Learning to Teach

By the time Chris was ready for kindergarten, Eli was three years old.  Eli was my wild child and I remember telling my parents that when it came time to homeschool him, I would have to re-evaluate things.   I didn't know if I could handle him or not.  It turned out that he was the easier of the two to teach.

I have definitely discovered a lot about learning styles over the years including insight regarding my own style of learning. At first, I thought that I should just have to read to them and they would learn. Children were sponges I had been told so I expected them to soak up everything I was telling them. Yeah...not so much.  I was also under the impression that children had to sit still and pay attention while they were being taught.   Again...not the case.

This first dawned on me when I was reading a book about  Charles Lindbergh one day to Christopher. Eli was off in the corner playing with his giant leggos while I read.    At the end of the week, I was quizzing Chris on the subject matter, but it wasn't Chris who was answering the questions. It was Eli! I was assuming since it was Chris that was by my side that he would be able to remember every word he had heard. I certainly didn't think it would be the three year old toddler who was humming and clanking plastic blocks in the corner while I was reading. Yet, he was able to answer all of the questions correctly.

I realized that I was going to have to learn a different style of teaching.  One of my boys was an auditory learner, Eli obviously and Chris was a visual learner.  I had to learn to adapt. We became very hands on with our lessons and we loved it!  We built pyramids out of giant boxes. We made dioramas of the jungle. We made our own playdough together with the wildest of colors. We created chariots using toys from their rooms. Our options were limitless! And we had bright colored charts and maps and calendars.  It made it fun for me to teach and fun for them to learn.

One thing we incorporated was a sensory box. It had dry rice and beans along with objects of different sizes and textures.  They had measuring cups and funnels.  There were squishy balls in it, strips of furry cloth, small rubber grips for opening up jars, pipe cleaners,  and anything else that they found fun to touch. Each boy had one and the only time they were allowed to bring it out was when I was reading to them. They could then play quietly with their sensory boxes while listening to the story.  When we were done, we would place the lids on them and put them away til the next day. It became something they looked forward to each day and it wasn't a fight to get them to be still.  
I wanted my boys to learn to love to learn and we tried many different tactics to assist in this. Some of them worked. Some of them didn't. I will share more along the way!