Explorethe Treetops

The unseen world of Kew Gardens.

Climb high into the tree canopy and explore underground at our amazing new Rhizotron and Xstrata Treetop Walkway, and enjoy Kew as you have never seen it before.

This summer you can also discover the sights, sounds and inner workings of trees at our Year of the Tree Festival.

24 May-28September www.kew.org/trees

The year of the treef estival
Natural Learning Gill Kilner , mother of five explores the intricacies of mathemathics with her unschooled daughter

“M

um, can we do some sums today?” asked Lyddie, our five year-old, yesterday. I really cherish those moments – the times when

ILLUSTRATION SANDRA HOWGATE

all the hard decisions about natural learning versus forced schooling prove to have been the best ones for us to have made. The times that demonstrate children really do want to learn, even maths. The times that most unschooling parents – myself included – grab with both hands and never ignore. So I said, “Sure.” And: “Text book sums or Mum sums?” trying not to sound like I was taking her food order in a caféé. “Um...” Lyddie considered, looking at the ceiling. “Mum sums.” “Ok. Blackboard, whiteboard or paper?” “Whiteboard.” “Adds, takeaways, groups-of or shared-bys?” “All of them.” So I divided up the whiteboard into four and put a big symbol in the middle of each quarter of it, one for each function. “Right,” said I, getting into the teaching rôôle, “I’ll write some sums in each section and you can work out the answers...” “Oh no,” said Lyddie. “I’ll write some sums in each corner and you work out the answers.” “Oh! Right. Ok. You write the sums then,” I said, handing her the pen and doing mental backflips. I was actually thinking: “What’s she going to learn, if the rôôles are reversed? Is this going to work? Is there some way I can negotiate, manage the situation better?” But then I decided I had no choice really but to go with it her way, because anything else would have put her off the whole exercise. She wrote the sums and I duly worked them out, audibly, using my fingers, her fingers and finally the contents of a nearby basket of Duplo bricks, which turned out to be excellent tools for the job. Better than the split peas we were using last time anyway. All went well until we got to the very last sum, which was one divided by three. “Are you sure these numbers are the right way around?” She was. “So that’s one thing to be shared around three people?” I further enquired, anxiously imagining myself trying to chop up a Duplo brick. It was. I looked around, thinking quickly. “Bread,” I said in the end. “We’ll share out a piece of bread.” So we went to the bread board, carefully cut a slice of bread into three and

gave one share to the baby, one to Lyddie and one to me. “There,” I pronounced, relieved. “Now. How much have we all got?” Lyddie looked at the bread in her hand. Counted it. “One piece,” she told me, quite truthfully. Oh dear. “No, it’s a third,” I explained. We had one slice of bread and we cut it into three, which means each piece is a third of the whole slice.” “Er, OK,” said the child who really wasn’t getting it. “Well, please can I have some jam on my piece?” And that was it: the end of the maths moment, which had lasted for nearly an hour. The trick, I’ve found, after nearly

“Now. How much have we all got? Lyddie looked at the bread in her hand. Counted it. “One piece,” she told me, quite truthfully.

ten years of delivering this kind of home education, is to know when to stop. If I stop as soon as they start to lose interest then they will ask to do the activity again soon. If I persist then it’s no longer fun and it might be a long time before they want to repeat the experience. The other part of that trick is the easier skill of knowing when to start helping with a child’s learning process and this too has to come from the child every time, I’ve found, or I catch myself fighting an uphill battle in which any results are definitely not worth the effort expended and are most likely to be the child’s impatience and absolute disinterest. But when the assistance takes place on the child’s terms, in her own time and in her prescribed way, fast progress is made. I find I’ve got to be ever ready and willing to say “Yes,” to everything, at most times of the day and evening. In any one given day I might be asked to bake a cake, go for a walk, watch a dance, do sums, help with reading, read a story out loud, set up painting or collage, find

a website, demonstrate a musical instrument and find the explanation for a scientific theory. None of it planned in advance. All enjoyable, exciting and yes, sometimes exhausting. But worth every minute. Yesterday’s big science question was: “Why is it not safe to watch television in the bath?” And I didn’t know the answer – not in the required detail. Every reply I gave led to: “Yes, but why?” until we got out the science books, poured over them, did some googling and phoned some relatives who could and did explain it better than I could. At the end of it I was wiser too. It seems one can never learn all there is to know about electricity, and many other things besides. My teenage offspring have been engaged in more practical, applied learning these past few weeks. We’re selling our house soon and we want to replace the bathroom first, so they’ve decided to do the work themselves. They’ve learned basic tiling and pipework with no trouble or instruction. They said it was easy! n

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