Google The Unplanned Homeschooler: To doodle or not to doodle?

Saturday, August 23, 2014

To doodle or not to doodle?

This week, I followed a discussion on Facebook about kids doodling on their homework. Some homeschooling moms strictly prohibited the practice, while others thought it was just fine, and most agreed that a little doodling doesn't hurt anything as long as it doesn't cover up the student's work.


I love that most of the worksheets my kids have done over the years have plenty of extra white space. I've found miscellaneous doodles, poems, jokes and sometimes even carefully thought out scenes that traverse the whole page. Those extra marks on the page never failed to make me smile, as they revealed my kids' personalities, their creativity, and their budding senses of humor. 



Now that my twins are in middle school, when I look back at their binders of elementary school work, I couldn't care less about seeing 8+4=12. But I LOVE seeing my daughter's evolving skill at drawing animals, my son's amazing superhero adventures, and both of their fascinations with goofy jokes. 


Doodling is good for your brain!


Some of the moms in the Facebook discussion recommended a TED Talk, by Sunni Brown, who purports that doodling is a powerful tool to help boost your learning power. This article in Psychology Today expands on the video, explaining Brown's research and going into greater detail about exactly how doodling can improve memory and help students retain more information as they work.

Many homeschoolers already incorporate music and movement into their routine, to help auditory and kinesthetic learners better absorb the material they are trying to master. Why not allow doodles, too?

A time and place for neatness 


I appreciate a sharp presentation, with crisp margins and clean lines. There is definitely a time and place for neatness, and students do need to learn how to put together a clean report and how not to doodle all over an important test. But worksheets are for practice, not for show. They're a scant step up from whiteboards and dry erase markers, in that once the material is learned, they are completely disposable and irrelevant.

By constricting the free and spontaneous flow of creativity that may be expressed in the white spaces of children's worksheets, parents may be missing out on some of the best memories of their children's development they could hope to capture.


Or at least a great laugh at the their child's visual joke about stinky feet and poot clouds!


Oh, hey! One more thing... if you want a great deal on some awesome art curriculum for your kids, act fast. This sale ends soon.


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