The way children learn like little sponges, in formation goes in, sinks in real deep, and then POP! Out of their mouth comes something truely fantastic. Like at the beach trip we went to recently, the lady running the session asked the children what they thought the might find on the beach, fish, stones, shells, debris, crabs.
And then pop! T hears crabs and starts telling everyone about hermit crabs, at the age of almost five. While I'm stood there wracking my brains thinking when did we learn about those?! He taught me something that day!
Today was a pretty uneventful day, I needed to catch up on laundry, and yet, it had snippets of education through really fun things.
Lesson 1: I set T a challenge to build me a tower of bricks that made a red blue red blue pattern. Sequencing, boom. POP! Let's count them! Maths boom.
Lesson 2: T was getting dressed and suggested that we play a game of camouflage. POP! I didn't even know he knew what camouflage was?! He picked out a tshirt and we had to find things around the house the same colour to make it camouflage before he put it on. Ok sounds fun. :) it was. We learnt about shades of colour. Matching. Boom.
Lesson 3: Writing practice, while I was on the phone in a strange chalk board book, T wrote some words. Doesn't sound like much but he did all by himself, no prompting, no practise, no copying, just POP! Straight out his head. (We haven't pushed reading and writing because we want him to find a love of it and forcing him to read or write with no purpose isn't anyone's idea of fun, yet he can actually read a fair few words and is beggining to have lovely handwriting)
Lesson 4: Road safety, we walked to the shop, but T wanted to take his scooter, we live in the sticks where for half of the walk to the shop there is no pavement, T graciously accepted it was too dangerous to use his scooter on the road and waited for the pavement, even then when crossing smaller junctions he got off without being asked and carried his scooter himself across the road. POP! Road safety boom!
They are just small examples of our day where we did 'nothing' educational. Learning doesn't just happen at school. Learning opportunities are everywhere for a child, in all things. And on days where I feel like we aren't 'learning' I need to remind myself of this: wait for the POP!
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