When to start school activities with my 2 yr old.

Michele - posted on 04/20/2011

I have 4 kids (13, 4, 3, 18 months). My 4 year old didn't really start picking things up until this past year (he will be 5 in June), but suddenly he bloomed. There is so much more I could probably do with him, but my 3 year old is eager to "play school" whenever I am "teaching" his brother. There is so much he doesn't "get," but sometimes I wonder if he isn't picking up more than I thought he was. Overall, I don't worry so much. I use life experiences to help teach things.
I will do cooking projects to help learn to count and use numbers. We will sing songs and read books. But, up until my 4 year old starting relating things more, I simply did not do anything formal.
Now, my 18 month old has to be there watching while we go over our "school" stuff. If I give a worksheet with letters or numbers to practice writing, the 4 year old writes them, the 3 year old draws and colors all over them, not really trying and the 18 month old has to color, too. But, I figure they are being exposed to it, no matter what form it is.

Alice - posted on 04/19/2011

Danielle,

I have 4 girls, 7, 5, 3, and 1. I didn't do anything "formal" until they started reading (usually by 4). I did read stories to them, played refrigerator magnets, we played "I Spy" to learn colors, sang the alphabet song, books of the bible songs, and other learning songs, and did shapes and counting with legos and blocks. My oldest one started coloring about 14 months old (my 2nd tried to eat crayons until she was 2.5 lol) and we did coloring with the two little ones about 15 & 13 months old.

My 3 year old can already "read" little things like "the" "and" "dog" "cat" etc. (mostly by memory, I'm sure) and she will play the math and phonics games with her older sisters - which I allow since competition helps :) She'll come and say "can I do some school?" and I show her how to write her name (or now, the numbers, or certain letters) and then color the paper (she calls it "coloring school"). Other than that, we just use teachable moments and allow learning to come as their own pace until they can read - then we start with a light "curriculum" (abbreviated K5 from A Beka) until they reach the mandatory school age for FL.

If you can present school & learning as fun, they will be more receptive and that's how to pass on a love of learning so they will challenge themselves to learn :)
~Hope this helps!