Ghost Park

This is a post from our old site that we've moved over to our new domain (hence the ages are a little out of sync!)

On somewhat of a spontaneous whim I decided to take the nearly-four-year-old and the two-and-a-half-year-old to one of our favourite haunts - Wingham Wildlife Park - today, to give Marie a chance to sleep during the increasingly infrequent naps that the six-month-old now seems to require.

The day had been mixed so far, with frequent dissatisfying showers amongst patches of beautiful sunshine, and there was a neat little window as the youngest started to drift off at around 3:00pm in which we could bundle into the car and head over to the enormously popular animal park.

It was deserted.

And I mean, only-us-and-the-staff-at-feeding-time levels of deserted. We had the entire place to ourselves. We'd seen the last bus full of school kids, presumably on a day trip to the attraction, pulling out of the car park as we arrived, and we wandered straight in to find ourselves alone with the animals.

Now, I realise that our kids aren't even school age yet, so this doesn't technically count as homeschooling if you're splitting hairs, but if you've read our other posts, you'll know we're taking more of a 'why not start now?' approach to educating the kids about things we find interesting, and so as far as we're concerned - school is in session, and we just hit the jackpot.

As we drifted past the windows full of exotic spiders and invisible stick insects, it struck me:

What school kid gets this experience?

A completely deserted park to wander around uninterupted, unencumbered by queues, with no bigger kids hurtling around to knock them over or spook them as they gently watch the animals in a more sedate, peaceful environment.

Maybe the daughter of an oil tycoon who pays to have the place booked out for a private function for a birthday, but other than that, no child that attends mainstream schooling will likely ever get this experience, and here we are, trotting along on a whim on a decidedly 'meh' Tuesday afternoon.

It was spectacular.

One of the reasons the initial upfront cost of the year membership to places like these is worth it, is the flexibility to pop in for even an hour or so, without worrying about whether you've gotten your money's worth.

It's not cheap, but when you use it three or more times a week, you'd struggle to find such an abundance of exercise, entertainment and learning opportunity for the price. This means that we can decide to pop in for an hour or so on a random day during the week, and if we pitch up and it's ridiculously overcrowded, we go do the shopping first and come back later.

There's treasure to be found here

The learning opportunities at a place like Wingham are immense, and I frequently resort to using it as an example whenever I'm dragged kicking and screaming into another 'why are you homeschooling your children' debate with another parent who decides to try and change my mind. It usually goes a little something like this:

"I remember learning about food chains, diversity and ecology from a textbook, while sat in a grey classroom, looking out the window at the sunny afternoon I was missing out on, wondering what I was going to do first when I got home. I'm fairly sure I didn't learn that as effectively as if I were stood staring at a lion, eight feet away, chewing away on the leg of a bison."

Today we saw the lions being fed, and witnessed the sheer volume of meat required to sustain just one of these incredibly powerful creatures, and how much they had to hunt and kill just to survive.

We then wandered over to the enclosure with the bison and antelope, and saw them grazing nonchalantly on the long grass at the edges of the enclosure, their delicate ears gracefully flicking away the occasional fly that tried to land.

They, too, need to eat almost continuously throughout the day in order to sustain their substantial body size, but there is more than enough grass to go around, so the herds of these herbivores could grow to huge numbers. By seeing the animals in front of us, and reading the information boards on the enclosures, and talking to each other, asking questions and suggesting answers, we got a real feel for why there are so many herbivores, so few apex predators, and how even a minor upset in the ecosystem can lead to catastrophic effects on their survival.

The three year old delighted in postulating idea after idea, drilling down with question after question until a satisfactory answer was provided by myself, the park keepers, or Google. He could keep going until he truly understood, rather than until the teacher told him to stop asking questions so the class could move on.

We spent twenty five minutes just watching the penguins, asking why they had smaller wings than the other birds, why their feet were webbed, and how they stayed warm in the freezing water, before we then sauntered off to play on the swings.

It's absolutely immense how much a child can learn through simple, contextual conversation with an adult who is willing and able to give them the time to explore.

This should come as no surprise, as adults will gladly pay vast sums of money to go to conferences and seminars, to speak with mentors and gurus in their field of expertise, because it's such a valuable way to learn.

But we forget how much 'stuff' we know compared to our kids, and that the only way to impart this wisdom is to show and tell them what we mean, and as often as possible. So in just one hour of 'filler time' intended to give my wife a rest, we ended up not only learning a whole load of cool new information that we hadn't planned on 'studying', but we had a whale of a time doing it, and spent some truly quality time together as a family.

This is how I wish I had learned about the world around me when I was a child, and it's the opportunity I'd like to pass on to my own kids. What's more, I get to be there with them, to see what they love, to be part of their learning adventure, and even to discover a whole host of new things myself.

Sure - it might be the 'wrong' choice, and school may well be the 'better' option - but it's a risk we're willing to take, and so far, it seems like a pretty good choice.

I'll let you know how it goes.