Act and Receive Pattern of Learning

As a young homeschool mother teaching and learning along with my children, I began seeing a pattern. It started out with a feeling of “there’s got to be more.” I began teaching my children with pictures, games, sounds, and stories. As they got older I added words, dates, and times. I was teaching them as I had learned in school. But, I kept remembering that as a child in the gospel I wanted to know more about patterns, I longed for the “whole picture.” When my Young Woman’s teacher asked what we wanted to learn I was excited to tell her I wanted to know how all the scripture stories fit together. For one reason or another, she never taught it and I continued to be hungry. The thought occurred to me, “Why not learn it as I am teaching my children?” Of course! I could learn it myself. This was a big revelation as I had always been told what to learn, it never occurred to me I could learn it on my own.

I opened up the Old Testament (along with the institute manual) and began teaching ancient history. We started with the Creation, and the Fall and went through all the scripture stories. We would put pictures on the wall to “see” the whole picture. Years later, my hunger was being satisfied.

I noticed that there were levels of learning. 1) Telling the story, giving the facts and information – the Telestial Level 2) Seeing and understanding principles – the Terrestrial Level and 3) Applications, having the principles change us individually – the Celestial Level. This became my goal, getting to level three every day. After all, life was the time we are to learn to become like Christ.

This proved to be harder than I had originally thought, “How do I help them get to the Celestial Level every day?” One day as I experimented with teaching, I wrote down a Give and Action or spiral pattern: “learn – knowledge – apply – understand – share – wisdom.” This simple pattern has developed into The Key Pattern of Learning.

The Act and Receive Pattern of Learning:

• We act by Learning and receiving Knowledge
• We act by Applying and receiving Understanding
• We act by Sharing and receiving Wisdom