I've been mulling

1. I've heard rumors that my parents had a master plan for our education that went beyond, "Hey, let's send 'em to school." For instance, I remember attending plays and symphonies with them when I was young. I figured they were just looking for something to fill the time; now I find out they wanted to enrich us with early and frequent exposure to the arts. I can't tell you how special it made me feel to discover that, even so long after the fact.



2. My sister has created a secondary blog to discuss educational research and philosophy as she works to bolster my niece's education. I'm fascinated by what she has to say.



3. My toddler and I are in a rut, and a rather unhealthy one at that: We watch entirely too much tv, and the laissez-faire days that worked so well when she was a baby have made us both stir crazy and irritable now. She has too much energy to burn in the small confined space of our living room, where we spend most of our time; I have too little energy to deal with her patiently and well.

These three factors have got me mulling over how to be a better parent to my busy, busy girl. I think she's bored. I've come to the conclusion that she and I would both do better with more structure in our lives. I don't want to schedule away all her free play time, and I can't afford to send her to preschool or any sort of lessons, but she needs to spend her days doing more than staring at the tv screen or at me and our four walls. She needs enrichment, stimulus, a routine that she can look forward to....

In typical RCH fashion, I first focused my energy on the chart I would design to give her a visual representation of her new life: It would be elaborate and fabulous! Created in Adobe Illustrator in full color, with intricately drawn analog clocks so I could teach her about time, printed as an 8x10 at CVS on glossy photo paper on which I could use dry erase markers for the day or week's variables (did you know you can do that with glossy photo paper?).

But of course, a cool chart doesn't really address the issue -- and without pondering the substance of these new and improved scheduled days, what would I put on the chart, anyway? So I began to contemplate that last night. I have no child development credentials (as I lamented recently), and I don't feel like I have the time to thoroughly research the matter the way my sister has. But I know my kid; I know her interests and attention span and I think I know what she's capable of (though, being a mother, I can't be blamed for thinking she's a TOTAL GENIUS, lol).

I've come up with one sample day's activities and a "curriculum" that I hope will translate well to lots of other days. Each afternoon (I think I'll leave our mornings lazy, as I often don't feel fully awake before noon) we'll focus our attention on a given topic in four ways: academic development; an activity song or game; emotional or social development; and an art or craft project. My sample day would go as follows:

Topic: My Body!

• Counting Parts [Academic] - "What do I have 1 of?" I'll ask, and we'll talk about having one head, one nose, one mouth, one belly button, etc. "What do I have 2 of?" Two hands, two elbows, two eyes, etc. You get the idea.



• Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes [Activity Song]



• Making Faces [Emotional/Social] - The two of us will make and guess facial expressions.



• Sticker Faces [Craft] - I have a sheet of stickers with various eyes, noses, mouths, ears, and accessories (hats and glasses and that sort of thing). I would give her construction paper circles and let her fill them up with different combinations of stickers to make her faces.

None of these activities will take very long, and I don't even think I'll plan them back-to-back. I'll simply use them to break up the day from our usual snack time and play time and tantrum time. ;-)

Any input from the peanut gallery? I'm still very much in the mulling stages -- pondering now what other topics and activities we could add to the repetoire, how to fit them into my makeshift curriculum, and how to implement the whole thing (including the design of a fabulous chart!) -- so if anyone reading this has ideas or opinions to share, please leave me a comment. I'd really like to figure out something that will work for us, and that will make her feel special ~28 years from now when she looks back on her childhood.


~RCH~