Discovering your Child’s Passion

Posted on March 4, 2007
Filed Under Home Schooling, Your Family |

By Rachel Larkin

When we pulled our oldest boy out of school, the words “Mum I’m bored” was heard frequently in our home. He had only one year of state schooling and was already infected with the boredom disease. Schooling seemed to have taken away his ability to have ideas and plugged up his creativity. He wasn’t able to stop, relax and enjoy spending hours on a project or hobby. I guess the school routine didn’t allow for periods of thinking and ideas and tinkering time. Boys need tinkering time!

So I had to come up with a way to get the thinking of ideas going, ideas of what to make and ideas of what to do. We spent the first year of our home educating journey getting to know one another again. Just enjoying reading a book, going on field trips together and getting to know our local area. Over this time several interests and passions started to emerge, it was exciting to see his mind become active and the sparkle in his eyes when we discovered something new.

He developed a love of climbing Auckland’s volcanoes. We captured our volcano discoveries on film and he gathered information as we went. It was interesting to stand back and ponder what was motivating his love of mountains. At first I thought it was the act of climbing them but he always wanted to get to the top and wasn’t really concerned with the process of the climb. I then thought that it was the mountain itself and was directing him to books on rocks and the history of volcanos but it wasn’t really any of that, he showed an interest but it wasn’t his passion it wasn’t what was driving him. His underlying motivation was…. what he saw when he got to the top of the mountain!! – The cityscape below him, the roads interlocking, the busyness of the cars, the people like ants scurrying around, the areas of industrial factories compared to the residential streets. That was what was interesting him.

From this experience (which took place over a year) he has developed his passion of cities and has moved onto road maps. At the age of six and a half he had very advanced mapping skills, owned his own copies of the Auckland street map and the road code. He would have passed the road code test if he was allowed to sit it.!

How can mum spark an interest in her child? A start would be having a “productive free time” list. This is a list of activities that are fun and educational and may be the start of an interest or hobby for your child. I found various “productive free time” lists on the internet where other mums had composed a list of possible productive activities for their home educated children. I sat down with my son and together we went through the lists and came up with our own. The list was printed double spaced and we cut each item into a long strip. We placed the long strips into a special box. When we had reached a point in the day when he didn’t know what to do with himself he had to pick two or three pieces of paper from the box and decide on one activity.

Later on, when his decision making skills were more developed, the box was put aside and we had the printed list on the wall and he independently made a choice. The “productive free time” list had its place for a season and now we don’t seem to need it as the boys are fuelling their own passions.

Click to see the Larkin Family’s Productive Free Time List

The Larkin Family’s Productive Free Time List

1. Nature Walk – find some bugs
2. Build with Legos
3. Little Legos
4. K’Nex
5. Reading
6. Teddy Bears Picnic – big chest
7. Drawing
8. UNO
9. Building outside with wood
10. Climb a tree
11. Play in the sandpit
12. Make some cards
13. Write a letter to somebody
14. Collect different leaves and paste them onto paper
15. Play monopoly
16. Junior Scrabble
17. Jigsaws
18. Write on the concrete with chalk
19. Dress up
20. Crafts
21. Do gym outside
22. Do a treasure hunt
23. Tumble
24. Pick up sticks
25. Barrel of monkeys
26. Pasting – collage
27. Make your own comic book
28. Build a fort
29. Puppet play
30. Record your own radio play
31. Play dough
32. Dig tunnels outside
33. Build a parking garage and repair station for cars
34. Dictate a story into tape recorder for someone to type out
35. Build a spaceship
36. Cooking
37. Tent / cubby house out of blankets
38. Run through sprinkler
39. Press flowers
40. Pull weeds
41. Bird watching
42. Act out a play
43. Write a play
44. Invent a circus
45. Soccer
46. Throw a ball
47. Collect rocks
48. Play Frisbee
49. Make Frisbees out of plastic lids and decorate
50. Dust the lounge
51. Play dress up
52. Teddy bears picnic
53. Play store
54. Prepare a restaurant lunch/dinner with menus
55. Toy cars
56. Chase butterflies
57. Thomas trains
58. Gardening
59. Make homemade wrapping paper
60. Make bookmarks
61. Watch the clouds
62. Clean under your bed
63. Make music
64. Fold laundry
65. Sweep the driveway
66. Bike riding
67. Copy your favourite book illustration
68. Design your own game
69. Lemon juice painting
70. Hide and seek
71. Read a story to your younger brothers
72. Make up a song
73. Map of your bedroom/house/street
74. Cut pictures from magazines and write a story
75. Plan a treasure hunt
76. Make a treasure map
77. Plan an imaginary trip to the moon
78. Plan an imaginary trip around the world –where are you going
79. Sticks and mud and make birds nest
80. Make a family newsletter
81. Paper airplanes
82. Obstacle course outside
83. Read newspaper

Rachel Larkin currently resides in New Zealand with her soul mate, Noel and their three awesome boys (aged 9 to 5). Rachel worked in the corporate world for ten years as a Chartered Accountant before coming home to homeschool her children. She has a passion for inspiring and encouraging women to partake of all that God has for them. Check out her website: http://www.Rachel-Larkin.com for more encouraging articles and Freebies.

Comments

4 Responses to “Discovering your Child’s Passion”

  1. Cathy Nagle on March 4th, 2007 9:23 pm

    Happy Sunday Rachel!
    I really enjoyed reading your post this afternoon. That has to be THE BEST way to get rid of the schoolish mentality in a child by adding productive free time. I think we underestimate the accomplishments that can be made during this time. This is where we can see certain passions develop.
    Your PFT list is excellent!
    Love, Cathy :o)

  2. Melissa~ on March 7th, 2007 6:28 pm

    Wow, what a fantastic list Rachel! Love it! Your blog is wonderful! I truly enjoyed your article on sowing generously into your children’s lives. Oh how that touches my heart! I think you should develop that into a book!

    Love,

    Melissa~

  3. Belinda Letchford on March 25th, 2007 2:05 am

    Hi Rachel - Your Productive list is terrific. It is a great story that really does make the point of giving our children time. I have linked it to my Talents, Gifts and Abilities page on my website, where I talk about the same issue.
    Belinda

  4. Nathalie on April 23rd, 2007 10:03 pm

    Thanks for inspiring me!

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