When Homeschooled Preschoolers Are Causing Mayhem: A Gift Guide
And a review of a new homeschooling book, Monica Swanson's "Becoming Homeschoolers."
Dear Friends,
I have two homeschool-related pieces to share today, and then some questions for you.
FIRST:
Do you need to know what to do with your preschoolers during homeschooling? Or how to help a homeschooling family with young children?
Look no further. I have a guide full of gifts and tips over at the Arena today, plus some thoughts on homeschooling preschool in general. Read here:
“Gift guide: What to give homeschooling parents whose preschoolers are causing mayhem”
**Note: I wished I had suggested buying kid scissors to go with the tape book...it makes the activity useable and fun even if the kid has trouble tearing the tape!**
SECOND:
I also have a review of a new book on homeschooling by veteran homeschooling parent and blogger, Monica Swanson, up at Current today. It’s highly practical — if you’re interested in how homeschooling works (or need some ideas), you may want to take a look:
“A Manual for Homeschooling”
FINALLY:
There has been some significant discussion in the comments of a couple of my recent posts about how to handle homeschooling young children, kids ages 3-7 or so. Preschool was of particular interest, as was the age of beginning formal reading instruction (beyond singing the ABC song, in other words).
So I thought I would ask you:
- Do you find that young children benefit from formal academics?
- What has worked for you with young children, whether homeschooled or not? What do you think they need most?
- Have you had experience with early reading, late reading, or reading that ended up needing specialized intervention (tutors, therapists, etc.)? What was your experience?
Warmly,
I NEED THIS MORE THAN I CAN SAY! 🤪
I'll read more later but I wanted to drop this - someone told me to pursue what your kid is interested in, because it's easy to learn the things you're interested in and it requires a lot of discipline to learn things you're not interested in. That's been going really well for my almost 4yo. We spent a couple weeks binging on phonetic matching (matching picture cards and letter cards) and then she lost interested, so I didn't push it. Then we talked about traffic lights for a week.
The thing is, I know that at some point she will have to buckle down and study things she doesn't especially care about, or that aren't her strong suits, because that's just how life goes. Am I going to know when it's time to push / enforce? I'm worried that I'll get to eighth grade and be like "eh, well, if you don't feel like reading anything at all, that's fine. Let's make cookies" (which is what I do now). When does that transition happen? Will I know?