This Learning Journal is all about encouraging life-long learning by supporting students to follow any interest they have. I educate my children at home, and had been looking for something like this, but everything I found was either full of “busy work” or really ugly! My interest in the work of Maria Montessori has taught me that children do best when they have the freedom to work within an environment that has been prepared specifically to their needs. It is important to allow the child to choose, while providing the work that is specifically helpful to that child’s stage of development. The Choose Your Own Topic Learning Journal is a prepared work that supports self-directed learning by allowing the child to choose a topic, and be guided in various ways to explore their education. Various resources are suggested throughout; awesome for students who like to learn using various methods, and for families who wish to give their children more autonomy in their education. Resource suggestions mention books, as well as the internet, including YouTube and Pinterest. Working in this way fosters self-responsibility and independence, and supports many learning styles. This is an activity workbook with room to breathe. Suitable for the self-reader, yet also suitable for a parent-child team to work together. Cross-curriculur guidance means that many subjects are covered in the work of the Journal. This is akin to the “Unit Study” approach which many educators, both in schools and at home often use. This Journal will support a study topic for anywhere between 10-28 days, depending how fast your child chooses to work through. Pages include : Personal planning and scheduling, Reading, Handwriting, Spelling & Grammar, Drawing, Countries of the World, Film Study, Observation, Music & Songwriting, Cooking, Poetry, Culture & People, Art, Reporting, Presentation… As the student explores the topic with this guide, it is likely that Science (through experimentation and design), and Math (through measurement and geometry) will be covered too. Your child can choose any topic that interests them! They will be directed to find 4-6 books on the topic of their choice, and it doesn’t even need to be a serious ‘research book’. Story books, Manga or Comics will work too!