are a little older, the confidence they’ve gained allows them to pursue and master whatever they set out to do.

A Love Of Reading– This is one of the most important things you can instill in your children. A love of reading = a love of learning. The entire world through all the ages will be at their fingertips. If you begin reading aloud to your children when they are young, this will come so naturally. Don’t even try to keep up with them at this point!  

The Great Debate: Real World vs. Academics

I have seen countless reels, posts, and debates over this on social media lately. This topic both exhausts and frustrates me. It always goes something like this:

“Homeschooling is great because we can focus on real life skills like baking bread, milking cows, and entrepreneurship instead of useless things like algebra and physics which they’re forced to do in public schools.”

As a homeschool mom who’s lifestyle is very much homestead related, I really do understand this sentiment. However, every time I see posts like this, which is quite often now, it makes me a little bit aggravated. There are always ample examples in the comments of people who do use advanced academics in their “real world” to show that maybe this is something that needs rethinking.

The main problem I see with it is the fact that God ordered the world so that the Pythagorean theorem exists as well as the wonder of what the Periodic table represents. Not man, and not the public school system. All truth is God’s truth, and I don’t understand trying to separate areas of His creation in this way. “These are important….these are not important.” Understandably, for most of us, those things don’t put food on the table or assist us in the day to day. But, to say that they’re unimportant because of that makes our experience of reality the arbiter of truth rather than the One who created it.

It is my conviction that we would do well to study the whole of God’s creation in order to better learn about and understand Him. To say that whatever He is revealing in advanced mathematics or science isn’t as important as personal finance or building a house is putting the cart before the horse. The more we understand about God, the more rightly we can order our “real world” lives and affairs in a way that honors Him. We can recite Shakespeare or Latin, or discuss philosophy, theology, astronomy, and ancient literature while we tend the garden or bake bread or milk the cow. I’m not sure why these 2 approaches to “education” are so often pitted against one another.

Nature As Teacher

Nature study should be at the forefront of every homeschool. It is where the abstract meets the tangible. Where practical applications play out. Where the physical realm collides with the spiritual. Of all the things we’ve studied in our homeschool, living close to nature has taught us more than anything else. These aren’t just facts and chants and memorization. As much as I love those things, nature is a different kind of teacher.

– The way the wind rustles in the holler. Knowing just where to look for morels in the spring. The image of the bird that comes to mind when you hear its call out the window. The way a black widow web looks and feels, so you know not to get too close. Autumnal rhythms of harvesting and firewood and hunting. The angle that sun rays fall through the southern windows during the winter. Knowing allllll the types of trees just by looking at their leaves or bark. The way the sap runs out of sugar maples, and the labor required to make syrup. The anticipation of spring, and looking forward to tea and salads from chickweed and clover and redbuds. –

Those are the kind of in your bones, deep in your soul, for as long as you live type of things that form us as people and tie us to a land, a place, a family.

Mastery Is The Goal

I love Charlotte Mason’s concept of spreading a generous feast before our children. Give them many different subjects and ideas to think on, ponder, and learn. Some might take this to mean that quantity trumps quality, or that it’s better to passively learn something of shallow depth rather than to dive in the deep end until it is mastered. To this I would say, “both/and.”

With all of the good, true, and beautiful things there are to learn, it would take us a thousand lifetimes to even begin to really understand most of them. However, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try with the finite amount of time that we’ve been given. If all we ever did was piddle at this and dabble in that, then we would never come to a place of understanding and really engage with a subject. To form a relationship with it, if you will.

A great example of this is learning a musical instrument. When our children start out in music lessons, it is often slow and tedious. The songs are boring. Their playing is squeaky. It’s not a lot of fun for them to play, and not very enjoyable for others to listen to. Well, not to anyone except Mommy and Daddy who think their playing always sounds delightful! However, after a few years of lessons, the music they make is actually pretty good by any critic’s standards. A few years beyond that and they are all playing together, enjoying each other’s company, and anyone listening in can’t tell whether it’s the children playing or Pandora. Why? Because they’ve mastered their instruments. Mastery is important, and it should be the goal as children get older. 

Live An Interested Life

Years ago I read a homeschool article that offered the best advice I have ever come across. I still read it periodically to keep myself grounded. The one thing above all other things that you can do as a homeschool parent to cultivate a love of learning in your children is to live an interested life. The passion and curiosity with which you approach life will be “caught” by your children. Likewise, if you model indifference or disdain for learning new things then that will also be reflected in them. Think about the outcome you’d like to see in your children once they are 10, 18, 25, 70, and set the example. You can read my favorite homeschool advice here by Anna at Pleasant View Schoolhouse. I love how she says, “You are interpreting the world to your child.” Yes and Amen!

Some Other Ways To Cultivate A Love Of Learning In Children

~ Create a supportive environment in which they are free to fail. Failure is inevitable on their way to success. I love the term “fail forward” because it represents forward progress regardless of the immediate outcome.

~Add a touch of whimsy wherever you can.

~ Lean into each child’s individual learning style. Sometimes a simple rephrasing or use of math manipulatives can make a connection for your child.

~ Educational games are a great way to incorporate learning with play.

~ The easy accessibility of online resources is an amazing thing about modern education. Even if you dream of a Little House on the Prairie one-room schoolhouse, it’s hard to deny the benefit of all the resources that were never available in the past.

As we labor each day in our homes, let us encourage one another in our mission of raising lifelong learners!

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Thank you for sharing!