It's "M" week. And this Mama has a new outlook on this whole homeschooling thing. The teacher in me keeps wanting to press forward and take advantage of Isaac's love of learning. But he's not loving this whole structured "school" thing that we're doing right now. He'd rather be racing his cars, riding his bike, playing with his dinosaurs, annoying his sister, playing dress-up, looking for bugs, etc. You name it...and he'd rather be doing it. And why not? I mean...he's THREE. My stupid self keeps forgetting this important little fact. :) I am SO eager to start teaching my children, not realizing that teaching is happening all around us. It doesn't have to look a certain way! That is the beauty of homeschool.
Is he smart enough? Sure. Is he capable? Absolutely! But is he interested in these structured activities right now? Nope. Not at all. Sure...some of them he's enjoying. Great. I'll stick with those until he's done with them. But he really doesn't seem interested in working on his writing skills right now. He'll learn to write eventually. I'm not too worried about it. The pressure to get him writing is coming nowhere except from me. I see other kids his age writing their letters...and they seem to ENJOY doing this. That's GREAT. The fact is that he CAN write some of his letters - A, O, E, F, T, I, H, C, L, U, V, and X, just to name a few. ;) But my point isn't what he is or isn't able to do...it's that he doesn't enjoy working on them right now.
Now eventually, yes...we're going to have to buckle down and work on writing skills. He will eventually learn how to write, but it doesn't have to be right now. :) What he DOES seem to enjoy is memorizing things...whether it's words, Bible verses, or songs...he's good at it, and he loves it. He also enjoys learning about bugs...what kind they are, what they eat, where they live, how they move. He gets tickled and overjoyed at the discovery of a woolly bear caterpillar, and is eager to know everything he can possibly learn about it all at once! :) The kid is also VERY into books - he'll sit and listen to a story for 20-30 minutes straight! He also enjoys playing word games - that involve rhyming or opposites usually. He's also really active and likes to move, move, MOVE. And running/racing is quite possibly his favorite thing EVER. :)
So "school" is going to begin looking a bit different for us from here on out. I was going to stick with what I had been planning for at least a month, but the more I think about it the more I'm feeling like I just need to abandon ship. The last thing in the world I want to do is make his first experience with "school" an unpleasant one!! It's supposed to be fun, new, and exciting. Yes...there's going to be "work" but not right now. Not at three-years-old! The most important lessons for him to learn right now deal with love - loving God and loving others. I need to remember that.
I also need to remind myself that I've been homeschooling since the day they were born. Learning is SO much more than worksheets and structured activities. I have created an environment that will help to foster a love of learning, and right now that is good enough. We'll do a few activities each week...the ones he REALLY enjoys. And we'll play...and then play some more. I'll help teach him the beauty of imagination and help him make up wild stories that we can act out together. And if I'm being completely honest here, he'll be the one teaching ME those things, because as adults we often forget!! We'll continue working on memorizing Bible verses and talking about the weather. I might even throw in some sight words every now and then. But I'm going to let him be my gauge. I'm not going to push it...and just let him enjoy being the crazy, wonderful 3-year-old boy that he is. :)
I think you're absolutely right in noting that, at least at this age, they seem to learn best when they really enjoy what they're doing. True, at some point they WILL need to buckle down and learn the things that aren't so "fun," but why not have fun while you can? Then they're learning and they don't even realize it!
ReplyDeleteFor more word fun, try synonyms and homonyms. Jesse noted once that "pea that you eat sounds like pee in the potty," so I told him they were homonyms (though technically I guess they're homophones, since homonyms are spelled/pronounced the same, where as homophones sound the same but can have different spellings) and ever since then we've been noticing them everywhere. I didn't try to teach it on purpose, but they picked it up because it was fun. Same with synonyms.