SAHM - 'formal' educational activities

[A-to-Z]

I am thinking about becoming a SAHM until my 'babies' have been at school for a couple of years. They are 1 and almost 3. I am a perfectionist (and old). So, of course, I want to do it right.

One thing that I am wondering about is, do other SAHM's spend time doing educational activities or do you just incorporate it in day to day play. ie Do you schedule a block of time in your day to do it?

My kids will be coming out of childcare where they do do these activities. I guess I am referring to things like 'teaching' alphabet/numbers/time etc.

Also, what else do you do? I don't want to get into the rut of just going to the park and watching dvd's all day. We will be doing lots of arts and crafts too.

Do any of you have structured/routine days? Do you think it is good for the kids to know what is coming up or do random days work better?

Thanks for your ideas.

[kristyc]

we have a flexable routine.

I try to have meal times and sleep / rest time at the same time each day and we go with the flow around that

I incorporate "educational" activities into every day play. Children learn best thru play!!!

Ie - drawing - Im drawing a circle - can you copy it, nappy change time - Can you find me the red nappy (cloth is great for learning colours ), reading books - can you find the B (bradley is currently learning the letters of his name), playing blocks - how many blocks do you have, can you give me 3 more, If brad asks for a snack and it isnt time for one yet i will tell him to wait until the big hand is on the 12 and the little hand on the 2 etc etc

[Cath]

I think Kristy has got it in the right context.

Also, some kids don't want to learn. My 12 year old couldn't have given a flying you know what about learning about the alphabet and letters and numbers or painting and colouring and pasting, he just wanted to be outside all the time. But my 8 and 5 yr olds will spend ages drawing and writing of the own accord. Ally would have always been happy to sit and read books and do colouring and painting stuff.

I would try and just incorporate learning through your everyday activities. Even shopping can be a learning experience. "can you find me one with the number 4 etc"

Hope you enjoy it all Dee.

Cheers,

Cath

[MummyT]

I try to make learning incidental to play, if I've ever tried to push learning (flashcards etc) the boys just turn off straigh taway. Eg., we talk about time in the context of today is tuesday, we do Happy Coconuts on Tuesday in the morning. At lunch we talk about it being lunchtime, halfway through the day. In the late afternoon we talk about how we're saying goodbye to the sun and hello to the moon because the day is turning into night. Talking about letters and numbers just happens throughout the day, I don't necessarily plan it.

There was an article in our local newspaper the other day about how important simple, repetitive play is for children's learning and that these days parents are too worried about structured play and don't place enough emphasis on typical childhood, unstructured play. There was another article on news.com yesterday about how kids are missing out on unstructured play because parents are time poor so when they spend time with their kids it often involves adult types of activities like going out for coffee, paying bills, running errands etc.

So, to answer your question, I don't ignore education but for us it's incidental to play. I think kids learn best through play and that if you can take advantage of opportunities that present themselves through play then you're on to a winner.

T

ETA: my kids go to daycare once a week and while they do spend some time in structured play, a lot of it is unstructured or they will take advantage of what is going on to teach the kids...eg, if one of the kids finds a beetle they'll all look at it and spend the day talking/reading/singing etc about insects. That's great, one of the things I love about our daycare, but just because they do that once a week doesn't put pressure on me to do it for the rest of the week. If it happens, great, if it doesn't, no big drama.

[kim1]

We home school, so yeah we incorporate education activities in day to day life LOL.

Children learn best through experiencing things. My DS2 never understood basic fractions in the 5 yrs he spent in mainstream school, a few hands on cooking activities at home and he developed a firm grasp of the basics. Education doesn't need to be structured it's a life skill that comes naturally. We might take a walk and stop to break a stick of sugar cane and it becomes a lesson. Sometimes its as simple as what makes the cane grow or sometimes it branches into research when we go home on how sugar is extracted etc just depends on how much interest they show.

Teaching the alphabet etc can also be fairly unstructured, my DD2 learned to read words and understand phonetic sounds of letters by us just pointing out words whilst shopping. We'd point out the word eg Exit..say the word, then the letters, then sound it out. She was reading at a year two level by the time she started kindy.

Even blowing bubbles in the back yard can become a lesson on light refraction, air currents etc. Some kids do respond well to structure, others don't depends on the individual child and you know your children best. I only provide structure for myself in that between 10am- 2pm is 'school'time, all that means is that I make sure we are doing and learning together and I'm not distracted by cleaning etc. (Of course there are other things for home schooling that I make sure we get done..eg this week we are working on adverbs and adjectives so I make sure to guide our interests to include those but it's subtly done, none of this - "Okay kids get out your books, today we're learning what an adjective is." lol)

[brand new mum]

My big thing at the moment is media literacy. Even though DD is far too young, I think you can incorporate media awareness in your arts and crafts, ie, cutting up catalogues (using catalogues that come out around mothers day, fathers day and Christmas is perfect) and having kids identify (through casual conversation appropriate to age etc) stereotypes about men and women and boys and girls and casually 'chat' about why the shop is advertising products in a certain way (ie, the family looks really happy, why do you think they're happy? Is that the only thing that would make them happy? What makes our family happy? Do you think we would be happier if we had the things that the family in the ad has? etc). Maybe they can then make their own mothers day/fathers day catalogue of what their mum or dad really does like (pics of cuddles etc). Not sure if this will work with my DD when she's a bit older - I'm coming from an English teacher's point of view.

[Histoire]

I would try and just incorporate learning through your everyday activities. Even shopping can be a learning experience. "can you find me one with the number 4 etc"

This is what I do. If you try to do anything formally my boys just revolt (2 & 4yrs) but the incidental stuff has the boys excited..... eg. waiting for the lifts in DH's office and asking DS1 what floor the lift was at and I was at his response (ie. didn't think he actually KNEW that number). Tonight we were doing subtraction. A home made pizza cut into 8 pieces. 8 minus 1 equals 7 etc.