by Harriet Hairston
My son doesn’t go to day care. Since my husband works nights, he stays home all day with Daddy, then we tag team and I take over for the evening. Needless to say, teaching my son basic age appropriate concepts like shapes, colors, numbers and the like is a huge concern for me. Every chance I get, I’m pulling out the crayons, books, paper, puzzles and blocks.
Two weeks ago, I found a great resource called School Zone for preschool. It came with a CD ROM to download learning games onto the computer. I sat my son at the computer and we went through each challenge, starting with numbers, then shapes, then colors, then basic words. Although these are things I had been teaching him, I didn’t have a gauge as to whether or not he was retaining the information. Imagine my delight as my son breezed through each challenge as if to say, “Come on, Mom…don’t underestimate my potential.” The only thing he had trouble with were descriptive words, which I’ve been paying particularly close attention to since purchasing the CD ROM.
Needless to say, this three going on four year old has me impressed. So I purchased the Kingergarten level of School Zone and downloaded it onto the computer. With the exception of being able to make the connection between a letter and a picture, he breezed through that as well! Next week I think I’ll get the first grade math and phonics book to keep the challenges coming.
It’s important that we challenge both ourselves and our children to protect our skills from atrophy. I underestimated my son in many respects, and I have accepted the challenge to continue building both his vocabulary and his desire to learn more and more. His little baby face fooled me, but you’d better believe I’ve upped the ante when it comes to challenging him. So far, he’s facing every challenge I’ve given him dead on. I don’t think anything will be impossible for someone with such a thirst for doing what doesn’t come easy to him.
BMWK, how do you challenge your children? What kinds of exercises do you employ to ensure they will become the brilliant individuals they were destined to be?
God bless!
~ Harriet
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve always thought about how we challenge our youth so much at the early ages and then dwindle off considerably as they get older.
good stuff HH. Have you seen him be interested in a certain ’subject/topic’ yet?
you know what?
Mama used to
Clothe me
With appreciation
Tummy Tickles and
Flood me
With high fives
Even though my high five
Was a low five
For her
Letters and numbers a breeze
look mom!
I can read!
Take Tim’s truck toward the tweed
We smiled and laughed
.
.
Now she only says good job
And subjects change
I knew times different would come
Just now…
learning as aint fun
sigh
KARMA!!!! Just last night my 3 year old going on 4 year year old was sitting on the couch with me (while I was watching Mya on “Dancing With The Stars”)counting to 20 and saying his ABC’s!!! Then all of a sudden he started counting backwards TOO MY SUPRISE!!!!!!!!!! Then he goes to the kitchen to tell me what time it was, looking at the digital clock on the stove!!!!!!!!! He said it’s 8 3 3 (8:33), I can’t wait until Xmas, because I plan to purchase play toys as well as educational toys!!!!!!
We really do underestimate them!!!!
Staycee2 said:
KARMA!!!! Just last night my 3 year old going on 4 year year old was sitting on the couch with me (while I was watching Mya on “Dancing With The Stars”)counting to 20 and saying his ABC’s!!! Then all of a sudden he started counting backwards TOO MY SUPRISE!!!!!!!!!! Then he goes to the kitchen to tell me what time it was, looking at the digital clock on the stove!!!!!!!!! He said it’s 8 3 3 (8:33), I can’t wait until Xmas, because I plan to purchase play toys as well as educational toys!!!!!!
We really do underestimate them!!!!
~~~~~~~~~~
King James thanks. We do get tired and forget what our encouragement use to be. We know kids are sponges. I want to buy my granddaughter on the way “My baby can read” CD’s, am I pushing it. Kids these days are tv smart, music smart and dance smart because of too much cable. I don’t want my granddaughter to know the words and sing along to “birthday sex”. I don’t even know the song but my youngest told me that little ones are singing “birthday checks”. Still not a good look to me but it could be worse.
This is a great post and I must admit that I have under estimated all of my 4 kids at one point in time when they were toddlers. My three year is currently in daycare and I had no idea that she new her Months until she sang them for me. I was like wow. She just moved to the 3 year old class in August and I had no idea all of the wonderful things she learned in that short time. Now when our 7 year old does her homework, our 3 year is also at the table doing homework too.
With my older kids I continue to challenge them. Especially when the teachers are not challenging them or holding them up to higher standards. With my teenager, I often get things like the teacher does not care about spelling or grammer or neatness…but I always tell him that I care about the quality even if the teacher does not. I make him re-write his homework if if is sloppy and I make him do his math problems without the calculator even though he says the teacher allows it.