subject: Using Everyday Experiences To Teach Your Children [print this page] I have always believed life is about constantly learning. Whether it is new things or reinforcing things previously learned. I approached raising my son with this same attitude toward his everyday life. Fortunately my husband shared this same philosophy with me. No matter how mundane or simple the task we always encouraged him to try to figure out what he was learning from it. And if it were possible, we would try to make a game of it and challenge him to increase his learning experience.
In the beginning we kept the challenges simple and easy to do. As he grew older we increased the difficulty to stretch what we observed as his ability. Sometimes we made it too easy and sometimes it was a bit too hard. Regardless of the difficulty factor involved he would always learn something. Even if he didn't think he did.
Most often the challenges were not so much physical, but were more on a mental level. Once he started school we tried to make the challenges match what he was studying. Often times it was to reinforce a particular lesson he was learning and maybe having difficulty with.
By making it a part of everyday activity, he wasn't looking at it as if it were a homework problem or assignment to solve but as a game to be won. Of course he would sometimes get frustrated, but that is when it became most important for him to not give up. We would encourage him to press on. Sometimes he needed a hint, other times an affirmation that he was on the right track and closing in was all he needed.
When he was first learning the alphabet, whenever we would go for a drive we would challenge him to identify as many letters as he could as we drove down the street. When he began reading words we would do the same thing with words. When at a stop light he would have to read all of the street names before the light changed green.
Of course there were a lot of street names he was not able to identify, and some streets that got brand new names as he tried to pronounce them out. As time went on it was surprising how fast he started figuring them out. "Stop" was his favorite because it was the first one he got right.
As he was learning his numbers we would take him to the store and ask him to identify the numbers on the price tags. At first it was just individual numbers from the price. For example, if the tag showed the cost as $3.95 we would challenge him to give us any one of the three numbers off the tag. If he said "five" "nine", or "three"; he was right. Soon he was ahead of us telling us what was on a tag even before we asked.
The next step was to identify the number on one side or the other of the "dot" (decimal point). We would pick out items that cost more than ten dollars. For example: If we chose an item with a price of $27.54, we would ask him what the number to the left of the decimal was and then the number to the right. The answer, of course, is "twenty-seven" and "fifty-four" respectively.
We kept building on his skills as he progressed through school. When he was in high school and we would be shooting baskets, we would make him keep track of his shooting percentage while we played. He was not allowed to take the next shot unless he could give the correct percentage. This did two things, it really slowed the game down, but at the same time it had him constantly thinking and working at the same time.nnJust so you know, we didn't make him do this every time we played, but often enough, that he got pretty good at doing percentages in his head.
There are so many things you can do. These are just a few that I have mentioned here. A few others we did: Figure out which item is more expensive. Which item is the better deal based on amount and price? (This opens up the opportunity to learn the difference between price and quality versus price and volume.) Going for a walk we figured out how many steps it took for him to walk a mile. We saw real life examples of parallelograms, octagons, and many other geometric shapes in our everyday world. By bending over, looking between our legs, and using the formula for an isosceles right triangle we figured out how high our house was from the ground and how tall our tallest tree was. We figured out why bridges don't fall down. Sitting on our deck we discussed why clouds form and how rain happens.
Use your imagination, the opportunities are endless. Choose things that your child would be interested in. (Hint: Most kids are interested in what interests their parents.) The best part of all is the great times you will have together. Keep it light and fun. Don't make it a chore or be too task driven. You both will enjoy it and learn so much more together.
Do you have time to do this? My husband and I both worked full time jobs (me 40 hours a week and he worked around 75 hours a week). We just incorporated it into our everyday activities and looked for the opportunities. Once you begin, the ideas start coming to you more and more.
Oh, my son? Did it work for him? You tell me. He is now 28 years old and is an engineer in a very good job with a good company. He has a son of his own that is almost two and I suspect he is planning to do the same thing with his son that we did with him.n
by: Donna Randol
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