One of the reasons I love homeschooling is that we get to integrate learning in our day-to-day activities. We don't need to force our kids to learn things that they are not interested or ready to learn at the moment. Let me share three ways by which I and my husband "sneak" learning or teaching in our daily activities.
1. Play. - Our kids are still very young (a 17 month old and a 4 year old) thus play is an essential part of our homeschool. We play with our kids. We also let our kids engage in a lot of imaginative play. The kids have a lot of fun learning through these activities. I have actually written several articles about some of their favorite pretend plays.
Here are some of them:
2. Daily Conversations. - I'm blessed to be a WAHM (work at home mom). I get to talk a lot with my kids and get to work on writing or consulting projects at the same time. We talk about a lot of things and I get to teach them about life and many other things through our conversations each day.
The other day, my eldest and I talked about the different kinds of food that we eat. He had some questions and I was happy that though I was challenged to answer his questions, I was given the opportunity to discuss that topic with him and he learned some science and nutrition stuff from me.
Some days, we talk about the weather. Other days, we talk about his interests and business plans. These past two days, we talked about death and going to heaven because of family friends who died.
This is one thing I love about homeschooling. It helps me to be an intentional parent and it provides me with an opportunity to have quality time with my kids.
3. Routines or Chores. - One of my son's chores is to water our plants. Through this daily routine, he is reminded that plants need water, air and sunlight. He likes repeating that lesson as he waters our plants. We also found a song about photosynthesis that he likes.
Other routines that we have teach him about our family values. Like we go to Mass on certain days. We attend prayer meetings. We serve in various ministries. These regular activities teach him that our family life is centered on our faith, that we use our talents, energy and resources to serve the Church and the poor around us, and that we make time for prayer and worship.
Daily routines like packing away his toys and things after use and eating breakfast and saying his morning prayers first before playing allows us to teach our eldest son to be responsible and to prioritize some activities over others.
These are just some of the ways we "sneak" learning or teaching in our family. How about you? I would love to learn from you, too. Feel free to share by leaving a comment.
* This post is part of the Gifted Homeschoolers Forum Blog Hop on Stealth Schooling.
No comments:
Post a Comment