I love to ask my kids questions. You can learn a lot that way! Yes, I ask the traditional, "How was your day?" when an older child comes home from work, or from community college, or from a visit. But I also ask other questions that help me to know who they are, how they learn, and who they are becoming.
For instance, in our family we like to pose "hypotheticals" at the dinner table. You can tailor them to something you are going through in your family, or to some character quality you are trying to encourage. One day we read in the paper about the great lengths a child in our community had gone to — to raise money for a charity. The dinner question that night was, "What cause or charity could make you work extra hard like that child did?" The answer led to wonderful, and long-term, volunteer work at an animal shelter for one of my girls.
Asking them about how they prefer to learn can yield invaluable information. Consider this simple question when studying weather: "Would you rather visit a weather station, read a book about weather, or make a weather tracking station at our house?" Your child then reveals their preference for experiential learning versus book learning. While you cannot tailor every lesson to this preference, you can certainly indulge it once in a while!
Finally, if we want to encourage our children to think about their future work life, it's great to ask them questions like, "Would you rather work indoors, or outdoors? With people, or by yourself?" Our kids are discerning preferences, even now, that will continue to be their preferences as they make life-impacting decisions later in life.
So keep asking your kids, "How was your day," or things like, "How was homeschool band practice today?" But sprinkle in lots of questions that begin, "What do you think about….?" You will learn about your children, and they will learn about themselves.
Written By: Homschoolinc.com
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