Spotty Banana Homeschool

TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, is an amazing global movement that hosts some of the greatest thinkers of our time. One of those great thinkers, Sir Ken Robinson, spoke back in 2006 about the importance of creativity in schools, society and the world (view video). Ken made an alarming but not surprising observation about how public schools around the world place so little emphasis on creativity and the arts. Ironically, these same schools punish high energy children, who Ken points out, could benefit tremendously from art, dance and theatre. The schools’ solution for managing these ‘troublemakers’ is to recommend diagnosis for ‘ADHD’ and then force these kids to ‘fit in’ with the rest of the class — with disastrous results. Ken cites a terrific example of how we should handle these highly intelligent, energetic youngsters.

As homeschoolers, most of us are already aware of our kids’ intensely creative abilities (and sometimes high energy) and we do everything we can to encourage and accommodate them. Our extremely high-energy homeschooler can’t even sit still long enough to eat. If challenged or inspired though, he focuses so intensely that he ‘consumes’ information like a hungry caterpillar (but he might do it while spinning in circles!) Over the past year, we have written several posts about some cool creative project ideas that we came up with to inspire our child.

So, in the spirit of promoting creativity among homeschoolers, check out some of our previous posts and share some of your own by commenting on this post!

• How to Get Your Homeschooler to Enjoy Writing
• A Homeschool Art Lesson
• Homeschoolers Can Publish Their Own Book
• Use Toys in Your Lessons!
• Homeschooling Over the Summer?