Yesterday's homeschooling kashrus halacha (Jewish law) lesson and science lesson, combined in one, in unschooling fashion; in my opinion, how all learning should be done. The world and learning shouldn't be compartmentalized into different subjects, especially not between "secular/science" and Torah, because "science" helps our understanding of halacha.So, what exactly was the lesson and how did it come about?
Rafi (5) asked me why the chicken skins (crackings/gribines) left from making my shmaltz (rendered chicken fat) were so salty.
To answer him, we did an experiment.
Took a DRY bowl, and ensured there was no water in it. Took a cucumber, dried it off, then sliced it up. Put it in the bowl, ensuring there was no water. Sprinkled salt liberally onto it. Set it aside for a little bit.
After half an hour, we saw how much water was in the bowl that wasn't there beforehand. Rafi wanted to know how the water got there, and where the salt went, and if the salt melted. I corrected him, and taught him about osmosis and why the water came out of the cucumbers. (At a level that he could understand at his age.)
I then said that blood isn't kosher, and asked Rafi what he thought would happen if you put salt on a chicken, and he said "the blood would come out to be with the salt". I said he was right, and said that that's why you put salt on it, so the blood would come out and the animal would be kosher. So he said "but some times there is blood in the chicken when you cook it", so I explained to him the different types of blood in regards to kosher laws, how dam hanefesh, the blood that comes out when you shecht (slaughter) the animal is 100% forbidden, and then blood that is left- dam ha'eivarim- is divided into two categories- you salt it, and the blood that comes out (dam hanifrash) is not kosher, and the blood that is left inside after salting it is kosher.
Lesson to be continued- what happens when you put sugar on cucumbers? Flour? Sesame seeds? And other osmosis related lessons. If he wants to learn that.
The definition of unschooling has always baffled me. Everything you describe here includes the kind of learning we do too, yet I don't really consider myself an unschooler. OTOH, I do do formal phonics instruction in 1st/2nd grade until they take off reading on their own, and we have a math book that follows a particular order. OTOOH, we simultaneously do all kinds of sideways mathematical explorations based on our environment or interests. And sometimes I just delete whole sections of our text (on reading the clock or calendar, for example) because there's no need for specific instruction since we learn it in the course of daily living. No one hanging out with us for a day would say we were doing "school at home," yet what we cover pretty much follows the recommendations in The Well-Trained Mind. I also just lift a lot of learning OUT of our books and put it out there for us to wrestle with in a non-papery kind of way. I call our learning a "Great Conversation." It's definitely not a classroom here, but it's also not specifically a child-led environment. Maybe a child-inspired environment??? I guess where I would differ from what I've read about many unschoolers is that I don't wait until their interest in something is piqued to dive into it (and require that they do it). I do require reading lessons early on. I do require certain subjects be studied, and that a certain amount of learning be accomplished each day. I also think our day-to-day life provides many educational opportunities that are not book-based. I also don't ever need to test them, because it's very evident from our conversations what they understand and don't understand. Completely rambling thoughts... I've just always been puzzled by this. :)
ReplyDelete