Early Academics
Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 3:52 pm
I would like to discuss early academics for preschoolers. I've seen many folks for and against formal teaching of children under the age of 3 and 4.
Personally, I feel it's up to the parents to observe and recognize the pace of the child. In our case, I am formally home schooling my dd since she was 2.5 (we began this past January). I noticed the need to expand on the informal teaching when, one day, she knew practically everything on the flashcards we were using. She knew the letters, numbers and big/small. This is when I started to research curriculum and started setting up her classroom.
During the past two months, she is definitely thriving. She enjoys seat work as much as she enjoys projects. Several times I ran out of worksheets to do because she asks for more after we are done with the lessons. She has even cried when I had to end school because the baby started crying!!
This past week, she started learning German. Once again, I noticed that she was properly using Spanish phrases and counting to 10 in Spanish from watching Dora the Explorer! She asks to watch her German videos even when we are officially done watching them for school.
So the point of this is, I think if your child shows interest, then pursue it. I'm not pushing her, I go at her pace and do new things when I notice that there's something she would like to explore. Some children aren't ready and some are, it's up to the parent to recognize this. As long as your not pushing an unwilling child, I see nothing wrong with early academics.
Personally, I feel it's up to the parents to observe and recognize the pace of the child. In our case, I am formally home schooling my dd since she was 2.5 (we began this past January). I noticed the need to expand on the informal teaching when, one day, she knew practically everything on the flashcards we were using. She knew the letters, numbers and big/small. This is when I started to research curriculum and started setting up her classroom.
During the past two months, she is definitely thriving. She enjoys seat work as much as she enjoys projects. Several times I ran out of worksheets to do because she asks for more after we are done with the lessons. She has even cried when I had to end school because the baby started crying!!
This past week, she started learning German. Once again, I noticed that she was properly using Spanish phrases and counting to 10 in Spanish from watching Dora the Explorer! She asks to watch her German videos even when we are officially done watching them for school.
So the point of this is, I think if your child shows interest, then pursue it. I'm not pushing her, I go at her pace and do new things when I notice that there's something she would like to explore. Some children aren't ready and some are, it's up to the parent to recognize this. As long as your not pushing an unwilling child, I see nothing wrong with early academics.