Follow Their Lead: Making Real-World Connections Through Your Child's Interests

“Just follow their lead,” casually mentioned a well-intentioned homeschool veteran. I must have quizzically stared at her. I had no idea what that meant or how it pertained to school. Initially, I thought it meant unit studies based on topics of my children’s interests.

In 2017, when we started homeschooling, my third-grade daughter loved horses. I had her draw them, read books about them, and then we went to a horse farm and graphed the number of horses. I then felt somewhat accomplished as a homeschool mom. She bored of horses and moved onto the next topic. We did very similar things with dolphins, fashion of the 50s, and cupcake baking. All topics and activities had great qualities; yet, nothing was consistent. I realized that these unit studies would have me racing around to gather supplies, information, and planning.

Then, oftentimes, her interest changed before I had everything pulled together.

Keyword is I.

I had to pull it all together and make the connections; she was almost a passive participant.

A friend of mine started a book club on Charlotte Mason’s philosophy. When referring to the “science of relations” versus teacher-presented topics, Mason was quoted as saying, “The teacher has done it; he has selected the ideas, shewn the correlation of each with the other and the work is complete.” I realized I wasn’t following their lead as much as taking a topic of interest, exhausting it, and learning . . . by myself. I formed relationships with the material; they gleaned some information in their passing interests yet didn’t connect relationships.

However, academic subjects of math, reading, writing, and science were part of every single unit. We switched our focus. I would expose them to any topic and they could use their interests to study it. “Following their lead” took on new meaning.

Our focus changed to presenting simple topics through memory work and living books that they could grasp using any tool of interest. They used their desired occupations of cooking, building, drawing, or writing to understand the information. They were making the connections, not me. My occupational therapy/ homeschool loving self was on fire!

Here are some examples:

My 14-year-old daughter is learning to draw faces. She starts with an app then prints and draws into a book journal. This year, she is drawing her perception of book characters. Her interest is helping her to picture characters while reading and to remember details that help with class discussions and writing persuasive papers.

My 11-year-old son has a current interest in stop-motion videos. He spends hours moving Lego figures with minute precision until his characters appear to tell a story in video format. This year, he has a plan to make a stop-motion recording of all our history memory-work. Follow along on YouTube KC bricks to watch his creations.

My 7-year-old son is interested in studying sharks and ocean animals. He is using Ocean Anatomy: The Curious Parts & Pieces of the World under the Sea by Julia Rothman to find sentences to copy. This copywork is a tool to practice the motor skills of handwriting while being exposed to beautiful sentence structures and grammar. Since the fonts of the book change frequently, he is also practicing visual perceptual skills in form constancy.

“Follow their lead” can have different meanings. For our homeschool, we use high-interest activities to help our children envision how the world fits together.

Here are three simple steps using activity to “follow their lead.”

1) Observe your children: What do they gravitate towards when you aren’t structuring their time? It’s ok, if its screens; notice both of my older children have apps as part of their activities.

2) Think how these preferred activities can be used during your school day: Can they either use their interests to build skills, like my younger son, or use their interests during academic tasks, like my older two?

3) Talk to your children about your ideas and gather theirs. I never would have chosen oceans for my youngest if I didn’t explicitly ask.

“Follow their lead” and “follow their interests” are intimately related and intertwine well in the homeschool environment. Observe your children and ask questions of them. It is easier than you might think to achieve both goals.