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Learning in Waves

CS First studies started up at the house again this week!  If you’re not familiar with Google’s CS First program, if you have homeschooling, or unschooling kids who would like to learn programming for free, you should check it out. 



The gang here is returning to it after a two month break.  Their break wasn’t inspired by any faults of the program, far from it.  They’ve loved every single class.  Working on their most recent lesson a few months back they spent hours figuring out different graphics schemes for their dancing program. A few days later, they simply became busy with other things. 

That happens a lot here, and is one of the many outcomes of our unschooling practice.  Other things come up.  Some classes end, others start.  In the meantime the things the kids are learning fade in and out of their immediate focus.

And that’s OK, because their focus returns to the things they really enjoy, every single time.  Earlier this week, upon finding the banner she had made for our first few CS First classes, One spoke up, “Can we start doing CSFirst again?”

The response from my partner and i was the typical one from unschooling parents, “Sure!”

Since then, the kids have dived back in.  They moved onto the next lesson and are learning more complex programming concepts.  Just as they did before, One, the oldest kid, the one who knows how to read is doing most of the work moving around the programming constructs.  Six year-old Two, and four year-old Three are helping out with design suggestions, watching everything One does, and evaluating the results.  They took on this form of agile programming all on their own. 

Do I think Two and Three are learning programming also?  Yeah.  They’re seeing how the graphical programming constructs are organized to produce different outcomes.  They both know their numbers, and Two is picking up words contextually lately even though he’s not sounding them out yet.  I’ve seen the two of them learn so many things based on experience without the ability to read that I have know doubt their brains are picking up all of this as well.

Jumping back in after a two month break, there was no ‘slide’ in retained knowledge, the gang just ambled along exactly as if they’d left the lessons yesterday.  Repetition seems not to have mattered, nor do any other forms of rote practice.  Taking a break didn’t hurt their retention a bit.  One did the same thing when we left off working on digital circuits for a few months.  As far as I can tell, that’s the way the gang will always learn, fading in and out of the subjects they love, pursuing their passions, and that works for me!


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