Simply Mother

I’m hoping to collect a few of the little discovery experiences I witness my kids having, to publish here for those who want a better idea of how I see learning happening all the time. I just love watching their minds work and new understanding develop. It is happening constantly, but usually I can never remember how it unfolded cohesively enough for a blog post. Here’s the one I mentioned in one of the homeschooling posts. I suppose you would call this “doing math.”

Sarah, 6, wanted to buy a Polly Pocket-type doll at the check out stand. She saw it there the week before and decided next time she would bring the money she had from her birthday and buy it. It was about five dollars, and she had that in bills so she paid the checker and got her doll.

After playing with it for a few hours she came to me with her tin full of change, which she has just collected randomly throughout the house and deemed “hers”. Poor child, do you think it’s time her parents got with the program and started some kind of an allowance?

Anyway, she asked me, “Will you help me count out five dollars with this? I want to buy my doll a friend.”

So we did, and I took the opportunity to make each dollar out of a different type of coin (four quarters, 10 dimes, 20 nickels, 100 pennies, and she had a dollar bill), but when she gave a slight hint (through body language) that I was being too “teacher-y,” I recognized it and backed off. Though at one point she did ask if we couldn’t just make all the dollars out of quarters, since it would be easier to carry, so she was definitely grasping the concept somewhat.

Happy to have another five dollars, she was determined to buy a similar doll next time we went to the store, but I casually mentioned that frequently the items in the check-out line are not the best buy, and we might check around to see if she could possibly get more dolls for her money.

This led to an eBay search where you indeed can get a whole heck of a lot of Polly Pockets–plus accessories–for far less than five bucks a pop.

However, since they are sold in lots, there wasn’t anything that was only five dollars. I wanted her to understand the difference between buying one doll for $5 and buying a 200-piece lot for $20, and that even though she was spending more, she was getting way more for her money.

It didn’t seem like she was comprehending the higher numbers so we started talking in terms of hands.

“You can get this one doll for one hand (holding up all five of her fingers for her to see), or you can get ALL THIS (pointing to a picture of a gigantic lot of dolls and accessories) if you just save your money and get three more hands (holding up both her hands and my hands, with all 20 fingers wiggling.)”

I don’t know what the schools would have to say about this, I’m not trained as a teacher and am really just making this all up as I go along, trying to read her way of understanding things and using whatever seems like will help at the moment, but she definitely seemed to comprehend my point.

She decided to wait and save her money, although, like I said, I’m not sure what she’s thinking she’ll be saving since we’re slacker parents and haven’t started an allowance!

Okay, actually we did try it briefly a couple of years ago but abandoned it when I realized she had no concept or ability to save at all. Also, she forgot about it entirely unless I brought it up, so it seemed safe to drop it. Now that she’s a little more ready, we’ll have to work something out so she can get an idea for how much things cost and how long it takes to save X amount when you’re only getting Y each week.

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Anyway, that is all–not a very exciting post, but all I’m trying to show is that kids really will learn what they need to know as soon as they:

1. Need to know it, and
2. Are developmentally capable of understanding it.

A teacher-friend read something in a teacher magazine that really got him wondering about his job. It basically said this:

It doesn’t matter how good of a teacher you are, how awesome your lesson plan may be, or how many times you go over a concept, a child will not be able to learn it if he is not at the point, intellectually, where he would be able to understand it.

Obvious, right? The second point is the kicker:

Once a child IS developmentally capable of understanding a concept, it doesn’t take any fancy teaching for him to learn it. He basically just has to be exposed to the idea, and (probably) see a real need or use for it, and then he’ll figure it out on his own.

This is my constant experience with my kids.

Filed in: child development • family • home education | November 3, 2009