by Sarah Major, M.Ed
I vividly remember the schoolroom we had when I was a child growing up in Honduras. The room was full of light; the table was set against a wall with two wide windows and adjacent to another wall that had windows opening onto an enticing view of the yard. The table and bench were painted a soft green and accommodated three of us, each with our own drawer for supplies. The walls were lined with low bookcases filled with all our favorite books.
There was a rocking chair where Mom sat and an easel with a little blackboard on it. I remember it being a very cozy room that was perfect to work in.
In addition to creating a lovely place to do school work, my mom had selected a really solid and comprehensive curriculum to use for teaching her five children. When the boxes arrived from the States, we couldn’t wait to open them. The box contained a manual that made it easy for my mother to make sure all areas were covered as she taught. This was particularly important during those years in which she was teaching four different grades at one time. We kids loved opening our box to find new books, tablets, a ruler, pencils, pink erasers-- all brand new and smelling lovely, ready for us to tuck into our drawers.
In spite of having a lovely room and a great curriculum to use, however, there were still some worms in the apple. I remember at times waiting for Mom to finish with my siblings so she could check my work or give me my next assignment. I also painfully remember laboring over my poorly-done arithmetic paper in order to meet the challenge of fixing all the problems I had missed. Fixing my arithmetic paper usually took up the bulk of my daily school time. It was simply torture for me. I also was not wonderful with spelling. I recall the notebook euphemistically named “My Personal Word List.” This makes it sound like those words were my best friends forever, when in reality, they were the words I’d butchered at some point during spelling tests and which I had to revisit until I could write correctly. While I enjoyed mythology, I really couldn’t stand composition. Writing was torture for me, just like arithmetic was. I understand today that the problems I faced were not due to the room, my teacher, nor the curriculum; the problems could be laid at the door of my own learning needs. Doubtless in homes all across the country are children very similar to how I was.
Any parent who homeschools more than one child likely encounters the same challenges my mother did: the need to teach multiple lessons at once to children with a variety of learning strengths and struggles, while trying to make sure no child has to wait too long for help.
Another common struggle is the need to keep younger children busy and engaged without letting them feel neglected. Often the youngest children demand attention during lesson time, or may want to participate in the activities that occupy their parents and siblings. “I want to learn to read too!” is a frequently heard cry. I personally don’t remember back that far, but I do remember teaching at home as an adult and having little ones crowding around wanting to “do it too!”
Several years back, I homeschooled a small group of children for kindergarten and cared for some younger children at the same time. My agreement with the parents of the preschoolers was that I would include their children as they wanted to join us, but if they lost interest and wanted to play, that would be fine also. At first the 4-year olds, Beau and Adrianna, would hang around our school table curious about what we were doing; they would dabble a bit in the activity, but would soon run away and play. Jeremy, an active three year old, would drop in occasionally when we were learning sight words using the stylized version, but his interest was very limited! I only discovered later just how much he was absorbing.
Over time, however, because we were using visuals, stories, and movement to learn, Beau and Adrianna were drawn to what we were doing and began staying with us for longer and longer periods of time. They were captivated by the images and stories that were vehicles for learning our alphabet and sight words, were drawn to the dot games we played for math, and they truly did love the time of day when we drew pictures and wrote about what we’d drawn. By spring, both children were reading, writing, and doing basic computation in math. Because Beau ended up wanting to stay with us all the time, he was reading on the 2nd grade level by spring.
Adrianna was only with us a couple of days a week, so her achievement was not as advanced as Beau’s, but she was still ahead of the game for kindergarten. Jeremy shocked his mother at home by suddenly being able to read some sight words. This showed me early on that learning truly can be caught even if not taught – depending on the method employed!
Another memory that makes me smile is of three toddlers I cared for who were not talking yet. They played all around us as we taught 3-4 year olds their numbers, sounds, and sight words. I didn’t think they were paying attention to anything the older children were doing! One noon, however, I was cleaning up after lunch and noticed the “triplets” hovering around the stylized numbers we’d posted on the wall. Part of our preschool lessons included singing the number song and doing the body motions that represented each number. Apparently as the toddlers were playing, they had absorbed the learning that was conveyed in the images, the song, and the body motions. Curious, I asked, “Emmy can you find 7?” Without hesitation, Emmy toddled over to the stylized image of the 7 and pointed happily. I asked all three children to find different numbers and they found each one without hesitation. These children had learned to recognize numbers and couldn’t even say them yet!
I’ve written so frequently about how natural it is for young children to learn via images and movement, and these instances of young children learning “school aged” material bears witness to this fact. Teaching with rhythm and song, with images embedded in the learning, with body movement all make learning effortless for young children. When I compare learning this way to how I learned when I started out I groan a bit inside. I was not only a young child, but I was unbeknownst to anyone, a strongly visual learner, a global thinker, and also a tactile learner. I was everything that made traditional lessons hard for me. So while I was drawn to the school room and still have warm feelings about the room, those memories war with my actual experiences with school itself.
I feel reasonably sure that had my mother had access to stylized letters and words, had her curriculum provided for visuals, stories, jingles, and hands-on experiences for learning, both she and I would have anticipated school each day with happiness. As it was, each time she got busy teaching my older sibs, I took the opportunity to escape to the outdoors where I could make little gardens, build little playhouses, make mud pies, and climb trees. My poor longsuffering mother patiently would search me out and bring me back to the school room to work some more. It just recently occurred to me that I was probably not the only one suffering through school!
There is no doubt that teaching multiple children at one time is a challenge. Many of you have perfected a system that allows you to teach more than one child at a time. Many of you have become masters of caring for the home and the youngest children while still teaching your school aged children’s lessons. It would be fun, however, to experiment with teaching our school aged children using visuals, stories, and motions and just see how much difference it makes for our visual-spatial learners, and to see just how far our toddlers can go without our even trying to teach them anything. We would keep them busy and they would learn all at the same time we’re teaching the older children.
While I wait for this experiment to begin, I’m going to proceed to my next task while humming to myself “One is a thin man standing up straight. Two is a fishing hook ready for bait. Three is a….”
I vividly remember the schoolroom we had when I was a child growing up in Honduras. The room was full of light; the table was set against a wall with two wide windows and adjacent to another wall that had windows opening onto an enticing view of the yard. The table and bench were painted a soft green and accommodated three of us, each with our own drawer for supplies. The walls were lined with low bookcases filled with all our favorite books.
There was a rocking chair where Mom sat and an easel with a little blackboard on it. I remember it being a very cozy room that was perfect to work in.
In addition to creating a lovely place to do school work, my mom had selected a really solid and comprehensive curriculum to use for teaching her five children. When the boxes arrived from the States, we couldn’t wait to open them. The box contained a manual that made it easy for my mother to make sure all areas were covered as she taught. This was particularly important during those years in which she was teaching four different grades at one time. We kids loved opening our box to find new books, tablets, a ruler, pencils, pink erasers-- all brand new and smelling lovely, ready for us to tuck into our drawers.
In spite of having a lovely room and a great curriculum to use, however, there were still some worms in the apple. I remember at times waiting for Mom to finish with my siblings so she could check my work or give me my next assignment. I also painfully remember laboring over my poorly-done arithmetic paper in order to meet the challenge of fixing all the problems I had missed. Fixing my arithmetic paper usually took up the bulk of my daily school time. It was simply torture for me. I also was not wonderful with spelling. I recall the notebook euphemistically named “My Personal Word List.” This makes it sound like those words were my best friends forever, when in reality, they were the words I’d butchered at some point during spelling tests and which I had to revisit until I could write correctly. While I enjoyed mythology, I really couldn’t stand composition. Writing was torture for me, just like arithmetic was. I understand today that the problems I faced were not due to the room, my teacher, nor the curriculum; the problems could be laid at the door of my own learning needs. Doubtless in homes all across the country are children very similar to how I was.
Any parent who homeschools more than one child likely encounters the same challenges my mother did: the need to teach multiple lessons at once to children with a variety of learning strengths and struggles, while trying to make sure no child has to wait too long for help.
Another common struggle is the need to keep younger children busy and engaged without letting them feel neglected. Often the youngest children demand attention during lesson time, or may want to participate in the activities that occupy their parents and siblings. “I want to learn to read too!” is a frequently heard cry. I personally don’t remember back that far, but I do remember teaching at home as an adult and having little ones crowding around wanting to “do it too!”
Several years back, I homeschooled a small group of children for kindergarten and cared for some younger children at the same time. My agreement with the parents of the preschoolers was that I would include their children as they wanted to join us, but if they lost interest and wanted to play, that would be fine also. At first the 4-year olds, Beau and Adrianna, would hang around our school table curious about what we were doing; they would dabble a bit in the activity, but would soon run away and play. Jeremy, an active three year old, would drop in occasionally when we were learning sight words using the stylized version, but his interest was very limited! I only discovered later just how much he was absorbing.
Over time, however, because we were using visuals, stories, and movement to learn, Beau and Adrianna were drawn to what we were doing and began staying with us for longer and longer periods of time. They were captivated by the images and stories that were vehicles for learning our alphabet and sight words, were drawn to the dot games we played for math, and they truly did love the time of day when we drew pictures and wrote about what we’d drawn. By spring, both children were reading, writing, and doing basic computation in math. Because Beau ended up wanting to stay with us all the time, he was reading on the 2nd grade level by spring.
Adrianna was only with us a couple of days a week, so her achievement was not as advanced as Beau’s, but she was still ahead of the game for kindergarten. Jeremy shocked his mother at home by suddenly being able to read some sight words. This showed me early on that learning truly can be caught even if not taught – depending on the method employed!
Another memory that makes me smile is of three toddlers I cared for who were not talking yet. They played all around us as we taught 3-4 year olds their numbers, sounds, and sight words. I didn’t think they were paying attention to anything the older children were doing! One noon, however, I was cleaning up after lunch and noticed the “triplets” hovering around the stylized numbers we’d posted on the wall. Part of our preschool lessons included singing the number song and doing the body motions that represented each number. Apparently as the toddlers were playing, they had absorbed the learning that was conveyed in the images, the song, and the body motions. Curious, I asked, “Emmy can you find 7?” Without hesitation, Emmy toddled over to the stylized image of the 7 and pointed happily. I asked all three children to find different numbers and they found each one without hesitation. These children had learned to recognize numbers and couldn’t even say them yet!
I’ve written so frequently about how natural it is for young children to learn via images and movement, and these instances of young children learning “school aged” material bears witness to this fact. Teaching with rhythm and song, with images embedded in the learning, with body movement all make learning effortless for young children. When I compare learning this way to how I learned when I started out I groan a bit inside. I was not only a young child, but I was unbeknownst to anyone, a strongly visual learner, a global thinker, and also a tactile learner. I was everything that made traditional lessons hard for me. So while I was drawn to the school room and still have warm feelings about the room, those memories war with my actual experiences with school itself.
I feel reasonably sure that had my mother had access to stylized letters and words, had her curriculum provided for visuals, stories, jingles, and hands-on experiences for learning, both she and I would have anticipated school each day with happiness. As it was, each time she got busy teaching my older sibs, I took the opportunity to escape to the outdoors where I could make little gardens, build little playhouses, make mud pies, and climb trees. My poor longsuffering mother patiently would search me out and bring me back to the school room to work some more. It just recently occurred to me that I was probably not the only one suffering through school!
There is no doubt that teaching multiple children at one time is a challenge. Many of you have perfected a system that allows you to teach more than one child at a time. Many of you have become masters of caring for the home and the youngest children while still teaching your school aged children’s lessons. It would be fun, however, to experiment with teaching our school aged children using visuals, stories, and motions and just see how much difference it makes for our visual-spatial learners, and to see just how far our toddlers can go without our even trying to teach them anything. We would keep them busy and they would learn all at the same time we’re teaching the older children.
While I wait for this experiment to begin, I’m going to proceed to my next task while humming to myself “One is a thin man standing up straight. Two is a fishing hook ready for bait. Three is a….”
Sarah Major, CEO of Child1st Publications, grew up on the mission field with her four siblings, all of whom her mother homeschooled. As an adult, Sarah homeschooled a small group of children in collaboration with their parents, and has taught from preschool age to adult. Sarah was the Title 1 director & program developer for grades K-7, an ESOL teacher, and a classroom teacher. As an undergraduate student, Sarah attended Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. where she received a B.A. in art. Sarah then received her M.Ed. from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI. In 2006 Sarah resigned from full-time teaching in order to devote more of her time to Child1st. In her spare time Sarah enjoys gardening, cooking, pottery, quilting, and spending time with her family.
Child1st Publications, LLC
www.child-1st.com
704-240-9957
1379 S. Aspen St.
Lincolnton, NC 28092
