All in This Together – Keeping up with Learning At Home
Ok mamas, daddies, caregivers…whoever you are to a precious little child who’s world has been completely changed for the time being – let’s all take a moment to breathe. Maybe these pretty flowers will help:
Did you do it? Are you breathing yet? I hope so! Why is this important? Because right now, many of us are running a different sort of marathon as caregivers than we typically do. I’ll spare us all the details about what I mean exactly, because literally every reader of this post is probably doing the same thing – trying to juggle all of the balls of parenting, working, and supporting our children’s education in ways that we have never done before. Shout-out to all of the teachers – I pray for the day you are paid what you deserve for educating our future leaders.
Like many, my older two children (8 and 6) are currently engaged in distance learning from home. We are so grateful for the work their teachers have done to make learning continue without physically being in the classroom. For the most part, we’re managing o.k. Some days are harder than others (let’s be honest, focusing can be challenging for all humans, no matter how old you are). Overall, I’m grateful that there is a little time in the morning to add things to their weekday schedules, like morning devotions and time at the breakfast table as a family. I’m counting every blessing right now, that’s for sure, and I won’t take for granted the time that I’ve been given to spend with them on weekdays, when I typically only see them in the hurry of the morning and the hustle of the evening after work.
For our two older daughters, we’ve pretty much settled them into the following routine:
- Wake up, get dressed as if they are physically going to class (yup, uniforms and all!)
- Breakfast/morning devotions and praise and worship music (they love dancing to this song every morning!)
- Start school work – Each child has their own Chromebook. They each have two daily Zoom meetings and they complete their assignments in between each meeting. We keep them in separate rooms as much as possible so that they’ll focus better. Our 6-year-old works in my husband’s office space since she needs a little more support throughout the day.
Of course there are daily lunch breaks as well as outside time sprinkled throughout this schedule.
In addition to supporting our older two with their schoolwork, we are also working as best as we can to support our younger two children (2 and 4). With our 4-year-old being home-bound (at least for the time being) for the final stretch of preschool, we’re working to ensure learning continues for both her and our 2-year-old as well. What does this mean for us? Well, we’ve been combing through the internet to find the best tools we possibly can to offer them a rich preschool curriculum from home. They sit with me in the kitchen and do their “work” while I’m “at work.” They’re working through workbooks, counting bears and math cubes, practicing their alphabet and phonics skills via sandpaper letters (thank you Montessori for this practice – it’s genius!), and practicing their handwriting via workbooks as well as old fashioned pencil and paper. We’re doing the “movable alphabet,” watching some educational videos (brilliant when we need them to chill for a moment during conference calls), and exploring nature in our backyard garden. We’re planning themed lessons for the week, whenever possible, but in the spirit of letting the child lead their learning experience (again, thank you Montessori for this lesson!), sometimes they’d rather just color and all of the day’s plans (or at least some of them) get moved to the next day.
I’m going to share a few resources below that are helping us navigate our current journey, especially for the younger ones for whom we’re having to create some sense of structure. I have no background in early childhood education, but I can tell you that I’ve been a child before, and I am currently raising four tiny humans that teach me something new everyday. Most importantly, they teach me that teaching them works best when we offer ourselves, and them, as much grace as possible as we work through this time together.
Setup
One of the things I love most about early childhood classrooms is that everything has a place. Shelves of “work” invite children to choose activities that are fun and stimulate their brains, often through play. Here’s a quick snapshot of how we organize the main “work” of the day for our 2 and 4-year-old.
Most days these activities stay the same, adding on extra activities if we are working through a new domain/theme for the week. I invite them to choose something off of the shelf to work on and explain the activity to them. At this point, they’ve kind of figured out what to do with each activity on their own, which is fun to watch. Below are some of the activities, with explanations of what they are.
Sandpaper Letters
Sandpaper letters are a Montessori inspired activity for children that teaches them the alphabet by learning the sounds of letters instead the letter itself. It might seem like an odd way to learn the alphabet, but this is actually pretty genius because when kids learn how to read, they need to know how a letter sounds phonetically. With two fingers, a child practicing with sandpaper letters traces the letters and, with guidance as needed, are taught to share the name of the letter phonetically with you. It’s really cool to watch, and the sensory element of touching the letter sends a connection to their brain that might actually help them learn how to write the letter easier when that time comes. Sandpaper letters can get pretty pricey, so I went to Michaels and purchased supplies to make some instead using sand (check out the wedding aisle for the sand), glue, and cardstock. The vowels are on blue paper, while the consonants are red. All of the letters are lowercase. There are lots of great videos on YouTube that you can take a peek at if you want to see a sandpaper letter lesson in action.
Our 2-year-old is having a great time with these. The key is to only introduce a few letters at a time (no more than 4 or so), and each day we review all of the ones she knows before we add more to her lesson. We are also reviewing these with our 4-year-old, being sure that she has mastered letter sounds since we are starting to work with her on reading.
Writing Practice
To help our 4-year-old practice writing, we’ve been working through My First School Book from the Learning Without Tears company. Ideally this will give her more confidence with writing her letters more neatly, as well is in the right direction. When she has no interest in working through this book (yup, there are those days), we simply give her a blank sheet of paper and encourage her to write her ABCs all the way through, correcting any backwards letters or mistakes after she has a chance to give it a try. We also have a whiteboard easel in the kitchen for her to work on letters as she desires (because, who knew, switching up the work medium makes her more engaged in her learning and breaks up the monotony of doing the same thing everyday…She’s definitely her mother’s child 😊).
Sensory Work and Pincer Grasp Development
Want to keep a kid, whether they’re age 2 or 4, busy for at least 30 – 45 minutes? Given them a container of rice or beans and have them transfer each bean or rice grain from one container, to another, using kiddie chopsticks or something similar. This helps them with developing their pincer grasp, working out those little fingers to be prepared for writing when the time comes. When they get bored with this activity (and they will, it’ll take them a while to complete it, especially if you tell them to fill up a whole jar), they’ll just start playing with the rice/beans. That’s okay too! Bury some objects in the rice and have them dig them out (especially good for a 2/3 year old). For a 4-year-old, have him/her sort out all of the beans from the rice, because that’s how it’s supposed to be – and by now, if you have two kids “working” side-by-side, they’ve probably decided to combine their “work” and now you have an uncooked protein/grain side-dish waiting to be separated (since you’re not actually cooking these 😊).
Counting Bears/MathLink Cubes/Brain Flakes
Do you remember any of these from grade school? I do (sans the Brain Flakes…I think those are a little newer)! These are wonderful, and we ordered a set of each to keep in the house for all of the kids. They’re helpful for teaching colors, learning what a number looks like in terms of quantity, learning addition/subtraction…Get creative and let the kids do the same! Our 4-year-old enjoys making numbers 1 – 10 with these, using a different color for each number. She has done something very similar with Brain Flakes, and will often use a magnetic number to match with the number of objects she has laid out. All of the kids enjoy using these, and they’re even helpful for explaining math problems to our 6 and 8-year-old. Whether they build with them, count them, organize them by color (thinking about our 2-year-old with that one), there’s educational fun to be had by all with these (including myself with the Brain Flakes…they’re pretty awesome 😊).
Puzzles and Pattern Activities
No explanation needed. They come in a variety of themes. We are big fans of wooden ones for the little kiddos, like the ones from Melissa & Doug, and have lots of others they can choose from as well. Here’s a peek at a few of our favorites.
Bead and String Activities
These also help with developing a child’s fine motor skills. Big beads are great for smaller hands (the 2-year-old) and smaller beads and string are great for our 4-year-old. They think they’re just making necklaces, we’re actually teaching them patterns and developing the muscles in their fingers 😊.
Art
Crayons, colored pencils, washable markers, finger paints, dot art paint, food coloring…let the kids get creative! Grab some coloring books and let them go to town, choosing pages on their own to color. Better yet, if your kids are like ours, they often prefer to just have plain paper to make their own creations. We purchased some thick white card-stock for coloring, as well as a roll of larger activity paper to offer them a bigger canvas for their creations, as needed. We spotted a fun activity online recently where they encouraged you to use food coloring on paper outside and watch how your designs change in the rain. The kids had a blast with this!
Felt Fabric- For all Types of Fun!
Get yourself a stack of colorful felt from your local craft store and keep it around. It’s useful for art projects, as well as for cutting out objects/parts for “domain” or themed lessons. Take a peek at this plant part identification activity we created for our 2 and 4-year-old during our “Parts of the Plant” domain. They loved it, and the older ones even had fun putting the pieces together after they completed their normal school work.
Alpha and Numeric Magnets
Everyone knows about these. They’re great to have around for a variety of reasons. We’ve been using the letters for working on the “movable alphabet” with our 4-year-old. In this exercise, we choose a sound group (think, three letter words that have the letter “a” in the middle) and give her objects that she then has to lay out and spell their names using the magnets. Below is a photo that explains this a little better.
Domain/Themed Worksheets
There are a ton of resources on the web, some free and some that require a small payment to download, for teaching specific themes to kids. With a little Google searching, you’ll find that sites like Teachers-Pay-Teachers and others will offer you age-appropriate worksheets for teaching certain domain areas to your kids.
Books
Libraries, if open, are full of great resources. If you can’t get to a library, pick a topic and search Amazon/your local book store to find resources to expand your home library. There has never been a better time to grow the home library and broaden the topics of the books on the shelf. Don’t forget that many libraries also have free eBook resources too, in case you aren’t able to check out books in person.
YouTube/Educational DVDs and Videos
Yup, dropping these right here too. Thinking about teaching a certain theme to your kids, in addition to their typical math/reading/writing skills? YouTube has lots of age-appropriate videos that are great for helping explore various subjects with children. We’ve also ordered a few DVD sets for the kids to watch that are academic in nature. These come in handy during work conference calls, for sure!
The Kitchen
Your kitchen is a great place for kids to learn fractions, life skills (like how to set a table and manners), and so much more! The kids explored our pantry when learning about the food groups and our 6-year-old literally just used a plastic knife to cut up a broccoli stalk recently (she was determined to help cut something). Invite them into the kitchen with you – they’ll learn a lot by “watching” and “doing.”
Other Parents/Social Media
See a mama/daddy/caregiver on social media doing something cool with their kids? Reach out to them! This time is tough for everyone, and I think the more we can collaborate, the better off we’ll all be. I’m seeing Montessori inspired shelves popping up on my social media feeds, amazing themed week ideas, cool sensory bin ideas…all kinds of inspirational posts! I know a mama who is incorporating Black History facts into her daily lessons and is doing an amazing job with planning her lessons at least a couple of weeks out. Let’s keep each other inspired and uplifted, ya’ll! For those who I’ve reached out to already, thanks for sharing with me. It takes a village…
Ok, I think that’s enough for now (and this post is all kinds of long). I hope that something I’ve listed is helpful. Do you have some resources that might be helpful during this time? Share away below! Hang in there ya’ll. These days can be challenging, but I pray that you’ll find that the sweetness of the gift of extra time with your kiddos encourages you and makes it all worth it ❤️️.
