Last week my homeschooling course consisted of a lot of discussion about routine and rhythm.  This was a great exercise, because I got to analyse what we actually do and what I wanted to do, and make some concrete steps towards bridging the gap.

The main thing I realised was that we have a lot of free play.  And that’s great!  We’re looking at three hours of free play on a busy day, i.e. one where we have an activity on for a couple hours in the morning.  I feel really good about that, because while we do have a lot of activities on, that’s still a lot of self-directed play time.  Bella’s great at independent play and that has immediately answered some of my own questions about why that’s the case.

The thing that keeps coming up now is learning.  We’re at the age (21 months, approaching that second birthday) where people start talking about formal learning.  I have friends eagerly teaching numbers, letters, etc.  I’m one of them – every morning I work hard to get our Bengali time in.  But fundamentally, I don’t want our days to be full of lessons. I just want to make sure that Bella has the opportunity to explore activities with certain outcomes.  If she’s not interested, fine, but if she is – well, we’ll never know if we don’t give her the chance first!

What does that really mean?  How do you do this in a child-led way?

farm animal matching

Here’s an example.  Today, after breakfast, we settled into the living room and Bella naturally started playing with the toys on her shelves.  One shelf has her farm animals, and laminated photos of those same animals.  Before we knew it, we were matching the wooden farm animals with their photos.  Object-to-picture matching is one of those pre-numeracy skills, and a fun one for toddlers too.  That’s the reason that Montessori shelves are so popular: it’s the ease of having these lovely invitations to work available for children to choose independently.

After further playtime (which included a tea party with a china set, also on a shelf – not sure if that one can stay out; I worry about it breaking an awful lot!) we headed out to the swimming pool.  And then I spied my second opportunity for a bit of learning. Bella normally demands songs to be sung to her in the car, but I thought I’d try to entertain her in a different way, as I had the opportunity to sit in the backseat while my husband drove.

I introduced these Emotions cards to Bella a couple weeks ago, and she loooooved them.  Most children love seeing photos of other children, and the fun expressions just add to the enjoyment.  Bella has a couple that she’ll copy, and there are a couple others that clearly still thwart her.  It’s a great way to introduce vocabulary, and also discuss those big feelings that toddlers often have.  Bella already says “baby sad” when she’s feeling upset, which is great, but I’d love it if we could work on angry, surprised, etc.

So I brought the cards along, and for 20 minutes we chatted our way through them.  It was a lovely way to spend a car journey, and a great 20 minute so-called learning session that may not have occurred otherwise in our day.

The moments are often there – it’s just a matter of being able to grab them when they come up.