Hi. I started doing when my daughter was 2 years and a half. Now she is 2 years and 10 months. Just yesterday I realised that I have not really been teaching her for 2 months as I was busy moving to another country. Now I am studying nursing and I don’t have time to teach her. I feel bad as my daughter loves learning. Whenever she sees the flashcards I made her, she hugs them and asks me to read them to her. I really want to teach her but I don’t know how to manage my time. Is there anyone in a similar situation? What did you do? I really need suggestions.
Take advantage of the time during eating, bathing, etc. Just show her flashcards during the activity and make it more fun for both of you. For bathing, maybe you can even make home books (plastified so water doesn’t touch the page) and read together while playing in the bath. Depending on her level and her interest, you play different games, maybe even teach her math or something else while eating, cutting in slices for her etc. Just keep the flashcards so you can use them easily.
It’s just a thought, maybe others will share more.
Justbeinmommy-
No worries! So many of us here worry about fitting in everything we would like to do!
First thing: prioritize! What is the very most important thing you can teach her? What do you want to focus on? What is easier to teach ‘on the fly’ and what needs more preparation on structure?
Once you have determined this (for us it was reading, as we felt, and still feel that EVERYTHING begins here, come up with a schedule. Can you fit Little Reader into the bedtime routine? Can you show it at mealtime? Do you have a carer that can show it to your child so that you can devote more time to reading books or other?
The Absolute, biggest adjustment. Is learning to consistently, constantly TALK! Explain! Literally everything to your child in the time you have available! This can be a big adjustment, as many are simply not comfortable with this…
Here is a very simple example from our own lives. Andreasro has suggested bathtime for EL, and this has ALWAYS been key to us!
Starting at about 10 months, when we ran a bath for our kiddo, we used a thermometer to measure the temperature…at that point it was relative: ooh, too cold! Ooh, too hot! What is pleasant?
Soon we made her a laminated chart (in Celsius, Fahrenheit, and Kelvin!) to show easy to relate concepts- freezing, boiling, pleasant, a bit too hot, a bit too cold, body temperature, etc…
In the bath we have a TON of EL 'toys- measuring cups and spoons, graduated cylinders, water colors, Erlenmeyers, anything and everything you can imagine to learn? In the bath…but although I may direct at times, this is basically unstructured play for her…or so she thinks! â€hhmm, which is more buoyant, cork, or that rock? (Yes, she has rocks in her bath!) should we rinse your hair with 8 ounces, or 1 cup? Silly mommy…
Everything else? talk, Talk, Talk! When we are driving to routine places, Alex will name streets and tell me which direction to turn. Is she a genius? NO! I talk to her ALL the time, and they pick up so incredibly much from this!
And then, be confident and thrilled with what you can manage to teach her! Odds are, if you are interested in this forum, she will be incredibly ahead of her peers…focus on getting started again, and increasing day-by-day until you reach either your goals, or a balance between EL and providing a better home life/financial future for your family!
It’s always refreshing to read your posts Keri 
Wonderful job with Alex!
@ justbeinmommy
Maybe you can consider putting up posters, maps, even flashcards on the wall? I did this with my daughter so that wherever she goes in the house, she would see/learn something even without my constant presence. Our furniture and appliances has labels. Our bedroom has a hundred-chart, body systems chart, mounted picture cards. A hallway can become an “art gallery”, just put up notable paintings, wonders of the world, portraits of important artists, scientists, etc. This may be a lot of work in the beginning but you’ll have your hands free later.
Thank you all for replying. @ Kerileanne99 I love the bathtime idea. I do talk to my daughter a lot about everything and she loves to ask “why”. I guess I am a talkative mom as my daughter started talking when she was about 7 months. I never really looked at talking as a part of learning but thanks for reminding me. I feel motivated again and hopefully I will try to find a balance between studying and teaching my baby. Once again, thank you all.
I completely understand! I am a single mother and a grad student. I attend a University that is an hour away, so spend a lot of time commuting. I constantly feel like there is so much more I could be doing with Xander, but then I look at him and how happy and smart he is and know he will be ok. I have been learning that a little bit goes a long way. He watches LM during breakfast, while I prepare our lunchboxes (I tend to eat at the counter while I make them). We try to do LR at least once a day, but he LOVES to have me flash through the words of other categories so it can become quite time consuming. We read books during snack or bath time. I also try to stay ahead when prepping his materials. I set up activity trays on the weekend and our goal is to do each of our activity trays every day, which takes 30-45 min if we stay on track. If it is a busy day, we skip the trays. A lot of weeks it doesn’t happen the way I would like, but some is still better than nothing. No matter how much I do, I would always feel like I could do more, so I try to make peace with the amount we can get done. Besides, the whole point of early education is that you have fun doing it. If it becomes rushed and stressful, it isn’t serving its purpose anyway.
We learn a lot in the car. We point out colors, shapes, talk about everything we are learning and reading about. Count, skip count, backwards count etc…
We are now doing a neurodevelopmental program so it seems like we are always doing something! Before we started the program though, I always tried to coincide teaching with another activity. For example, when K was little we kept a set of cards by the change table & did them as well as a speech activity every diaper change. We do certain activities at bed time as well as at meal times. We also have activities to do in the vehicle like listening to stories on tape, & eye excercises.
We also try to fit activities in every day life. the garden is a great example of this - We talk about seeds, plants, growing, what plants need to live, soil & what it is made of, decomposing, etc. then when we harvest there is lots of counting, sorting by colour/ripeness & on &