Some advice, please :) Is he "too young"?

[Gina]

Hi, my name is Gina. I'm a stay at home mom to a wonderful 16 month old.

I am at a loss for where to begin as far as homeschooling goes. I'm considering the Montessori approach, but I haven't ruled anything out yet.

My two questions are:

Can I start now? (My son is 16 months old)

How (when and where) do I begin? I'm really confused and have no clue how to start.

Thanks in advance!

[Theodore]

16 months is a bit early to be worrying about homeschooling per se, but you can certainly read to him, which will build language patterns he can use to learn to read early, which in turn will give him a big step up on learning everything else.

[Joy]

Gina,

It's never too early.

I had three children in a log cabin in Alaska and I home schooled each of them for a certain amount of time. My youngest was born when my oldest was in a kindergarten curriculum and my middle child was 2 1/2.

I taught them all sorts of things that became life lessons. Now all three have graduated from college.

There's a bunch of stuff you can do with music and language training skills.
I study the latest neuroscience research available about this subject and also speak on the subject. It's something near and dear to my heart.

If I can be of any assistance, just let me know. I'd be happy to share what I can with you.

Keep you pretty chin up!
Joy

[nep]

In my teens, I had the opportunity to work in a montessori based day school as a teacher's aide. Most of my time was spent with the preschoolers when it came to the teaching aspects during the morning. Montessori is a method that definitely believes it is essential to start children young on the path to learning, but is at the same time a gentle approach-- maybe you discovered this through your own studies on it. A book I would recommend for implementing this in the home is: Teaching Montessori in the Home: the Pre-school years, by Elizabeth G. Hainstock. I have heard that she also produces books concerning each year, but have not seen those myself.

nicole