Do you draw three children away from their play to ensure you do some 'real learning' ahem?
They all worked cooperatively on this parking garage, come road mat. All 3 of them together, it was a lovely to sit back and listen and to sneak a peek every now and then.
What would you do?
9 comments:
Let 'em be at my house :) There is time for school work later. Someday they won't care about paper and cardboard and all that creating.
I am glad I am not homeschooling - it would be a toughie for me. Now I can just enjoy the moments when daughter contentedly plays - by herself or with friends.
That is a dilemma! We had some math activities planned today and none of it happened because the weather was so beautiful and it has been such a long winter and Matthew just HAD to go outside! But he fed a chipmunk, "mowed" the lawn, dug in the dirt a lot, watched birds, swung, and was happy. I knew it was best to just let him have his time out there, but I was tormenting myself the whole time with thoughts of all those nicely laid plans that never happened!
Let them be. Those moments of bonding, sharing, and working together teach them more then any formal lesson could. Plus there is almost tomorrow for lessons, better to live in the moment. :)
My girls do a LOT of creative playing together. I try not to have to disturb them, if I can. I always let them know if an activity that we've planned to do is coming up soon, so they can come to a stopping place in their playing. We try to balance everything, but sometimes it's hard.
Well, we're Natural Learners over here, so it is all time well spent. You never know what children are really learning in any given moment. Enforcing a moment of "schooly" teaching doesn't necessarily result in learning. And many studies say that children learn best either through play or because of playtime (even as down time). Besides team work, getting along, and cooperation are very important life skills!
I think it depends on the age of your kids. For younger kids, I would let them be and wait until they ask for things to do. Play is so important because it creates initiative and in your case, cooperation. For older children, they might need to get more school work done. Great thing about homeschooling is they still have time for other things since they are not staying up at night doing their homework.
I wouldn't interrupt them. I'd much rather have memories of working and playing together than lessons with mom.
My kids are pretty creative in their play too. I almost always have to drag them away from creative play time to get *my* version of schoolwork done. This means that we don't really "start" school until late morning or even after lunch. But if I don't get a certain amount of "the basics" done most days I start to stress internally. For us and the age of our kids, our "basics" are math, spelling/writing, independent reading and music (and often our current unit studies as well). I've seen such tremendous progress with that consistent "10 or 15 minutes of...fill in the blank" that I do interrupt their play when the time comes. (Okay, unless it's something super cool like the road map/parking garage set your kids created!!)
~Liesl
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