Observation and the 4Rs

When people start reading about PA, they learn about the 4Rs. I don’t think the 4Rs were meant to be as legalistic as I’ve made them out to be. I thought in order to come to a conclusion I needed to literally 4R a subject. So, I would sit down and get out my 1828, concordance, and Bible. With pen in hand, I’d start writing (that was 10yrs ago, now I cut & paste) definitions and more definitions, underlining, & searching the scriptures so I can come to some conclusion to what God says about the topic. This is a valid activity, but there is more to research than books. What is the first thing we should do when we read our 1828 or Bible? Observe!

When I realized that research was observation, I started looking at other means to observe beside books. Word study is not an activity for young children to be doing (unless they are learning how to read), but observation as a whole is. I realized my children are partaking in PA when they are observing. It is a quite natural activity that we take for granted. I do believe the art of observation should be encouraged and fine tuned. Let me give a couple of examples:

Katherine Dang in her Cds mentions children learning to reason from the scriptures at a young age. “Thy Word is true from the beginning”. What do you observe? Let them draw their own ideas according to their observations. In order to declare they must observe. I am a work in progress in teaching my children this. When you do literature studies, you are training them to observe character, etc…

Here is an example that came quite by accident. I started having my sons reading natural history books. Books where the author writes about the creation around him. My 11ds just finished “Secret of the Woods” by Long. Long spends one or two chapters writing about his interactions with one animal. It is a downloaded book. This has encouraged my ds to start observing the world around him. He has been setting wild cherries out for chipmunks to eat. He watches their behaviors, such as how they wash themselves. He then runs to me and tells me. It is thro’ this discussion that I can lead him to discoveries of individuality, self government etc…This, too, is a work in progress for me.
I hope others are encouraged to look beyond books to observe, oops, I mean research. 4R’ing does NOT have to be a legalistic four step process. It is quite natural.