I know I’m a little late here, but If you haven’t already picked out your Mother’s Day gift, or if you just want something else to satisfy you, here’s another great idea of a gift to give yourself for Mother’s Day. It’s the LOLIPOP Book, officially called, For the Love of Learning: Giving Your Children a LOLIPOP Education by Amy Edwards. This book is especially for you if you are a TJED homeschooling mom, but any mom can benefit by reading it. It’s all about helping your child fall in love with learning, so that the child has a true “love of learning phase” as touted in the book, A Thomas Jefferson Education. I love the book’s pretty lavender color with the multi-colored lollipop. It makes me want to just devour the book!

LOLIPOP stands for Love of Learning Integrated with Projects and Opportunities for service and Play. I picked up my copy at the TJED Forum last week where I got to hear the author speak. I am so excited about this book! Love of learning can often be the hardest phase to inspire learning. The core phasers can just go play and the scholar youth are self-governing with their plans and classes and projects, but the love of learners are in limbo. They don’t always know what’s out there to learn. They want to do hands-on things and explore but that need can seem daunting to a mom, at least to me. This book helps with that!

You can get the table of contents of the book here and order it as well http://sdlaa.com/For_the_Love_of_Learning.html . At that website you can also see one classic book recommended each month for ages 8-14 and then 14 to adult with discussion questions http://sdlaa.com/Classics.html. You can read the author’s blog here http://lolipoplearning.blogspot.com/. She also has a facebook page called “LOLIPOP learning” where you can get bits of wisdom from the author.

The author, a homeschooling TJED mom, Amy Edwards, wrote this book as part of her master’s thesis at George Wythe College. It is an outgrowth of the Thomas Jefferson Education philosophy. If you haven’t already read the book Thomas Jefferson Education and the sequel, Leadership Education: the Phases of Learning, it’s best to read those first before you read this book.

in this book, you will read about how the love of learning phase, which is around ages 8 to 12, actually has three subphases: Love of Play, Love of Sampling, and Love of Producing. Amy has identified these phases based on her study of the work of Piaget and Erikson. Understanding these subphases will help you better understand your child’s developmental needs and how they learn best. By reading this book, you will understand that content learned by children at this age is not so important as learning thinking skills and confidence in themselves in their ability to learn. Love of learning is the time for children to learn that they can be self-learners. The confidence and skills learned in love of learning build a foundation for them to learn whatever they need to learn as a scholar later in scholar phase and for the rest of their life.

You will better be able to “inspire, not require” by understanding these things. I can’t wait to digest this book and implement the ideas with my love of learner. It even has some ideas to help you with several LOLIPOP projects.

I like that the book emphasizes that children learn accountability and follow-through best until scholar phase by doing chores with their parents, not academics. The book is strongly grounded in the philosophy of Raymond Moore, that “school can wait.” Children forced to finish academic projects can get a “hate of learning” instead of falling in love with learning. I love this quote from the author on the LOLIPOP facebook page.

One reason that giving each child a foundation in a love for learning, self-confidence, and learning strategies is so important is that lack of this foundation is often the root of disruptive and unproductive behavior in older students. When confronted with challenging academics, a teen who lacks a love for learning will do the minimum. Teens who lack the confidence that they can learn anything with some hard work will disengage and often become disruptive in a group setting. Teens who have no strategies for learning will become frustrated.