Three Areas of Learning

I was listening to a podcast this week from the Circe Institute on "Igniting a Love of Learning."  (You can find the podcast here: https://www.circeinstitute.org/podcast/podcast-igniting-love-learning-your-students.)  The thing that struck me most was a comment one of the members of the podcast made about there being three types of learning we're trying to teach our kids:

1. Skills - handwriting, math computation, tying shoes, disagreeing appropriately
2. Information - dates, facts, pieces of poetry
3. Understanding - concepts, moral values

And these three need to be taught in different ways.  Unfortunately, the podcast didn't go into much detail about the different ways to teach each one, but it started me ruminating on the idea.

I don't have a problem using rewards or payment to teach skills.  I know some people do, and it's certainly not my go-to approach, but when a kid needs to learn a particular skill on my schedule (potty training, for instance), a reward can jump-start the process.

Skills take demonstration and lots of repetition.  It's a matter of drill.  It did say in the podcast that a moderate amount of drill, like 5-10 minutes, is better than half an hour or more.  I totally agree!  Drilling every single day for a short amount of time helps my kids a ton with their skills in math and phonics and other areas.

Information is taught by repetition, usually.  Creative repetition is nice, but it's not my strong suit.  But spaced repetition is the key to retaining information, as far as I understand it.  When my kids get bigger, I think we'll use something like Anki to retain information that's important.  (At some point, I have to figure out what is important; that's what this is waiting on, not some nebulous "older" age.)

And understanding, I believe, comes best through literature, conversation, and living.  That's why my teaching is heavy on reading and discussing with my kids.  All the homeschooling philosophies I enjoy, like the Robinson Curriculum and Charlotte Mason and Classical Education, are heavy on reading the classics.  This may be why.  Understanding is the most important, so it needs a lot of attention, without neglecting the other areas.

So my kids read and discuss classics.  We drill on important skills regularly, daily if possible for the most important ones.  And I really like the idea of a spaced repetition system for information; now I'm looking for what information to include!