Learning at Home With a Preschooler and Toddler

For us, learning at home looks a lot like hanging out together.  With Bea a very active 4 years old and Claire a busy toddler, my girls aren’t developmentally ready for much sit-down desk work yet.  So we go to the park, spend time at the library, bake cookies, knead bread, can jam, play blocks or restaurant together, build puzzles and read stories.  And amidst all the chaos and open-ended time, learning happens.

Learning at home is a natural, organic process.  I show Bea what shapes letters make, and she points out letter shapes in pretzels and sand patterns and mud puddles.  I sound out words for her as we read and tell her what sounds letters make.  Later, I hear her sounding out her words as she is speaking them, emphasizing and elongating the phonemes.  I slice plums, preparing them for their fate as plum jam.  Beatrice counts and arranges the plum pits while standing on a chair beside me.  I ask her whether she has an odd or even number, and she pairs them all up and finds out.  Meanwhile, Claire toddles around, experimenting with gravity and momentum and nesting objects and discovering her emergent will.

An Unschooled Early Childhood Education

I try to let Beatrice direct a lot of her learning by her enthusiasm for a project or topic.  We have learned a lot about hedgehogs during Bea’s hedgehog phase.  We’ve read books and looked at pictures of hedgehogs, drawn pictures of hedgehogs and pretended to curl up in hedgehog nests together.  Beatrice loves to dress up as a hedgehog whenever possible.  We even met up with another homeschooling family nearby to visit their real, live pet hedgehog.  I’m not sure if we will be unschoolers throughout our homelearning journey, but right now the child-led model is working well for us.

Whenever Beatrice has a question about something, I do my best to answer it for her or help her answer it for herself.  Sometimes that means encouraging her to experiment with the freezer door to find out what makes the light go off when the door closes.  We have used the globe to illustrate why we have seasons or where dad has gone on his business trip.  I try to encourage Beatrice to ask questions by taking her seriously and giving her real answers.

Lifelong Learning

We don’t stop learning once we’re adults, and there is research that shows that children model behaviours they see their parents doing, especially when it comes to things like reading.  (Scholastic, 2006) I want to encourage my children’s learning by taking on new challenges and learning new things myself.  I’m not sure how much my kids notice of my own learning adventures, but I try not to shy away from doing things I’m unfamiliar with.  I want them to see learning as something adults do too, and that not knowing how to do something doesn’t have to be an obstacle, it just means that learning how to get started is the first step.

The challenge in modeling learning myself is finding ways to actually learn and do new things with small kids at home.  I discovered as an adult that my mom was a knitter when I was a little girl.  However, I have no memories of her ever knitting anything.  I do remember watching her bake bread and sew and cook.  She probably pulled out her knitting once we were in bed, and that makes sense.  Knitting with a toddler or preschooler around is not very relaxing.  But for my kids to benefit from watching me struggle with and then master a new skill or gain knowledge, they need to see me do it.  This is something I’m working on.

Homeschooling and Learning Resources We Use

1. The public library – This is the biggest, best, most versatile and affordable homeschooling resource anyone can use.  I love my public library, and we take out lots of books.  I mean, LOTS.  I have stacks and stacks around the house.  We read picture books, Magic Tree House books, non-fiction books, board books, and we even sometimes take out adult non-fiction to look at interesting pictures (Like a copy of Scientific American that had pictures of galaxies on the cover or a book on Earth that was full of high-definition satellite images of the earth’s surface.)

2. Art supplies – We love to do crafts, and I have a cupboard full of bits and pieces of stuff that can be chopped, pasted, ripped, crinkled and glued.  The old standbys are the favourites though, such as pencil crayons, wax crayons, markers, tempera paints and the chalkboard.  I’ve found several great ideas for crafts at No Time for Flash Cards, The Toddler’s Busy Book and The Siblings’ Busy Book.

3. The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading and Bob Books by Scholastic – Initially I started out by doing the early sit-down lessons in The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading with three-year old Beatrice.  She was willing and interested at first, but that interest soon waned and she hated learning the rhymes and sitting still.  So I stopped doing the sit-down lessons with her, and instead I read through the phonics rules to refresh my own memory.  Now I drop in phonics pointers as we are reading or talking and it’s much more fun for everyone.  The Bob Books are boxed sets of simple stories that even very beginning readers can sound out on their own.

4. Getting outdoors – We learn a lot about the natural world by simply getting outdoors and going for hikes.  I picked up a couple of field guides to help myself learn the names and characteristics of the plants in our area, and I’m proud to say I can now tell the difference between a hemlock and a pine tree.  I can identify a huckleberry, and so can Beatrice.  One of the most appealing things about homeschooling is the opportunity to learn alongside my kids, and letting ourselves be inspired by each other’s learning.

5. Playdates with friends – We meet other families for fun, learning how to share, jumping on our neighbour’s trampoline, developing friendships and learning about what is going on in our community.  Yes, that’s right: socialization.

6. Homeschooling Co-ops and Community Centre Classes – As much as I love having lots of open-ended time to think, play and discover at home, right now I also need the structure that organized activities bring to our day.  We participate in some local homeschooling co-op groups, including an all-ages choir, a homeschooling co-op and a preschool homelearners group.  I also usually register Bea for one or two classes through the Community Centre or a local arts program.  Getting out of the house brings us in contact with the world, helps our days go more smoothly, exposes us to new people and ideas, and provides more opportunities to have fun and learn at the same time.

Even if Beatrice was enrolled in preschool this year, we’d still do many of the things we have scheduled for our upcoming homeschool year.  I’d still do crafts with her at home, read library books and answer her questions.  We’d just have less time for field trips, playdates, classes and co-op meetings, and less time to just be together and enjoy open-ended time at home. There is something to learn from life in each day if we can take notice of it, and right now homeschooling lets us make the most of what life has to offer.