Learning The Most Important Learning Skill: Learning On Your Own

KJ watching another kid play a Grand Champion Chess Player

Self-Sufficiency- I've harped on this a million times because it is a key component of a happy life and an enabling factor for a strong society.  It's so important that it has a formal place in our HomeSchool Charter. One of the keys to Self-Sufficiency is being able to learn things on your own.  Sure, I could distill and dispense information all day long and have the girls simply learn that way, but I will not always be there and I certainly don't know everything.

Further, as humankind evolves, there will be new frontiers where there is no established textbook or knowledge base and those that will thrive will be those that can teach themselves these emerging areas.  I'm giving my girls a HUGE advantage over others by emphasizing the self-learning skill.  Being able to do this was a huge part of my professional success: I could teach myself the most bleeding edge technologies before they ever appeared in common communication channels (when everyone else could catch up), and by the time they did emerge I was already known as the expert and even quoted in common press articles and books (I've even had chapters in books devoted to what I did!)

To help build the "Learn on your own" self-sufficiency skill, I gave KJ a choice of a Strategy Game that she would have to learn on her own.  The choices were Go, Poker, and Chess.  She would have to join a league, and I would determine her "grade" based on how well she did in the league.  Neither her mom nor I would help her, she was on her own (beyond approving of online account type stuff).

KJ selected chess, and started her journey.  She found all her own resources (websites, videos, and even an online chess learning "freemium" platform called ChessKid).

Here are a couple of things that have emerged, beyond her simply learning chess:

• In the beginning, we would overhear KJ sharing with her little sister,Dy, what she learned. This dialog spawned lots of neat side-effects- KJ could ensure she understood finer points, KJ gained places of further inquiry as some of Dy's questions she didn't know the answer to, Dy picked up the rules of the game, the girls had talking points that were not superficial 
• The competitive aspect of chess has served as a neat way to goad KJ further, as she hates to loose, even to a "robot." So she works her knowledge and even more importantly, thinks about strategy application (yeah! more strategy!!!)

The hardest part has been keeping the wife component from "Helping" :) That motherly instinct is strong!!! But the Wifie understands that the goal really isn't mastery of chess, but mastery of learning how to learn on your own.

Word Triggers For Learning The State Capitals

Over Christmas break, way back in December, my eldest wanted to finish memorizing all the capitals of the United States.  I told her we could absolutely weave that into her Winter Break Homeschool activities.  We would not, however, be using the rote memorization approach that they had been applying at her charter school.  Rather, we would use a "trigger word to story" memorization device.  I'm happy to report that not only did she learn the remaining 30 state capitals within 5 days, but she has retained them over the past 6 months!

How to learn, how to acquire information, how to build knowledge, and how to apply wisdom are often lacking in an education system.  Many times the student is left to their own devices to figure out ways of doing these things.  Within our homeschool we actively seek out a variety of ways to get stuff into our heads (See our homeschool Charter, VII.Tactics of Exerevno Academy.5).  It is hoped that by doing this, each of our girls will find multiple ways that work for them so that when they, as adults, have to learn something, they can do it on their own, both effectively and efficiently.

The funnier the association the better

As shared, the technique we explored together for her states was "trigger word to story." I have no idea what the formal name is for this approach, but it is the technique of seeing a word in something and building a story out of it that clues you into the answer you want to recall.  It is a simple two step process.

First, I asked my daughter to look at the state name and blurt out the first word that came to mind.  For example, when she saw Nebraska she said "Ask".

Second, I challenged her to build a story that links "ask" to Lincoln, the president.  She shared with me that when she did the debate module at school, she was told the history of the Lincoln Douglas debates.  She then continued on with something like, "and he would ask a lot of questions."

Viola! That's it, when she sees Nebraska, she triggers with "ask a" recalling that Lincoln asks a lot of questions.

Below are 20 of the associations she built. The key point is that the trigger word and story had to resonate with her, not me. My context, my knowledge, my background, etc. would build associations that didn't/wouldn't naturally fit her recall.  For example, she got stuck on Oregon, so I offered that I see Oreo and that is a cookie sandwich, and that she could instead have a Salami sandwich (for Salem). Nope, that didn't work so after some poking and prodding, she came to one that she still hasn't forgotten but doesn't work for me at all ... something about "Sailing"

After we built her list, when she would recall the capitals, she would regal me with the story each time, thus further burning her association into her mind.  Some of her associations were funny, some were crude, and some made no sense to me ... but that didn't matter, they made sense to her and she remembered.

Examples from my daughter:

Alaska - Whats the best month to visit the coldest state? Jeau Know? June, No?
Arizona - Prisoner of Azkaban/Arizona? The Phoenix
California    - Sack Ra Men Toe (I don't get this one at all!!)
Colorado - Where does a DOe live? In the Den of Fur (Den-of-fur, Denver)
Idaho - "I da ho" No you're not, you're a boy, see (Boy-see, Boise)
Illinois - There is no Ill in Spring Field (notice the rhyme)
Iowa         - "I owe a" "these monies"  des monies Des Moines
Kansas - Where is the Kan Of Sauce? At the Top! (Top-E ka)
Michigan - Mich gets rich by land Singing
Minnesota - Mickey was jealous because Minnie had lunch with Paul
Montana - Hanna Montana? No Helena Montana!
Nebraska     - Aska lotta questions? Lincoln debates
North Dakota - Dakota is a good business woman with Mark, Bis-Mark (friends of hers)
Ohio - Oh, Hi!!! O.... What Columbus said when he first came to America
Oregon - Or, go Sailin (Or, go is from Oregon)
Texas - Austin likes to Text (Austin is a friend of hers)
Utah - "ahhhh" from the Salt Lake bath (ahhh comes from U ---tahhhhhh)
Washington - Must being washing tons of clothes for Olympians
Wisconsin - W is on in? Because of his Mad Eye Son
Wyoming    - Why you, Ming? Because of my friend shy Ann

War's Gift To Kids- Learning How To Apply Strategy Through Games

Our 8 year old playing a phenominal cooperative
family game called Forbidden Island where choices
are openly discussed and applied, fitting into
an overall shared strategy.

All parents, homeschooling or otherwise, expect their children to make good choices, but I've never met another parent that teaches the mechanics of how to do this.  Primarily they expect their kids to kind of figure it out through trial and error.  I've over heard some parents say things like "Think about the consequences" but that's the extent of their advice.  There is a whole academic discipline devoted to making good choices and it is called "Strategy."

Many people simply brush off studying Strategy as a war thing.  While it does have its roots in the unknown and chaotic environment of warfare, over the years its application to all areas of life have been studied and applied to great effect, be it business, or home buying, or simply picking out where to hold a party (we did this as part of a course at Stanford on Strategy).  Unknowns and chaos are a part of life and having the ability to formalize decisions in such spaces is a very powerful tool.  Even when to be spontaneous can be analyzed as part of a strategic decision.

Learning about, and applying, Strategic Thought in life is an important part of our Homeschool education.  Strategic Thought enables our girls to make better choices in uncertain and unknown environments, which covers a large swath of actual life .... and an even larger amount if you push yourself into unknown areas. We feel so strongly about this that we've not only formally codified it into our homeschool charter (VI. Strategy of Exerevno Academy.2, VII.Tactics of Exerevno Academy.4, and VIII.Operations of Exerevno Academy.3), but we actively pursue it as a field of study on its own.  We leverage board-games as a laboratory for this topic, and life's choices for the actual application.

The kinds of Board-Games we incorporate in our homeschool life for strategy lessons are turn based, where the pace of the game is regulated by our choice speed.  Our board games are chosen such that neither physical agility nor physical prowess grants an advantage.  What matters is the ability to make good choices.  No, these aren't all war games.  In fact, as I look at our game collection, of the 30 some games in it, only two are explicitly/overtly about war (Stratego and Risk) and two are implicit (Go and Chess).

Some games we play are cooperative, while others are adversarial.  Some are team based, and some are each man for themselves.  Some are perfect information games, while others are not.  Some are 1 player, some 2, some 4, some 6 and up.  The games have various age recommendations, from 5 and up to 13 and up (although we consciously ignore the suggested age range). Some take 5 minutes (Uno, for example), some have taken 5 hours (we once played Carcassonne Big Box and it took 5 hours for a single game), and some take days (Monopoly seems to have this happen more than most games). Some have elements of chance and some require diplomacy, but all require strategy.

These kinds of games also provide for another important part of our homeschool approach, the acquisition of the skill of active feedback (again, see our charter).  You can see and measure how outcomes are unfolding, and because we use turns as a speed regulation mechanism, each person can operate their feedback loops comfortably and adjust if need be.

If you're homeschooling, you probably include games to some degree but do you activity choose, study, and play games that develop specific deep skill sets you want your kids to have in life?  We do, and our girls LOVE them.  We will be sharing examples throughout the life of this blog, and they will be labeled with Games.

Do you have a great strategy board game recommendation? If so, please do share.