Child-led Learning

What is Child-led Learning and How Can it Benefit the Learner?

Looking for ways to tailor your child’s education to their interest?

Interested in new ways to foster more cooperation in the learning space?

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Hello and welcome to the Harmonious Classroom blog! Today, I want to talk about child-led learning: what it is and why it’s so valuable?

Child-led learning is an approach where children’s natural curiosities and passions guide what and how they learn. Instead of following a fixed curriculum, educators can tune into each child’s passions and create an engaging learning environment based on their interests.

So why is this approach so powerful? Well, when children get to choose what they want to learn about, or when learning is tailored to what already fascinates them, the learning REALLY sticks. It becomes meaningful, engaging, and enjoyable. Children develop a natural love of learning. And honestly… it encourages more cooperation too, because they genuinely want to be involved.

Think about it like this: as adults, we’ve all tried learning something we didn’t care about…maybe for work or another obligation. Chances are if you didn’t NEED to remember it, or you weren’t interested in it, it didn’t stick. Children are no different. If they aren’t engaged or curious, no amount of hands-on activities or carefully planned lessons will make the learning stick.

So, how can we use child-led learning to make education more valuable to the child?

When you embrace a child-led approach, you honour each child’s natural pace and interests. This opens up a wonderful opportunity for connection between educator and child. It gives the educator the opportunity to dive into the child’s world, exploring their interests together and letting the learning evolve from there. The children are more engaged, they learn more deeply, and the whole process feels joyful rather than forced.

Here’s a story about what happens when learning isn’t aligned with a child’s interests: When my daughter was three, I planned a hands-on lesson about maple syrup. We did a whole unit on trees & maple syrup. I took my kids out and tapped all ten maples in our front yard. I taught: tree identification, cardinal directions & how to use a compass, the purpose of sap weather and how it flows through the roots & trunk, and so on. Together we spent the early Spring collecting sap, boiling it and making our own small batches of maple syrup. It was a fully interactive and sensory-rich lesson! I thought it would be amazing! But one morning about three months later while we were having pancakes for breakfast my daughter asked, “Mummy, what animal does maple syrup come from?” My carefully planned lesson had completely not stuck. Why? Because she wasn’t genuinely interested in the tree tapping process. Even the most carefully articulated lesson won’t resonate if it doesn’t follow the child’s genuine curiosity.

Some of you know that I recently opened a self-directed forest school with a good friend of mine. (Check out Cedarwood to learn more!) So what does “self-directed” mean and how does it differ from child-led? Self-directed education takes child-led learning one step further. Here, educators not only follow the child’s interests, but the children are also given full responsibility for their learning. According to Self-Directed.Org “Education is the sum of everything a person learns that supports them towards living a satisfying and meaningful life.” They make choices about what, how, and when they will learn. Trust is fully placed in the child, allowing them to be the master of their life and their learning. We trust that children will learn when they’re ready and when it matters to them.

Now, here’s a story about the a child-led learning experience that truly took off: At my forest school, we had been making geo-boards with wooden disks, hammered in nails and elastic bands. One child began taking the elastic bands and weaving them like they did with their Rainbow Loom at home. She made this over-sized bracelet out of elastics. She kept talking about how good she is at rainbow loom and soon the word caught on. (For those who don’t know, Rainbow Loom is a set of mini elastics that can be woven together in different patterns to make bracelets, key chains and ornaments.) “Me too! I love rainbow loom!” Another child announced. We began to see that this is something the children were really interested in. To be honest, it was also a great fine motor activity and really prepares children for finger knitting and other hand work. So we decided to purchase our own set of Rainbow Loom and bring it into the space to see what would happen.

Suddenly, the children were all engaged. The older children taught the younger children. The younger children were so eager to learn from their older peers- because they could feel the passion and excitement that the older kids had embodied about this Rainbow Loom. So far the skills we’ve learned: following multi-step directions, learning from peers, attentive observation and fine-motor coordination.

Then, one of the older children told us, “I have a rainbow loom at home that I’ve been working on for months and it’s probably longer than all of us put together.” The response from the others was “No way! That’s not possible.”
Well, it turns out it IS possible. The next day the child brought in his GIANT rainbow loom chain, and I must say- it probably could set a world record. It was so long that it just HAD to be measured. We were all fascinated. From here, the learning TOOK OFF.

We got out our notebooks and everyone made an estimation of how long this rainbow loom was. 30ft? 50ft? 100ft?

We all wrote down our estimates. Next, we got out our measuring tape. EVERY child was so eager to work together to measure this and figure out just how long it was. The only problem was the measuring tape was only 12ft long! We quickly got a clipboard to keep track of the measurements. The older kids came up with a solution: lock the tape at 12 feet and move it along, tallying 1 each time they slide the tape forward. In the end, the loom chain stretched 12 feet, 6 times, plus another 3 feet. This lead us to some math equations!
The children broke it down:

12ft X 6 = 72ft

72ft + 3ft = 75ft!

A 75ft long elastic chain!

From here, we needed to see whose estimation was the closest. So it was time to subtract.
100ft - 75ft = 25ft
75ft- 50ft = 25ft
75ft- 30ft =45ft

From this Rainbow Loom adventure the children learned:
How to teach others, how to observe and ask questions, fine-motor coordination, problem solving skills, how to make an accurate estimation, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and more! SO much learning took place naturally, all sparked form a shared interest in Rainbow Loom.

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