Welcome to this week's Mindset Session. This is an exciting week. You guys have covered so much.
- We've already gotten to the letter L in the alphabet.
- Your child is likely counting very high up, perhaps even all the way to 100.
- We've covered a wide range of fine motor skills and social-emotional skills.
- Your child has engaged with concepts ranging from science to history to art.
- They're learning about themselves, they're learning about the world.
You have accomplished a great deal so far. I want to take a moment to congratulate you on that. Take a moment to acknowledge that. Congratulate your child, congratulate yourself, and give yourself a pat on the back. It's not easy, but you've come so far and accomplished so much.
It's a good time to look back and reflect on that and see how much you have done in a short amount of time, no matter where you're at with the objectives, whether you are right on track for this point, or whether you need to take a little bit of additional time with some of them.
The importance of tracking progress
You should, if you haven't already, come up with your own system for documenting all the learning that your child is doing, which can seem very overwhelming, especially at this age, because learning moments aren't necessarily stereotypical. Sometimes it's just that you've had a great conversation in the car. Maybe your child has asked you a question about rainbows, and you googled some information about it, and you guys had a little chat about it in the car or something.
Well, that's a real learning moment. And so, you should try to come up with a system that works for you, whether it's digital or on paper, to record those little moments that happen throughout the day that you might otherwise forget.
If you don't record them, you do forget about them. And then you don't always have that opportunity to look back and recognize all of the learning that your child is actually doing. It's really important for motivation, not only for you but also so that you can see how much your child is growing.
We watch them grow on a day-to-day basis, and sometimes it's hard to recognize just how much they are learning as they progress. So, you can sit down at the end of the day and journal about what happened that day, or you can use the voice recorder on your phone to take little notes of these moments as they happen.
Meet your child where they’re at
So, going back to my comment about whether you have checked off all the boxes, I often discuss that and how it's really not about checking off our to-do list every day. It's about engaging with your child and progressing from where they are, building a learning relationship with them.
At any age, but especially when children are very young, there is a wide range of what is considered developmentally appropriate or on track, particularly in certain categories of activities, such as fine motor skills or social-emotional learning.
There may be children who seem to be far ahead of their peers in these areas, yet they're both developmentally on track. I encourage you to think on that a moment, acknowledge that, and just check in with yourself and make sure that you're not necessarily comparing your child to any other child, whether it's your friend's child, your other children, the child you were at that age, or even your own sort of expectations for where your child would be at.
And just to have a moment to reset and recognize that they need to be met where they are. It doesn't matter if they're not counting to 100 yet or if they haven't mastered all of the letter sounds. The point is to really get to know your child, to get to know where they are in the learning process, and to go and meet them exactly where they're at and help them to progress from that point because it ultimately doesn't matter very much if they don't check off all the boxes. It's okay. Let’s understand where are they actually at and how we can help them get to the next step.
Consider taking a break from the curriculum
You might also, at this point, be feeling a little bit burned out. Perhaps the routine is getting a bit dull for you and your child, so don't hesitate to mix it up. Sometimes, no matter how well my schedule or my routine works, I get tired of it, and my children do too.
And sometimes it's just a matter of reshuffling your schedule and making some adjustments to really freshen your mindset about your day. If things are getting a little tedious and you're encountering some resistance to the learning activities, consider adjusting your schedule or taking a break for a week or two.
This is almost midway through our homeschool preschool curriculum, so it's a good time to pause and take a breather if needed. Maybe you've been letting some other tasks go by the wayside because you've been spending more time on learning activities with your child.
Perhaps you need to take a week or so off to catch up on those things and feel refreshed, or you can let your child do the same.
This is a wonderful time to pause if you need to and assess that you'll likely return from that stronger and better than ever, ready to blaze forward, and your child will probably do the same. Consider taking a brief break at this time if that works for you.
And I think that's about it for this week. I hope that you enjoy the learning objectives we have planned. Again, if your child has reached that milestone of counting to 100, maybe consider a little celebration for them. It could be as simple as a cookie or just calling grandma to tell them about the accomplishment. It's a wonderful thing to celebrate and usually a big deal for a small child. So, congratulations on everything you've done so far, no matter where you are. We'll see you next week.