You have planned one or more learning activities, assembled the materials, and set aside time to spend with your child. You and your child begin the activity. She makes a half-hearted, quick attempt, then says, "Can I go play now?"
What to do?
In my opinion, there are times to insist on a full, quality effort, and times not to. Times to insist are during homework, chores assigned to the child that he has been fully trained on, and thanking people for gifts of time or material things. Parents, of course, will decide which times require more effort according to their family culture and values.
I think a good time NOT to insist is during learning times with a parent. These should be fun and more of a reward - although children certainly will resist them from time to time because they have other ideas of what to do at the moment.
- Make sure the time is set apart and that you begin the activity together.
- Plan activities that are interesting and fun. You will also want to plan activities that give them practice on their weakest skills; for these, try to take special care to make the activity interesting. (For example, the Kumon workbooks motivate my older son to work on things that he resists when it's just me asking him to try them.)
- If preschoolers or older children do not want to finish, pick a satisfactory stopping point and tell them it will be fine to stop when they get to that point. You will want to use your own discretion with older children. An example of a time NOT to stop is in the middle of a science experiment, unless a waiting phase is built into the experiment.
- For babies and toddlers, when they move away from one activity, follow them. Move on to the next thing. I find five to ten minutes to be the longest that babies and pretoddlers can last on most learning activities. Toddlers may spend longer amounts of time. Keep activities available on an ongoing basis so they can get more exposure to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment