Preschool at Home {A Naturally Enriched Learning Environment}
There is a lovely (so I’ve heard) little Christian preschool here in Tiny Town that is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from our front door. Handy, right? Except that we have chosen to not send our children to preschool at all.
It’s not that I think there’s anything terribly wrong with preschool (especially having heard such great things about this one). Nonetheless, we have chosen to do these preschool years at home.
I strongly believe that young children can learn everything they need to know simply from participating in life within a loving and caring family. In fact, I believe that young children actually benefit more from staying at home to play than they do in a formalized learning environment. I would worry that sending my child to school (even part-time) might set up a dichotomy between “learning time” and “non-learning time”, which I believe would be a disservice to him.
Currently my firstborn is 3.5 years old. He could have started preschool last September, but instead he is at home. If you peeked into our lives on any given day, you would not find letter and number worksheets, nor educational toys or carefully researched lesson planning.
Instead you’d probably see him running around in his underwear (he’s in an anti-pants stage…) imagining and acting out fairly elaborate scenarios with his trains, cars, and dump trucks. He’s a kid that builds an awesome block tower, covers every square inch of his paper with paint, and throughly enjoys digging in dirt and sand. He showed a small interest in drawing and colouring six months ago and recently he drew his first person, quickly followed by an airplane, a train, and now letters of the alphabet. He will sit still for as long as someone is willing to read to him, and loves books of all kinds. He is demonstrates empathy and care for others in his interactions with others.
I’ve written before about our attraction towards Interest-Led Learning (Unschooling), and I think that now is the perfect time to lay that foundation for my children. If you think about it – just in our daily life he is exposed to any academic subject that you can think of, including the following:
- Reading
- Art
- Music
- Mathematics
- Imaginative Play
- Physical Activity
- Life Skills
- Nature Studies
- Social Studies
- Science
- Writing & Story-Telling
- History
- Ethics & Philosophy
- Religion & Christian History
I plan to do a series of posts outlining some of the ways that he is learning these subjects intrinsically in the rhythm and flow of life. Some are more obvious than others, but I plan to also share some of my ideas for how I will expose him to these things in a variety of ways.
Do you send your kids to preschool? What kind of educational philosophy resonates most with you?
Love this article. I have been working on a few posts about what we do for preschool and doing some research tonight after I heard an NPR story about “enriched learning environments” so this popped up. It sounds like a great start. I just put up a list of preschool resources you might find helpful, though your little one is 4.5 now. So much fun these preschool years!
http://www.thehomeschoolexperiment.com/my-favorite-preschool-resources/
Love this philosophy, but when you have a kid who is anti-toy and would rather “play” under the kitchen sink or with daddy’s thumb wrench… directed play sounds fabulous, and with another baby at home I cannot wait until September when he is three and and go play in a safe environment as giving him attention 24/7 is nothing short of exhausting
It can definitely be exhausting, it’s true. We’ve worked hard to help our kids learn how to play on their own. We don’t always play with them when they want us to (though it’s important that we do sometimes!), and they have gotten quite good at entertaining themselves. I think it’s actually helped my 3.5 year-old’s imagination soar. He now can play on his own for several hours at a time. I also don’t mind if they don’t play with “toys”… in fact their favourite things are the random household items that they can pretend with – like a string, non-breakable kitchen items, shoes, a box, dirt outside, etc. etc. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Yes, yes, YES! No child without severe disabilities should need constant attention. The best toys do not have a logo or cutesy character. Imaginative play is how a child learns about the grown up world and about themselves. Directed play is how to keep children from being inconvenient, by teaching them to be obedient, indiscriminate followers. Preschool is for children who have not learned anything from their elders, so they can learn what to think, but not how to think.
We even have a preparatory school before preschool here. They had a segment about it on TV. It is to teach children, as a group, how to hold a marker and, as an entirely separate activity, how to cut paper with safety scissors. Most of the kids had no clue. None. All the mom’s, fresh from the salon, were beaming for the camera because they had paid a lot of money for this, even though the child next to them was trying to cut paper with their forefinger and baby finger through the scissor handles. I thought it was heartbreakingly tragic.
And it explained why I had to teach my five year old readers what red was when we started homeschooling with the provincial distance education system. We did what I thought was important to demonstrate the concepts were understood in about two to three hours, four days a week, then did hands on learning.
The last finishes formal schooling this coming year. One participates in an online 50,000 word novel writing event every November, self taught enough Japanese to watch the news broadcasts about the earthquakes and tsunami on Japanese TV and is now learning Spanish and Swedish. The other makes Byzantine jewellery, reads history and philosophy, and is learning Russian. None of that was directed from anywhere but within. Was it exhausting? For a while. Was it worth it?
I’d jump at the chance to re-live every. single. second.
By the way, be prepared for a LOT of criticism about your home-taught child’s perceived lack of socialization. Socialization, in this context is about getting along with people who dress, think, and look like you. It does not include the little old man down the street, the very young child next door, the middle aged woman who works at the grocery store, or the kid with the speech impediment at the library. “Eeew, who goes to the library….”
I completely agree. I did not send my youngest or eldest ( well I did but it traumatized her forever! So we pulled her out a month in.) My middle BEGGED to go and he thrived ( he has Aspergers and I think it was good for him to interact at an early age) But I do believe home (if possible) is best ( if it is a loving, generally stable home.) I send my kids to Kindergarten simply because they were my best memories and I also want my children to see the difference between educational systems and home. I like being able to say “you tried school and liked it but you like home even more.” They always choose home because of the lack of schedule and pressure. So I like contrasting but I see your point about never putting that “learning time vs unlearning time.” That, luckily can be undone a bit earlier on but it is a true enough fact. I love the unlearning approach. I love having all three of my children home to great the day with me every day, to hear them play and play and play and grow and imagine and BE without any influences telling them what to be or how to bully. It’s perfect I think and I see their souls in their eyes a lot more…
It’s so great that you were able to know and meet your children’s needs as individuals first and foremost! Love that.
Oh yay! I’m so excited for this series! My daughter will be 3 this summer and we share many of the same philosophies as you describe here. Can’t wait to hear more! (And I’m sure it will provide me with much-needed virtual support for all the “you’re not sending her to preschool????” questions I’m facing!)
Yeah, those questions can be hard to answer! I think as I write this stuff out I will just be able to say “go read my blog”, lol!