Capturing their imaginations

Education at home is not me filling my children's heads with facts as much as it is me "teaching" them how to learn.My educational goals for them have more to do with getting them to love learning as opposed to filling their heads with facts they can parrot back to me immediately but not retain in the long run. Today we visited the battlefield at Gettysburg. Before we got here we had attempted Civil War studies without much real interest. (In fact, I was starting to despair a little, but that's not important right now.) However, walking the battlefield, seeing the battle markers, hearing the stories and then looking over the hills and valleys where one of the most intense battles of the Civil War took place changed EVERYTHING. Suddenly they are fascinated by those 3 intense days of fighting in July and are hungry to learn more. It's in moments like these that I have to remind myself about something I know to be true: REAL learning is more "caught" than "taught." =D