Early Reading at home

I have an almost 4 year old who is starting to get interested in reading. She says she wants to learn how to read so I have been working with her a little bit to get her ready to really learn to read. I am a big believer in going at a child's pace and not pushing them. Learning at this age should be enjoyable and fun, not forced at all. One thing I have started doing with her is reading a story I know has a lot of a certain letter. Today we read a bird book. So I gave her a block with the letter B on it.She traced the B with her hands, lower and upper case. We made B sounds and I told her to listen for the letter b. When the letter was prominent like in bluebird I pointed it out to her. We also love the Curious George Learns the Alphabet Book. It is so wonderfully illustrated and she has for a while learned to associate letters with certain words and sounds, like S-snail or T-tomahawk We are going slow, working on a letter every few days. This gives it time to sink in and helps so it doesn't feel so school like. I want my children to crave learning, love it and really want to learn. Not think of learning as some passive experience where they are drilled with flash cards and words. While this might help an older child learn, a child who is not even 4, yes it can be taught to them, but at what consequence? And are they truly learning it or just repeating blindly like a parrot? If she is reading at 4 she will be a young reader, but I have seen it pushed on kids even younger. But do children really younger than 4 understand phonemes and language rules? This is even hard for a 4 year old to grasp which is why I am going slow with her and teaching phonics. She already has picked up some sight words but over and over again I read how the combination of whole reading and phonics the best way for a child to become a great reader. Maybe tomorrow we will read the Cat in the Hat and work on C, or maybe if the rain clears we will spend the day in the sun, digging in the dirt and listening to the cicadas. That is the wonderful thing about this age and learning at home, no pressure, just love and enjoyment.

Kids Need to be Kids

An interesting article caught my eye on preschools and children. This article from WebMD states that kids in a preschool setting or childcare spend 70-80% of their time in sedentary activities. What I found interesting is that the main reason for this is the push of academics on children too young.
Children need time to play period. They need time outside, to run, jump, climb trees. This is all very important for their physical development. But we have this push in America for academics earlier and earlier and it is coming at a cost.
Parents putting their children in school at early ages so they can read earlier, write at a young age. All of this, studies shows, backfires and these children who learn this early often do not do better then other children who were let to be children.
These parents don't want their children just playing while they are paying for them to be in school.
And on the flip side some schools are scared to let children play outdoors for fear of injuries in our sue happy culture.

What is sad is this push does not just come from parents. Many kindergartens expect a lot from young children and expect them to know a lot when they come in to kindergarten. They also try to teach them so much in the short period they are there. Consequently they are shortening play time and outdoor time. This is not by the choice of the teacher, but by laws and mandates from states and government agencies.
Parents feel conflicted, how much to push before kindergarten? Ideally not much, but its harder and harder to do this.
I just think of an average day for a young child in an academic preschool.
Wake up 7:30 eat breakfast
8 get dressed and ready for school
Out the door by 8:45
9am school
School till lunch time.
Lunch at home then nap till 3 ish.
This leaves several hours at home for the child to get outdoors and just play but many parents schedule playdates and other activities during this time. They also might allow the 2 hours of tv the AAP says is okay for children.
This leaves dinner, bath and bed.
Where is the time for free play? When can kids run and climb, balance and logs? These are important to their physical development.
When can they just explore their world, discover on their own? Find acorns, dig in the dirt?
When can they play, pretend dance and sing on their own?
I feel bad for many children in this generation. Being pushed to their little limits but not allowed to live limitless.

Spend time outside with your children, everyday unless weather is severe.
Give your children plenty of free time, indoors as well.
Turn off the tv, video games and computer. Young children do not need these at all. Limit them as much as you can.
Encourage play, do something outdoors, garden, shovel snow, go for a walk, a hike, swim, indoors, cook,bake, sweep, knit, craft. All of these things your child will love to imitate and play out other times.
Encourage play, not academics in this young age.
As I stated in a previous post I plan to home preschool school. But this will be less academic and more play based. I want my children to enjoy childhood, not feel pushed at a early age, and look back on this period and smile about the smile times we spent together, not the simple times we spent in a car riding from activity to activity.

Exploring and Learning With Children

Image via Wikipedia

I have a love/dislike relationship were I live. My dislike is simple, I hate to drive and I live too far from anything to walk or bike.
But I do enjoy living so close to nature. I am in one of the most rural parts of the most populated state. We have all types of birds, chipmunks, deer, foxes and even black bears.
I also love that just a short walk away my neighbors have cows, roosters and chickens.
I love having Liv learn animal sounds from real animals, not from a book. We do read books with animal sounds often, one of our favorites is , but she hasn't learned any sounds from it.
But every time she hears an animal making noise she learns the sound so quick. Their are birds out chirping all the time in my yard and Liv asks to see the "cheep cheeps" When we go to see the cows she goes "meeyo" When we see "doggies" she goes "woof woof" I love watching her learn from real life examples.
It really sets up a lifetime of memories, one she would not get from learning about cows online or in a video.
The best way to learn is to experience. The sad fact is that many kids do not get to experience nature.
Young children learn best while just letting them explore, observe and discover. They do not learn from sitting in front of a t.v., educational programs or not, doing work sheets or flash cards or participate in organized sports. They need time to learn for themselves, play in nature and learn the little things that help build a foundation for the higher levels of learning that they will experience later in life.
There is no reason to push, education and learning is not a race, a race has a definite beginning and end, your learning should not.
Pushing children in the trend, but the results seem to backfired. We are not getting smarter as a whole, just the opposite is happening.
Give children time to play and they will learn with out even realize that is what is going on.

Recommended books:

Structured Learning Too Early

Image by brungrrl via Flickr

I came across a great article in the NY Times about how we are pushing children way to hard at a young age. The lack of play in kindergarten and even now in preschools and how this is harmful to our children.
Even though there has been so much research that this pushing of our children in harmful to their life long learning. I keep reading about getting a head start and ahead of the game, but education is a life long process, not a race that has a beginning and an ending.
This is one reason why I love Waldorf Education. They see that play is an important part of a child's day. Unstructured play is essential for a child to learn many skills that they can not learn in a structured setting. They can learn about their environment. How soil feels in their hands, what happens when they take their friends toy, and no parent makes them give it back with a forced apology. They learn how to use their imagination. All of these skills and many more are lost on children who are pushed into a structured learning environment too early.
There is so much more to it then what I am blogging here. Please think twice before sucummbing to all the outside pressure to push your child to read early, do flashcards and other early educational tools that are too often used. I see this pressure every where, on tv, in playgroups and now many states are even mandating preschool.
Let kids be kids.

Related articles

• Play time: Kids need invaluable, old-style, free-form fun - The Denver Post (denverpost.com)