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A review by orchardoriole
Project-Based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners by Lori McWilliam Pickert
4.0
I'm fairly torn on my review of this one. I've been reading Lori Pickert's blog for a couple of years, and I'm embarrassingly groupie-like in my admiration of what she has to say. But I've gotten more out of her blog and her discussion forums than I did out the book.
The idea of project based learning, as I understand it, is that you donât go to your kids, and say, âThis month weâre going to be learning about the human body!â Or even, âHey, I see youâre really interested in dinosaurs right now. This month, weâll tie all of our learning to dinosaurs!â
Instead, if your kid is interested in dinosaurs, you let them take the lead and tell you what theyâd like to do with their dinosaur passion. Your job is to be more of mentor, helping them remember what plans theyâve made, providing materials, and gently offering new ideas when they get stuck. The idea is that itâs really valuable to learn how to learn, to be excited about something, to make plans and follow through with them, to overcome obstacles, and that sort of thing. The kid will obviously learn all kinds of interesting, specific things in the course of their project, and if the project is dinosaurs, theyâll probably become a walking encyclopedia of dinosaurs or whatever. But thatâs really secondary to the process of learning and making.
The book does do a good idea of getting the idea across. But the forums and blogs do a better job of explaining how to make that idea a reality.
The problem for me, I think, is that there are few examples of specific projects in the book. I remember reading somewhere that Lori did that intentionally. She didn't want parents reading about a specific project and comparing their own child's real-life project to a hypothetical project in the book. And I get that. But it made it hard for me to connect to what the book was saying. The book tended toward repetitive discussion of abstract philosophy instead. And I'm generally all about the abstract philosophy! But I guess I was looking for a more robust dose of how-to to go with the philosophy.
I actually read the book twice, once before we'd started any project-based learning and again after we had a project underway. I found the book more meaningful the second time around, when I was able to mentally apply what she was saying to the actual project my daughter had going. I suspect I would have found the book more helpful the first time if I'd had some representative projects to connect the ideas to.
I think the book also could have been served by a section or two on troubleshooting. The forums tend to be overflowing with discussion of, "All he wants to do is play Minecraft! What do I do?" "She gives up on her interests after a day or so. How do I help her go deeper?" "My space is really small. How can I make this work?" The troubleshooting discussions on the forum tend to be really enlightening, both because the answers are helpful and because they're a nice reminder that, no, it's not going to be textbook perfect for you all the time, but that's okay. I would have liked more about what to do when things aren't working.
And, finally (This is getting pretty long!), I would have liked more discussion of projects that are not necessarily completed with art materials. I've never been a let's-make-stuff-in-the-physical-world kind of girl. Maybe my own daughter will be, but maybe she'll be more like me. Anyway, I know that a project can be anything that's a really deep passion, and the output can be anything - a story, a computer program, a really excellent loaf of bread. But the book sometimes gave the impression that it doesn't count as a project unless art supplies were involved. And I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intention.
I think I'm being harder on this book because I've enjoyed Lori's blog so much over the years. If I had been picking it up cold, I think I would have found it really enlightening. But as it is, I'm going with three stars for the actual book, and five stars for what I've read of Lori's book, averaging out to a four.
The idea of project based learning, as I understand it, is that you donât go to your kids, and say, âThis month weâre going to be learning about the human body!â Or even, âHey, I see youâre really interested in dinosaurs right now. This month, weâll tie all of our learning to dinosaurs!â
Instead, if your kid is interested in dinosaurs, you let them take the lead and tell you what theyâd like to do with their dinosaur passion. Your job is to be more of mentor, helping them remember what plans theyâve made, providing materials, and gently offering new ideas when they get stuck. The idea is that itâs really valuable to learn how to learn, to be excited about something, to make plans and follow through with them, to overcome obstacles, and that sort of thing. The kid will obviously learn all kinds of interesting, specific things in the course of their project, and if the project is dinosaurs, theyâll probably become a walking encyclopedia of dinosaurs or whatever. But thatâs really secondary to the process of learning and making.
The book does do a good idea of getting the idea across. But the forums and blogs do a better job of explaining how to make that idea a reality.
The problem for me, I think, is that there are few examples of specific projects in the book. I remember reading somewhere that Lori did that intentionally. She didn't want parents reading about a specific project and comparing their own child's real-life project to a hypothetical project in the book. And I get that. But it made it hard for me to connect to what the book was saying. The book tended toward repetitive discussion of abstract philosophy instead. And I'm generally all about the abstract philosophy! But I guess I was looking for a more robust dose of how-to to go with the philosophy.
I actually read the book twice, once before we'd started any project-based learning and again after we had a project underway. I found the book more meaningful the second time around, when I was able to mentally apply what she was saying to the actual project my daughter had going. I suspect I would have found the book more helpful the first time if I'd had some representative projects to connect the ideas to.
I think the book also could have been served by a section or two on troubleshooting. The forums tend to be overflowing with discussion of, "All he wants to do is play Minecraft! What do I do?" "She gives up on her interests after a day or so. How do I help her go deeper?" "My space is really small. How can I make this work?" The troubleshooting discussions on the forum tend to be really enlightening, both because the answers are helpful and because they're a nice reminder that, no, it's not going to be textbook perfect for you all the time, but that's okay. I would have liked more about what to do when things aren't working.
And, finally (This is getting pretty long!), I would have liked more discussion of projects that are not necessarily completed with art materials. I've never been a let's-make-stuff-in-the-physical-world kind of girl. Maybe my own daughter will be, but maybe she'll be more like me. Anyway, I know that a project can be anything that's a really deep passion, and the output can be anything - a story, a computer program, a really excellent loaf of bread. But the book sometimes gave the impression that it doesn't count as a project unless art supplies were involved. And I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intention.
I think I'm being harder on this book because I've enjoyed Lori's blog so much over the years. If I had been picking it up cold, I think I would have found it really enlightening. But as it is, I'm going with three stars for the actual book, and five stars for what I've read of Lori's book, averaging out to a four.