Lifeschooling and the Four E's

By Danielle Papageorgiou of Lifeschooling Conference

We’ve all been there.

You’ve laid out the plans for the week, carefully selecting just the right resources and planning the perfect lessons to make this week run smoothly. You even wrote up individual hourly schedules for each child.

But then the toddler gets sick in the night; your best friend needs to talk through a crisis; and your husband’s boss schedules a couple meetings that keep him late at work multiple nights.

And that schedule?

Well, it ended up somewhere buried under the piles of random coloring and activity sheets that you ended up relying on... or trying to.

Truth be told, your living room is just one big blanket-and-cushion fort, and there are marbles in the bathroom sink, along with clay, for some reason you’re not sure you want to know.

Your visions of happy little children sitting at their desks and eagerly learning are shattered. And it’s official: The week of homeschooling was a bust.

Or was it?

Enter: Lifeschooling

The fact of the matter is, families throughout history (and long before our modern system of education) have been dealing with just these same “interruptions” and crises, and somehow, some way, the kids still learned.

In fact, some of the most famous, innovative people who have contributed most to society–Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens, to name just a few–were basically self-educated.

So could it be that we’re thinking about education all wrong?

I believe it’s time to get back to the simplicity of learning and embrace something I call “Lifeschooling.”

Lifeschooling is “the individualized process of discovering your child’s God-given gifts and talents, primarily through real life experiences, that happen within the context of your family’s unique situations and missions.”

I know it’s a mouthful. But, to put it simply, the main point of this philosophy of education is to “merge life with homeschooling” and help your children find their gifts so they can use them for God’s glory.

It’s about seeing education in all those real life experiences, and then capitalizing on it and encouraging the sparks of interest we observe. It’s about embracing the diversions and so-called distractions God brings our way, and learning to see what He sees in them.

Those marbles and clay in the sink, diverting the water in different directions? Looks like you might have a budding engineer on your hands. The large pillow forts? Perhaps architecture is in this child’s future.

When we see a mess, God sees so much more! We just have to have the vision to understand these outward evidences of the gifts He’s put inside them.

But how do we do this?

The 4 E’s of Lifeschooling

We’ve all heard of the 3 R’s: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. But E’s? “Erratic, Eccentric, Exhausting, Exasperating”? Because that’s how a week like that feels, right? 

Well, let’s try to see that “failure of a week” for what it actually is. And the 4 E’s will help us do that, as they give a sense of structure to what can otherwise feel random and wasted. These four stages aren’t meant to be an exact process, nor do they have to happen linearly, but they do help us see learning in those everyday happenings.

These are the 4 E’s of Lifeschooling:

• Exploration (playing and reading)
• Experience (everyday life, including chores, projects, field trips, travel, etc.)
• Expert Engagement (mentorships and apprenticeship opportunities)
• Entrepreneurship (learning how to use their gifts to serve in the marketplace)

Exploration

This phase includes both playing and reading. Playing can feel "wasteful" to us, but remember this is how God designed children to learn! Think how much a baby learns... crawling, walking, learning a language... all without lessons or worksheets. Imagine!

In the early years, hearing books read is more about exploring language itself. But as they get older, we can read a wide variety of topics and give them a broad base of experiences through reading.

A child who enjoys reading in general will be more likely to research topics of interest. It’s commonplace now for my adult children to teach me new things nearly every day, simply because they love to read and learn on their own.

Experience

The second stage of Lifeschooling, Experience, has to do with everyday life activities, projects, chores, travel, etc.

This learning often happens very organically, as we just live our lives and tackle the things that need to get done... cooking, cleaning, sorting laundry, etc.

But we can also intentionally find the learning angle and maximize on those experiences.

Expert Engagement

Once you have identified some of your child's strongest gifts and interests, you can move into the phase of helping them further hone those interests and become an expert in their own right.

There's no need to wait for graduation, and I would contend that the younger years can, in some ways, be much better for developing their gifts!

At this phase, you can bring in experts who are already working in the fields of your child's interests.

These may be close family friends, fellow church members, or other homeschool moms and dads who can teach, mentor, and challenge your child further through mentorships, apprenticeships, jobs, and other ongoing focused experiences.

Entrepreneurship

Regardless of your child's natural inclinations, this is an important part of the Lifeschooling journey because it will help them learn:

• How capitalism works
• The value of serving and being paid for delivering value.
• Economics principles
• People skills
• Money management skills

These are all skills and principles that are vital, whether they decide to go into business for themselves or become part of a small venture or even a large company.

Understanding the basics of entrepreneurship and using their gifts to provide value to others, like any other skill, is learned best through real life.

Entrepreneurship is where they find purpose in their gifts... serving others, and most of all God, with their talents and abilities!

Conclusion

None of the 4 E’s are worth anything if you don’t start with an F: the Foundation. The entire Lifeschooling philosophy is built upon the foundation of Matthew 6:33: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you.”

We must teach our children, first and foremost, to seek God with all their hearts. And when you do this, God is faithful to His promise! All those E’s simply fall into place and your Lifeschooling is successful.