Today, I want to talk to you about something that I've been thinking about for quite a while. It came up again last week as I was talking to someone about education, and that is this idea of one and done in education. The idea that if you hear something once, you should know it. Now, the person I was talking to was talking about phonics and how they were trying to teach their kids phonics. They went over the lesson and the kid just didn't seem to get it.
So they were both getting really frustrated. And after a few months they just kind of put it aside for a while, which I thought was actually a really great way to approach it. The takeaway for me was this attitude, and I know I've had it before because this is how I was educated. You were in a classroom. You were a scout. You were doing something where you were supposed to learn information.
Someone would tell it to you one time, usually in a lecture form, and then often you're supposed to take notes or you would be tested on it later. And I think that that is a really stunted and stingy way of looking at education, because the reality is, most of us don't hear something one time and know it. I really think that real education world learning takes place in the same way that you would create a lasagna garden.
Now, if any of you guys are gardeners and you know about lasagna gardening, just bear with me because it actually makes some sense. Also, gardening is when you take layers and you create your garden out of layers, so you might have a foundation or layer and then mulch and then leaves and then garden scraps and then really nice topsoil. But you layer all of these products together to create a really rich, loamy dirt for your garden to grow in.
And honestly, I think that that is how education is really best delivered. So this idea of one and done that we tell our kids something or they hear at one time, or they have a one time workshop on it where they're exposed to a ton of stuff or just like math. Okay, here's how to do it. Now tell me how to do it and you're going to get tested on it. I think that really can impact our students confidence and retention, because it makes them feel like they should know it right away.
If we layer the learning just like we layer a lasagna garden. Then different types of learning experiences can take place. We're using different neural pathways and that is going to make for a stronger academic foundation. So just like if you are teaching phonics to your your young child, you're going to have a good hopefully a good phonics program. We love Jaffa Phonics. You're going to take your really solid phonics program. You're going to do it for five, ten, maybe 15 minutes a day.
You're going to create a learning, reading rich environment for your kids. So you're going to read to them 15 minutes a day. You're going to have books on tape available to them. You're going to go to story time at the library. You're going to do different things and create this literature rich environment for your kids, so that the actual phonics class makes sense to them. They have a context. So it's a learning rich environment, just like a lasagna garden.
You're making a soil rich environment for your plants to grow. So is your educating your kids. You want to use a combination of things that's going to hit many neural pathways. You're going to want to use auditory material, visual material, kinesthetic material, life experiences outside nature, crafts projects, art field trips, those kind of things. You're going to want to just create this really amazing soil in which your kids can grow academically.
It's going to strengthen their understanding and help the knowledge to take root. Now, this is a pedagogy that builds over time. So repeated exposure to information over time and through various methods reinforces learning. I'm a big puzzle person. I love puzzles of all sorts. I love deductive reasoning. I like actual physical puzzles. So I kind of I'm true confessions I do about a puzzle a week. I have still one of my kids is at home and we do puzzles every week, and we we love doing it.
It's kind of like a fun thing to do on the weekend. We listen to podcasts and listen to music and have great conversations and work on these puzzles. The thing is, if you work puzzles long enough, you know that familiarity just kind of all of a sudden you see a piece and you know exactly where it goes, even if it's not in the section you're working on. And that's a lot like learning is. So you'll be working on something. I used to teach Latin.
You'll be working on Latin, working on Latin, working in Latin. It feels so disjoint, disconnected. You're doing grammar over here. Vocabulary over there. You're saying it's over here a little bit of history over here. And you're just like, oh my gosh, where does this conjugation ending go? I just don't get it. And all of a sudden it clicks. It just clicks because your brain is making use of all this information that you have and you've built this amazing soil in which to grow.
And so I think it's a good pedagogy as we're teaching our kids repeated exposure to information over time through various methods again reinforces learning. So what are practical ways as educators, as parents for the educators, right. How can we incorporate this layered approach with different things that we're teaching our kids, such as project based learning, collaborative presentations, baking, cooking, going on field trips, going on those factory tours.
All these things can really make a big difference in your kids ability to learn information, solidify it, have deeper, more complete understanding of complex problems and projects, and be able to build on those. That's a really cool thing. I've heard this idea that if you can Google it, you don't need to memorize it, but I think that's really short changing. Our kids computers are great at tasks, but they're not a brain. A brain is not a computer, and a brain is really good at projects.
So if you think of learning as a project, yeah, you can Google that one thing, that one task. But can your brain really put it together in a unique, amazing way? Synthesize intense, energizing information that computers, at least at this point, can't early do? Just think about that. You want your kids to have memory work under their belt in various subject areas so that they can synthesize and synergize and information. Again, think of memory work as a layer in your educational pedagogy.
It's just one of the important things that you teach your kids how to memorize, just like you teach them how to read, just like you teach them how to add and subtract is just another layer in your educational lasagna garden so that your kids can bring in information and sensor synthesize and synergize it. It's just a great pedagogy. You can use this layered approach in so many different ways with phonics, with higher level math, with history.
Our family has done this with various things in our own life that we've been on this like unit study for decades. At this point, that's led our kids to travel internationally and learn second and third languages and meet people from around the world because of unit study. We started years and years ago as a family and actually one of my sons works in this field now, so layered learning really, really works. It builds acumen, it builds academic acumen. It builds confidence in the learners.
It empowers them to take control of their own education. So how can you create a design a garden learning experience for your own kids? You can do it in multiple different ways. You can do it with learning centers. You can do all the unit study approach. One of the most basic ways I think to implement this is just by developing patience as an educator, or as a homeschooler, or as a as a parent who is helping your kid with their private or public school education. Just develop patience.
Realize in your own head that just because you share something with your kids one time doesn't mean that their brain is going to make sense of it. They might be in the overview mode. They might not be in the deep learning mode. And again, if you can take electronics out of their life, they're going to have so much more brain space and better synapses and all sorts of good things happening in their brain so that they can really take in this information and make sense of it.
I think this is a really fascinating way to look at education, and it's something that I had to learn myself. I was raised in an educational environment where it was almost all lecture style, and if you had like if you didn't get glasses when you need it or if you had an auditory processing disorder or anything like that, you might not have heard the whole lecture. You might not have known that there was instructions on the board, and so you might have missed out a lot on a lot of things.
And then all of a sudden you're getting tested on it. And so it was kind of a frustrating academic environment, because unless you're one of those students who just heard and paid attention and did all the things right away, it was it was kind of like the cards were stacked against you, right? But layered learning allows you, if you miss this one thing over here, guess what? You're going to get it over there.
And by the way, you might get it more deeply over here, even if you got a little bit over here. So again, it's a really great academic pedagogy. Understand that you're just providing your students with so many more tools to actively layer and learn and create an amazing learning experience for themselves. And remember, we are in the fourth Industrial Revolution, and so our kids are going to be learning and living and working in a global gig economy.
They're going to have a lot of competition in this life and a lot of competition vocationally. If they can learn to layer, they're learning. If they can learn to become an out of date act that is going to set them apart and help them maintain a really solid vocational life and be able to earn money even in a competitive global gig economy. Remember, learning is a lifelong journey and just like a well layered garden, we know that knowledge grows best with time, care, and variety.
This is just one way to think about how you're going to build an academic pedagogy for your kids. That makes sense no matter what their learning style, no matter what their challenges getting their abilities. If you layer the information for your kids, is going to build an academic garden where they can grow and thrive. This is Lisa from. It's not that hard to hand school. It's not that hard to homeschool. We know you can do it.