Well, we've been married for 2 weeks now!! To be honest, it feels a lot longer than that! We've been keeping pretty busy with school, cleaning and unpacking, homework, and our jobs. Yes, I (Aimee) finally got a job!! But I'll write about David first. He is an SI leader. This means that for 50 min on Tuesday and Wednesday he reviews Biology with whoever comes to the SI. Currently he is looking up fun videos on the scientific method which is why I'm writing here. Poor guy has so many science classes. His labs go until 6:30, even on Friday! He has 3 labs a week which was so sad last week because I home alone until he got back. But now I have a job which keeps me out until 6. So the house won't be cleaned and organized as quickly, but that's ok since I'm making $15 an hour! And I only work 12 hours a week! It's so great! I start tomorrow and I'm excited! I'm tutoring a high school sophomore. He especially needs help with English and.......... MATH. Haha! But it's geometry and it actually makes sense to me now.
My classes are a lot of fun. A few of my classes are advanced sewing, child guidance,and preschool methods. I am learning SOOO much about children and how to raise them. I'll pose the cool info I learn. So far, some cool things I've learned are:
- To help your child gain self esteem, don't comment on all of their stuff (artwork), "WOW that's so good!" because then they will learn that approval comes from adults. Ask them how THEY like it.
- Let them explore.
- Don't model anything but behavior. Let them be creative and create whatever they desire.
- They shouldn't be put into competitive situations until age 8 (I'm going to talk to my teacher about this more for more clarification, this was just a tangent we got on during class). But competition can be demotivating for children
- Teach them by using what they are interested in. If a child will only play with trucks, the teaching possibilities are endless. You can teach them about color, size, textures, letters (if the trucks have words on them), etc.
There is just so much good stuff in my class!! I'll bring back my course reader (it has TONS of articles on how children learn) so you guys can look up stuff you're interested in. One last thing, don't give you preschool aged children worksheets and coloring books. Let them color in their OWN lines.
Well it's too late for me and I will try and see if I can get Dave to go to bed now :)
All is well here! Just lots of boxes...
Please keep posting these great things you learn about kids!! I need all the tips I can get! It's true about teaching them by using what they are interested in. I could teach Annie just about anything through books because she loves books. Luke, on the other hand, had very little time in his attention span to sit and read a book. I quickly discovered that if the book had choo-choos or cars it would magically hold his attention for extended periods of time. So for his birthday we found some car books with numbers, shapes, and colors and he absolutely loves to read through them over and over. In no time at all he has learned to count and recognize numbers, does pretty well with his shape recognition, and the colors...well he knows what the names are, but is still hit and miss with naming them correctly. We're making progress though!
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing, isn't it? Just how getting them interested makes ALL the difference!
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