About the world of Flow to Learn
The Mission
Flow To Learn’s purpose is to help parents supplement their children’s education at home or support their homeschooling practices by strengthening their child’s joy of learning and sparking their interest in the world off the screen. During play, children effortlessly drop into flow, which in psychology is a term for “optimal experience.” In education, flow is increasingly used to describe the ideal state for learning.
Flow To Learn’s book and online resources guide parents in creating play spaces and hands-on learning opportunities for children to follow their inherent curiosity and explore their world from an authentic place within. The book helps parents support their child as a unique person with unfolding talents, preferences, and characteristics that are revealed over time. While initially, some time investment is needed to create suitable, inspiring environments, this preparation ultimately frees caregivers from the role of entertainers and enables them to experience flow, side-by-side with their child. Flow To Learn helps parents increase their own flow state and see children as guides to more presence and joy in life.
Flow To Learn also helps parents support children through the ups and downs of childhood by offering many suggestions of how to accompany them through the range of their positive and upsetting emotions. Emotional safety and healthy boundaries generate socio-emotional skills, which lead to the development of empathy, patience, self-discipline, and resilience. Flow-friendly parenting and education reduce tension, deepen connections, and amplify understanding and appreciation between the generations.
Ideally, we create preschools and grade schools based on Flow To Learn’s insights, so children can continue to learn joyfully throughout all the school years and retain a lifelong joy of learning based on their own needs and interests.
About the Author
Carmen Viktoria Gamper is an advisor for innovative child-centered education, and author of Flow To Learn.
“I’m an educator, and I would like to help parents see their child from my perspective, from the view of an innovative, child-centered teacher who recognizes that children are highly capable young masters who know how to learn. In my work at innovative preschools, elementary schools, and summer camps, I have witnessed hundreds of children naturally drop into the deep, focused state called “flow,” which is increasingly recognized by educators and psychologists as the ideal state for learning.
The insights on child development and learning presented in my work are the result of more than 15 years of work and research in the field of visionary, child-centered education; this includes my work as a teacher, director, tutor, and consultant as well as accredited programs and self-study of Montessori education, the Reggio-Emilia approach, Friedrich Froebel’s legacy, mindful education, wilderness education, the forest kindergarten, Freinet and the Modern School Movement, and others.
After becoming disillusioned with being a teacher in standardized school, I took a Montessori teacher training. Soon, I discovered the child-centered Rebeca Wild-based (RWB) schools in Europe, where children are supported to learn on their own terms in carefully prepared hands-on learning environments, and teachers are “learning companions” and mentors. I ended up working as a pedagogical director, educator, and consultant at several of these schools, and eventually became passionate about sharing my insights as an advisor. I relocated from Italy to California in 2005 and founded New Learning Culture Consulting and since I have supported many schools and parents in creating conducive conditions for the flow state in their learning environments. You can learn more about my consulting work at https://newlearningculture.com/
For Flow To Learn, I am tremendously grateful to have collaborated with Susanne Stover, an Oregon-based writer, editor, and mother who practices the Flow to Learn’s parenting approach with her two wonderful children.
I’m also incredibly grateful to Sybille Kramer, an Italian mother, artist, educator, and creator of the delightful drawings of the young masters of flow in the book. Sybille has created a multitude of artful hands-on learning materials for preschool and grade school, which are cherished in Italian homeschools and public schools. Check out her website https://sybilletezzelekramerartblog.wordpress.com/free-downloads/
