The key is knowing that they want to do what the ‘big kids’ and parents are doing. Allow them to begin practicing (through play) the your future plans for how you want them to approach lessons beyond tracing their name with a colored crayon.
Children play school until around the age of 7. When I hear that a parent/child love home schooling, it tells me that the parents are amazing playmates. Inspire your child’s imagination, invite them alongside you to learn, and your child will rise to any standard!
Our home was a bustling place when we had a 7-year-old in first grade, a 5-year-old special needs in K4, a 3-year-old reading, an 18-month-old toddling, and one on the way. We adapted each day on a need basis making our main goals being to get in what was vital while projecting (like the Holy Grail!) playtime, nap time, mealtime, and family time.
In our home, we believe the study findings that children ‘play’ school until around the age of 7. — and we strive to be amazing playmates so our children will be eager to rise to any request or standard. I mean, who would not?! Approach teaching/learning as 1000 ‘at-bats and everyone is eager to join the game. We were careful to avoid telling them that they are smart as we learned how this can set them up for future identity crises. Instead, we spoke into their hearts how proud we were of them for being hard workers, and how this would be their best asset for their whole lives.
We loved field trips and hands-on activities getting us out of the house for a few hours each week, but we focused on building a strong foundation with the basics – reading, narration/comprehension, from word to sentence to story- writing, grammar, and math. This was seasoned with the weaving in of science and history into our read alouds and chores. Two-week ‘campaigns’ were our approach to (at this level) valued-but-overload-lessons such as foreign language, spelling, and cursive.
We always kept in mind the value of exposing our children to different subjects and experiences to broaden their knowledge, skills, and worldview, but maintained a strong boundary that helped me not jump into everything with 18 feet and hands. Time is precious and relationship trumps everything else in life!
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