Teachable moments

In education, they stress the importance of relevant lessons and teachable moments. On a friend's Facebook post today, I was slightly teasing her about taking her homeschooled kids to the Renaissance Festival (not teasing about that, teasing about potential lessons to go with it). My suggestion was a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the Festival to the real Renaissance followed by a letter writing campaign urging the organizers to switch the name of the Festival to MidAgesFest. As we spoke back and forth about lessons and teaching, I thought about the teaching I do as a mainstream education perusing mom. I find it to be very liberating in raising my kids to have help from other teachers in working on my children's education. This allows me time to focus on their interests (space, dinosaurs, etc), less worries over making sure I stick to a plan, and more of the teachable moments integrated into our every day lives.

Today I had Mac practice her writing on her thank you cards for her birthday party. I wrote out, on a piece of paper, "Thank you Love Mac" and had her write them on each card. While I will add specifics to the cards tomorrow, I love that each card had her mark and labor of love on them. It amazed me how she was able to (joyfully) sit and write copy work on 12 cards. It's a good lesson in gratitude and in practicing writing! I am hoping to help her draft a letter for some of our servicemen in a letter writing campaign that is going on around Facebook.

Those teachable moments are goins everywhere. In baking and cooking we work on math, order and sequencing, and talk about science. In all the places we go we sound out, read, and spell words. When playing outside we chalk letters, words, and numbers or use other mediums as well. Matt practices Spanish with the girls in a variety of settings. We talk about patterns in birthday and Christmas decorations. The teaching is found everywhere and not just the formal stuff.

I am glad for my background as a teacher to help me see all of these great snippets that can be used to further my kid's abilities. Of course, I have a couple of more formal lessons that I would mind putting together too!!!