Isla has started "school" back up this fall and I guess technically this would be considered her official preschool year in regards to the school system. As a past teacher, preschool teacher specifically, you would think replicating school would be an easy thing for me. But since being in the classroom, I have read so many books, listened to so many speakers/podcasts, and learned so much about child development and education. I have witnessed my own children as they have naturally learned to crawl, walk, and talk an entire language all on their own, in their natural time. Their innate ability to learn and be curious about the world does not stop at 5. I personally believe the only education a child needs consists of four things- life, conversation, play, and reading. Children should be allowed to live life to the fullest, not tied down by overbooked schedules or stressed out routines. They should be exposed to deep, rich conversation with different kinds of people and loving, secure adults. They should have large amounts of free time to play, afterall play is the work of the child. And they should be read to often, exposed to all different kinds of books, and given the world through literature. I don't think any kind of preschool or kindergarten can offer those simple things, unfortunately.
So I aim to give my children those four things. And really, that's how our every day life goes anyway. We really don't have to do anything much different than what we already do in our day to day. There are some things that do require a little more exposure or intentional lessons, like math for instance. But even subjects that require more adult-direction, can be learned organically and naturally given the right environment and exposure. I really do aim to surround my children with a rich learning environment through all sorts of ways- co-op, friends and family, books, conversation, and even a little bit of unit learning. It's fun for me to introduce new topics to my children like spiders and constellations and fairytales. So that's really what our "school" consists of- a lot of reading on a whole bunch of topics with a little bit of basic skills sprinkled in.
And Isla eats it up. She just loves to "do school" and so I offer when she's willing.
A lot of our days are spent mostly just living life. That includes playing, hanging out with friends, co-op activities, art and zoo classes, field trips and adventures, baking, reading, and anything else we find worthy. And I consider that all a part of her education. She makes more neural connections and hands-on learning through those experiences than any type of sit-down work. But on those days when we don't have much going on and we have a little time to spend together, we do a formal type of schooling.
We started our formal time back up in September. We celebrated with an official first day of school that mostly consisted of sticky buns and playing outside :)
We like to do unit studies together where we pick a topic and do a deep dive together through books, videos, crafts, science experiments, field trips, and more. Sometimes the topics are things that Isla is currently interested in (like bugs), sometimes the topics are seasonal (like apples or pumpkins), and sometimes the topics are related to whats upcoming in our lives (like the nightsky when we visited the planetarium). Here are some of the topics we've touched on in the last two months: apples, moon phases, constellations, pumpkins, and bugs! With each topic, we've worked really hard to bring it to life! Ewan likes to join sometimes too :)
Comments
Post a Comment