Alan & Brenda Leonard

> my biggest struggle has been trying to find things that interest her. she
> reads very well, but doesn't particularly like to.(I am very relaxed about
> what she reads, I just want her to read!) sometimes I feel like she isn't
> interested in anything. how do I help to spark her interest?

Hi, Mindy,

I've been reading Homeschooling Our Children, Unschooling Ourselves tonight,
and one point that the author makes is that children sometimes need time
between interests. Processing time, or whatever. Is it possible your
daughter is just between interests at the moment?

I find that lots of my son's ideas come as outgrowths (sometimes very odd
ones...) of things we do together. When he complains of being bored,
sometimes I stop and think that we really haven't been doing much lately.
So we plan a trip, or pull our a new puzzle or an old game, or whatever.
Eventually something seems to catch on and pull him out of the rut.

I read a couple of the Classical Education (also called Thomas Jefferson
Education) books a while back, and besides realizing that I could never do
that -- I don't have the patience for that approach, I really liked a point
that the author made. His response to parents who complained that their
children weren't interested in math or didn't like reading it was to ask
when *they* had last read some Euclidian Geometry or such. It reminded me
to think about what I'm doing myself.

Of course, there are all sorts of things she's learning from "just playing
all day", too. Kid's work is play.

brenda