Let me begin with the fact that our oldest is 2 years and about 2 months old. So as far as an established curriculum goes, we haven’t exactly dived into that yet. However, I work with him every day on some of the basic things that I know he can learn.
This includes numbers 1-10 which he can say on his own, in sequence, as well as recognize most of them when presented with them and asked, “Which number is this?” It took him a little while to get to this point, it certainly did not happen overnight. I have been working with him on numbers since before he ever started talking. I would show him the numbers in a book or with blocks and once he started to copy or mimic me, we started repeating them multiple times a day.
At first, when he was around 12-14 months old he refused to say ‘One’. I would go “Say One” and he would say “two” Every. Single. Time. It was frustrating sometimes, but now he says all of the numbers on his own and I look back on those days with a warm heart for sure. Our children are more capable than we sometimes give them credit for. It still amazes me how quickly my son can pick up on things if I just make the time to sit down with him and help him with it a little bit.
Some other things we work on daily are the ABC’s, spelling short words beginning with every letter like, At, Cat, Ball or Bat, Dog, Eat, Four, etc. I also work with him on recognizing and naming animals including uncommon animals like lions, bears, penguins, geese, donkeys, and such. We work on knowing and naming different colors and shapes. He does well with recognizing similar shapes like squares and rectangles, we talk about how they are the same and how they differ. He will often tell me if two things are the same color, like a blue shirt and a blue pair of shoes. We work each day on most of these things, spaced out as we go about our day usually.
We have good days, where he loves to sit down, listen, and learn. Then we have other days where he basically has the attention span of a fruit fly and just jumps from one thing to the next, not sitting still, not listening, and just wanting nothing to do with it. On those days, we “play”. Usually, when the weather is nice, these will be our outside-all-day days. We take a walk to the park or go play kick the ball in the backyard. But since we’re in the middle of winter, outside days are hard to come by. So, I’ll have him color with water colors or colored pencils and I’ll color a Psalms coloring book beside him. We both really enjoy this and could sit together coloring for an hour or so easily.
Or we will play a game of “Bring Me Something (color) ?” with his toys. Where I’ll say “Will you bring me something Blue?” And he will go and pick out something blue from his handful of toys. This game carries on, and then I reverse it. I’ll pick up a toy and say “What color is this?” And he will tell me. This is one of those games where one day he knows and says it all correctly and the next day he looks at me like I’m speaking Spanish. We just have to find what works, day to day.
As far as the future goes, I do want to start some sort of homeschooling curriculum with him as well as my daughter when she is old enough. And if all that goes well, then I can definitely see myself homeschooling the twins as well when they reach the age of schooling. Boy turned 2 this past October, Girl is about to be 1 next month and the twins are due in July! So… I have absolutely no idea how I am going to get it all done. But I do want to homeschool them. We’ll just have to see what the future brings.
I know my hands are going to be full, but being the one who teaches these little’s and helps them learn means the world to me. Being able to see their faces firsthand when things click, when they finally get something they’ve been working towards, or when they solve a puzzle that’s been bugging them, these are the kinds of things that I want to be the one to see, not just told about it when they get home in the afternoon.
If you have any recommendations for homeschooling in the UK please let me know. (Christian based ideally) Or if you know of an international Christian based homeschooling curriculum, please reach out to me.
Thank you so much for stopping by this week,
Victoria