...write to the ministry and trying to do an experiment,
we just walked our own road
and then, in certain phase it was suddenly here
and we took Šimon from school
and we started to learn at home.
People often keep asking me:
"Does it look like at school?"
"How does an ordinary day look like?"
"It’s the same as at schol, but you are sitting at a kitchen desk
instead of a school desk?"
And this is a classic imagination of how should it look like,
because we all got used to it.
Actually we can't imagine something else.
And I call it a "home school"
But "home school" is only a very narrow expression in terms of
what education actually is.
I'd like to broaden it a bit
and maybe even know, in your minds,
there's and expression "home education".
The "home school" is a part of all that,
but the home education is for us, I mean for our family,
it's our lifestyle.
Everywhere I go, what I do,
I always, I have it so deep in my mind,
I always think about children, what could they learn from it.
When I plan a weekend, I always do it with a thought,
what will the children learn there.
When I buy a pexeso, I buy road signs
or, I don't know, castles or protected plants,
when I go to visit a friend,
we take a work with literature,
when children are older,
we find a city in the literature,
what is interesting about the city,
is there any interesting architecture?
Is there a good museum? Is there an amazing gallery?
I mean, it penetrates our whole life,
our whole being.
We grow plants because of children, so that they could see how a bean grows,
we do it also from a reason to learn them that physical work is valuable,
and simultaneously we take records from everything.
Everything that's happening, we record it.
So we teach ourselves a systematic work.
When I bake cakes, the leavened ones, I always take photos of it,
how pretty the yeast plants work.
You wouldn't believe how much the children could learn from that,
because they have many questions.
When I cut a weed,
2 days ago little Mirko came to me and asked,
by the way that's the youngest brother:
"Mummy, why do you cut the weed from those potatoes?"
And I'm telling him: "Hmmm... what do you think?"
I mean, I give a space to the children,
to find the answers by themselves.
To give them enough space to look for the answer,
I help them a bit, for sure,
in case they have no idea.
And at the home school, during the home education,
you have an unbelievably big amnount of space.
Because, as I said, you have the necessary substance,
which man has to do and certainly in our system,
because for a half a year you study and at the end of the year you go to school
to pass the exams and you have to be ok with time,
everything what is in the schedule,
but this one takes us only a very little amount of time.
We call it compulsory disciplines,
as figure-skaters have.
They have to pass some compulsory disciplines,
but we do it in 1,5 or 2 hours a day.
And then we have an amazing space,
which we can fly and burst in
and to fill it by extremely interesting
and creative acitivities or just by an ordinary day,
an ordinary life, because life brings so,
so much, but this is the wrong expression, right?
...many, many opportunities for learning.
They're everywhere... those opportunities,
you just have to notice them.
And when you notice it, you have to catch it and take it.
When we walk near a pool of water on the road, which frog eggs swim in,
we realise, this pool of water will disappear,
we try to save the eggs,
we dig a new hole and we write a note:
the date and time: "we dug a hole for frog eggs,
we moved the eggs" and another one after a week -
"We came to check the eggs out,
to check what's happening to them,
and we tried to save them" We didn't manage to do so.
Just for your information, we didn't save little frogs.
We didn't manage to do so, but it was very useful for us,
we learned a lot.
When we go...e.g. few days ago we travelled from Košice to Žilina,
and we were looking from the window. We didn't travel
without a purpose, we took a map of Slovakia with us.
And that´s so beautiful. You look from the window
and you see Little Fatra, you see Greater Fatra
and then you find it on the map,
6-7 years old child can orientate quite well
on the map.
I know at school they teach how to use a map in 4-th grade,
but I don't care.
When the time comes, we’ll aready know it
and nothing happened.
We meet people very often:
in our environment, either our relatives, but also unknown people,
we don’t hesitate to talk to them.
We were at a puppet show,
afterwards we came to the actress
and we asked her about the show.
And with a big enthusiasm she talked about
creating the scene in the theater
and what else we could notice during the show
and how amazing it was and we had even a greater experience
from meeting the creative woman
than from the show itself,
even though the show was very nice as well.
What else could I tell you from those ideas
what could be done...
I don’t know, if I remind now so easily...
Aah, I will tell you, how beautifully we work on
developing a visual and audio creativity.
Those are such simple things,
you go out with children to the nature,
or elsewhere and you close your eyes
and you’re listening to the sound of town or a village,
or sounds of a meadow or a forest.
We are lucky enough that we have an opportunity e.g. in autumn
to listen to a deers‘ pairing season or to the sounds of an owl during a year.
And the children beautifully feel it with their whole body,
and with all their senses they feel the nature,
and we enjoy it very much.
We watch clouds and try to see there animals or other things.
There’s a turtle, there’s a dog, there’s a map of Slovakia...
I mean, we always take those opportunities.
Everywhere I go, e.g. I go to the town, even with children from a kindergarten
and I ask them "What kind of shop is this one?"
Goods, services... recognizing and
I would tangle into my words,
if I cointinued talking about this.
I just believe each one of you has plenty of ideas,
what could you see and do in an ordinary life.
And those are your free rides.
As those figure-skaters don't have only compulsory disciplines,
but they have free rides, too. So these are our free rides.
And about one free ride
Šimonko would like to tell you.
We don't want it to look like school is rather bad,
but it somehow doesn't finalize few things.
School taught me how to read, but it wasn’t my cup of tea.
It taught me how to write, but that was neither my cup of tea.
And then a „home schol“ came
and my mum showed me one book.
That time the book was my most adventurous literature
I could ever imagine.
But of course, after some time,
I was tired enough,
because I didn’t have a reading stamina that time
so I went to my mum to finish the reading for me,
but my mum prepared some work before it,
that immediately needed to be done, tu put me off.
And I then had some break
and I continued with reading. It lasted perhaps 2 months.
Now I can do one book in few whiles.
So I solved the reading stuff.
Then I read many books from the Three investigators,
many people know them.
And that was one hell of a reading.
And then my mum had an idea,
that I could make notes about those books.
So I made notes about an author, title,
rating, content, date, how much time did it take to read it.
And then, as I got better in writing,
I started to make notes every day.
So one example:
29.10., today Mafatu swam away from the island,
where he wrecked on and landed on another one.
30.10. Today I read first day on the island.
15.11. When Mafatu woke up, he started to discover the island
and he built a shelter.
Today Mafatu did a trip.
7.11. Today Mafatu started to discover
the other side of the island.
So this is the example of how I made notes about it.
I couldn’t have done this at schol, because there is a plenty of another children
and they coudln’t do such thing just because of one pupil.
So actually, this is a kind of individual approach
to a child,
but home schol is also about a self-activity.
Every single morning I woke up and found tasks for me,
what was I supposed to do in one day.
Of course, my mum was helping me with many,
but it was my choice, which task we had to work on.
But I had to plan that way,
so that my mum would be ok
to take care about my 2 brothers as well.
So I actually learned how to plan some things
and that was a kind of self-activity.
And when I was supposed to come back to schol in 5th class,
I found out my classmates have kind of a problem
with the preparation at home- which I didn’t have,
because that wasn’t such a difference.
that...what...(laugh, applause)
It wasn’t such a difference. I had less tasks
but I had only an afternoon to do the tasks, not the whole day.
So that was a ...
You misled him out of the concept with that applause.
That self-activity and an individual apporach
could connect in „home education“
Very simply.
(Applause)
I would like to add to it,
or to gratify with you that Šimonko said
about the self-acitivity, too,
because in some American studies I read
that American, and generally there abroad, where they have
a bigger population of home educated pupils,
the universities praise it very much
those home pupils, because they have very good
sense of self-activity and responsibility.
That these 2 things a classic school can’t teach very well.
So this is just of a curiosity from the web.
The biggest fears I hear,
when I tell people about educating my children at home,
is from the socialization
and from pedagogical inability of parents.
Very often I wonder about that pedagogical
inability of parents, because parents
are very efficient teachers of their children.
They teach them amazing things in 6 years.
They teach them how to walk, hygienic habbits,
how to eat and how to talk.
And in comparison with institutions- parents are very succesful.
Because very often happens,
maybe some parents who adopt children,
could tell you more,
when they took the children form the institution,
they had to teach them how to walk again.
That institution wasn’t able
to teach those children how to walk correctly.
So parents are very,
but very efficient teachers of their children.
So I wouldn’t really consider this argument.
And that socialization...
We don´t have much time left so I can’t tell you much,
there are many arguments and studies about it,
but for now this example has to be enough for you. (Simonko)
Just for the information, when you talk with him,
he won’t be scared of you, he won’t run away,
he is not shy and frightened,
because poor him was isolated or something like this.
So you’ll find out that he is quite socialized,
as everyone else who should be socialized,
at his age. So I think,
that is suffiecient for now.
Also, I would like to tell you:
...and that applause took me few seconds,
so now I’ll steal them back...
And I would like to tell you that when you don’t resign,
what we, parents, who educate our children at home,
could pass to another parents,
is a heritage: don’t resign about that responsibility,
educate your children. Don’t let school do it instead of you,
that the school will do it.
Keep the responsibility somewhere inside of you,
and when you’ll be enthusiastic enough, you’ll notice
that you inspire your environment.
We managed to inspire their grandparents that much...
First they weren’t enthusiastic about it...
(laugh, applause)
But really...
After those several years of experience
it came to a phase,
that grandpa did with all them, I have 3 children,
so he did few educational walks
to all the surroundings of our town
and when grandma scrabbles leafs in autumn, she says:
"Come on boys, we’ll have work classes."
So it has ability to inspire the whole environment
to invest into your children.
And anyway it’ll enrich also the world of the children,
it’ll enrich your environment, and it’ll enrich yourselves!
And certainly it follows the topic of this conference:
Today we create the future.
Thank you for attention.