- Read to your children at least once a day, but preferably much more. Read for pleasure yourself to model the behavior. Read until you are blue in face, and then take a breath and read some more.
- Listen to your kiddo. Really listen. Put down what you are doing, look at them, and listen to them as if you were talking with another adult. Sure, these little people may have vastly different interests and talking points, but they are just as important as another adult. This is setting the groundwork for you to know your child well enough to design a curriculum, as well as setting the groundwork for a solid and open relationship with your child down the line.
- Homeschooling does not mean school at home. While, a particular family may design their homeschooling experience in such a way, that's not necessary. Schools have so many children to educate at one time that they must govern children with bells and time restraints and schedules. As homeschoolers, we get to do what works best for us. It seems for every book I read, I feel a that much more comfortable with allowing the kids to follow their own hearts.
When I talk about a child led* schooling structure, a question that many people have is: Don't you have to keep up with certain standards? How can you do that while letting the child just do whatever he wants? I'm not an expert, but this is how we do it. The Kid wants to throw a party for superheroes. And when I say he wants to throw a party for superheroes, I don't mean his stuffed superheroes. When this kid says he wants to do something, he wants to do it full out, so we're going to do a unit study on Superheroes. I have many planned activities based on superheroes, but here's an idea for each core subject (even though core for preschoolers in my opinion should be mostly character development).
Writing: Practice writing all the superheroes' names that he wants to invite. The invitations need to be legible.
Math: How many heroes are we inviting? We need to make sure we have enough supplies.
Life/Social Studies: Not all heroes can shoot spiderwebs from their wrists. We will be learning about heroes like police officers, military, firefighters, and EMTs
Science: Storm's cloud in a jar activity
Reading: We must read about everyday heroes, including firefighters, police officers, and EMTs.**
Character development/ Acts of Kindness: Gratitude. We need to say thank you to our heroes with notes and cookies. Notes and cookies also count as writing and math.
At the end, I'm thinking of throwing a little party where we invite friends to dress as a superhero and come to a superhero themed science party.
What are your favorite unit themes?
*Okay, so we're more of a child led, parent guided. This is not unschooling, although I have major love for unschoolers!
**If you're reading this and you are an everyday hero and wouldn't mind talking or writing a little about what you do and why, maybe answering a couple questions, I would *love* to be in touch. You will be paid with cookies :)
