Do you have a particular place you go to with your little one to work on bits, flashcards, reading, or whatever else? Of course, if you’re using the computer, like for LR, then that’s obvious, but what about other times? Or do you simply grab your materials and go to wherever your child happens to be? I noticed one person uses a small blanket and the child sits on it every time the do a short burst of “learning time”. Just wondering if anyone else has any type of routine or habit.
Nope. I would love to have a learning corner like what is recommended in the Tweedlewink course, but we simply don’t have the space for anything like that. Gabriel’s room is not big enough, and we don’t have a playroom. He’s normally on my lap in my room when we do most of his activities.
We mainly do learning activites on the couch or at the table. My husband and I are hoping to turn a spare room into a learning room/educational playroom, with all his learning materials and a montessorri type set-up. The sheer amount of materials he has clutters up anywhere else and if they are not out they don’t get used.
I haven’t seen the Tweedlewink course material yet… does it say anything specific about how to set up a learning corner?
Yep. They say to try to have it in a corner with a nearby window for natural light. It should be bright, beautiful, safe and happy. You should have low shelves that have all the learning materials easily accessible to your child and some sort of basket or box to organize all of the flash cards and other learning materials. There should be a cd player to play classical music. You can also include tuning forks for teaching perfect pitch and a flashlight for visual stimulation.
The walls should have posters reflecting what you are teaching. So if you are teaching the alphabet, then you want letters on the wall. If you have a young baby, then you can put infant stimulation cards on the walls. Just make sure anything you put up is easily seen by your little one.
The floor should have a soft carpet to lay on, and you can include a blanket and/or stuffed animals to snuggle with.
I would love to have a place for Laurana, but at the moment we just do cards anywhere in the house - I have some in the bedroom and she sees a lot in the bathroom just before bath time. I even take them out into the garden when showing her things out there - it just works better for me at the moment to be able to show her the object in its correct place and show her the word at the same time which means carting flashcards all over the place.
When she gets a little older I will probably make a space for her to do activities but right now she is too active to sit still for even two minutes in one place.
I would love to have a room to use for doing cards, etc. I would also love a play room. Oh well, one day I will have a bigger house! Right now K even sleeps in our room because we don’t have on extra bedroom. Her toys are kept in the living room.
We tend to do activities wherever we happen to be - high chair, change table or living room usually. Messy activities like painting / & sensory like playing in rice or cereal we do in the kitchen.
We have a playroom, but when it comes time for us to do an activity we either sit at the Little Tykes picnic table (to color whatever), but most of the time we put a blanket on the floor.
That works really well for us. When he sees us put the blanket down, he comes running (he knows he’s supposed to go sit on it). If we do Legos or anything, they stay on the blanket and it helps with cleanup. Plus, he knows he’s not allowed to leave the blanket. It just helps us to have that routine.
But before, when he was smaller, we showed Bits everhwere–the bathtub, the high chair, in the car, at the park, at the doctor’s office…didn’t matter.
I have a playroom for my toddler, but it is not a good place for our flash cards sessions, as he doesn’t pay me any attention, he just want to play with his toys here. I take him normally to the sitting room and sit him on a chair, where he can not “go away” , here he sits quietly, and this is what works for us.