Читать книгу Homeschooling For Dummies - Jennifer Kaufeld - Страница 66

You do, however, have some pretty great strengths. Maybe you play soccer well, exhibit a flair for flower arranging, or balance the family’s financial books effortlessly. These abilities trace back to specific skills: in this case, an athletic ability, design skill, and prowess with numbers.

These are the things that you can pass on to your children. Although they may not be born with extreme athletic ability, you know enough about soccer (and probably some other team sports) to get them started in the right direction. You know that regularly moving your body for a period of time makes you feel better and enhances your general health. These are tidbits of knowledge that you share, and you don’t need a textbook to do it. To you, this probably qualifies as part of life, but in the school setting they call this “education.”

And if something is important enough to you that you spend the time to excel at it, you probably want your children to at least have a nodding acquaintance with the skills involved. Your child can learn to balance a checkbook and follow the stock market without needing to declare finance as a college major; there’s a big difference between developing a life skill and a vocation. (Some skills and talents may develop into that vocational specialty, but they don’t have to.)

Sometimes it’s those things you learned the hard way that you want to pass on the most — I learned to cook from my college roommates, so I make a concentrated effort to teach my children nutrition, meal planning, and basic cooking skills. On the other hand, my mother taught me to make pies, so that’s important for me to pass along as well.