Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Learning with my Pre-schooler

Adam is about the least scholarly Pre-schooler I know. Instead of filling his weekends with Enrichment classes - Music, phonics, math genius, science club etc - we bring him out and about, exploring new places, revisiting old ones, or simply going to my parents'.

If I had all the time in the world, I would even want to homeschool him. But of course that is not possible otherwise we would live like church mice.
So the next best thing to do is to spend as much free time I can with him.
I try to spend my evenings alone with him, giving him one-to-one attention. It's still do-able now that Ashton spends most his time sleeping and feeding and my helper is very good with him.

Remember I made some color magnets here to teach Adam colors?
Well, he has mastered the basic colors of the Color Wheel now and I've upped the stakes by making Color Boxes, filling plastic containers with different objects found around the house, to let him explore his sensory and motor skills.
The boxes come in a variety of sizes and cost $2 for 3 at Daiso.
The items to fill up the boxes cost practically nothing because I find whatever I can use in the house.
I only made these today. I will get down to making more Color Boxes over the next few days depending on what I can find.

School after school - I poured out the objects from the boxes and got Adam to sort them according to color into their respective boxes.

The red dots on the floor are actually stickers which we use to teach Math and counting by pasting them on unwanted cardboard from previous toy purchases. For a start, we did 1-4.
It is tempting to slide into my lazy mode and just put on the iPad so I can get on the internet or iPhone so I need ALOT of discipline and patience when doing these stuff with Adam.
Endure Veron, you can do it!

I'm not sure at 3.5 years old how "advanced" should a pre-schooler be but I've realized I googled the topic on Child developmental milestones and every child develop at different paces so I shall refrain from being a kiasu parent (easier said than done!).

Obviously I'm not a trained early childhood teacher so if anyone has any great ideas how to "homeschool" your children do share with me! Much appreciated! :)

2 comments:

  1. Hi Veron, I'm homeschooling my 4 and 1 year olds. Am learning a lot from this affordable and comprehensive online Montessori Teacher Training Program: http://www.mummysreviews.com/2012/02/01/review-karen-tyler-montessori-teacher-training-program/

    Do check it out. :)

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    Replies
    1. Hi Vee-mummy! Long time no "see" :)

      Thanks for the link. It's very informative indeed. I'm particularly interested in getting my hands on the shelves with compartmentalised trays.

      Will work on it when we are back from Oz :)
      Thanks again!
      Veron

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