Thanks first,
But to start with, i prepare my materials a month in advance, so that i dont fall back in planning and preparing my material. Yes, i do agree it’s frustrating when you dont have your materials ready, hence i only start with my child when i have everything in place.
To start with this is what i do:
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I have an excel sheet that outlines what would i teach my child each week. I have attached a sample of my excel sheet. Hence this gets me to a head start in planning and prepares me in advance of what i need to do. PLAN is the most important thing to achieve what you want
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Then, once i have outlined all what i need to do, i start to gather material and information, now since i do 9-5 job, i normally prepare my materials every day for 1 hour after my child is off to a good night sleep. Then on weekends i just put all the materials together and make my presentations or i put in Little Reader. Each week I target 2 categories hence by end of the month i have atleast 8 new categories or more to begin for the next month. This keeps me ahead.
About spending time with my daughter and teaching her, I atleast cover 2 sessions in each Maths / Encylopedia / Reading.
This is what I do:
- At the end of the day, i’ll keep my materials ready for the next day, the way i do it, is if i am teaching her BIT Cards, then i’ll keep the selected BIT Cards organized in a seperate folder or in a plastic basket. But since now i have the LR lite, i just keep in ready in playback session
- So, once done this, the next day after work, i just refresh my self and feed my daughter after daycare and spend time in my room playing with her and teaching her, at times she does both sessions together, so which means i am done with my sessions. I dont force her into doing 3 sessions on a weekday as it becomes to stressful. Eventhough Glen recomends 3 sessions, i just follow my daughters mood.
And as such, there is no ground rule that says that only if your child is shown 3 sessions a day, she would learn what she is shown. Hence just follow your childs instincts. Dont get caught up with how many sessions you do with her. Beleive they can even learn in one session a day, I am saying it because my daughter does know things with only one session per day.
Also, not to forget, that as you progress in your teaching, you would be repeating these words / number so many times, hence i am not rigid with number of sessions i do, I can tell when she learnt what she saw, when she shows interest.
Also i try to club encylopdia/reading sessions together, that is when i show the picture i also the words hence in this way i killing 2 birds in one stone. Hence to summarize instead of doing 3 sessions of each in encylopedia / maths / reading, that is 3 +3 + 3 = 9 sessions, i just do 2 sessions where each session is a combination of all 3 hence bringing it down to 2 sessions rather than 9 sessions, and believe my daughter has learnt it this way right from birth (no jokes). It would drive me crazy and stressfull to do 9 short sessions. Hence i just do quick sessions as my daughter can sit with long sessions. I guess she got use to it since birth. But yes there are times that she just looks at few BITs and done with it, then in such situation i would continue with that BIT later during the day or may be next day.
If it’s on the weekend then the best time, i do it with my daughter is in the morning after her breakfast, after her nap and evening
Hence this how i manage doing it in short, But yes, there are times that i dont teach her anything for months as they are priorities at home/work, and hence at those times, i just put her on some educational DVDs from “BumbleeBee DVDs”, and also as i spend time with her i alway always emphasise speaking to her in short sentences, teaching her atleast one new word orally everyday, this ateast gives me a satisfaction that she learnt something. Also when creates a mess at home with her toys or eating, i’ll get her envolved cleaning up the mess. Like eg. If her toys are all around the place, i get her picking up the toys by their names, so i would tell her get the teddy bear, then where is the blue fish, of where is the tall giraffe, hence in this way i am always using short sentences when talking to her, eventhough i am not formally teaching her BIT Cards. And she loves the clean up mess game. Even in the bath tub, i would point to all her parts of the body and believe she knows everypart of her body even her private parts, so this way i am always teaching her be it on / off glen’s program.
Also there are times, i’ll take her the laundary room and tell her put to the clothes in washer/dryer along with me and at times also name the clothes as i throw it for washing.
My personal experience, is to just enjoy what you do with a child, dont get stuck with the sessions counts you need to them, believe they are born genious. All you need is to create that environment for them and they will follow it. And also most important thing from all, ALWAYS GIVE CREDIT TO YOURSELF, for it is because of you, that your child has the environment.
