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At the moment I am spending half an hour each day with my daughter working on 'school' things. Alphabet, Numbers, Date, Time, Seasons, Month, Day of the week for starters. So we started with her name two weeks ago. She has cracked it already! She loves her school
time and each day we try to do something different. She is three, so will be starting shcool in one years time. (Here in the UK the school year starts in September - go figure). We have massive bright posters which I get out each morning with the months, days and numbers on them. Each day she tells me which month it is and which day of the week we are on. There are some that are always on the wall with numbers, colours and alphabets also which we use for backup - but she is so used to seeing them that I will have to attach them to card and make them into decent posters which can be presented on occasion as opposed to always being available.
At the moment we are using one of her toys which is a school bus and has letters and numbers on it. We are learning the letter sounds and names as well as the numbers. We also 'join-the-dots' for the letters, so that she does a written part to her work also. Because we only do a half hour each day it is generally concentrating on one activity only. It has been great for her concentration levels and she has absorbed much more than I realised. (she shows off to my family)She has known the alphabet song for about a year now and it is beginning to make some real sense to her.
My parents have a couple of spelling games here which we have been doing this week while we have been here. But I have nothing like this at home and have as yet found nothing in the childrens shops - I may have to borrow their games. We also have this simple math game at home that uses interlocking bears as counters so do addition and subtraction. The cards that come with the game are far to advanced for E yet. But next week I have planned to start some 'one plus one equals two' and see if we get anywhere.
I am a bit clueless as to what is appropriate and what is too advanced for her. Or even what is required for when they start school. When I started Kindy I had to know certain things - and here in the UK nursery seems to be an option. Also with us moving soon I have just taken her out of her nursery school where she was learning great social skills but I am loathe (since plans have changed slightly) to put her in just anywhere as I dont want her moving moving moving all the time and getting unsettled from new friends always. So this school scheme seems to be working on a few levels. I just dont want to push her too hard, or teach her things that are no way what she should be learning at this age to the neglect of something else.
The main reason we have started doing this is because I noticed she was having trouble concentrating and devoting time to activities - especially if she found them unstimulating, which was often the educational ones. She adores her telephone convos and putting dollies to bed, but there was little variation or stretching of the imagination in these games. So i thought that if we started learning and accomplishing things at least I would have a target to work towards and she would benefit properly.
Peace
EF.x 
(I hope all this makes sense and that it inspires others to also do concentrated sessions as planned study times)
(September 2006) (
