How to Harness the Teaching Power of Storytelling: Movie Schooling Series (Part 1)
It’s summer here at It’s Only Homeschooling. While we love the longer days, splashing at our local pool, and playing at parks with friends, when the temps reach the triple-digits, we tend to gravitate to somewhere with fully functional AC.
Board games, curling up with a good book, art projects, and science experiments are fun ways to beat the heat indoors, but the truth is, one of our very favorite ways to learn is through watching movies together.
Grab a big bowl of popcorn, your favorite cold drink, and join us!
The Power of Storytelling
Storytelling.
The oldest form of teaching.
Our brains are innately hard-wired to this form of communication. We think in terms of a beginning, middle, and end. We receive, interpret, process, and respond to information in this manner instinctively.
As teachers, parents, and well, humans in general, we are storytellers.
Good stories promote relationships. They forge connections both among people and between people and ideas. Relationships are personal. We invest in and gravitate towards things we personalize. Through effective storytelling, the audience is invited to go on a journey. Traveling companions learn vicariously through the trials and triumphs of the characters.
What better way to learn than by enjoying a good movie?
What Is Movie Schooling?
At its core, Movie Schooling is a non-traditional form of homeschooling, much like Road Schooling, Unschooling, Travel Schooling, Game Schooling, or YouTube Schooling. There are as many ways to homeschool children as there are, well, children.
Essentially, movies are just another form of medium through which you can educate your child.
No need to complicate it or overthink it.
Benefits of Movie Schooling
Convenient – Are you a homeschooling family who likes to travel? Or perhaps you just have numerous extra-curricular activities for multiple kiddos and your mini-van is your new second home. Either way, make use of that “car-schooling” time with movies.
Enhances Learning for ALL Learners – Movie Schooling supports individualized instruction and differentiated learning. While specifically meeting the needs of visual learners, Movie Schooling can be utilized to enhance learning for ALL learners.
Entertaining – It’s fun! Whoever said education must be all work and no play was, well, I won’t resort to name-calling, but I am quite certain they were NOT a homeschooler!
Inexpensive – While cheaper comparatively than traditional private school tuition, homeschooling is not without its costs. Typically, extracurriculars eat away at one’s budget. Movie Schooling does not have to be expensive. Multiple monthly subscriptions to streaming services can add up. Consider picking one that contains the most amount of content for your family’s purposes, be it entertainment or education. There are also free educational videos on YouTube. We get a large portion of our educational visual media from our local library.
Teaching from Rest – We have all had days where we had TONS of things to do, but we equally needed rest. Movie Schooling fits the bill for a relaxed approach to teaching and learning.
Teaching Tools
ALL subjects from the core of math, history, and science to character education and health can be supported through the visual media medium if you know where to look and practice discernment in your selection of viewing material.
Homeschoolers make up a community of extended family. When we stumble upon something that works, we tend to not keep it to ourselves. Here are some of my family’s favorite resources we have come across to support our Movie Schooling journey:
Using Streaming Educational Videos in Homeschooling to Enhance Learning (rebeccareid.com)
20 Favorite History Movies for Homeschoolers (7sistershomeschool.com)
Movies for Homeschoolers for Memorable Learning Adventures (hessunacademy.com)
Movies: A Resource for Homeschooling Parents (thehomeschoolmom.com)
Coming Up
Be sure to check out Part 2 of our Movie Schooling series. In our next blog post, we share how movies can enhance learning in your homeschool including how movies can be used to help differentiate learning, bridge the gap between the past and the present, and foster empathy to name a few.
Later on in the series, we discuss ways to keep your kiddos safe with Movie Schooling Safety Suggestions. Finally, we share how Movies can help teach Emotional Intelligence.
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Blessings,
Kimberly
IOH Mom
This website is not a professional counseling website and nothing here should be construed as professional counseling advice. Although Kimberly Bennett, LPC is a Licensed Professional Counselor, she is not your counselor, and no counselor-client relationship is established unless she has signed an agreement with you. All information provided through this website is for informational and educational purposes only. This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure statement. Thanks for visiting!
