Free Time and a Headgates Update

Happy 4th of July everyone!  I am so thankful for this country and the freedom to worship how I feel is right, to teach my children in the way that I want, to learn the things that I choose to learn, to express my opinion without fear, to have the peace of mind of knowing that my children's world is filled with innumerable possibilities!

I mentioned quite a while ago that I would write a post about "Free Time" in our home.  This being the day that we celebrate freedom, I decided I might as well post it now.  It has taken me a while to get to it for several reasons.  Reason #1 - There is not much to say - it is what it is - free time.  People do what they choose to do.  Reason #2 - It sounds absurd because, yes,  I really do expect my children to choose to learn when they have other options before them.  Reason #3 - We just started this "experiment" and I wanted to see what it would look like.

In our schedule, mornings are used for work - we get the house in order, we work in our garden, we prepare meals, we have a devotional (recently we have been splitting our devotional up into different parts during the day because of some of our new meal rules - maybe I'll write about it later), we eat lunch and then we have free time in the afternoons.

In the DeMille's Leadership Education book, it is suggested that afternoons are used for inspiring.  In other words, mom sets an example.  They say:

"This example is not lost on the children, who learn much more from what they watch us do consistently than from what we assign them....Afternoons are for setting an example, and interruptions from little people are welcome."

During free time, I try to model whatever it is I want my kids to do.  This is how I set up a Master Inspire Plan - deciding what I wanted to do during free time.  I have been too busy lately (pioneer trek, and friends coming to stay with us, visiting family for the 4th of July) to be very on the ball with my Master Inspire goals, but I fully intend to get on track next week.

Regardless of my many limitations as an inspirer, I have seen some really great things as we've closed headgates and I've allowed my children to choose what to do with their free time.  I previously wrote about the "virtue of time".  The virtue, or essence, of the free time in our home is:  to do what our heart and mind tells us.

Keri Tibbets mentions on her headgates ebook that you can get an idea of what phase your child is in by peeking in on them during their free time.  If they are playing, they are in core phase.  If they are learning (although they tend to think it's play) then they are love of learners.  If the are studying, they are scholars, etc.  When they are given the right environment, they progress naturally through the phases.

A while ago, I found myself asking, during a family prayer, for Heavenly Father to help us use our free time wisely.  When I finished the prayer, the kids asked, "What did you mean that we should use our free time wisely?  Should we be praying about how to use our free time?"  I was a little taken aback by this question.  If they felt like they had to pray to ask what they should do - would this make them feel forced to do something?  Would this take away from their love of learning?  Would it be like requiring?  I didn't know, so I simply said, "Umm, I guess so, shouldn't we?"

As I thought more about it, I realized that I didn't just want my kids to learn stuff for the sake of learning stuff.  I wanted them to learn for the sake of doing good, helping people, finding joy in fulfilling what God placed them on this earth to accomplish. 

"The promptings of the Spirit were never intended to supplant our moral agency, but the Spirit will underscore preferable options in our behavior and clarify a certain course of action in our hearts and minds."-Howard W. Hunter

A few days ago, I watched a movie called Celestial Education.  It opened my eyes to a few things and I'm sure I'll be writing about some of the things I felt inspired to do, but one of the things that she mentioned was that from ages 8-12, the focus of our children's education ought to be to learn to hear their Heavenly Father through the Holy Ghost.  I wonder how often children are given this opportunity.  We tend to keep them pretty busy - do they have time to ponder and wonder what God would have them do?  Do they get enough practice hearing and acting on the promptings they receive?

Since the essence of free time is for us to do what our hearts and minds tell us - then maybe it's a good thing to be in tune with what those things are.

Allowing children to choose what to learn, and giving them guidance and example along the way - isn't that how our Heavenly Father parents?

"To fully understand this gift of agency and its inestimable worth, it is imperative that we understand that God’s chief way of acting is by persuasion and patience and long-suffering, not by coercion and stark confrontation. He acts by gentle solicitation and by sweet enticement. He always acts with unfailing respect for the freedom and independence that we possess. He wants to help us and pleads for the chance to assist us, but he will not do so in violation of our agency. He loves us too much to do that, and doing so would run counter to his divine character."-Howard W. Hunter

Like I said, I am still experimenting.  If I notice there is something amiss, or something that I feel strongly that they need to learn at a certain time, but they are not choosing and I can't seem to inpire them in any way, I'll have to go with what feels right at that time, but for now, I am seeing wonderful things happening.

When I first started this notion of "free time".  (We fgot rid of everything in the house that would be entertaining or distracting first - see headgates.org)  The older children chose to read.  After a couple of days it was like they needed to see that they really could do anything they wanted and - they played.  Even my 10 year old played with dolls for a few days.  I have to admit that at this time I began to worry.  "Maybe this is not such a good idea," I thought, "Maybe I should give them more parameters about what is acceptable." A good friend talked me in to giving them a little more time.  Sure enough, within a few days, playing was no longer quite so fun and the older kids began to look for more mentally stimulating activities.

We've been trying this for about three months now.  It is so fun to wait and see what the children will choose to do. 

Lately, Spice has been reading, practicing the  piano, climbing a tree in which she found some eggs she likes to check on, working on math (I actually told her to stop math for a while because it was stressing her out, but she recently decided that she was ready to try it again), and writing - she likes to practice cursive so she's been writing poems down from memory. 

Bud has been reading - he read Where the Red Fern Grows, The Summer of the Monkeys, and The Hobbit in one week.  He is currently just over half-way done with The Fellowship of the Ring.  It is harder reading so he hasn't been picking it up as often as he was picking up the other books, but he chose it and he likes to read it.  He is also writing (he just finished a story - it ended very abruptly - I think he ran out of things to say and didn't know how to end it - he said, "I want to leave you hanging at the end of this story - just like Charles Dickens does at the end of his chapters!" Now he wants to write a story about his three frogs.)  He also loves observing nature.  The other day I saw him laying on the sidewalk staring at an ant colony - I kept checking on him and still, there he lay.  He probably watched those ants for 45 minutes.  He came in and told me so many interesting things that he observed.  I haven't been quite as pleased with his choice of activity the last couple of days.  He got a bouncy ball at the dentist's and he has spent a big chunk of his free time catching it and racing it with other bouncy balls down the driveway - maybe I should consider it a lesson in physics and relax ;-)  I am happy to report that he is still happily doing his penmanship lessons every day.

Little Miss has also wanted penmanship lessons.  She often reads as well (she just finished Charlotte's Web for the second time), and she likes to read to her little brother.  Most of the time she plays some imaginary game with Bazinks.  They play that they are animals, characters from books (especially Harry Potter and Little House on the Prairie).  They also love playing outside.

Bazinks plays.  He likes to "practice his penmanship" lately too and he likes to pretend that he is reading.  He also sings a lot.

Baby Ray naps, and finds stuff to stick in his mouth.  He has mastered crawling upstairs and is starting to learn how to crawl down them.  He loves dancing to classical music as well.

Everyone is really happy.  I was worried that they might feel resentful this summer when they saw many of neighborhood kids outside playing much of the day, but they seem perfectly content to tell their friends that they can't play until Tuesday or Friday.  They seem to enjoy their free time as much as I do.