What Do You Do with Your Younger Children?

Question

What do you do with your younger children?!

With my younger children, they “play” at my work (and chores) and I can be teaching them as I go. While they play, I can be pursuing my own education because children are natural learners; while I write or read, they naturally find their own activities that are age-appropriate and help them develop.

Why Should Education be Tailored to Each Child?

Every child is different and so are their interests, abilities, and personalities. My girls are different, and it wouldn't work to make them do the same activities at the same ages. Here is a little about how they learn differently...

Milah

At 17 months old, Milah (who is very focused and naturally developed her fine motor skills) could sit next to me and pour rice between measuring cups while I cooked (see video below). She loved rearranging objects on her own designated little shelf.

Milah Playing with Rice

Brielle

Brielle has a much higher movement and doesn’t sit still too often, but she will run and play alongside me while I cook. Right now she is dragging a chair over to the counter, climbing up, and putting objects on the counter. She loves running to get a book from the shelf, climbing up on the couch, opening the book for an instant, shutting it, and then going to get another book (though she also can sit still for several books at a time, she just has to be in a calm mood). She is in constant motion and her gross motor skills are incredible because of it! I knew that clear speech would come a little later for her, but now that she really wants to express herself her language is improving quickly.

Brielle Trying to Walk with Hot Pads On Her Feet

A Morning at Our House

While I wrote the beginning of this post, the girls played with chalk on our driveway. Then they wanted to play bubbles outside.

They came inside and Milah whispered in my ear could we eat a “wasa” (avocados and tomatoes on bread)? While eating Milah observed that Dan had hung a skeleton toy on our kitchen table chandelier, and Milah asked “why is that hanging from the ceiling?” I told her it was a decoration; she said she wanted to get it down so it wasn’t a decoration. Because I was okay with it, she climbed on top of the table and figured out that she had to hold the chandelier still and then manipulate his arm (everything being as high as she could possibly reach) until it came free. This was a great exercise in balance (she stepped up on the unsteady table) and spatial reasoning (she figured out how to un-link his arm from the metal).

The Principle

If you look at more than academic skills, believing that children learn well from real-life experiences, and see your interactions as time to teach, you will be much more likely to succeed at home schooling. (e.g. as I hand my sipper cups to my girls, I often ask which color they want and little ways like that in addition to reading books about color taught them colors). These types of teaching are everywhere.

Math with a 3 Year Old

Next Milah found some fruit snacks and asked if she could eat them. I said sure but she had to share with Brielle and me. I told her to count out 3 for Brielle, 2 for me, and the rest for her. We counted how many she got (9), then we added mine and Brielle’s to Milah’s 9 to find out there were 14 total. Milah had grouped them by color (blackberries together), but she decided she wanted some of our blackberry ones, so she traded them out while keeping the number of fruit the same for Brielle and me. This is hands-on math at a three year old’s level.

Each of my girls loved experimenting with water whether it was dripping out of a faucet at the kitchen sink (while I made dinner), our pouring it from bowl to bowl.

The World is An Experiment

To children, the world is an experiment; they are natural-born scientists. Milah found the water spray bottle I use for her hair and she’s going to spray it on a napkin and clean off her face. Sounds like a fun experiment to me! She’s twisting the nozzle so it either comes out fast or in one stream or as a mist. Brielle is watching her try these things, craning her neck to see what Milah is doing, and her face is so interested and intent. Milah took off the nozzle all together and they’re just seeing how that makes it come out in drips. Milah naturally gave Brielle a turn and Brielle’s trying to do it, but it IS pointing it at her face…haha. Brielle wanted the nozzle off and since she wasn’t able to do it herself, she brought it to me for help. I asked if she wanted if “off” and said the word as I took it off. She repeated after me. Brielle is learning speech at her developmental level.

Children are welcome interruptions from whatever I’m learning; but I can be learning while they do these little experiments. Unwelcome demands are phone calls and other outside demands or to-dos.