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Can I Find Balance?

I love the Mother Goose Time curriculum that we have been using.  It is teaching my son so many things I never would have taught him on my own.  Here are just some of the things my just turned three year old knows only because of Mother Goose Time:
  • Your heart pumps blood
  • Bees and butterflies have a proboscis
  • Scorpions have pedipalps
  • Recognizes cardinals, blue jays, owls, robins, and probably a few other birds
  • Can identify a huge variety of musical instruments (more accurately than I can)
I am so pleased to offer him such a varied learning experience.  But I have to get better at it.  In December he knew all of his letters, numbers, and most of the sounds the letters make.  Before Mother Goose Time that is all I was teaching him.  Last week I sat down with him and he only knows most of his letters, a few of the phonetical sounds, and some of the numbers. 

This is NOT Mother Goose Time's fault.  They are great at incorporating learning the basics with learning about new topics.  This is MY fault.  I have to many kids in my house most of the time, and I am a terrible housekeeper.  My teaching time is limited, and so I have not been using Mother Goose Time to the fullest.  I tend to run out of time to do school many days, between getting every one fed and ready, cleaning up the house, running errands, and admittedly having a little more downtime than I probably should.  So I "binge teach", which means that not everything gets covered.  Circle Time, which is when Little Guy would be learning a lot of the basics, gets pushed aside.  I completely forget to do flashcards with him (I know, some people hate flashcards, I happen to love them and he has fun with them too.  They are not part of the Mother Goose Time curriculum.), and don't give him workbooks anymore (also not part of the curriculum).

Right now I am not doing anything well.  I kind of think of myself as "surviving, not thriving", and I need to work on that.  My son is only three, but he is a really smart kid.  By slacking on his education I am doing him a huge disservice and not respecting the gift God has given him.  This month I am going to focus on finding the time to teach him more often.  I should not be letting him forget things that he knows, I should be teaching him new things while reinforcing the "old things".

I have to find the balance of teaching him and having a clean house.  If I could do those two things I would be so happy with the balance between serving my husband and training up my son. 

Comments

  1. CyndiMay 24, 2016 at 11:54 PM

    I think you can cut yourself some slack. At 3 he doesn't need a full focus constant teacher. He just needs to use his imagination and play. Provide activities that will encourage him to do different things and change out the toys so he gets variety (except for the classic open ended stuff like blocks and imaginary play stuff).
    Just talking to him and involving him will "teach" him so much more than teacher/student time. There's no need for him to know all of his letters/sounds yet, but you can do small things here and there that won't overwhelm either of you. Just read words out loud and talk to him about the words he sees. Labeling toy baskets and clothing drawers can surround him with more literacy. "Reading" the picture of a t-shirt on his shirt drawer when getting dressed activates the part of his brain that will see the letters SHIRT and think shirt. Sounding out letters will come naturally.

    Not trying to sound preachy or anything, just saying, don't be hard on yourself!

    ReplyDelete

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