Homeschool World Forum

4-year-olds are old enough to learn to read (in fact, you could start late age 3), so any time now is good. Just try to limit your sittings to 45 minutes or so so your child's attention level doesn't drop off.

If 45 minutes isn't enough, take a 15-minute break between sessions.

Learning begins at birth. Simple age appropriate learning skills will serve to aid the child's development. Before beginning formal preschool education a child should have had many varied experiences in order to build a strong foundation for formal learning. Visual and listening skills are especially important. Most young children have short attention spans.

When I taught preschool, we would have circle time. You could do that with him. When he is at his best time of day, sing songs, talk about the weather, days of the week, seasons, things that will be short and keep his attention. Then as he gets older you can introduce other topics that he is interested in and as his attention span grows introduce more typical school work ,if that is how you plan to teach him. That way he will already have in his schedule a time and place for school stuff to be.