Last week, I attended an online Homeschooling orientation. It was done thru Zoom. This was actually the second online seminar I attended in zoom and it was actually fun. It has an easy-to-use interface that allows semi-technophobes like me to navigate with ease. Anyways, I'm not here to talk about zoom. I just wanted to share a couple of things I found out and learned in that orientation/seminar.
First is that I realized that I may be putting too much pressure on myself with regard to educating my daughter. Way too much pressure than it should be. I found out that I may have been following a curriculum designed for kindergarten when my daughter's age is supposed to be learning pre-school stuff this schoolyear. All these time, I thought that I will be enrolling her to a homeschool provider and that she will be enrolled as a kindergarten student.
The good thing though is that she now knows stuff that a kindergartener should know like writing letters, reading simple sentences and phrases. She now also "craves" study time.
Eversince I found out that the curriculum we were following is a little to ahead, I started to lessen our study time. Now she feels bad/sad when we "forget" our study time The not so good thing though is that I may have put too much pressure on her at an early age. Truly, our line of thinking as a parent directly impacts our children.
During the orientation, they explained the different kinds of learners. Those that learn through listening, seeing, touching, feeling, or doing. I knew that my daughter is a visual learner. I myself am also a visual learner. But I also found out that she is also a tactile learner. Tactile learners based on the word tactile learn more through their touch.
I didn't know this before. But I did notice that my daughter likes having a stick in her hand to point to the words that she reads. She also loved the plackards I made for her when we studied about the days of the week.
All these while, my daughter has been showing me signs how she would learn best. Even though I gave in to some of her "whims" during our study time, it would have been even more effective had I known about this kind of learner type.
The lesson plans I made for her were too focused on seated learning. Meaning we would sit in her study table, she would write the letters, (we are at letter S now, by the way) read the words, phrases and sentences, color some pictures on her workbook, trace some numbers and that's it.
After the orientation, I redesigned my lesson plan and employed some more help of visuals and cards. The first lesson we had after that seminar was about "fast" and "slow". She knows the meanings of those words already but this time, I taught her how to read them.
One of the tips given to us was to incorporate play in the learning. I have given her some playtime lessons like the game "touch the color." It enhances her motor skills, and makes her explore the surroundings this gives her exercise for her bones, muscles and her eyes.
This time, our reading time also included playtime. I would flash the words "fast" or "slow" and she would run accross the hall according to what she read. And it's highly effective.
I almost made her dread reading. I am thankful to have attended that seminar. They even recommended books that we could buy for her pre-school learning. And I am quite relieved now that I know I don't have to enroll her yet. That means we have more time to save morw money for her schooling. And that means we still have more time to practice relaxed homeschooling style.
If you are new to homeschooling like me, I would recommend that you browse the net for any support groups you can find that will help you with your homeschooling journey.