After a stressful few weeks I finally feel peace starting to creep back into my life. As mothers we need to be aware that peace that is so necessary sometimes needs to be given the place and time in which to thrive. This is especially true when it comes to child's play, not acting out t.v. show scripts or playing with electronic items but real imaginary play, in which a child explores and learns about their world. It is saddening to see that the play based learning that our prep students are supposed to be engaging in is not occurring. I have heard many accounts of late from prep children's mothers of which reader their child is on and that their child already knows xxx amount of academic work but there is no mention of their child's enjoyment and play. I used to believe that I valued an academic start fairly early (as in starting abc's in prep) but when number 1 and I encountered most children reading and writing at the start of kindergarten (or preschool) it was a rude awakening. Now we are starting prep and hear of even more learning expectations and I can't help but feel that we are rushing our little ones into an adult world with giving them time to properly comprehend and analyse it. Most of us have a wonderful memory of childhood play, I just wish we could value creating these same memories for our children. Doesn't the saying go all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.. The article below provides some food for thought
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/10/09/the_hidden_power_of_play/
Library holds a copy of Later Rather than Sooner ...hm, may not have the title exact but the premise is as you suggest & that we start our youngsters on academics before their brains are developed enough to do what we ask of them. Interesting read if you want to go that way. Actually the library doesn't have a lot of homeschool resources but the books they do have aren't bad.
ReplyDeleteactually reading a great one from the library at the moment bringing up geeks by marybeth hicks. I had to order it in and it was quite funny to see the librarian and 2 other ladies eyeing it off when i took it out, they all wanted to read it lol.
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