So let’s talk about atmosphere first. Atmosphere is really the first way that we begin learning about the world around us. The human mind is capable of looking at two or more objects and discerning the similarities and differences between them. Even if they are small and seemingly insignificant. When we are exposed to things over and over again before a relationship with it. We get to know it. And this is when we get to notice the similarities and differences. Some cases it is a kind of intuition because of the multiple exposures that we had. Charlotte Mason said

When we say that “education is an atmosphere,” we do not mean that a child should be isolated in what may be called a ‘child-environment’ especially adapted and prepared, but that we should take into account the educational value of his natural home atmosphere, both as regards persons and things, and should let him live freely among his proper conditions. It stultifies a child to bring down his world to the child’s level.

Atmosphere is about forming relationships with the world around us, other people, and ourselves. We form relationships through our five senses, and we do this from regular exposure. As an example, professional baseball players can see a pitch and within a fraction of a second no exactly what kind of a pitch it is and react accordingly. Think about how you learned to recognize your child’s face and voice. You weren’t taught, quizzed, or asked to verbally describe how you know. But you know your child’s face immediately when you see them. You can recognize your child’s voice in a crowd of other crying children. It’s a type of knowledge that can’t really read about it in a book or be explicitly taught. It is something they just have to experience and develop a sense for.

Some subjects work especially well for this type of learning. Art appreciation, music appreciation, nature study, and even writing. By constant exposure and discrimination between things your child forms a sense for it. These skills are almost impossible to teach directly. Instead, your role is to provide a lot of exposure and ask your child to discriminate between things. They don’t need to verbalize or explain why.  It’s like asking you to explicitly describe  how your child’s face is different from another child. It just is, it’s a sense.  

Learning to discriminate between people, objects, and other things is called interleaving in cognitive science. 

Interleaving

You take two or more things that are similar and ask your child to discriminate between them. Let’s say you give your child a bunch of  tree leaves and ask which one is a maple leaf. The child may have no idea, so they guess, or they may know and you give them immediate feedback. Yes, that is a maple leaf, or no, that’s an oak leaf. There are many different kinds of maple leaves and they all have a similar shape, so your child may encounter a few different varieties of maple, but after much exposure Will learn to recognize the general shape of maple leaves. Once your child has the hang of that you can get more advanced and give them only maple leaves and ask them to differentiate between those (silver, sugar, red, etc). 

Another way to teach by interleaving is by gathering various leaves, rocks, paintings, etc. and asking them to sort them into groups. This requires them to look for patterns, similarities between objects, discriminate,  and decide how to sort them. So much learning is going on, and you didn’t even have to prepare a lecture or prod them through a worksheet! 

The key is that the objects are not wildly different from each other. They need to be similar enough that it takes some close observation to find the minute differences. 

Second, you are not looking at, or doing, the same thing over and over. This is called blocked practice and  it doesn’t work as well. Studies show that by only looking at, say, Monet paintings over and over again won’t help you recognize Monet paintings as well as if you looked at a variety of impressionist paintings with the Monet’s mixed in. 

Examples of Interleaving

My favorite spelling and phonics program (based on years of research and developmental psychology) is WORD STUDY. Kids are given 15-20 word cards and are asked to sort them into “families” or groups based on how they sound or how they look. This requires children to use their keen sense of intelligence and powers of observation to decide how to sort them. This is interleaving. 

On our nature walks we collect seeds, leaves, and flowers. When we get home I ask them to sort them into groups based on how they look. I do this with pictures of birds and their calls, as well to help them recognize native bird.

At the end of this school year I gave my boys the 18 paintings we studied (all impressionist) and asked them to sort them into groups (the three artists we studied). Alternatively you can play a game where you give the child a painting you’ve studied and ask them the artist or the genre. When they get it wrong just give them the right answer and move on. 

These are just some examples, there are limitless ways you can use interleaving in school and in life! And don’t forget the other senses: smell, taste, touch, and hearing.

Homework Assignment

Homework will be assigned at the end of the week with the final post/video.