Just wondering if anyone would like to share their daily routine or structure for EL activities. At the moment DD (15 months) does Some WTL Chinese DVD in the morning followed by some Mandarin Nursery Rhymes, a session each of LR, LM and LMS before her lunchtime nap, a second session of LR and LM after dinner and some Spanish nursery rhymes or Sparkabilities in the evening. Everything is very screen based and I’d love to have a bit more hands on stuff so I was wondering what other mums do and how they fit it all in!!
Did you see this one?
http://forum.brillkids.com/general-discussion-b5/how-to-help-nurturing-a-16-month-old-in-education-*videos-of-baby-z/msg101327/?topicseen#new
My kids are too big to help much with a routine but many of the math ideas I shared in teh thread can be hands on. Plus Waterdreamer fits so much into her day a little inspiration can’t hurt 
I’ve honestly never been very good at routines. My approach is more like a checklist. I have certain things that I want to get done every day and we just try to work through the list, fitting in meals and outside activities as necessary. I’ve realized that I have very high expectations of myself and sometimes I get feeling down when I realize all of the things that didn’t get done at the end of the day, but that it’s much better to focus on the things that DID get done. If I let myself feel like I’m “behind”, I get bogged down feeling like I need to catch up and that can be depressing. I’ll never truly “catch up”, especially with that attitude. Now I try to pat myself on the back for whatever did get done and start the next day’s tasks with whatever didn’t get done the day before. For example, we never did Spanish and I never got around to teaching Ruth (15m) a reading lesson yesterday. 
But the kids all practiced the piano, we did our math, a nice painting project, writing, a solid devotional, and they watched some educational programming and they played outside. I also did a bunch of laundry and we ate well. Not a bad day by any means. Today we will focus on Spanish and Ruth will get some reading time in first thing. Then we’ll try to tackle the rest of the subjects again. Remember that things don’t have to be done daily in order to be done consistently. It’s better to aim for the stars and hit the treetops than to aim for the treetops and land in the mud. The key is to also be happy if you only wind up in the treetops, even if you feel you could have done better.
Good luck!
Hello Mc,
I like this post. I agree with the fact the importance of being happy while teaching our kids. I remember when I read in one of these post the relevance of centring on the input without obessing with the results. I read it in a post where Mandapplus named the importance of the input. Now, my LO has turned 18 months and I am surprised what she knows about the English language, not only in speaking but also reading.
I like what Tamysin says about daily routines. You can plan a daily routine, I think that the majority of people do that but later… I was one who tried to do it. Yes, Tamysin, it is better to look all what we have taught, how our children acquire a language without realizing it. Even your LO is learning piano. Wow… It is wonderful!!! Playing a piano, wow, wow… I learnt to play the guitar two centuries ago… If Itake the the guitar, and play the guitar now, you could run away…
You name the laundry and you ate well. Good job!!! A day has only 24 hours and we are human beings, our children as well. They can be so smart and funny!! I have realized that Nuria is very intelligent in some aspects, but she is a little nervous… Ha ha. She is not able to introduce the cubes A LA PRIMERA, I don´t know translate this expression into English… What a pity! I am learning a lot teaching my LO. She follows the songs and imitates the actions… identifies many words, speaks and speaks
I like being aware of parents´ daily routines as well.
I am doing LR, now impossible my big laptop is broken, starfall, jolly phonics, letter factory, yes british and american at the same time, sometimes sparkabilities, she loves pocoyo, dora, peppa pig, learn to talk, sing and sign, She names sign since this Sunday when sees the dvd.
It is amazing what our children are able to do!
I wrote this up in another forum and it is detailed. We have a routine rather than a schedule. Maybe I should call it a daily rhythm. Nothing has to happen at the same precise time. But it happens mostly in the following order. Times are for simplification.
Our schedule is a little off to most because my husband works second shift. So we do everything later than most. I only have a 3 year old. And sometimes a 1 year old I watch.
Times are approximate.
9am: Get up and give my son breakfast. If he is awake before 9 he will read or play by himself until I get up. We shower.
10am: About 3-4 days of the week we do an activity out of the house. Be it StoryTime, gymnastics, science class or just the park. The activities are only an hour or so long. But we walk there and home, that takes at least another hour from our day. Walking times are filled with a lot of discussion about what we read, how we conduct ourselves in public by using manners. Observing the world around us.
The days we stay home I will put on a math or science show and we cuddle up and watch that. Then we do an activity relating to that show. My son recently watched some shows about mammals and did an “essay” by dictating. But most of the time I am lazy in the mornings. And the TV stays off and he plays cars or trains or puzzles of playdoh or he build contraptions.
12pm: Daddy wakes and my son and him play their special games. Legos, trains, cars, hiding, monsters dun dun hands? Weird stuff. They go for a walk and play outside with the dog.
1pm: We have lunch. Sometimes at home, sometimes out.
1:30pm: We have reading time. This is often an hour or so long. We read about a lot of subjects. We are able go over history, geography, grammar, science and more during this reading time. We read many picture books, living math, fairy tales and poetry too. My son reads quite well so I don’t really need to instruct him anymore. And if I do I explain the phonetic rules as we read. We take turns reading aloud to each other. Just because he can read does not mean I let him read everything himself. I should note he will often read by himself during his free play time.
2:30pm About this time my son goes down for his nap. It is extremely rare for him not to nap. If he doesnt, he gets an hour quiet time in his room. Now I get time to do chores, set aside activities, cruise the Internet. Do any prep for dinner. Most days I watch my neighbor’s 1 year old boy and he comes over at about this time and stays until late in the evening.
5pm: My son wakes up. When I have 2 boys. We play outside. We have dinner. After dinner I let the kids watch some nursery rhymes, while we have out little dance party and do a little music lesson. When it is just my son, he helps me cook dinner. He reads the recipes, helps with any measuing, cutting etc. Then he helps me clean up. He wants so badly to wash the dishes and I promised he can start helping me do that this week. We bake scones or bickes once a week. We also run a mile together after dinner has settled. Have a shower when we get home
7pm: Learning Time, quiet time. I focus on teaching a few things to the littlest boy if I have him. Shapes, colors, body parts, letters, numbers etc. Then we read books. My son reads to the little one. We sing some lullabies.
8-9pm The Little one is in bed. This is our more intense learning and PRT time. And a little bit of seat work. We do math instruction and work on handwriting. Coloring, cutting, etc. We play board games a lot during these times.
10pm: End of the day another hour or so of reading, cuddle time. And then my son goes to bed. And my neighour picks up her boy at 11pm. If my husband isn’t working late (very rarely) my son gets to read with him before he goes to sleep.
11:30pm: Me time! I turn the TV on and stream a few shows, I do a short intense crossfit style work out. I read and research a lot! I plan activities. I chat with online and real life friends. And I am in bed by about 3am when my husband goes to bed and we go to sleep.
Voila!
We go to bed late and get up late too. I’m glad we’re not the only ones.
As far as piano goes, I think people focus on the thing that are important to them. I was a music major, so music is a biggie for us, but we don’t focus on art like an artisan family might. (we only do art once a week). Parents have specialties and they rub off on their kids. We use Piano Wizard and my kids really love it, so that also helps.
I do believe that music is important. I just fail to get it in everyday due to lack of enthusiasm from James.
I have also found that we focus on one thing strongly and other things are secondary. Now that James can read we don’t spend a lot of time teaching it. And it is now mostly for fun. We are more math intensive now. But is suspect that when he becomes more independent we will be able to focus on something else. Hopefully music. But it Might be writing due to age.
You know the quote “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”? I feel like that with schedules and routines. I love them. I love coming up with them, I love what I can get done when I follow them. But I have never managed to follow one for more than 3-5 weeks. Then it disintegrates, and I have to (get to?) come up with a whole new one. Odd, I know, but it works for me!
That being said, our current schedule is heavy on the outdoor time. That’s my main focus for off-screen “learning” at the moment. So this is what my 3yo and 1yo and I do daily:
7-7:30 The girls come get in my bed (husband has already left for work) and cuddle until they get me up. (I don’t like mornings.)
7:30-8:30 Breakfast and screentime. This is the bulk of our official learning for the day. We do LR, LMus, flashed RightStart math, Reading Bear, youtube “Kids Picture Show” Addition tables, and a treat - an Alphablocks episode. I’m working to add EK in there, too, and I need to come up with more ideas for math, but that’s the current practice.
8:30 I go out and milk the goats. The girls usually come play in the backyard while I do it, but the past couple days they’ve opted to stay inside and play with toys.
9 I read my scriptures, exercise if I have time, and get ready to go.
9:30 We go 3 miles to an undeveloped piece of land filled with equestrian/walking trails. Mondays and Wednesdays we take my nephew, who’s 4, with us. We start at a picnic table at the top and use Kimochis to discuss social skills. Then we throw the Kimochis in the car and hike down to the creek. The kids play for a while, then we have a snack and read 2-3 books and act out/play one of the books we read (like “being cougars” or “building a house” out of rocks). Then we go for an explore. I want to add in sitting quietly time at the end; maybe next week.
11:30 We give my nephew back to his mom and get our picnic out of the car. By this point the 1yo is asleep in the backpack carrier, so the 3yo and I eat and read stories and talk. Sometimes we head back out for more exploring, sometimes we get to watch horses being tacked up, sometimes we watch birds or ants or whatever. When the 1yo wakes up she eats and joins us.
1 Tuesdays we go to storytime at the library. Other days we may head to the splash pad or the store.
2 Back home for Naptime! I’m trying to put the baby down first and let Big Girl work on reading and math with me. Or maybe I’ll start packing all the stuff and do it over lunch. It’s just so hard to get out the door!
3:30-4 Kids get up for a snack. I want to do Session 2 of LR and the EK here at some point. Sometimes this is where Big Girl’s reading and math happen, but Baby is an attention hog if she’s awake.
4 Housework, making dinner, playtime
5:15 Husband comes home and we have dinner, do whatever we’ve got going on, get together for nightly devotional at 7:30 and then bed for the girls by 8 so my husband can milk the goat.
This schedule works very well on Mondays and Wednesdays, because I’m committed to my sister-in-law. Other days, maybe not. Like today, we ended up doing learning stuff a lot in the morning and never made it outside. Too bad. This has been in place for a month now, so it’ll probably run out of steam soon.
As far as non-screen learning, I’m only doing what comes up naturally outside right now. Lots of books, and I try to make the ones I pick math or science related. I’ve tried Montessori in the past, but it doesn’t work at all for Big Girl. After all the effort I put in, that’s very disappointing, but oh, well. I have some ideas on how to adapt it, but not the time right now. Maybe in the winter. We also have the classical music station going whenever we’re home, and I try to speak French with them as much as possible. And I have a deliberate focus on seeing how anything and everything can be turned into math. I want to talk math all the time. It’s getting there, slowly. That’s about it. I think we’ll do more in the winter. Maybe I’ll write up what we did last winter sometime.