mad dash for preschool

recently i got word from someone joining our local homeschooling group that they weren’t actually going to be homeschooling but were looking for help with doing preschool for their 3yr old. that’s fine, some people do consider themselves “homeschooling” preschool. i’ve heard it said.

but she seemed pretty frantic to get some “schooling” for said 3yr old. this i find sad.

i’m of the mindset (for our family, i don’t claim to know what’s best for other families…but that isn’t going to change the sadness i feel for other kids when things are, in my view, sad for them…much as christians feel sad for nonchristians. we’re all entitled to our feelings.) of very little (or no) academics for the little ones. so rushing to get academic learning set up for a 3yr old, who is still little more than a baby, is just sad to me. although…there is an exception to this in my mind…because i may be in this position real soon…a younger sib that wants to “do school” like older sib…i can understand a mom following his/her interests in that…especially if it ends up helping the parent to focus on the one-on-one teaching that they need to be doing with the older. i may very well do some academics earlier with tyren because of this sort of situation. he always wants to do whatever maeven is doing. we’ll see how it goes.

but anyway, while discussing the mad dash for preschool with a friend, i was reminded that if this mom was sending him to public school eventually, that she DOES need to cram as much in during these young ages as possible…to “prepare” him for school. that’s sadly true.

i’ve always said that we don’t do preschool in our family because we are going on to homeschool so we have no need to “get them ready” for school. it just happens naturally here. but i have also always said that i totally understand how families that plan to put their children into the system do absolutely need to prepare them for what is to come. give them a foundation to build upon. i totally agree that in that situation it IS important…because the public school system is so friggin INSANE with how much they are attempting to cram into the little ones at earlier and earlier ages.

just sad, that’s all.

one of the gazillion reasons we homeschool…nice to not have the stress of it all. tyren’s 3 so i cannot even imagine having to frantically figure out how to get help to begin the cramming.

i actually purposefully delay academics. although less so with tyr then maeve…sib issue, of course. kinda like they do with waldorf, but not to the extreme that they take it (actually distracting them from learning their alphabet and such) …i’m ok with him picking up whatever he picks up naturally. he already knows his alphabet for the most part and can count pretty dang well. and i don’t recall ever “teaching” him any of this. course, pbs is always cramming all sorts of info at the kids…and there are lots of computer games he plays that enforce this sort of thing, so i’m sure that and big sister is where he got it all.

i HAVE, however, thought of preschool for tyr (although nixed the idea cuz we just don’t have the money) simply so that i would have more time to work with maeven on the stuff i feel she should be learning…i have heard of homeschooling families that do that and it seemed like a good idea. but i have nana. 🙂 my mom isn’t working anymore, so i’ll be using her to take the little bugger off my hands regularly so i have time to work with maeve.

which reminds me…i need to get working on the rest of my plan for next week! i am trying to be ready to start full speed ahead on monday (or tuesday, if daddy’s home on monday…still haven’t gotten word on that yet).

time to get back to work!!