My partner and I always knew we were going to homeschool our daughter, Sofia when she was born. With us living in the US Virgin Islands, the public schools were not very good and the private schools were incredibly expensive, the decision was always definite on choosing the path of homeschool. Either way, if we could afford private schools, I still would not have opted for us to homeschool.
We moved to the USA when she was 1 year and 9 months, not old enough for us to even think about putting her in school but the subject came up time and time again and even though the public schools in the midwest were a bit better than the island schools, it still did not feel right to consider another option other than homeschool so that was always the final decision.
Sofia is fiercely independent, creative and an imagination that would put Disney to shame 😉. She would sit hours and hours and play with toys switching back and forth between her characters (toys) with up to 6 different dialogs and perspectives for each different character.
Her stuffed animals and our dog were the guinea pigs to her vet escapades.
Cotton Candy needed an emergency C-Section to save her puppies
Blackie has a bad case of the "stickerpox"
Even Charlie Horse got special treatment
Oh no!, Ozzy is hurt bad
He needs lots of love, care and don't forget bandages!
And the vet herself was a puppy or cat 80% of the time and would wear puppy ears, or outfits for weeks on end.
She absolutely loved arts and crafts, painting, creating anything to do with puppies and kittens. She could jump for hours on her small trampoline and that seemed to be her go to when she had a lot of pent up energy.
While we nurtured and promoted her interests in creating things, play and imagination, we started to introduce short curriculum hours of numbers and language when she was 3. It was very obvious that she will excel in Math as she was already adding by the time she was 4 and that was with only a couple of flashcards of numbers addition once every other week.
Language Arts and Phonics was a different story and struggle for me. Her attention span for that was about 3 minutes and she complained it was “so boring”. So I haven’t made that a priority and set it on the side burner until lately, as we have moved to Mexico where we are now in a different country with a different language than English. There are now 2 language we must learn to speak, read and write.
She is 6 years old and her interest in reading, letters, words and sounds is still next to nothing. The curriculum we had didn’t work for us at all. I’ve tried different approaches and different apps, tried to create games out of it all to no avail. I am getting a bit defeated and intimidated as I seem to be out of my league and thinking maybe its me and I’m not using the right way or I'm the right person to teach her. At this point I am seriously wondering if she would do better with other kids in school than just with her boring mom (I know its a discouraging thought and probably a little bit of mom guilt)... at least with the phonics and reading part. I even talked to my partner about enrolling her in a year of school in Mexico where at least she can get to learn speak, write and read the Spanish language.
I am totally new at homeschooling and I imagined it wouldn’t be easy but this is a challenge I have not overcome. We really want to instill a love of learning and reading in her but I am at a loss for how to go about with teaching her how to read. She loves when I read books and will pretend she is reading the books she has memorized by heart but when it comes down to the nitty gritty of actually learning the phonics I totally lose her. Also what I find curious is that if it's a word that is important to her like dog and cat, she recognizes the word and knows how to read and write it.
So to all the homeschool moms and HomeEdders out there that have found solutions to things that their child showed no interest in but was sorta vital to learn in the real world, any words of wisdom, techniques or advice on my perspective or what else we can do to make it fun for her, then feel free to give it. Maybe I am missing something as I am a total Homeschool Rookie and feel like I am the student more than she is. And maybe if I stop overthinking (I tend to do that from time to time) and if I forget about it for another year, she will eventually find interest when her time comes. Afterall, what is the rush. She has a whole lifetime ahead of her. Her interests will peak when she is ready, right?
I don't really have advices on how to work things with letters and reading with your little one because for us it went miraculosusly...but I will think about it!
I have a 3 years old. This is our reading and letters journey so far.
1..He knows letters from the age of 1 (we had some wooden letters and I didnt noticed he started to memorize them). All Letters from A-Z and backwards.
So I'm only saying this because I didnt struggle with letters, reading or words. I guess every child is different and his interest was always letters and a bit later numbers. They still are in the present.
If you let your daughter watch educational shows, you can try Alphablocks. Take a look when you have time. They are amazing.
other than this, I don't know what to say at the moment, why your daugther doesnt have the interest for words yet. I know a lot of kids who dont either. Maybe its not her time yet. But she's so good at pretend play, from what I've read! That is actually super great! Imagination and creativity are very important for their little brains as well. See?? My kid isnt quite creative. He's more into logical things and activities. So yeah, children are definetely unique and have different interests and abilities.
On the other hand, I wanted to say a big Welcome to you in this community and hive blockchain! I've just read all your posts, I wish you all the best in Mexico!
Greetings from Romania
Hi @missdeli. Thank you for your response and insight. She actually does know all her letters and sounds and a couple of words like cat and dog, so I probably shouldn’t be that concerned. It’s just that she has no further interest to learn anything more right now. I guess it’s all in due time. She showed a big interest in anatomy, math, astronomy and other stuff the last 2 years and knows all her organs and planets. Her mind is just busy with other stuff instead of learning to read. I believe if I can Find the right approach where she can relate to it in her interests she’ll excel in due time.
yes, I totally agree! Hopefully you'll find some answers around here. My son also is interested in anatomy, math and astronomy the most. He's a little mister mind when it comes to math and planets.
You should definetely give it a go to Alphablocks. Maybe it works for you. They have many good reviews and apparently they helped many kids with reading and phonics.
I'm sorry I can't help you with an advice but if an idea comes to my mind I'll come back to you. I know what you're searchign for. Actually I feel I can relate to you because myself I try to arouse my child's interest in nature and environment but I can't say I succeeded. We did many activities on the topics and reading, spending time outside and so many more but still, somehow I dont feel he's into it. I guess its not the time or simply he doesnt like it so much as he likes numbers.
Each child is definitely unique and definitely have their own timeline. I will look into alpha locks. Thanks for the suggestion. Appreciate it.
No problem! my pleasure!
Ah I think we are in a similar boat! Our son is a similar age and we have him in reading and writing programs but he’s not doing very well at it. He’s very smart and good at things he enjoys but when it comes to reading and writing he’s fairly slow at taking it up. He’s able to remember a good amount of things but has issues when it comes to saying the words. We are trying to homeschool and it’s certainly not easy!
I think one way that we’ve been able to help him is to follow his passions and incorporate that into it. He loves building and construction stuff so we are trying to do things related to that for helping him learn words and stuff. It’s certainly a challenge but being a parent isn’t easy that’s for sure!
Thank you @cmplxty for sharing. I know I am probably not the only one struggling to find solutions to homeschool challenges.
She has indeed had a very good imagination, that imagination of hers will play a huge role in her future chosen path. With that being said, she has a bright future. Good evening from the Philippines!
I see from both your post and your reply to missdeli that she knows her alphabet and a couple of words she thinks are important, which says to me that she is learning literacy and will learn as she chooses to when it's important to her. It reminds me of a talk by a woman who was unschooled along with her siblings and she related a story about how they were a bit concerned that her youngest sister wasn't learning to read and write, while her parents didn't seem concerned. This girl had an interest in Barbie dolls, however, and she used to get her siblings to help her search for them and their accessories eBay. Eventually, they refused to keep helping her, so the only way she could continue with her passion was to get literate herself, so she did.
My suggestions would be to continue to surround her with the language and literacy and maybe see if you can add things in to her games which could encourage her with reading and writing around her. For example when she playing vets you could bring up the idea of woiting down the animal's information for the surgery's records. You could trace large letters with your fingers so she starts to see the movements associated with writing the letters. Could you create boards or posters where you can put up letters to feature each week and have pictures with their words next to them? This way it's on display where she can see it, but isn't feeling pushed on it, but you may still be to engage her. This way you can introduce letters in a way that she can start to see the different phonetic uses of them, which can change with the word.
With regards learning Spanish, I think your instincts are right in that immersion is the best way for her to pick it up at this age. Are there places other than school that she can go to where she can pick it up? If not, then it won't necessarily be a bad thing for her to experience school for a bit to immerse her in the language, just monitor how she takes to it. Some children thrive in that environment, others don't. My eldest was a little like your daughter. She was a real sponge for learning and new things and would love the start of school when it was exciting and there were lots of new things to learn and do. However, she'd then get bored with the repetition and I'd have a sobbing daughter who didn't want to go to school any more.
My experience with homeschooling, was that it was constantly changing and evolving in order to immerse them in subjects in a way that they would enjoy and respond to. They started out in the school system, so they had the basics of literacy, but my youngest was nearly put off reading and writing completely by the schooling approach, so I ended up dropping it completely and we made a deal that she would choose her own books to read and if she really didn't like them after the first page she could take them back to the library unread. It took a while before she read anything, probably more out of insistence on not liking reading, but eventually she decided she'd find a series of books she liked and for a long time only read them. She was 7 nearly 8 when this happened and doesn't even remember it now.
I'll leave you with two things that helped me as a homeschooling parent. One is that we all question ourselves and wonder if we're up to the job. The other is something I think you are already doing instinctively, but I'll draw your attention to it, and that is to just observe what she is taking on board. I guarantee you they take on board way more than you think and surprise you regularly.
Also remember that everyone has different strengths and interests and it's only schools that put the pressure on for all children to be good at everything. My eldest is a maths and science nerd, but never really got the hang of reading comprehension, so she only connects with literacy on its logical side; grammar, spelling etc.
I feel like @trucklife-family would be able to offer some insights here, having fully unschooled her girls and learnt how to step back and trust their instincts to learn themselves.
Thank you for sharing you experiences, it helps eleviate my concern a bit. When she does play vet she has a checkin list for all her pets and knows how to spell their names by now. I think it is a very good idea to put more effort into adding phonics and language into her play cause that is obviously how she will learn. I will have to be more creative and do that.
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Make the most of that creativity and keep stimulating it. You can also sell the dialogues to Disney (hehe).
Socialization with other children is important, it helps them build character. However, we know that homeschooling can be difficult, but not impossible. We must have the tools at hand and the necessary knowledge to do a good job, if not, the ideal is to seek professional help.